Privacy

A Netherlands-based meta-search engine has opened its doors in Australia for the first time in an effort to help users circumvent the Government's proposed mandatory Internet filtering scheme.

Startpage Australia, an English-language version of Ixquick, claims to be the most private search engine in the world by deleting user IP addresses within 48 hours, as well as offering SSL encryption and, more recently, an integrated proxy to anonymise all traffic linked through search results.

If someone you didn't know sat beside you on the bus and began divulging their family secrets and sexual fantasies, you'd probably slip on some headphones, discreetly search for another seat, and maybe scrunch your eyes closed in the childish hope they'd have vanished when you looked again. We don't normally crack open the inside of our minds for the delectation of strangers. How weird, then, that these restraints are suspended by so many of us online.

You might have written off the fuss about Facebook over the past few months as essentially technical: nerds fighting nerds, arguing over the default settings on a website. If only it were that trivial. Technology is certainly part of it, but fundamentally the Facebook story is about how people present themselves to different audiences, and what societies should do about companies that dominate their markets.

You can partially switch to Yahoo and take other steps to shield your data from Google, but what happens if Google itself is compromised? One particularly privacy-conscious Computerworld contributor suggests five potential scenarios and the "Defcon 1" and "Defcon 2" solutions.

Companies get to decide whether to tell their customers they've lost their personal information or hackers have stolen it, according to legislation tabled Tuesday by the Conservative government.

In a move that may end up drastically scaling back what Facebook had hoped last month would be a redefinition of the Web itself, the social service will soon begin rolling out simplified privacy controls, according to a blog post today from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The new controls may make it easier for Facebook users to limit the extent to which the system shares their personal information with others, especially including other Web sites.

Want an expert lesson in how to respond without actually responding and how to apologize without saying you're sorry? Then you need to read Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg's quasi-mea culpa in today's Washington Post. Do it now; I'll wait.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ending his silence about recent privacy controversies, has admitted to making some mistakes and promised to fix the problems.

In a letter Sunday to tech blogger Robert Scoble, Zuckerberg wrote, "I know we've made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place, and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve."

Imagine sitting in a café and discussing the details of a business proposal with a potential client. Neither you nor the client has a laptop; you're just two people having a conversation. But unbeknownst to you, someone half a world away is listening to every word you say. Later, as you leave, you receive a text message referring to the proposal and demanding money in exchange for silence.

Recent research from two universities suggests that such a remote-eavesdropping scenario may soon be possible.

There’s a storm brewing in cyberspace. Internet users who, until now, have been perfectly happy to share their most intimate thoughts online, are questioning whether things have gone too far.

Many of these privacy concerns centre around Facebook and Google, which is hardly surprising given their dominance – billions of people around the world interact with these sites on a daily basis.