Privacy

The last couple of years have seen criminals hacking websites to steal personal information for monetary gains. Now, security firm Trend Micro has come out with a report which said that there are about 25,000 Indian email addresses and passwords on different hacker forums on the internet.

The report further stated that the information is a mix of email ids and passwords from sites like Yahoo, Gmail, Sify, different webmail addresses and a number of corporate email addresses as well.

Virgin Media is trialling a scheme that will identify whether its broadband customers are illegally downloading.

The ISP is using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to identify the type of traffic (email, web surfing, gaming etc) a broadband connection is being used for.

Any file-sharing activity will be then be checked against a database of music and films. According to Detica, which is working with Virgin Media on the system, it can identify whether the download is simply family photos or a music album, and if so the artist and title.

Google is now including reviews from more sources on its Place Pages for businesses. They're no longer coming from just review sites. They're coming from news sites, blogs, and more.

Mike Blumenthal, who writes for the Understanding Google Maps & Local Search blog, has an in depth analysis of this change and received confirmation on its existence from Google Maps Product Manager Carter Maslan.

An interview with an anonymous Facebook employee is flying around the web and burning up Twitter, but is the info discussed really anything surprising? The employee revealed that the company records everything their users post, upload and view, and that their data is kept even if they delete it. That’s not exactly a secret-Facebook uses the information for the Suggestions area, to serve relevant ads, and to provide such services as letting you know when your friends have birthdays coming up.

Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, is leading a charge to make privacy settings more explicit to users by creating visual cues in the browser. Raskin’s idea uses a set of small icons to denote the limits of a website’s privacy policy. Raskin likens the idea to how Firefox (and other browsers) currently handle phishing attack warnings, using visual icons and simple language.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's contention last week that privacy is becoming less important to online users caused a stir across the Internet and among privacy advocates.

Zuckerberg told an audience at the 2009 Crunchies Awards ceremonies in San Francisco on Friday that social norms are changing and people don't expect or want nearly as much privacy as they have in the past.

Contrary to public statements made by the Transportation Security Administration, full-body airport scanners do have the ability to store and transmit images, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The documents, which include technical specifications and vendor contracts, indicate that the TSA requires vendors to provide equipment that can store and send images of screened passengers when in testing mode, according to CNN.

On Oct. 23, 2009, Glenn Gaffney, the senior U.S. official responsible for collecting intelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, joined Utah Gov. Gary Herbert at a news conference in Salt Lake City. Together, they announced the construction of a new intelligence data center at Camp Williams, a National Guard site south of the capital.

I am sure that Facebook will endure until well beyond our being twinned with the Planet Tush. Facebook employees will, as the years go by, leave the company to enter politics more frequently. They will be elected with landslide majorities and they will be extremely popular as they will anticipate people's needs far quicker than the conventional gray-haired folks who buy ill-fitting clothes at expensive retailers and currently sit in the Senate.

How can I be so sure? Well, I just watched this video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg being interviewed by a very nice man in a suit.

Privacy groups have filed complaints with US regulator the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over Facebook's latest privacy changes. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) claimed in a statement that it had been joined by nine other privacy organisations in requesting the FTC to investigate recent changes to Facebook's privacy settings.

Since the changes were made, Facebook has been criticised by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and EPIC for encouraging users to share more information than they had previously.