Privacy

Just what personal information does your mobile carrier store about you, and for how long? A memo from the Department of Justice sheds some light on this question.

Plenty of people wonder how much information Facebook holds about you - but fewer know that, if you live in the European Union, you have a legal right to obtain it.

Unsurprisingly, it's not something Facebook is keen to tell you about, either - which is why the form required to do so is buried away on the social networking site. Campaign group Europe vs Facebook plans to change all that, prompting EU citizens to request a copy of all private data that's held about them.

Police officers are once again finding their names, dates of birth and home addresses have been published on the web. Meanwhile, over half a million customers of a health insurance company have their personal data put at risk. It's a bad week for data security in Austria.

Almost 25,000 Austrian police officers are the latest to have their personal information exposed by the actions of Anonymous activists.

Hackers today released personal information for Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein.

The document, posted to the Pastebin Web site, includes the CEO's age, recent addresses, details of litigation he has been involved in, as well as registration information for businesses, but no sensitive information such as financial data.

Every time you visit a site that features a Facebook "Like" button, your Web wanderings are sent back to the social network, even after you log off your account.

n Austrian hackers group has published the names and home addresses of nearly 25,000 police officials, a move critics say compromises the individuals' personal security.

Police say the data hacked by AnonAustria contains private information for more than 24,938 law enforcement officials, ranging from beat officers to senior commanders.

Police union official Walter Scharinger said Monday the situation is worrying for officers who might be targets of revenge by criminals they've encountered.

If someone shadowed your digital footprints, making notes of who you became a "fan" of on social networks, keeping records where you were checking-in via mobile devices, compiling your data to decipher your intent, would you consider that collection to be tracking your personal info? If that same entity followed you home and gathered more info on what your interests were, would you feel a bit like you were being stalked or your privacy invaded? What if that so-called stalker were not interested in you personally, just the how's of making money off your "intent"?

Though ridiculing as "scrubs" critics claiming all the LulzSec'ers used the same thin and ineffective anonymity screen as the accused "Recursion," who the FBI arrested yesterday for one in a long line of data breaches at Sony, one of the few surviving LulzSec'ers is calling for a boycott and ultimately the destruction of the VPN service whose records the FBI used to identify Cory Kretsinger as Recursion.

All users of HMA should close their accounts immediately as they do not respect privacy concerns of users using their VPN.– AnonymousSabu, Fri. Sept. 23.

Amongst the recent new changes to appear on Facebook, there is a "ticker" (a rolling real time list of what your friends are doing).

Not everyone has received it yet, because it's on a staggered rollout, but millions have already seen it.

You'll find it on the right hand side of your Facebook page, in the collapsible chat bar. It's smashing if you want to keep fully up-to-date with your friends' activity, but there is a problem with it.

A new set of terms and conditions for OnStar, the General Motors-supported safety and connectivity system, is generating privacy concerns among some subscribers, many of whom have been historically sensitive to the potential for abuse. For years, some G.M. car and truck owners have posted elaborate instructions to Internet forums and user groups detailing how to disable built-in OnStar equipment to prevent any tracking of their vehicles.