In a move that is not unheard of, but completely reprehensible, defeated Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is selling off his campaign’s donor and activist email list as the campaign attempts to crawl out of their $4 million hole of debt. And perhaps "slithering" is a better word as Newt is slapping his donors right in the face by not just selling their email addresses to other political campaigns, but to any unscrupulous company with equally slippery ethics.
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Articles on PrivacyIn a move that is not unheard of, but completely reprehensible, defeated Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is selling off his campaign’s donor and activist email list as the campaign attempts to crawl out of their $4 million hole of debt. And perhaps "slithering" is a better word as Newt is slapping his donors right in the face by not just selling their email addresses to other political campaigns, but to any unscrupulous company with equally slippery ethics. Myspace (yes, they are still around, believe it or not) has settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission over Myspace's alleged misleading of their users as to how Myspace was handling user personal information. Put plainly, Myspace was sharing the personal information of their users with advertisers, but misleading users about how they were using their personal information. The Lieberman Collins "Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act" (CIFA) - so designated because the proposed law is being sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and co-sponsored by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and also Senator Tom Carper of Delaware (and perhaps, more strategically important, supported by the Obama administration), is intended to help tighten up cyber security and thwart cyber attacks. Ironically, however, say opponents, this 'Internet freedom act' means exactly the opposite for businesses, particularly businesses that are designated as "critical infrastructure" companies. That is because CIFA would mandate - require - businesses to meet a Federal standard of network security, and out of their own pocket. (The full text of the proposed legislation is below.) Do you use Google Calendar? If you answered "no", well, are you sure that you don't use Google Calendar? Because even if you don't use Google Calendar directly, if you use a calendar on the iPhone, or on an Android phone, you may well be using Google Calendar on the back end without even thinking about it. The same is true if you "share" your calendar from your Mac. And here's the thing, your calendar on Google may be set to "public" view by default. Meaning that anyone can read your calendar. And it will turn up in public Google search results. You may already be aware that Google has a new privacy policy going into effect tomorrow, March 1st, 2012 (don't worry if you are reading this after March 1, 2012, this article will still help you to understand and deal with Google's new privacy policies). But what does it really mean for you? And perhaps more importantly, how can you opt-out of Google's having their finger in every part of your online life, and even remove data that Google has already collected? Here are the answers to those questions about Google's new unified privacy policy. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Firefox's Mozilla, have at last formally agreed to include a "Do Not Track" button (DNT button) in every browser. {Let's take this opportunity to explain that the way this works is that using the "Do Not Track" option inserts a special "Do Not Track" header into your browser. In fact, as we shall see, there may not even be a DNT button involved - you may need to be a super-user type to even find the "Do Not Track" option.} Their capitulation comes just before the Obama administration's appeal to Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights", but don't expect it to mean that they won't still be mining your data. (P.S. See below for how to enable Do Not Track in Safari.) With the recent decision in the Fricosu case, ruling that one can be forced to provide the password to your encrypted hard drive, you may be thinking it is better to store things "in the cloud". In fact, it can be worse, as cloud storage currently requires no warrant for law enforcement to access any of your data which has been stored in the cloud for at least 180 days. Sprint and ATT have provided their official responses to Senator Al Franken's inquiry about Carrier IQ, (also known as CIQ) the commercial customer tracking software included on the sly on their customers' cell phones, and their response is, essentially, "our customers agreed to it." ATT admits that they have CIQ installed on "900,000 devices, with 575,000 of those collecting and reporting wireless and service performance information to ATT." They also admit that they were capturing the content of SMS text messages sent and received while a voice call was in progress. This they blame on a "programming error", and that may be, but it illustrates the capabilities and danger of Carrier IQ. But one of the biggest bombshells may be that through Carrier IQ, they can - and do - remotely turn on your wifi! Think about that for a minute. Netflix has just had a big legislative win with the Feds. The legislation, HR 2471, removes a decades-old federal restriction (part of the Video Privacy Protection Act) banning public disclosure of video rental records. This means that Netflix could share what movies and television shows you've viewed with your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, etc.. HR 2471 just passed in the House, and is up for vote with the Senate. Cell phone companies are scrambling amid growing concerns over the Carrier IQ (or "CIQ") software that has shipped preinstalled (and undisclosed) on many, many smartphones across several carriers, as demands for full disclosure and accountability increase, Federal representatives demand answers, and some suggest that the use of the software, which is alleged to log keystrokes, websites visited, and location, violates Federal wiretapping law. Trevor Eckhart, who first discovered and outed what Carrier IQ was doing, went so far as to call it a "rootkit". Two U.S. malls were all set to use a new technology from U.K.-based FootPath Technology over the Black Friday weekend which would have allowed them to track each shopper's movement throughout the mall, from store to store, using a unique mobile phone signal from each shopper's cell phone - without their knowledge or consent! JC Penny and Home Depot are also said to be looking at adopting the FootPath technology. "Take This Lollipop", the creepy Facebook tour through your personal information, is an excellent example of something we have been trying to pound into your heads all along: putting personal information on the Internet (such as location based check ins) can be dangerous. More to the point: most people have no idea how much personal information they really have revealed online, and how easy it is to track them down, stalking them, and worse. "Take this Lollipop" is technically a Facebook app, which is how (and why) it asks for you to log in using Facebook Connect, something that we also advise against. You may think that you are being oh-so-careful with your Google profile, Match.com profile, Facebook profile, or other social media or dating site (or other) profile. You never use your full real name publicly, you don't share your address or where you work. But if you have an image in your profile that has ever been published anywhere else on the Internet, it can be very easy to use Google's image matching search engine to quickly discover any information associated with that image anywhere online. Facebook is being sued over its using its ability to track Facebook users' Internet browsing history even while they are logged out of Facebook. The Facebook lawsuit, filed in Federal court in Mississippi on October 12th against Facebook, Brooke Rutledge claims that, among other things Facebook is in direct violation of U.S. Wiretapping laws. But perhaps more to the point, it is in violation of treating its users with common decency, following them with Facebook super cookies and the like. The complaint also seeks to turn the lawsuit into a class action, so others can join the law suit. This interesting little tidbit landed in our inbox just moments ago: Borders sold all of their customer data to Barnes and Noble, including information about your DVD and other video purchases! And, clearly, your associated email address! Or, another way to look at it is that Barnes and Noble purchased your customer data from Borders. And promptly added you to a mailing list without your consent to use your personal data from Borders, which they *also* obtained without your consent. Either way you look at it, neither of them come up smelling like roses. The Nym Wars (nym for "pseudoNYM" and wars for, well, "wars", and pronounced 'nim wars') don't appear to be going away any time soon. The issue at the heart of the NymWars is whether or not people should be allowed to mask their true identity when posting on the Internet by using, well, a psuedonym. Google says "no", and has taken a firm stance with their Google Plus service, leading to a lot of gnashing of teeth, and pundit pontificating. Last month Social Intelligence Corp. received official approval from the Feds to monitor and search your social network status updates and other information that is publicly searchable online. So just what is Social Intelligence doing with the results of their social network search? They are providing them to the people who pay Social Intelligence Corp. for those results: prospective employers. Anything you say or post online in a public forum can and will be used against you, including remarks that can be construed as racist, photos that can be considered explicit, or anything that can be taken as evidence of illegal activity such as drug use, to name a few. Suddenly the drunk posting of a status update on Facebook from years ago can come back to haunt you and cost you that job that you really want. We're betting that some in the Google inner circle are ruing the day that someone at Google HQ first uttered "Don't be evil." Like Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes", it has become the iconic soundbite with which they are most associated. How that gels with the news that Google is now forcing anyone with a Google Profile to make that profile public or lose it, well, we're sure we don't know. But there it is: where users used to be able to keep their Google Profile private, Google has made clear that private profiles will no longer be permitted. Either take your Google Profile public, or lose it when they do a mass deletion of all private Google profiles on July 31st. Face recognition on Facebook - there has been a lot written about the privacy invasion that is the facial recognition Facebook recently unleashed on its users, which pops up uninvited, urging tagging Facebook photos that you upload, tagging all of the Facebook users that it recognizes in your images. The photo facial recognition software that Facebook has foisted on you allows Facebook face recognition of anybody who has not opted out of it (and let's face it, few people know how to opt out of it - in fact few people even know that the Facebook recognition photo tagger exists - until they run smack into it). Earlier this year we mentioned that Google was rolling out face recognition technology that would allow someone to pull up your personal information just by taking your picture. Now Facebook has launched their own facial recognition privacy nightmare, which "uses a comparison of photos you're tagged in to suggest that friends tag you in new photos." In other words, when one of your Facebook friends uploads a photo, and Facebook's software recognizes you in that image, Facebook automatically suggests that your friend tag you in the photograph. The "feature" goes by "Suggest photos of me to friends", and is also known as "Photos: Suggest Tags". And the kicker is, Facebook has quietly enabled this for you - it is running now! So here's how to turn it off! State Farm, the insurance company, has just released an iPhone app that evaluates how you drive. Called the State Farm Driver Feedback app, the iPhone application uses your iPhone's accelerometer and GPS to track your acceleration, cornering, and braking, and then gives you a grade. But is that all it gives you? What about increased insurance rates, or even being declined insurance, based on how you drive, as recorded by the State Farm Driver Feedback app? In response to the howls of outrage over the news that iOS4 is tracking and storing every location you visit with an iPhone or iPad, Apple has finally, more than week later, issued a statement on the matter,. In essence, they say that a bug made them do it, and they are going to fix it. Sort of. Google has announced a controversial face recognition software to run on mobile phones. The Google face detection application will access your personal information - including your personal contact information - when someone takes your picture using the Google face recognition app. A few months ago we wrote about the Federal Trade Commission's proposed "Do Not Track" list and legislation. One of the biggest invaders of your privacy is cookies that track you, and that respawn after you (think you) have deleted them, or, as they are known, "Zombie Cookies" (so-called because they come back from the dead). As defined in Wikipedia, "a zombie cookie is any HTTP cookie that is recreated after deletion from backups stored outside the web browser's dedicated cookie storage." Variations on this theme include the Adobe Local Shared Object (LSO) cookie, and the Evercookie. There was a Zombie cookie law suit last summer, levelled against such industry giants as ABC, NBC, MTV, ESPN, MySpace, and Hulu, alleging that they were using Zombie cookies that respawned after being deleted because their backups were being stored in Flash. That technology was provided by Quantcast, who was the lead defendant in the Zombie cookie lawsuit. Not long after, the FTC announced their "Do Not Track" legislation proposal, and now Consumer Reports is asking their members to contact their Congressmen in support of the proposal. As any jilted lover would, Sprint has rebounded, and has gotten into bed with Google voice. And, frankly, we think they make a better couple anyways. The sweet sound made by a direct connection between your Google Voice account and your cel phone is music to the ears. As mentioned earlier today, Sprint and T-Mobile USA's courting didn't stand a chance once AT&T cut in and swept T-Mobile off the dance floor. But Sprint had a friend with benefits up their sleeve, and it was announced today that Sprint has integrated Google Voice into their offerings. As if it isn't bad enough that Facebook is sharing your private phone number with all of your Facebook friends, there has been quite a stir this week over the news that Facebook is moving forward with their plans to allow third parties to access your contact information, including your address and telephone number. While Facebook denies this in the press, Facebook themselves confirmed it in a formal letter to the U.S. legislature, signed by Facebook's VP of Global Public Policy, Marne Levine. We've talked in the past about Jigsaw.com, the site that encourages people to sell them your personal contact information (you give someone your business card, they log into www.jigsaw.com and literally get paid to rat you out by selling Jigsaw your contact info). Now it turns out that they will not remove your contact information, even if you request that they do so. Remarketing is a term you are likely to start hearing more of, with the buzz about the possiblity of a Do Not Track registry. This is both because remarketing is one of the leading uses for online tracking of consumers' movements on the Internet and across the web, and because remarketing is one of the big reasons that Internet advertisers, Internet marketers, and their lobbying organizations oppose a Do Not Track list. Remarketing, you see, is online advertising that follows you around the web or, as we call it, stalkvertising. Yesterday the Feds, through the Federal Trade Commission, came out in support of a request by several NGOs to create a "Do Not Track" registry, similar to the current "Do Not Call" and "Do Not Send Junk Mail" registries, only in this case the tracking referred to in "Do Not Track" is the online tracking of Internet users across the web, tracking the websites they visit with cookies and other tracking technologies, in much the way that Facebook and their partners are currently tracking people. Among other things, this tracking allows them to have their ads follow you around the web in a practice known as 'remarketing' or 're-marketing'. In case you have been missing having to tear your hair out over Facebook's privacy settings and policies, fear not, because with Facebook's new "Instant Personalization" setting, you can tear away. Six months ago we reported on Facebook's then-new 'open graph' with "social plugins", or 'social graph', that followed you around to sites like Pandora and Yelp. This appears to have evolved into, or spawned, Facebook's "Instant Personalization" where, explains Facebook, the goal is "to give you a great social and personalized experience with every application and website you use." Did you know that Facebook is taking your telephone number, and publishing your phone number to all of your friends in a handy dandy online Facebook phonebook? And, we don't mean that they are 'going to' do this - we mean that they are doing it right now. That's right, as we speak, Facebook is publishing your telephone number in a Facebook online phone directory for all of your Facebook friends, in a Facebook phone book available in their account (with your phone number). If you think that because your Facebook or Twitter profile is set to "private" that it means that you can control who will see what you post, think again. In fact, even if you delete what you have posted - in your private account - you can still be forced to let others see it, even after you've deleted it. That's the Court ruling in a recent case involving plaintiff Kathleen Romano, who may have deleted postings, made to her private Facebook and MySpace accounts, which would be beneficial to the defendant, the Steelcase chair company. More information is coming to light about the situation with Google and David Barksdale, a Google engineer who used his access to the massive stores of data that Google has gathered about its own users to spy on the private lives (and data) of several Google users, who also happened to be minors. That's right - Google employee David Barksdale was spying on children, even cyberbullying them, using the access that his position with Google afforded him to look at the private information of children. What's more, it was going on for months. There is a meme going around this week, concerning Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and how he supposedly said that concerns over Facebook privacy were "overblown". In fact, nearly 1,000 sites, including the Telegraph, the Latest Business Report, and SFGate, are reporting that, and we quote, "Facebook privacy concerns overblown, suggests Mark Zuckerberg." However, in the actual interview on which these sites are reporting - an interview that Zuckerberg did with the New Yorker's Jose Antonio Vargas - Zuckerberg never actually says that the concerns are overblown - in fact he doesn't use the term "overblown" at all. Good thing too, because we just discovered that with a single click, Facebook is now revealing all of the applications that you use to your friends, and vice versa. (See screen shot below.) When you’re going through the security gates at an airport, you’re most likely resigned to the fact that your bag will be searched, regardless of whether there is a reason to do so.   But what about your computer, laptop, or cell phone, with the overwhelming amount of personal information it contains – do you expect that to be searched?  You should, as Lisa Wayne found out the hard way when her laptop was whisked away and subjected to a half-hour search.  It turns out this is fairly routine.  Now a law suit has been filed by Wayne and others to out a halt to this practice (some would say 'abuse') by the TSA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The announcement is imminent: Facebook is about to launch its new Facebook Places service. Positioned as a competitor to the increasingly popular FourSquare, and the slightly less popular Loopt and others, Facebook Places is another of the location based social media services, also known as geosocial networking. Put briefly, it is a service that allows you to "check in" when you arrive somewhere, letting everyone who follows you know where you are (and, often, what you think of where you are). Other services that offer some variation of geosocial networking include BrightKite, Google Latitude, Gowalla, Socialight, Hotlist, Scvngr, Fire Eagle, and Gbanga. Does it seem to you as if Google spies on where you've been on the web, showing you Google ads (you know, those "Ads by Google") that are based on where you've just been, instead of where you are now? Are you starting to feel as if Google is evil, despite their "do no evil" mantra, using some sort of special Google spyware to show you Google advertising based on your travels across the Internet? Do you feel as if Google is following you around the web? Well, you're not far off. Google is following you around, in the form of a cookie that they have trailing you. A cookie that tells Google where you've been, and Google then chooses which Google ads to show you based on that information. Most commonly, you will see ads advertising something in which you showed an interest previously, on another site, in an effort to rekindle your interest and induce you to buy. This is known as "retargeting". You can opt out of this Google privacy invasion, which Google calls "interest-based advertising", but you have to know how. When I was a child growing up in New England, we had a saying: If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. The same, it seems, can be said for Facebook's privacy policies. Barely 4 weeks ago, Facebook announced their new open graph platform that follows you across the web - a privacy policy that seems based on the less (privacy) is more (revenue) principle. A mere 4 months earlier, Facebook announced sweeping privacy policy changes that users found beyond confusing. And a few months before that Facebook announced privacy policy changes that allowed developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data! And now, just today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced yet another change to Facebook's privacy policies and Facebook privacy settings system, this one, he promises, "making control simple." The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just released the results of research which indicate that your browser creates a unique "browser fingerprint" which can be uniquely linked to you, thus creating a record of your browsing habits and where you've been on the Internet with your browser, even if you have cookies turned off in your browser. In fact, says the report, this non-cookie method for identifying users using their browser fingerprint with such browsers as IE and Firefox is effective as much as 94% of the time. We take Facebook safety seriously. A few days ago in one of our articles on Facebook we told you about Facebook's new open social graph and Facebook apps that allow Facebook to follow you around from site to site, sharing what you are doing, and how to opt out of it doing so - that is just one of the many Facebook risks you can read about here. (On an interesting sidenote, in researching this article we found that many people search for Facebook info and never find it because they misspell "Facebook" in a number of ways, including Facebok, Faceboo, Acebook, Fcebook, Fcebook, Faebook, Fasebook, Faccebook, Facebbook, Faacebook, Faecbook, Faceebook, Fcaebook, Facebookk, Facebooks, Ffacebook, Facebood, Facerbook, Faceboock, and our personal favorite, Fecebook.) Facebook - the site that changes its interface, services, and values almost as often as we change our underwear (hint: daily), has once again announced a major change that affects all Facebook users - and users of other services - in a major way. This week's announcement is that Facebook is now sharing it's new "like" system with partners like Microsoft Fuse Docs, Pandora, and Yelp - and any other site that wants to feature the new Facebook social plugins - creating what Facebook calls a "social graph" or "open graph". This means that when you "like" something on Facebook, that "like" will follow you around to Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft Fuse Docs - and vice versa. The good news is that you can opt out of it (and we tell you how). Do you use Twitter? If so, every single message you send out publicly - every single Tweet - is being archived by the United States Library of Congress. Observers say that this is a move by the Library of Congress to preserve for posterity the current culture as it is being expressed through voices on Twitter, both famous and unknown One of the burning questions of the entire "school spying on a student in his own home through the webcam in the school-provided laptop" fiasco - which was followed closely by the "school accuses student Blake Robbins of improper behavior in his own home based on photos taken through the webcam" debacle - is just what was the improper behavior with which they confronted Blake? Read on... (Hint: It has to do with his friends, Mike and Ikes. Yes, it's true.) P.S. Folks in the area are already calling this "WebCamGate". It's no secret that Facebook has an.. interesting ... view of user privacy. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zucker recently suggested that Facebook users (should) have no expectation of privacy. Now to add insult to the complete-lack-of-privacy injury, starting a few days ago, Facebook applications now have permission to grab your email address - that is to require that you divulge your email address before you can use their application. The so-called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - a service provided by Moddr that lets you delete all of your social media accounts at once (or as they put it, "delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego") - has certainly gotten the attention of Facebook. It started with Facebook blocking the IP addresses of the social networking suicide machine and similar services, however now Facebook has taken the much more aggressive action of sending the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine a Cease and Desist letter. Which means that Facebook is prepared to sue someone for helping people who don't want to be on Facebook close their Facebook accounts. We've received rafts of concerns about the newest Facebook Privacy Announcement and the new Facebook privacy policies - and even about Facebook's privacy policies policies (like the policy of forcing you to revisit their privacy policies repeatedly, and requiring you to confirm what appear to be new settings or keep your "old settings" without giving you a chance to see or understand what your "old settings" were to start with). Take one part paranoia, one part zeal, two parts conspiracy theory, and someone with too much time on their hands, and what do you get? No, it's not the sequel to Minority Report. It's the allegation that Yahoo and other ISPs are spying on their users and selling their users' information, with publication of the so-called "Yahoo Spying Guide", and other ISP "Spying Guides" as "proof" that Yahoo and other ISPs have put a price on their own users' heads. Now this is new! If you have a Facebook account, searching for your name in Google will turn up not only a link to your Facebook page, but includes a list of your friends, as well! And that's even if your privacy settings on Facebook are set to disallow public access, such as the "only My Networks and Friends can see my profile and personal info" settings. Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately (stay tuned for our upcoming story on the woman who was arrested for poking someone on Facebook!), and there is increasing awareness over just how intrusive and invading of their users' privacy many of their money-making practices are, such as using their users (you and your Facebook friends) in their Facebook advertising. Here's a real-life example of someone being used in Facebook ads, and information on how to opt out and stop Facebook from doing it to you. Recently an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming followed up on a request by a customer to email loan documents to a Gmail address. Unfortunately, after doing so, the employee realized that they had emailed the documents to the wrong Gmail address. Oops. Not only that, but they had accidentally included a file containing the identities, addresses, loan information, and tax identification information of more than 1300 Rocky Mountain Bank customers - 1325 to be exact. OOPS. All to a Gmail address belong to nobody-knows-who (presumably the error occurred when the Rocky Mountain Bank employee typoed the Gmail address). While this was announced last month, nobody really noticed it until this week. Facebook has created new features that allow developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data. In addition to the content of your email, it allows applications to make note of who are the recipients of a mail thread, and the time and date of the emails. A group of Facebook users has sued Facebook for violation of their privacy, and privacy law in general. The group, which includes two children under the age of thirteen, an actress, and a professional photographer, have sued Facebook in California Superior Court, alleging that Facebook's practices violate California online privacy laws which make it illegal to reveal users' private data for commercial gain. Holy privacy and security issue! A Palm Pre user who is also a securitygeekstud has discovered that Palm Pres (or should that be Palm Pri? Palm Prie? What is the plural of "Pre"?) are spying on Palm Pre users and on how they are using their Palm Pre, and reporting back to Palm! In case you aren't aware of this, every time you visit a site that has Google Adsense on it, and every time you visit a site that uses the DoubleClick ad management system, you have the potential for being tracked via a cookie that is injected to your computer. The cookie is known as the DoubleClick DART cookie, and, in fact, there is a very good chance that you are being tracked by one of these cookies. This is so that Google and DoubleClick can better serve you, providing better ads which, in theory, you will find more interesting and enticing. As online society becomes ever more social, and cares ever less about personal security, the phrase "social security" seems more than ever an oxymoron. Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly brought home than in this week's announcement by researchers at Carnegie Mellon that they have cracked the social security code, and were able to predict with frightening accuracy many social sercurity numbers (SSN). In many cases, their hack was aided by information gleaned from such social networking sites as Facebook. A Dutch boy who was mugged and robbed last year by a pair of 24-year-old twin robbers just happened to find an image of the moment before the mugging occurred, in the Google Street View on Google Earth. Montana, once known as "Big Sky" state, just became the "Big Spy" state, with the revelation that those applying for jobs with Monatana's City of Bozeman are required to provide their username and password for any social networking site to which they belong, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, and others. We've been telling people for years not to put pictures of your children up online on the Internet. Nobody ever believes us that perfect strangers will not only find those pictures, but do inappropriate things with them. Now here's a real-life example of this happening. In the instant case, Danielle and Jeff Smith are lucky that "all" that was done with the picture of their children is that it was blown up bigger than lifesize and used in an advertisement half-way around the world. Cell phone tracking via GPS and location privacy is starting to emerge as a big issue, especially with more GPS enabled cell phones on the market. e911 rules require that your cell phone transmit your location data when you make a 911 call. But some people are finding that their GPS cell phones are transmitting their location all the time. It's one of Facebook's dirty little secrets, even though it's been publicly available information for more than a year. Facebook takes information that you post, and sells it to advertisers who can use it in ads that are displayed to your friends. For example, if I posted "Eating Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream", Ben & Jerry's could then show an ad to all of my Facebook friends saying "Anne is eating Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream - shouldn't you too?" The service is part of Facebook's "Facebook beacons" service for advertisers, and the ads in which your Facebook info is displayed are called "Facebook Social Ads". And if you don't explicitly opt out of them, then you are fair game. Stupid users are the worst problem on the Internet, according to this survey of more than 600 Internet users. If Sebastian Boucher thought that encryping the data on his hard drive would protect him from prying eyes, he may have been right. But if the Derry, New Hampshire resident, who is originally from Canada, thought that it would protect his 5th Amendment right against self incrimination, he may have another think coming. Oh goody. The anti-privacy folks at Flexi Spy, who brought you cell phone tapping software for Nokia 60, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones back in 2007, have just announced a new iPhone cellphone spying software version of FlexiSpy. Whee! Even though we've heard hardly a peep about email tracking software service Did They Read It since they first burst on the scene more than four years ago, another email read tracking service has bellied up to the email tracking trough in the form of SpyPig. Regardless of one's politics, or political party affiliation, one can't deny that Barack Obama has done a pretty good job of using the Internet. Barack Obama's website and other Internet fund raising efforts have raised him more than $200 million - again, that's just Internet-raised donations! Now, amid heightening speculation that threatens to reach fever pitch, Obama is signing people up in droves to be able to receive a text message announcing his choice for his vice-presidential running mate, with his "First to Know" Internet campaign. The Internet is all abuzz today with a line from Google's response in the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against Google by Aaron Boring and Christine Boring of Pennsylvania. That line is "Complete privacy does not exist." There's only one problem - Google didn't actually say it. The controversial online advertising firm Phorm (pronounced "form") has, for much of this year, been in the middle of a maelstrom of criticism over its plans to serve up ads specific to the user's browsing history. Yet to go live, Phorm continues to sign up ISPs, mostly in the UK where their ISP partners cover 70% of the UK broadband market. Their early access trials, though, have been contentious, and the debate is far from over. How do you feel about having someone access your browsing history, the better to serve you relevant advertising? The good news, for savvy users, is that it can be blocked at the user's browser by permanently blocking cookies from the domain www.webwise.net. The mega popular Facebook site has joined the ranks of social networking sites that trick you into providing your password so that they can steal your AOL , Yahoo, MSN, or other address book, and spam all of your contacts. Only this time it's with a twist - they are actually spamming your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) contacts in your Buddy List! The spam starts out like this: "According to his Facebook status, Friend's Name (their username) is now "Friend's Nickname". Friend invites you to join Facebook and keep up with what he and your other friends are doing." What we want to know is WHY are AOL, Yahoo, and MSN continuing to let this go on? With very little fanfare, Google has unleashed their relatively new web history feature on their users. If you had any doubt that Google has the ability to store and track your every move you make - at least through them - let this put all doubts to rest. Here's what's really behind that "New! View and manage your web history" link you're seeing on the Google page. Is your ISP inserting their own ads into your browser, trying to cash in on your browsing experience? Now you can bust them, with this new way of testing it! Upskirting is an issue relating to the Internet for a couple of reasons. First, because upskirting - the act of surreptitiously taking a photo up someone's skirt - is usually done with a cell phone, part of the sport is posting the upskirt pictures you take to the Internet. Also "upskirting" is one of the most often-searched for phrase on the Internet. You might say that upskirting and the Internet go hand-in-hand. Forget plain old mobile phone tracking. FlexiSpy is a cell phone tapping and spying software that, once slipped on to your cell phone, sends all of the data from your cell phone to the person spying on you. It also allows them to turn on your cell phone's microphone so that they can remotely listen in on what you are doing, and on your calls! It currently works with all Nokia 60, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones, and, according to FlexiSpy, more phones are being added all the time. The mother of a Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was jailed for ten years by the Chinese government after Yahoo cooperated with Chinese authorities and revealed Shi Tao's identity and personal details to them, is suing Yahoo in U.S. Federal court. Recently I started getting invitations to join Flixster from complete strangers. Obviously, this was spam, but why were these complete strangers sending it to me? And why were they always from AOL and Hotmail? Now people are asking - is Flixstr accessing your AOL and Hotmail contacts list and spamming them in your name? Quite a few people have by now read about AOL's new Skyhook "Near Me" buddys plug-in. That's the plugin for the service which lets you know if any of your buddies are geographically near to you, and puts them in a "Near Me" buddies group. But what far fewer people realize is exactly how it works. How does it know when you are near one of your buddies? The answer may surprise - and concern - you. A new service announced by AOL, called Skyhook, adds a new "Near Me" buddy group to your AIM buddies. This is intended to show you your nearby buddies or local buddies. Based on where you and your AIM buddies are located, those who are within a certain number of miles of you will show up in your "Near Me" buddy group. Network neutrality, laws requiring dating sites to perform background checks and ISPs to rat out their users, laws banning anonymous posting, and cyber bullying legislation. Is it all part of a move towards a nanny Internet? A new law, called the the "Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act", or SAFE Act, proposed by Senator McCain and Senator Schumer, would require any ISP to report and forward to a central agency any image which came through or was hosted on their system which meets the Federal definition of child pornography. This includes drawings and cartoons of children, if they could be considered inappropriate, even if the children don't actually exist in real life, and ISPs that fail to report such images would themselves be subject to stiff penalties. A website exposing and selling personal information and personal items belonging to Paris Hilton, owned by Bardia Persa, has been ordered by a Federal judge to cease and desist from selling the items pending a hearing. The items were purchased by Bardia Persa for $10 million from Nabil and Nabila Haniss, who in turn had purchased them for a little over two thousand dollars. I'm betting that they purchased the items at a storage locker auction; and storage locker auctions are perfectly legal. A company called Accenture has developed a system for a "virtual family dinner". The concept is simple enough. With people scattered across the United States, and around the globe, it's increasingly rare that a family sits down to dinner together around a table. So, goes Accenture's corpthink, let's have their loved ones sit down with them - wherever they may be. The virtual family meal system is aimed primarily at the elderly, whom are often shut in, or may have special dietary needs which could be monitored by family members on the grid of the system. Did you know that your innocent-looking little cell phone can be used to listen in on your regular conversations - conversations which aren't even taking place on your cellphone but just in the room in which your cell phone is sitting - without you even knowing? Known as a "roving bug", this technology can be used for eavesdropping even when your mobile phone is turned off! Filehound is software that allows law enforcement officials to quickly scan a hard drive and determine the true nature of the contents of an image file that has been renamed to appear to be something else. VaporStream is a new product that offers recordless email that disappears after being read. And, it can't be forwarded, can't be printed, and can't be stored. But here's what I want to know: if you have to go through the trouble of logging in to someone else's server - and paying to do it - in order to not send a regular email, why wouldn't you just pick up the phone? The Sprint Family Locator is a new service being offered by Sprint that allows you to track up to four family phones via their GPS coordinates. So this guy walks into the Quidnunc computer repair shop in Seattle, and says "my computer doesn't work - I can' t open certain image files; can you fix it?" The Quidnunc technician fixes it, and low and behold, he finds that those image files contain dozens of pictures of kiddie porn. LocateCell.com and other Internet sites which were known to be selling consumers' private cell phone records have been either taken off line by action by the Federal Trade Commission, or have taken themselves offline after seeing the handwriting on the wall. As many as twenty high school students from East Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan were busted by their school after it was discovered that they had been drinking. How were they discovered? Pictures of them drinking were posted on blogs. Daniel Thurman was been caught in the act of upskirting, and now you can see the picture! Moral of this story? If you're going to up skirt (and please don't upskirt, but if you are going to up skirt), don't upskirt where there are security cameras! A private New Jersey high school has issued a blog ban against its entire student body, and any students not removing their blogs, including at MySpace and Xanga, face suspension. The machine identification code of your printer may be being embedded on every single page you print, including the date, the time, and your printer's serial number. Is our technology spying on us? A cell phone repairman has been busted for selling home sex videos which he found on his customers' cell phones. TeenArriveAlive and CarChip are technologies designed to keep your teen safe behind the wheel by allowing you to remotely monitor their every driving move. Using GPS location in one case, and inviting strangers to report on the child's driving in another, TeenArriveAlive and CarChip are sure to be controversial. The Wherify Wherifone offers a simple pre-programmed cell phone with a built-in GPS locator, so that you can keep track of your child, grandmother, or employee. Bluecasting has been accused of Bluetooth spamming, and tries to explain why what they do is different. Here's a pretty nifty website if you're curious about from where those telephone calls are really originating. It's called Fone Finder. The way that Fone Finder works is that you can enter any telephone number, anywhere in the world (if you are entering ... How would you like to be the lawyer who is known for defending a man on charges of upskirting? You may recall that upskirting and downblousing are the terms used for taking surreptitious pictures of people, in various states of undress, or under their ... This would actually be funny if it weren't so seemingly petty. No, wait, I take that back. It's funny anyways. Back on July 14th, CNet News reporter Elinor Mills wrote a story on Google and privacy. As an example of the ... According to a survey done by AdultMatchmaker.com (which begs the question, are there sites out there devoted to matchmaking for children?), as many a third or more of all online daters will do a Google search of their intended before going out on ... The U.S. Department of Justice has opened their online National Sex Offender Public Registry for business. The controversial registry collates information from all of the online state registries, allowing for people to search all of the online databases at once to determine ... Ever since the FCC approved wireless Internet access on U.S. flights, the promise of fly-fi on domestic flights has titillated U.S. passengers. Up until then, fly-fi had eluded domestic U.S. flights, although fly-fi has been available on European and Asian flights for ... A survey of nearly 2,000 people by the Chubb Group of Insurance Agencies has found that one in five Americans believe that they have been the victim of identity fraud. According to a press release by Chubb, other findings include: "Twenty-seven percent of respondents reported ... Aunty just found out this week that American Express offers this great service called the Credit Card Registry. If you subscribe to the American Express credit card registry, and your wallet or purse (or wherever you keep your credit cards and ... If California State Senator Joe Simitian gets his way, California will come to the fore of states passing laws which restrict the uses of the controversial RFID chips. South Dakota is presently considering a law which prohibits implanting an RFID chip ... Some interesting observations about the recent CardSystems hack in this news release: SAN FRANCISCO, June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- A week after CardSystems Solutions, Inc. disclosed that thieves made off with credit-card information affecting up to 40 million cardholders, the company has ... It seems that adult-themed websites in the United States aren't the only ones up in arms over the new U.S. "Age Records" rule for adult content websites, which became a reality this week. Not only are adult industry performers in Canada concerned about the ... Protecting yourself from credit card fraud and identity theft has become even more important with the unrelenting succession of security breaches, such as last week's theft of 40 million credit card numbers. Here are seven specific things you can do now to help ... Webmasters whose websites deal with adult content may soon have to start policing the ages of the models and performers who appear in content on their website, even if they did not generate or solicit the content - indeed even if the content ... Have you ever visited a porn site, even accidentally? Sure, it really does happen by accident. Heck, it's happened to me! The United States House of Representatives has voted to restrict the Patriot Act so that it cannot be used to pry into the library borrowing and book purchasing of U.S. citizens. You would think that this would be a no-brainer - ... Earlier this week Aunty reported to you that Microsoft was censoring Chinese users of its new Chinese-based web and blogging portal. Today Silicon.com is reporting that Microsoft has confirmed this in an email to Silicon.com, in which Microsoft admits that it does maintain a ... A mock trial, in which ISPs were sued for damage done by a zombie network to a few fictitious companies' business and financial interests, found that a jury of IT professionals overwhelmingly held the opinion that the ISPs were not responsible for the ... Ah, a fresh entry in our "how to get yourself into trouble with your cell phone" archives, along with videoing yourself having sex and having it turn up in porn shops, and the guy denying a crime involving an AK47 just as his cell phone displayed a photo of him... holding the AK47, and, of course, the ubiquitous upskirting and downblousing, A New York judge has ruled that Internet service provider RoadRunner must reveal the identity of a customer who sent email to the Public Relations Society of America's board of directors, claiming that the Public Relations Society of America's executive director, Catherine A. ... There's a hue and cry being raised about Microsoft's new MSN portal in China not allowing Chinese users to access or share certain "forbidden" sites and ideas on the Internet. In particular, Chinese users of MSN's blogging service, MSN Spaces, are forbidden ... Net-Detective.com has become one of the most extensive online database resources in the United States, with information on over 211,400,000 U.S. residents, or 90% of all U.S. residents. Unlimited searches all for one flat price under $30. (PRWEB) June 10, 2005 -- Net-Detective.com has ... Google sure does a lot of nifty things with their search and archive capabilities! And one of those things is that it now archives your search history. Meaning that if you are logged in to Google, and perform a Google search, ... A new report out this week indicates that a phenomenon known as digital bullying, or "cyber bullying" is on the rise. In the latest in a rash of incidents in which the personal data of customers of various institutions has been compromised, Citigroup has revealed that the personal account information of 3.9 million customers has gone missing. 3.9 million customers. Wow. In one fell swoop, the ... They are calling it the "Sex Degrees of Separation" website. Shagster.net is the Friendster or Linked-In of the intimate relationship. Slept with someone? Register them on Shagster.net. Slept with several, or several dozen someones? Register them all on ... Talk about spyware versus spyware. Authorities in Isreal have arrested dozens of people, including high level executives of multinational corporations, in what increasingly is developing into the Internet Trojan spyware custerfluck of the year. Only on the Internet can a Trojan ... For some reason we have had a lot of searches this week asking how to get rid of Internet cookies. It's really quite easy, but to make it even easier, we are going to cover it for you here. The Federal government is arguing, despite rulings by the court to the contrary, that under the Patriot Act they are, or at least should be, allowed to demand customer records and information from ISPs (Internet service providers) in secret, and without a court ... According to Cecilia Barnes, men have shown up at her place of employment in Oregon expecting to be able to have sex with her. Which is odd, because she's not a sex therapist or a prostitute. Perhaps less odd, though, ... Just when you thought that the state of the law with regards to the Internet couldn't get any more convoluted, a Minnesota appeals court has held that a defendant's use of the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) program can be admitted as evidence against ... Stanford University has joined that special inner circle - no, not the top tier schools - those which have had their computer systems hacked and data compromised. Earlier this month a hacker broke in to the Stanford Career Development Center's computer, compromising ... Most of us are concerned about Internet privacy, or the lack thereof, but Betty "BJ" Ostergren is doing something about it. Ostergren maintains a webpage which outs the private personal information of public officials - all of which is available to anyone ... There is a hue and cry being raised across the web about Yahoo's use of web beacons, which some liken to "super cookies", and which allow the tracker to track a user's movements not only within their own website, but even when the ... NEW YORK, May 18, 2005 - From computer monitoring and telephone taping to video surveillance and GPS satellite tracking, employers are using policy and technology to manage productivity and protect resources. To motivate employee compliance, companies increasingly are putting teeth in technology policies. ... How many people a day do you suppose go into a mega-electronics store like Circuit City and purchase a new computer? And how many of those people do you suppose have the store like Circuit City transfer their personal data from their ... Many of Aunty's dear readers will remember that around Christmas last year Aunty told you about the Ellsworth family trying to get access to their slain son's Yahoo email account, after their son Justin Ellsworth was killed in combat in Iraq. ... What's that old line about "who's watching the watchers?"? America Online (AOL) actually pays people to watch over their chat rooms, to make sure that nothing untoward happens to any of the underaged who like to hang out in the chat ... Britney Spears is pregnant. Hurrah. Huzzah. And isn't it a wonderful thing? With the advent of the World Wide Web, Britney Spears can, in one push of a button, announce that she is pregnant to millions of fans, cranks, ... Busting someone for smoking behind the school is usually a sweet moment for the principal. Unless, of course, the person being busted is the principal, and it's a student who busted her! Identity theft insurance? It's obviously an idea whose time has come. In fact some would say that identity theft insurance is an idea whose time is long overdue. Just ask anyone whose personal data has recently been compromised by either ... Aunty has been talking about RFIDs to track people since last year, and the natural extension, implanting RFIDs or other miniature technology (or ICT, as it's often known in Europe) in people, is not a new concept. After all, we've been injecting ... Ever wonder how someone on the Internet is able to tell where you are located when you visit their site? (You did know that people can tell where you are located, right?) It's done by geolocation - geographic location - of your IP address. AOL has acknowledged that their updated Terms of Service for their AIM service is confusing and in places poorly worded. As Aunty reported earlier this week, the AIM TOS included such choice phrases as "You waive any right to privacy." "That's a phrase ... Holy complete waiver of privacy, Batman! AOL's new terms of service for their AIM service includes that AIM users waive any right to privacy, and that the AIM user allows AOL to the right to reproduce and republish your chats anywhere, any ... Jack Nicklaus - one of the greatest golfers in recent times. In fact Jack Nicklaus has been called the "golfer of the century". Most sites offering information about Jack Nicklaus on the Internet would be providing things like Nicklaus' game stats, ... It is now possible to track and identify a computer anywhere it goes on the Internet by using its clock skew as a method for fingerprinting it. Clock skew is what a computer thinks the time is as compared to other time-keeping ... Remember the man who used his webcam and free webcam software to catch a burgler? In a twist, a peeping Tom has been caught spying on girls using their own webcams, connected to their own computers. He was able to do ... April 12th is the very last day. That's when the clock runs, and the deadline looms. And here you thought it was April 15th. Nope, it's the twelfth. Because we're not talking about the day your taxes are due. On ... Some of you will remember that just before Christmas we wrote about the Ellsworth family, whose son was slain in combat in Iraq, and who were subsequently trying to get Yahoo to let them have access to their son's email account. Yahoo had staunchly refused, citing their privacy policy. Well, it's happened again, to another family, the Linn family of Midlothian, Virginia, who have found themselves pitted against Reno-based Internet service provider Mailbank.com. Everyone knows that you shouldn't drink and drive. A lesser known, but perhaps equally dire warning is "teenagers, digital cameras, and Internet access don't mix well". Consider the recent case of a group of cheerleaders from Thomas S. Wootton High School, in Rockville, Maryland. By all ... A hacker has compromised the personal information and identification of as many as 32,000 users whose details were stored on computers at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia. The computer system which was compromised was that holding all of the information associated with university ... A Washington state Court of Appeals has ruled this week that police do not need a warrant to access and search the contents of an employee's office-owned PC. All that is needed is the employer's permission. This in the case of ... AuditMyPC.com is a website which offers a host of free services designed to help you to secure your PC. Using readily available diagnostic tools and your Internet connection, the AuditMyPC.com site will tell you exactly what security holes you have open, Windows patches which ... There are just so many facets and angles to this story, it's almost impossible to determine if there is a right and a wrong, let alone who is which. Justin Ellsworth, of Wixom, Michigan, was killed last month while on foot patrol in Iraq. John ... Earlier this week Aunty told you that the former AOL employee who stole the email addresses of 92 million AOL users, and then sold them to a spammer for $100,000, was due in Federal court and was going to plead "guilty" to charges ... Information Security Magazine, following extensive review, has published its list of the top security products for 2004. Evaluating products in a baker's dozen of categories, and with a first, second, and third place in each (gold, silver, and bronze, respectively), this is ... Jerry Smathers, a former AOL employee who first made the news by stealing more than 92 million AOL user email addresses, and selling them to spammers, is now facing up to two years in prison for his misdeed. Due in court in New York ... Forget upskirting and downblousing. What do you call it when you take a video of yourself during an..um...intimate moment - with a camera phone for chrissakes? How about this one: what do you call it when you take a video of ... Aren't those new camera phones so fun? Some of them are so tiny and cute! You can put them in your pocket, take them everywhere, take pictures of people without them even realizing... Whoops, hold on, because that latter can ... Jigsaw - it's like the illegitimate love child of eBay and Linked-In. Jigsaw is a new start-up headquartered in San Mateo, California, that has decided that it would be nifty cool to incentivize people to rat you out by posting your personal contact information from your business card to the Jigsaw database, which seems to be the functional equivalent of the world's largest business card Rolodex, cross-referenced by name, address, area code, and for all one knows, shoe size. If you have ever given your business card to a Jigsaw user, odds are that your contact information is already in there. Cookies. Everyone has them. And everyone wants to know how to get rid of them. While for some browsers it's fairly obvious and straight-forward, for others it's not so much. So, without further ado, here is a list of how to ... RFIDs embedded in your U.S. passport, encoded with your identity, and able to be read at a distance? GPS devices mandated by law, installed in every single new car, so that the state can monitor your every movement and tax you based on the milage you drive? It's not 1984, the Sequel. It's 2004, the Reality. Both of these measures seem likely before the end of 2005. As stupid ideas go, this one is a doozy: people have long said that one of the downsides of a Do Not Email Registry is that it would be such an attractive target for spammers. Well how about this one: the states ... Users of the "Did They Read It" ("DTRI") service run their email to you through the DTRI server, where a web bug is embedded in the email. When you open the email to read it, the web bug reports back to DTRI that you have opened the email, and where, geographically, the IP address you are using is located. For those playing along at home who are interested in, or even concerned about, the privacy issues being raised by Google's new Gmail service, the EFF raises some fairly thought provoking issues, to wit: with the advent of Gmail, along with a ... Much has been made in the past dozen days about Google's announcement of their new service, Gmail. First, the press release was leaked on April 1st, leading to wide speculation: was it an April Fool's gag, or was it not? (It wasn't.) Then ... |
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