The arms race between Internet marketers, who want as much of your personal information as possible, the better to sell you things – and Internet users, who want to keep their information private, but at this point have no idea how to do it, has just escalated again. As the Internet cookie has become endangered, with more and more users rejecting and turning off cookies while browsing, a new way to uniquely identify individual users has arisen: Internet fingerprinting, based on your computer’s unique profile. What is Internet fingerprinting? Read on.

Just hours before his alleged disappearance from a Hong Kong hotel, Edward Snowden, an ex-CIA employee and NSA contractor working through Booz Allen Hamilton, outed himself as the whistleblower in the NSA PRISM scandal. In the 12-minute video interview posted on YouTube, Ed Snowden explained his reason for releasing the documents that revealed the PRISM program. Here is the transcript of that interview.

Edward Snowden has come forward as the whistleblower in the NSA and PRISM scandal in which it has been discovered that through the PRISM program, the NSA and other agencies have had access to user data at such major Internet companies as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Hotmail and Apple. In the 12+ minute interview, Edward Snowden explains why he did it, and admits that by outing himself, he puts himself in danger from agencies such as the CIA and the NSA itself.

The Internet, the country, and indeed the whole world is abuzz with the news of PRISM, the no-longer-secret program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) first exposed by Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper The Guardian, through which the United States federal government is accessing and mining all sorts of user data from the major ISPs and possibly cell phone companies. Data which is potentially about just about anybody and everybody, even you. The list of companies and ISPs alleged to be involved with PRISM, by which we mean allowing the government to data mine their users’ data, is impressive (read as “scary”) indeed, although most of them are quick to deny it. However, we have evidence (see screenshots below) that even though they are denying it, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, and AOL are all involved. There are rumours of DropBox and Amazon joining. And Verizon is also giving the Feds access to their user data. But as 1984 as this all is, we really only have one question: why is anybody surprised?

There has been a lot of speculation that the new Microsoft XBox One (XBox 1) will essentially be spying on its owners. Well, ‘spying’ may be too strong a word but, at least, that it will have the potential to spy on its owners when combined with the required Kinect motion-detecting web-cam, an ever-vigilant watching and listening device connected to the Internet. These concerns arose after rumours started spreading that the new XBox One required a near 24/7 Internet connection and requires the Kinect.

Harvard University figured prominently this week in the news, as the fact that Harvard had been secretly snooping on faculty email came to light. The incident that some consider an invasion of privacy, and others consider ‘business as usual’, was precipitated by a leak to the media regarding another scandal – students caught cheating – that developed several months ago.

While this is not a brand new development, it is one that Facebook rolled out with little fanfare, and so many people are not aware of this privacy-invading function: you can be tagged on a friend-of-a-friend’s timeline, and also in both photos and comments by the friends of your Facebook friends. Which means that people whom you may go out of your way to not befriend on Facebook can nonetheless get to you, and invade your world, so long as they are friends with another of your Facebook friends.

It’s bad enough that Facebook is exploiting the data of minors who have accounts on Facebook. Now, the newest assault on childrens’ privacy is the recent decision to allow marketers access to the data in a massive databsase that contains the private data of millions of children – k-12 students – incuding their name and address, test scores, attendance records, sometimes even their social security number, and which lists whether they have learning disabilities, and more. So far New York and Louisiana have expressed their intention to enter the data of nearly all of their students, and Massachusetts, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Delaware and Colorado have said they will enter data from “select districts”.

Once again Facebook, your friendly social media hotspot, is the target of marketers wanting and gaining access to your personal data — as a loyalty frequent shopper card program can use that data to cross-reference your likes and interactions to target your pocketbook. And all of it is correlated to you, personally, without so much as a choice to opt-in.

Whether you call it spear phishing, spear fishing, or spearphishing, it’s a computer hack of your email in a way that’s targeted toward you, where you work, or a group you belong to. And, it masquerades as coming from someone you know and trust from your family, friends, workplace, or social group.

Twitter is trending with the promoted hashtag #AmexSync. Do you get annoyed with the “deals” that your Facebook friends “like” showing up in your newsfeed? Well prepare for it to get even worse on Twitter, as American Express and Twitter introduce Amex Sync, the service that connects your American Express credit card directly to your Twitter account. And rest assured, as Twitter has proven time and time again, your private information is secure behind their hack-proof system. (Not!)

Proposed California law AB 242, introduced by Assemblyman Ed Chau, is creating quite a buzz due to its wording, or rather, proposed lack of wording. AB 242 would require that all commercial websites and services offered through the Internet which collect personal information about California consumers make its privacy policy be written at a level of 8th grade reading, and be no longer 100 words.

A hacker, who goes by the name “Guccifer”, has hacked the email accounts of former president George W. Bush, as well as the accounts of his family and friends, and has taken to posting his findings online, including private photos, emails and private home addresses. Guccifer told The Smoking Gun, who broke the story, that he isn’t worried about the feds coming after him because they have actually been investigating him for awhile and this latest stunt is “just another chapter in the game.”

By now you may have heard about Facebook’s Graph Search. And you may or may not already have Facebook’s Graph Search, as Facebook is rolling it out slowly across their membership. If you don’t already have it (or have it but have not yet dived into it), here is an illustrated tour – or, really, an exposé – of Facebook Graph Search (perhaps more aptly called “Facebook Graphic Search”), explained in pictures.

If you’re tired of the privacy concerns of Facebook, the anonymous social network called Social Number may be right up your alley. Giving the question, “what’s your number” a whole new meaning, Social Number lets users pick a user number, which is their only identifier on the social network. That means users will not have user names or identifying photos, just assigned numbers.