Privacy

Ever wonder just how much of your personal information call centre workers have access to? The scary news is probably all of it, if a new security system from IBM research is anything to go by.

The MAGEN (Masking Gateway for Enterprises) software aims to mask sensitive information used in banking, health and government systems. MAGEN treats information on the screen as a picture, and relies on optical character recognition to determine which fields need to be blanked out or replaced with random values.

INTERNET tracking technology company Phorm yesterday announced that TalkTalk broadband had pulled the plug on its agreement with the firm.

The statement came just days after Phorm's shares tumbled 40 per cent when BT said it had no immediate plans to use the firm's controversial software, which collects information on individual's web use for advertising.

To protect against skimming and eavesdropping attacks, federal and state officials recommend that Americans keep their e-passports tightly shut and store their RFID-tagged passport cards and enhanced driver's licenses in "radio-opaque" sleeves.

That's because experiments have shown that the e-passport begins transmitting some data when opened even a half inch, and chipped passport cards and EDLs can be read from varying distances depending on reader techonology.

Since Obama's landmark speech on cybersecurity in May, his administration hasn't revealed much about its long-percolating plans to shore up the government's defenses against hackers and cyberspies. But privacy advocates monitoring the initiative are already raising concerns about what they know and what they don't: the details that have trickled out--including the involvement of the National Security Agency--and the veil of classified information that still covers much of the multibillion-dollar project.

The Bushization of Obama continues with a plan to involve the NSA in screening private-sector networks, The Washington Post reports.

The plan not only uses the NSA to monitor private networks but it does so in a way that makes it unclear who exactly is in charge of the effort.

For years, government officials have urged people to protect their Social Security numbers by giving out the nine-digit codes only when absolutely necessary. Now it turns out that all the caution in the world may not be enough: New research shows that Social Security numbers can be predicted from publicly available birth information with a surprising degree of accuracy.

It is always a case of some considerable concern when a lady reveals too much on Facebook. The site has standards, after all.

The lady in question this time is Lady Shelley Sawers, the wife of Sir John Sawers, the new head of British spy agency MI6. According to reports in the Mail and numerous other media outlets, the fair lady may not have been quite aware that Facebook can be seen by a rather large number of people if you don't specify that you want to keep your information vaguely private.

Following a report last week that Iran is spying on domestic internet users with western-supplied technology, advocacy groups are pressuring federal lawmakers to scrutinize the use of the same technology in the U.S.

The Open Internet Coalition sent a letter to all members of the House and Senate urging them to launch hearings aimed at examining and possibly regulating the so-called deep-packet inspection technology.

It works for Fido, so why not you? The same RFID implants used to identify lost pets are now being adapted for use on you and me, and not how one might have originally expected. As with all pioneering technologies, it's leisure pursuits that are getting the first stab at the tech.

A third of social networkers have at least three pieces of information visible on their profiles that could make them vulnerable to ID theft, says the security firm Webroot.

Research by the U.K. security software firm revealed that 78 percent of Brits are concerned about the privacy of information on their social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.