Privacy

LinkedIn recently rolled out its Company Groups, which according to the site is a “private place on LinkedIn where you can communicate and collaborate with your co-workers.” These groups are not company-run or managed; they are automatically populated with LinkedIn users who list Company A as his or her current employer and who have seemingly valid Company A email addresses. This level of verification is not uncommon with social networking tools (this method is similar to how Facebook sets permissions for company networks).

The names, addresses and Social Security numbers of nearly 12,000 current and former University of Florida students were accidentally posted online. The university has mailed notification letters to 11,300 students whose information may have been compromised, according to this Associated Press article on FOXNews.com. Officials could not find contact information for another 570 students.

Financial institutions may need to further improve their security systems to ensure that their customers’ personal data is safe, said Unisys Asia South vice-president and general manager Scott Whyman.

“Preventive measures that can be taken to combat identity theft (for example) include implementing the use of biometric data, such as fingerprint reading and iris scanning for validating online transactions,” he said.

According to him, fraudsters are always on the look out for “softer targets” — those that don’t possess tightened and up-to-date security measures.

When University of Virginia professor Patrick Grant opened his mailbox on May 23 to find three letters from Bank of America informing him that they would not raise his credit limit, he knew his identity had been stolen.

“I got one of those gut-wrenching feelings that this is really, really wrong,” Grant said.

Imagine my surprise when, in the course of doing research for this story, I stumbled upon my own personal health information online.

There it was in black, white, and hypertext blue. My annual mammograms; the visits to the podiatrist for the splinter in my foot; the kind of birth control I use -- it was all on my health insurance company's Web site. And that's not all: The prescriptions drugs I use were listed on the Web site where I get my prescription drug insurance.

About 14 percent of Canadians have had their identity stolen and nearly half know someone who had the same experience, a new poll shows.

And most consumers are not confident that businesses will keep their personal information safe.

"Canadians are quite conscious and concerned about the situation," said Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada who oversees compliance with privacy laws.

The company providing BlackBerry services has said that it cannot provide e-mail data of its 100,000 BlackBerry customers to Department of Telecommunication (DOT). RIM (Research in Motion) said that it cann’t comply with Indian agency’s demand as it was simply not possible.

The company said that giving unauthorized access to customers’ data or lowering the encryption level will compromise the safety of online transaction of its customers as it will give easy access to hackers to hack into their data.

The Chinese Olympic Committee for the 2008 Games has revealed that all tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies will include RFID-enabled microchips with spectators' passport information and home and e-mail addresses, among other sensitive personal info.

This high-level precaution is in response to the increasingly sensitive security issues surrounding the games, due largely in part to the host's controversial positions on human rights and freedom of speech.

I recently received an odd plea for help. A former colleague e-mailed me to request that all references to her be expunged from the online news blog I coordinate for a university here in Rome. It was a legitimate request, I concluded, so I went into the old posts and deleted the one in which her name appeared. It was about an upcoming event on campus from more than a year ago and had absolutely no news value to readers today.

How do you find a bride these days?

One of the nation's leading online tracking companies knows.

Monitoring consumers at roughly 3,000 Web sites, Revenue Science identified brides by picking out bridal behavior it had seen: anyone who'd gone online to read about weddings in the news, entered "bridesmaid dresses" into a search engine or surfed fashion pages for wedding styles.

The company found 40,000 such people, whom it knows by random number, not name, and sent them a tailored online ad.