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.
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Articles on PrivacyA 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. 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? 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. 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 Aunty has 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, Aunty is going to cover it for you here. The vast majority of ... 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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KingofthePaupers: Jct: There’s nothing wrong with small denomination California State IOUs if I or anyone else can pay their taxes with them. When Argentina’s government workers read Flexispy Review: @ Martin Curry - Unquestionably the Government have the ability to listen in on your Cell Phone through remote activation - so in theory it read Joe: Since you are dealing with politicians, it is really a combination of arrogance and stupidity. read Piewrre ML: And the answer is SO simple! I really query the adequacy of state legislators to do their jobs! Granted, it would required agreement read bigjohn756: Do we have to choose between arrogance or ignorance? How about plain stupidity? It takes no thinking ability to be congressman or to read MartinCurry: I have a guy who claims he is ex-cia tracking my family phones to find material to use against me and my loved ones. Can read andrew: Hi there lve receaved one of these emails and l got him or her tagging the line at the momment what steps can l take read
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