Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, has warned computer users that Facebook accidentally publicly revealed personal information about its members, which could be useful to identity thieves. Earlier this week, the full dates of birth of many of Facebook's 80 million active users were visible to others, even if the individual member had requested that the information remained confidential.
Another high-profile security concern in the news today, Google has been caught with its pants down regarding people who have registered accounts with them. Due to a bug (or perhaps “feature”?) inside Gmail, it is possible to retrieve someone's name that is attached to their Gmail account, whether or not you are befriended to them or sharing any content with them on the Google network. So, if your account name is something random or an alias of any sort, someone could still use a simple exploit to see what your “real name” is, or at least the name you supplied to Google.
If we had suggested, ten years ago, that one day soon, the government would draw up a list of prescribed occupations: that they would build a database of millions of people who would need to register for those occupations; and that a committee of Public Safety would be set up with power of absolute veto over every individual on the database; it is just possible that you would have decided that even El Reg had taken leave of its oh-so-cynical senses.
British citizens don't have to worry about hackers stealing their information and selling it. Their local governments are already doing that.
According to a report in today's London Times, an obscure proviso in British law allows local government "councils" to sell voter information to direct marketing organizations without informing them of the sale.
The government has asked National Security Advisor (NSA) to find a way to monitor the emails sent by BlackBerry users. The government is taking very seriously the issue of not being able to monitor the BlackBerry users data.
So far RIN, the company providing BlackBerry services has flatly refused to lower the encryption level as was being demanded by Indian agencies. The company had said that if it lowers the encryption level of the Blackberry users, hackers will have a field day with the devices and the data of its customers.
The Pirate Bay has ambitious plans to bring end-to-end encryption to all network activity, essentially blacking out a user's traffic from deep packet inspection gear and other prying eyes. Interesting project, sure, and definitely ambitious, but will it work? We doubt it, at least in the near term, and here's why.
TRAVELLING without a GPS has become unthinkable for many drivers, including the criminal fraternity, it would seem. Police are now finding the devices a valuable aid to implicating their owners in crimes, because forensics experts can extract information about a suspect's whereabouts from them.
The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data.
Facebook has closed down another of its most popular third-party applications following privacy violations.
The social networking site has rapidly become one of the most popular internet destinations in the UK, although questions have been asked about privacy issues surrounding both the sheer level of personal data and third party add-ons.
Meet Dominic Campbell. He's white, has brown hair, brown eyes and stubble, and lives in north London. After studying geography at Manchester University, he worked in local government for five years, before setting up a consultancy a year ago. He has 1,053 bookmarked web pages. He recently took a holiday in Monte Carlo, went drinking with a guy called Ian, and attended a wedding, in that order. He just discovered how good the hospitality is at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium – mini fish and chips went down well. Last week, he went to a Radiohead gig.
