Tag: DATA

Now that WikiLeaks has leaked thousands of sensitive documents into the world, the U.S. military is stepping up its efforts to make sure that it won't happen again. According to Wired, the military has decided to ban all personnel from using DVDs, CDs, thumb drives and any other form of removable media that can transfer data from computer to portable device. Anyone who violates the policy will ...

Share If you thought Julian Assange and his team of WikiLeakers were wreaking global havoc from some decrepit, dank basement in northern Europe, guess again. The Daily Mail recently ran some photos of the Pionen data center -- a cave carved out of granite under Stockholm's Vita Berg Park, where WikiLeaks reportedly houses all of its files. And, as you can see, the photos are pretty unbelievable. ...

NASA recently decided to sell off some of its old computers. Unfortunately, though, it forgot to erase some of the sensitive data that many of those computers still held. The embarrassing oversight came to light in a recent internal investigation (PDF), during which the issue was discovered at four NASA locations: Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and the Ames and Langley Research Centers. ...

When Eric Butler unleashed his Firesheep extension for Firefox, he reminded us all of how scarily vulnerable we are when surfing on public networks. The extension, which is available for both Mac and PC, essentially allows users to access the Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts of any other computer on an open Wi-Fi network. Now, however, a "cloud security" firm called Zscaler has just released a ...

Journalist David McCandless indexed over 10,000 Facebook status updates, and found that breakups peak twice a year: once just before spring break (to make you feel less guilty about all that drunken anonymous sex) and just before Christmas (to save cash on gifts). McCandless also found that most breakups happen on a Monday. The worst day of the week just got crappier. ...

Google knows that it messed up. In May, the company admitted to inadvertently collecting unencrypted Wi-Fi data with its fleet of Street View cars. Now, Google's offering a little more insight into what kind of information those cars actually gathered. When the scandal first broke last spring, Google wasn't entirely certain about what data it collected from unsuspecting Wi-Fi users -- it just ...

Reuters reports that a recent study conducted by a risk consulting firm shows that, worldwide, electronic theft is now costing companies more than physical theft. While it's a marginal difference, according to Kroll's Global Fraud Report, electronic theft accounts for about 27.3-percent of fraud losses reported globally while physical theft accounts for about 27.2-percent of that total. Fraud in ...

A major data system used to keep track of sex offenders shut down Tuesday morning, after unexpectedly reaching its storage limit. The blackout, which lasted about 12 hours, prevented law enforcement authorities in 49 states from keeping track of some 16,000 sex offenders, parolees and other marked citizens. Although tracking devices continued to record movements of known offenders, authorities at ...

If you've ever wondered exactly how much information a single website can gather from your computer, a site called TRASIR can tell you everything you need to know in black-and-white starkness. Once you open the page, the site will automatically display your IP address (which reveals your geographic location), the name of your browser, your computer's language and even your screen resolution. ...

According to officials at Greenpeace, Facebook needs to change its environmentally unfriendly ways. As the AP reports, more than 500,000 users have joined Greenpeace-sponsored groups calling for the social network to use renewable energy to power its new U.S. data center. On Wednesday, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reminding him that ...

Hey, amateur astronomers, listen to this: A couple of at-home space nuts recently discovered a pulsar with a screensaver that uses idle PC time to process data collected from telescopes. By using Einstein@Home to 'donate' a PC's processors to the pursuit of science, the program harnesses thousands of willing computers, rather than one supercomputer, to analyze data. This helps on-the-clock ...

On Sunday, telecom regulators from the United Arab Emirates announced their plans to suspend e-mail, instant messaging and Web-browsing services for BlackBerry users, due to manufacturer RIM's refusal to allow the government to monitor the data sent across its network. Now, another major Middle East country has instituted a similar ban that, unlike the UAE's, will go into effect very soon. On ...

Facing rising crime rates, the Memphis Police Department turned to a predictive crime analytics program developed by IBM back in 2006, thus making the threat of 'Minority Report' one step closer to reality. According to GovTech, the CRUSH (Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) software, which puts crime data on a digital map of the city, has helped the MPD reduce crime by 31-percent ...

If you missed Landon Donovan's game-winning goal in the waning minutes of the USA's World Cup match against Algeria, you missed a milestone moment in American soccer and the Internet. According to Mashable, Internet traffic on 100 major news sites, as tracked by Akamai's Net Usage Index, spiked to a whopping 11.2 million visitors-per-minute after Donovan nailed the net. While that's not quite as ...

While we have out doubts, a Romanian scientist claims the CD isn't dead just yet. In fact, he says its potential hasn't even been fully-tapped. According to Engadget, Eugene Pavel, founder of Storex Technologies, claims he could create a "Hyper" CD that would store 1,000,000 gigabytes of information. Not only could this Hyper disc hold a petabyte (yes, that's what you call all those zeroes) of ...