Privacy

Negligence by staff compromised 148 records including telephone numbers and addresses of students

After warning the Lancashire Police Authority over its negligence in publishing sensitive data in January, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said that the University of York has breached the Data Protection Act in September 2009. The ICO said that the university failed to close a test area on its website that contained thousands of students' personal details.

Android has had its fair share of malware problems. Whenever malware are detected, Google reacts swiftly and remove them. However, according to security researcher Neil Daswani, around 8% of the apps on the Android market are leaking private user data.

Spartanburg Regional, a South Carolina healthcare system, has been notifying 400,000 of current and former patients that their personal information was compromised when one of the organization's computers was stolen.

According to the healthcare provider, the theft occurred on March 29, 2011, when a desktop computer was stolen from an employee's car overnight. "The employee was authorized to have possession of the computer. We have reported this to the proper authorities and an investigation is ongoing," Spartanburg Regional said.

A research project being worked on for the past 18 months, Telex is markedly different from past anticensorship efforts, and we believe it has the potential to shift the balance of power in the censorship arms race.

What makes Telex different from previous approaches:

LADY Gaga has called in police after thousands of her fans’ personal details were stolen from her website.

Her record label Univeral acted after the site was hacked into by US cyber attackers SwagSec. A source said: “She’s upset and hopes police get to the bottom of how this was allowed to happen.”

Senior figures in his public relations team believe they had their telephones hacked into by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was working exclusively for the News of the World. Sir Paul was represented at the time by the Outside Organisation, one of Britain’s biggest entertainment PR companies.

Ironically, the company later employed Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World who was arrested last week, as its managing director. Outside is expected to sever all ties with Mr Wallis later this week.

Shoulder surfing, the simple act of leering over a computer users’ shoulder to spy on passwords and other sensitive info, may not seem like the most advanced hacker trick. But when it comes to shoulder surfing Apple’s iPad, Haroon Meer has it down to a science.

One of the biggest drawbacks for Facebook is its overcomplicated and difficult to use privacy and security settings. People struggle through many different menus in order to try and prevent any and every company, application and malicious user from getting hold of their precious data. We even see constant scams attempting to take advantage of users in order to spread their viruses across the platform.


The Hacker's Choice (http://www.thc.org) announced a security problem with Vodafone's Mobile Phone Network today allowing an attacker to eavesdrop on ANY UK Vodafone customer's phone call.

A mortgage fraud case has turned into a battle over the Fifth Amendment as the Department of Justice argued that the government can force individuals to disclose their encryption pass phrases.