Privacy

Ping is Apple's music-centric social network that is integrated into iTunes 10. From a privacy standpoint, it's pretty straightforward--as opposed to Facebook's multitude of privacy settings--but then again, Ping is also very limited as to what services it offers. In either case, here's a quick run-down of the privacy features present in Ping.

Ping is off by default, but when you click Ping in the source list on the left-hand side of the main iTunes window, you'll be presented with a message describing what Ping is, and a button that lets you opt in to Ping.

The U.S. Air Force is investigating the circumstances surrounding a Cape Girardeau recruiter who allegedly discarded sensitive documents belonging to potential recruits, such as birth certificates, Social Security cards and high school diplomas.

The Air Force's public affairs division in San Antonio issued a statement Wednesday saying that a new recruiter to the Cape Girardeau Air Force recruiting office at 3019 William St. was cleaning out old files when he inadvertently threw a "limited amount" of identifying information into a Dumpster behind the building.

A USA Today article from earlier this summer was just re-published on Officer.com, and it definitely grabbed my attention, given all the talk of iPhones and security lately.

Of course, a site called Officer.com would focus on police topics, and this one was about a growing area of forensics focused on the Apple smartphone. The police are increasingly becoming better versed with iPhone technology, especially since cell phones can be key in drug trafficking, and Apple’s brand is the most popular one.

The sensitive personal information found on the new German identification cards with data chips scheduled for nationwide introduction this November can be easily hacked, according to testing done by a TV news show.

Public broadcaster ARD’s show “Plusminus” teamed up with the hacker organisation the Chaos Computer Club to find out how secure the controversial new radio-frequency (RIHD) chips were.

China is now requiring people setting up new mobile phone accounts to register with their real identities as part of a new government measure to reduce anonymity among the country's 800 million mobile users.

All carriers are to adopt the real-name registration system starting this month, said China Telecom spokesman Xu Fei. Within three years, the carriers must also register the real identities of all existing users.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says a lawsuit by a man who claims to own a huge chunk of the popular social networking website is seeking to uncover needless details about his private life.

Zuckerberg is fighting a civil lawsuit filed by Paul Ceglia, an upstate New York resident who claims an 84 per cent stake in the privately-held company, believed to be worth several billion dollars.

Tomorrow’s WikiLeakers may have to be sneakier than just dumping military docs onto a Lady Gaga disc. The futurists at Darpa are working on a project that would make it harder for troops to funnel classified material to WikiLeaks — or to foreign governments. And that means if you work for the military, get ready to have your web, email and other network usage monitored even more than it is now.

It's hardly practical to believe there are "right" and "wrong" ways to employ social networking services like Twitter or Facebook. However, there are "smart" and/or "safe" methods of use, especially for location-based services (LBS) that identify your whereabouts at a given time, like popular social network/LBS Foursquare.

Researchers at security firm BitDefender have detected a new do-it-yourself kit created to produce customized Trojans that pilfer Facebook login details, passwords stored inside browsers and even VPN credentials.

The kit is termed as "Facebook Hacker" and it is very easy to configure, just like any do-it-yourself tool crafted with the 'skiddie' [script kiddie] in mind.

The programme works by scanning the relative positions of the eyes, nose and mouth and claims to be accurate in nine out of 10 cases.

It can then search the internet for further images of the same individual and, in tests, unearthed untagged photos which had not previously been seen by some of the people in them. The managers of Face.com, which created the software, told the Sunday Times that 5,000 developers were already using it.