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Posts with tag privacy

How to Erase Your Digital Past

Admit it -- at some point you've Googled your own name. Lots of people do it, and many may be less than thrilled with the results. While a lot of that might stem from their own stupid behavior, sometimes it's just unfortunate coincidences or the postings of others that can harm someone's reputation.

Computerworld found three people who hoped to erase some things about themselves on the Web: An IT worker who said something she regretted in an interview with the magazine, a freelance journalist with the same name as a Rotten Tomatoes critic, and a college grad with a unique name that's mentioned on a blog alongside drugs and sex.

In the first case, the Computerworld editors saw no reason to remove what happened since it was on the record. The experts interviewed for this piece said that larger mainstream outlets will probably refuse to change anything, though smaller publications might. The journalist with the unwanted Rotten Tomatoes association also came up short. The experts believe the request is too petty for such a large site to act on. Finally, the graduate was successful in getting her name removed after they reported an abuse to the blog's host site. Good for her.

The article has a number of tips and resources for people looking to help erase their digital trail. Basically, you'll be more successful with smaller companies and personal contact or if your grievance is something that can threaten you, like a maliciously posted credit card number. Naturally, the experts interviewed for the article are from companies that help people maintain or repair their reputations online, so you can always hire them. If not, either clean up your act or change your name. [From: Computerworld via Apartment Therapy Unplggd]

Have You Ever Checked Your Significant Other's E-Mail?


It's the 21st-century version of checking your significant (or semi-significant) other's diary, except this one involves actually snagging a password and sneaking into someone else's e-mail. E-mail should be private, even between spouses, or should it? We took to the streets of New York City and found some surprising answers on both sides of the debate, which you can see in the above Switched video. What do you think?

Teacher Suspended, Facing Dismissal for Facebook Comments

Teacher Suspended, Facing Dismissal for Facebook CommentsAnother day, another warning about the dangers of public Facebooking. We've seen how college applicants are getting shafted, as have seen other cases where employers are snooping at employees' profiles. Now we have a case of a teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina who stands to lose her job thanks to comments and pictures posted on her Facebook profile.

The teacher, who remains unnamed, listed "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" in her Info section and, in the "About Me" section, said "I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte." As part of the school's investigation they also found some "suggestive" exchanges between teachers and photos of other teachers, also in "suggestive" poses.

It all sounds fairly tame to us, but given the position teachers hold in society, we can see where the school's superintendent is coming from. Regardless, it's yet another example of why you should make your profiles private. If you don't know how, just click on "Settings," then "Privacy Settings," then set everything to "Friend Only" if you want to be safe. [From: The State]

New Site Helps You Find (or Stalk) Old Friends, Lovers



A new search engine has made its Internet debut, but this time its refined aim is to locate people, GeekSugar.com posted earlier this week.

123People.com requires only an individual's name to yield search results categorized into pictures, Web sites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, videos, news, blogs, street addresses, and still more. While the layout of the site is commendably clean, and the various subgroups of search results well thought out, the search engine itself, when we tested it, did not yield results as accurate as those Google did.

That being said, the 123People.com's accuracy will most likely improve over time and catch up with its well-organized, convenient layout. One word to the wise: If you're looking to find an old friend named "Sarah Jones," forget it. [From: GeekSugar.com]

College Applications Negatively Affected By Facebook Profiles, Study Finds

Facebook and MySpace Pages Might Impact College AdmissionsIf you thought your Facebook and MySpace pages were just good for keeping in touch with friends, think again. We've shown how they can impact how potential employers perceive you, and so it should be no surprise that college admissions officers, the people who decide whether you're in or out, are also doing some profile surfing before deciding on accepting or rejecting a given candidate.

According to recent survey at 500 colleges by education company Kaplan, 10-percent of the admissions officers headed on over to Facebook and MySpace to see what they could learn about a given candidate. More troubling (at least for those with questionable goods on their profiles) is that 38-percent of those officers said their impressions of the students in question were "negatively affected" after looking at the profiles on Facebook or MySpace, potentially preventing the receipt of a fat admission letter from the school.

Some might question whether this practice is legal or ethical, since social-networking profiles aren't the same as recommendations sent in voluntarily by college applicants. While the practice is ethical or not is up for debate, but it's certainly legal. Anything you post up for all to see on Facebook is out there in the public, so if it's used against you, there's nobody to blame but yourself. [From: The Wall Street Journal]

Cell Phone Snooping Software Lets You Snoop on Kids, Spouses


For parents and suspicious spouses who have no regard for the privacy of others, there is now TechGuard. It's a program that allows you to track the calls and read text messages sent to and from a cell phone.

After loading the program on the target cell phone (currently only compatible with Windows Mobile phones and BlackBerrys) the application can be controlled from a Web site. Snoops can then read every outgoing and incoming text message, and even block certain parties from getting through. You can also read any e-mail that comes to the phone, and view call and browsing history.

TechGuard costs about $11 a month. But, if you're really this nosy, we think that money might be better spent buying yourself some anti-anxiety drugs. [From: CBS News]

Tips for Securing Your Web-Mail Accounts

Tips to Secure Your Web-MailWeb-mail sites like Gmail and Hotmail are incredibly convenient, but when doing things online, security should be a major concern and not all Web-mail systems are as secure as you might think. Your personal data may especially be at risk when accessing your e-mail from a public Wi-Fi hotspot if you don't take the proper precautions.

Thankfully, Wired has started a wiki to collect tips for how to secure your Web-mail accounts. Most of them are pretty simple tricks that only take a moment to set up -- turns out most of them just aren't always that obvious. For example, you can force Gmail to always use an HTTPS (a secure connection that scrambles sent and received data) connection by checking a box in your Gmail settings. Similarly, Hotmail has an enhanced security mode, and you'll find the link on the log-in page, just under the password box.

Check out the page for some more tips, and add your own if you have any. [From: Wired]

Microsoft Adds 'Porn Mode' to Internet Explorer 8



Worried about your girlfriend, wife, or mom seeing all the dirty stuff you check out online? Well, fear not, perv, as Microsoft's 8th edition of Internet Explorer (IE) will include a feature that lets you surf the Web without a trace of what you checked out.

The new tool, called InPrivate Browsing, will debut later this month in the second Beta version of IE 8. When you, um, turn this feature on, IE will not save your browsing or search history, cookies, form data, or passwords, and will clear its cache when you're, um, done. While Microsoft says it's designed for people using public or shared computers, do we really need to explain why this is being dubbed "porn mode?"

Other new features include InPrivate Blocking, which tells you when content is able to track your browsing history, and InPrivate Subscription, which gives you lists of sites to block. Another change is to the "Delete Browsing History" option, which now lets you keep cookies for certain sites. Mozilla, which was supposed to have similar features in Firefox 3.0, is hoping to have it in 3.1 sometime in the next few months. Stay tuned. [From: Computerworld]

AT&T Would Like To Track Your Web Use For Advertising


In a move surely to be embraced by people who love being watched for advertising purposes, AT&T has informed Congress that it would like to monitor the browsing habits of its customers. Their justification for doing so is, in so many words, "Google does it, so why can't we?"

This all comes after a Congressional committee began investigating Web-tracking for advertising purposes after hearing that some Internet service providers would sell their customers' browsing histories to a company called NebuAd. The committee asked 33 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) about their tracking plans, and many companies (including AOL, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Verizon) said they only monitor on sites they run. AT&T says their tracking would require customers to sign up for the service.

AT&T said that Google has "the ability to observe a user's entire Web browsing experience at a granular level" and only answered questions about deep packet inspection, not general tracking. Google responded in kind, basically saying, "we answered the questions, and AT&T's just trying to shift negative attention to us. Not cool." Depending on what the committee does from here, we could see a sweet tech company catfight with your Web surfing privacy at the core of the issue. [From: Silicon Alley Insider]

Maryland's New Police-Car-Mounted Cameras Read License Plates

Patrol Car Mounted Cameras Can Read License Plates
Johnny Law's technological arsenal continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Over the past year or so, we''ve seen criminals fitted with GPS trackers, police soliciting help via text message and YouTube, a drivers license scanning PDA, and even a multi-lingual gadget that can translate spoken commands. That's why it comes as no surprise when the police show off yet another fancy tech-toy that is helping them nab crooks.

As the Washington Post reportes, the latest weapon in the war on crime is a pair of cameras mounted on the top of police-car rooftops. Said cameras snap photos of license plates on cars in front of and behind the police cruiser. The photos are then decoded using advanced image processing techniques, which read the numbers from the license plate and feed them through a police database looking for matches. Originally, these systems were purchased by Maryland police to help reduce car theft, but seem to have found just as happy a home pulling up unpaid traffic tickets.

Of course, don't expect privacy advocates to go quietly into the night on this one. The indiscriminate running of plates (police estimate the computer can check the records of 3,000 vehicles a day) strikes many as overstepping acceptable bounds. The British may be used to this level of surveillance, but Americans tend to be a little more uneasy about "the man" watching their every move. [Source: Washington Post]

Switched Video

 



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