Privacy

Under fire from tens of thousands of users, the social networking site Facebook said early Wednesday it is reverting to its old policy on user information -- for now. The site posted a brief message on users' home pages that said it was returning to its previous "Terms of Use" policy "while we resolve the issues that people have raised."

The "Terms of Use" is the legalese tacked on to the bottom of most Web sites that details what the site's owners can do with the information that users provide.

Italian crooks are making greater use of internet telephony because of the widespread use of wiretaps in the country.

Customs and tax police in Milan are complaining that drug dealers and other organised criminals are using tools such as Skype in an effort to frustrate investigations, the BBC reports. Investigators cite the example of a suspect drug dealer advising his accomplice to contact him by Skype before forwarding details about a deal to buy 2kg of cocaine.

For every new security feature a company designs, a thief discovers a way to get around it. They are like alligators, waiting to see personal information so they can clench it in their jaws and do damage that might not ever be repaired, or in best case, will take weeks, months, and even years to repair.

Last Thursday’s 10 important categories of employment transition security discussed several areas where a business should spend some time considering, developing, and implementing security measures related to employment transitions. The period of transition, from just before to a few months after an employee leaves an organization for any reason, can be a period of increased vulnerability for the organization’s information technology resources.

A new report from Javelin Research is getting attention for its extraordinary claim that data breaches are responsible for only a tiny minority of identity theft cases, compared to lost wallets and other low-tech exposures. But a closer look at Javalin’s numbers casts serious doubt on the company’s conclusions.

It's every e-mailer's nightmare ---- to hit the "reply all" button by mistake, broadcasting your personal information for everyone to see. Welcome to Andrew Schicho's world.

This week, the mechanical engineering student at the University of Rhode Island forwarded an e-mail to his mother about an IRS public-service announcement on what was supposed to be a secure listserv. Only problem is his mother's reply was blasted to all the university students on the, as it turns out, unsecured server.

A New York computer forensics firm found that 40% of the hard disk drives it recently purchased in bulk orders from eBay contained personal, private and sensitive information -- everything from corporate financial data to the Web-surfing history and downloads of a man with a foot fetish.

Firefox users looking for a little more control over the privacy of their Web browsing habits should check out a handy add-on called "RefControl," a Firefox extension that lets you decide which sites should be allowed to see your most recent browsing history.

When you visit a Web site, the people who run that site can see by looking at their traffic logs the name and Internet address of the site you were at directly before visiting their site, also known as the "referrer" link.

Have you taken the painkillers OxyContin or Vicodin in the past 10 months? How about the sleep aid Ambien or the stimulant Ritalin?

If you have and you obtained the drug legally, your prescription information is likely being stored in a centralized, state-managed database that can be accessed by doctors and pharmacists around Arizona.

Almost 30,000 Kaiser Permanente employees working in northern California will be receiving notification letters this weekend informing them of a major security breach that has taken place causing their personal information to be compromised.

The information includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth for the Kaiser employees. A press release issued by Kaiser indicated police officers have arrested a person who had computer files with Kaiser human resources information, and that person was arrested in late December.