ITRC found that more than 600 security breaches took place in 2012. Flaws were found in some of the nation's most respected companies: Apple, Citibank, and Wells Fargo. So, it seems the bad guys are doing better than the men in the white hats.
The growth of big-data, the BYOD phenomenon, and the popularity of social media all present challenges to the notion of defending the security perimeter.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
The Murdoch/News International scandal has all the elements of the digital age, from phone-hacking through embarrassing emails to agile digital reporting.
The plan for unmanned police drones to patrol traffic and other city conditions in Seattle has sparked a new set of legal concerns about privacy. Law traditionally lags technology, but we can expect now to see a new round of activity in the courts as legal definitions begin to emerge on what "next-gen privacy" will look like.
Companies are still getting their feet wet with social networking and what employees should and shouldn't broadcast. But they don't always involve HR and PR. Here's why they should, and what they risk when they don't.
Corporate email is a great natural time manager, a great way to communicate across time zones, and a natural way to keep records on ongoing projects and conversations. But there are limits to its benefits.
M2M is a hot acronym, but maybe it should stand for "Mine-to-Mine" because our appliances exist in a zone of personal information. Managing cooperation of the devices within this zone will allow us to create value and understand and mitigate the security risks they pose.
The Internet is offering addicts new treatment options in the form of virtual programs from companies like egetgoing.com and Lionrock Recovery. These programs present benefits as well as drawbacks.
We've been sacrificing more privacy every day to the online industry, risking more identity theft, for sponsorship of our online experience. How much sponsorship? About $133 per year per household at the most. Where do I send my money to opt out?
The quest for Webpage clicks and ad impressions is creating a market for sensational truths and lies in equal measure. How are we going to get to the bottom of any real issue online – like what's really going on with Carrier IQ, for example – if we can't separate hype from reality?
Facebook has more than 5 million deceased members and policies for how to handle their accounts. But, one problem: After people pass away, it's too late for them to decide whether they want their social media accounts preserved, "memorialized," or deleted.
Ontario's information privacy commissioner explains the unintended consequences of facial recognition technology and how biometric encryption can make it safer.
David Vladeck, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, discusses the state of "Do Not Track" and the problem with consumer behavior tracking online.
The US government is funding controversial projects to collect daily Internet activity, including Web searches, Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, and the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones. Its goal is to map these interactions to predict social behavior, such as protests.
With more and more executives relying on mobile devices to complete their work, mobile device management has become as popular as traditional IT management solutions.
The founder of 4chan, Christopher Poole, has become a VC darling now that he's started his own beta site, Canvas – proving that the troll's path can lead to entrepreneurial success in these strange days.
Law enforcement agencies are poised to use iPhones as facial recognition systems in the coming months. The technical advance promises efficiency but has created a backlash among civil liberties proponents.
Facebook has brought about a world where people manufacture their personalities and live inside of Facebook rather than inside their own minds. This is very bad.
The US boasts a commitment to "Internet freedom," but in practice that commitment falls short. What Internet freedom really means is freedom of the mind.
The most dangerous company online is one you know well: Facebook. The financial pyramid swindle we call "Venture Capital" is driving Facebook to find more and more revenue to pay off its backers – and to put our privacy more and more at risk.
Our online communications and privacy are being threatened by governments and corporations. Eben Moglen believes it's time for a People's Internet, made possible by "Freedom Boxes."
Google’s Android@Home is the first step in its plans to create an Android-powered "life fabric," where appliances lead us through changing, controlling, and, yes, maybe monitoring our lives. Are we ready to sort out the bad from the good in this?
Skype's acquisition by Microsoft should speed up some long-needed security measures and help the company rise above the social networking risk level. Skype users faced an increasing onslaught of spammers and would-be fraudsters, while left with less-than-friendly means of setting privacy filters.
WikiLeaks' founder says that Facebook is an instrument for government spying. Whether that's true or not, we're sharing too much, and we’re on the edge of compromising the notion of identity, and with it of privacy and commercial protection.
Spain's data protection agency told Google to remove links to information about a range of people, including a plastic surgeon and a high school principal, from its search engine, claiming they have a right to be forgotten by Google. What kind of precedent might this set about the removal of information, bad or good, from the Internet?
The Sony court decision to compel a jailbreak site to reveal IP addresses of visitors shows that in trying to enforce the DMCA we may be trampling on rights of people who never hacked, jailbroke, or even owned a Sony game product. A better balance of rights and law is needed here.
Deep Packet Inspection to intercept behavioral data has never been a popular idea, but recent comments by the FTC and ISPs suggest that the players are dodging the most critical issue of all, which is whether DPI use should be considered wiretapping.
Again we learn the hard way that making remarks about one's employer on Facebook is a bad idea and that Facebook, unlike the office watercooler, is a public broadcast medium.
The UK’s Information Commissioner's Office has reopened its investigation into Google after the company admitted to taking more than just pictures with its Street View car, but some of the responsibility should fall on the people.
Nielsen says worldwide ad spending is recovering, and that's a good sign for online ad ventures, but we're also facing record levels of click fraud and privacy violations. To avoid the fate of Wall Street and its "easy morals" we may need to start policing ourselves better.
We're all bothered about the government wanting to extend wiretap to OTT services, but a university study shows that half of tested Android applications are already spying on us.
RIM is giving in to demands by India to snoop on encrypted BlackBerry data. It's time to develop cheap or free encryption software for BlackBerrys and other cellular phones.
Google's problems in Korea and the leaked internal document on exploiting private data show that, if we want to avoid active regulation, we need more explicit disclosure of what companies do and don’t do with what they collect.
An email from Ukraine teaches us that perhaps those who complain about the Internet just haven’t figured out how to spam people’s inboxes with requests for pens and balloons… or something.
Data mining of social networks means people might face unforeseen consequences as a result of their seemingly innocuous personal choices and associations.
Is there such a thing as complete anonymity on the Internet? It is something of a philosophical question, but the consensus among experts seems to be 'No.' However, there are degrees of anonymity, which might be more practical for most people – and more necessary than ever before.
In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
Google's 'It Girl' talks about using personalized search to make sense of the mass of information on the Web – and how sometimes Google can appear to be semantically smarter than it really is.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Steve Saunders talks about the risks inherent in uncontrolled, widespread profiling of Internet users, and how one day this practice could form the basis of a new industry, the Outernet, which in economic terms will have outgrown the commercial value of the Internet itself.
Search companies and social networks are collecting incredibly detailed information about their users, says Steve Saunders, who predicts that these 'profiles' could one day become commodities to be bought and sold by companies on 'profile markets' or 'identity exchanges’ – the digital DNA equivalents of the financial and commodities exchanges on which stocks, oil, and gold are traded.
One of the most important Internet issues of all time is being ignored by the media. In this three-part video series Steve Saunders explains how search companies are turning the tables on their users by creating user profiles for financial gain, and how soon this trend will explode into full scale profiling.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
It is 20 years since the invention of the World Wide Web, and the Internet has changed beyond recognition since then. Steve Saunders peers into the future to predict what the Web will look like in another 20 years time – and he doesn’t like what he sees.
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