Tag: PRIVACY

Posting an event on Facebook used to be a quick and convenient way to let your friends know where a party was, or when your band was performing. Now it's becoming a good way to hand your home address over to thousands of anonymous strangers. An Australian girl joined an exclusive league of Facebook event planners who saw thousands of revelers RSVP to their low-key parties. The girl sent the ...

The Obama administration is pushing Congress to adopt a so-called "privacy bill of rights," in order to offer greater protection for Americans concerned about online data gathering and targeted advertising. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence E. Strickling is expected to propose the legislation today during a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee. A source familiar with the matter told ...

The TSA says it will be re-testing hundreds of airport body scanners after its last round of tests found radiation levels 10 times higher than expected -- a number the agency chalked up to a calculation error. "We understand it as a calculation error," TSA spokesman Sarah Horowitz told Wired, before explaining how difficult it can be to remember to divide by the number of units tested. The ...

Security firm Sophos has proven once again that, despite most of the attention and scorn being focused on companies like Facebook and Google, you are your own worst enemy when it comes to online security. The company ran an experiment in which it sent an invite to 200 randomly selected accounts to befriend one Freddi Staur -- an anagram for "ID fraudster." Of those 200 people 82 accepted the ...

Here's a Regretsy not made of yarn and 'Twilight' fantasies: Indie shop Etsy has made all of its user activity public, linked its profiles with Facebook's and published real names. The Facebook-like move has irritated Etsy fans, but blog Etsy Bitch has figured a way to undo the settings: just go your profile and editing choices. The site has not yet commented on this baffling move, but did ...

Share A Brooklyn teacher could be out of a job very soon, after making some controversial comments about her students on Facebook. Just a day after a 12-year-old girl drowned on a school field trip to the beach, fifth-grade teacher Christine Rubino posted a status update, implying that her students may deserve the same fate. "After today, I'm thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I ...

Peter Fleishcher, Google's global privacy counsel, took to his personal blog to address a push by several European countries to grant a "right to oblivion" or "right to be forgotten" to their netizens. There are several different ideas at issue, but one of the most controversial is that people have a right to remove information about themselves from the Web if they feel that data is out-of-date or ...

InPrivate, Incognito, Private Browsing -- whatever they want to brand it -- all modern browsers offer a special mode designed to keep what you do online a secret from prying eyes. Despite different names and origins at different companies, they all work in basically similar ways: A new browser session is created that operates separately from your existing one, with its own history and cookies ...

Targeted ads have long lived online, but nobody's quite figured out how to take advantages of personalized advertising and apply them to other media -- that is, until now. Cable and satellite companies are now testing systems that monitor your TV viewing habits and deliver ads based on that data. Cablevision is already broadcasting different ads to different customers watching the same show ...

A 13-year old Georgia girl is facing expulsion and relocation to an "alternative school" after she called one of her teachers a pedophile on Facebook. The girl, Alejandra Sosa, and two of her classmates who commented on the post must now go before a disciplinary tribunal for what Chapel Hill Middle School calls a "level one" offense: the worst category of transgression in the student handbook. ...

Three years ago, some of the world's leading tech companies agreed to participate in the Global Network Initiative (GNI) -- a code of conduct designed to protect online speech and privacy around the world. The initiative was originally launched in response to brewing tensions in China, where some Internet companies were accused of complying with government censorship policies in order to pursue ...

Last year, U.S.-born college student Yasir Afifi found an FBI tracking device stashed under his car. Now Afifi is suing the agency, claiming his civil rights were violated when law enforcement begain tracking him without a warrant. Judges have gone back and forth over whether or not GPS tracking ought to require a search warrant, and Afifi hopes his case will settle the debate once and for all. ...

For our second annual spotlight on cyber-security, Switched turned to a renowned expert in the field: Eugene H. Spafford, Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. Among his many professional associations and corporate and governmental advisory roles, Spafford is the Executive Director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), which supports ...

A savvy reader has informed Slashdot that the city of Beijing will soon begin tracking its citizens' cell phones -- ostensibly "to ease traffic congestion." According to the website of the Central People's Government, Beijing's cell phone-owning population (about 70-percent) will be tracked in real time as part of the project, which is called "Platform for Citizen Movement Information." ...

Symptoms: Imagine the pit in your stomach: finding charges on your credit cards or bank statements for items you didn't buy; applying for credit or a mortgage and being denied due to delinquencies on accounts you didn't open. The amounts for the previous year's reported income on your annual Social Security statement is incorrect, and for more than you earned. Or you get a letter or call ...