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PATH: BS | Privacy

Let Yours (Or Someone Else's) Fingers Do the Paying Posted by Pile (8069 views) [E-Mail link]	[Faulty Products]
Buying groceries with the touch of a finger could be closer than you think, if new research touting the benefits of biometric payment for retail giants like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco is anything to go by. The report, by Sanford Bernstein analyst Emme Kozloff, found that the use of so-called "electronic wallets" reduces the potential for fraud and identity theft, speeds up the checkout process, and most importantly, lowers transaction processing fees for retailers, improving their bottom line. Unfortunately, this highly-paid analyst didn't mention in the Fortune article that a finger made out of Play Doh can fool these machines 90% of the time.
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Government Goes After AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo User Data Posted by Pile (5816 views) [E-Mail link]
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches. It's worth noting that while Google is fighting this, AOL, Yahoo and MSN coughed up their users' data without much hooplah. SNL made fun of the Google story Saturday but neglected to mention their parent company, Time-Warner owns AOL and was involved in the issue. Perhaps it really is true that Google intends to be less evil. In any case, it doesn't say much for MSN or Yahoo, or the users who were foolish enough to use them for their search engine. Buh-Bye Privacy!
READ MORE \| 2 comments since 2006-01-19 23:01:31 \| Comment on this Article

"Bug" Turns Out To Be Back Door Found In All Versions of Windows Posted by Pile (9232 views) [E-Mail link]
Renown computer programmer and hacker, Steve Gibson has been analyzing the latest vulnerability for the Windows operating systems and has discovered that what appears to be a "bug" may actually be a secret back-door that someone at Microsoft built into all versions of Windows (for possibly more than a decade) that circumvents almost all known security and antivirus systems. Of course, now that the secret back door is public, it's being called a bug, but Gibson explains this is not the case, and it blows the lid off of the Pandora's Box on Microsoft operating systems, security and privacy.
READ MORE \| 3 comments since 2006-01-23 01:57:42 \| Comment on this Article

Anyone's Phone Records? Only $89.95. Act Now! Posted by wizeGurl (5939 views) [E-Mail link]
To prove that people's private phone records are available to anyone with a few bucks and an ounce of initiative, Americablog purchased the phone records for 100 calls for General Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate. They didn't need his permission; they only needed $89.95. Are your phone records as easy to get?
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Marriott Compromises 200,000+ Peoples' Privacy Posted by Pile (5782 views) [E-Mail link]	[Get-Rich-Quick]
The timeshare unit of Marriott International is notifying more than 200,000 people that their personal data are missing after backup computer tapes went missing from a Florida office. The data relates to 206,000 employees, timeshare owners and timeshare customers of Marriott Vacation Club International, the company said Tuesday. The computer tapes were stored in Orlando, where the unit is based.
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Bush's Secret And Illegal Spying Campaign Posted by Pile (6001 views) [E-Mail link]
In what some are calling a scandal that makes Watergate look like a parking ticket, two years ago, George W. Bush went behind the back of the American people and secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to carry out surveillance of people throughout the United States. The secret presidential edict, revealed yesterday in the New York Times, allowed massive spying, surveillance of phone calls and peoples' homes without any evidence of criminal activity, and without court order. This complete violation of the Bill of Rights was ordered without congressional debate or judicial scrutiny and oversight. It was Bush's secret, a hidden and criminal violation of peoples' constitutional rights.
READ MORE \| 7 comments since 2005-12-27 01:13:30 \| Comment on this Article

Sony Virus Close to 0wning Planet And Peoples' Computers Posted by Pile (9188 views) [E-Mail link]	[Faulty Products]
Here's a sordid tale of corporate control gone horribly wrong. In order to combat people copying audio CDs to computer, Sony worked with a company called First4Internet to employ copy protection to a large array of audio CDs by artists such as Neil Diamond, Cindy Lauper and Celine Dion. The company that installed this XCP copy protection utilized what's known as a "rootkit" in hacker jargon: a set of libraries that allows programs to secretly take over portions of a computer. Unbeknowst to consumers who placed these audio CDs into their computers, they were secretly infiltrated by the software. That would be bad enough, except: a) Sony underestimated the extent to which this viral code would spread (see image) and b) The code has a nasty back door that everyone knows about now that (due to Sony's equally-incompetent uninstall service) allows virtually any web page on the Internet the ability to download and execute programs on peoples' computers. To say this is a mammoth security debacle is an understatement. Sony is rapidly trying to recall the distribution of these CDs but it's obviously too late now. For the rest of us who didn't get infected, we can look forward to Celine Dion fans' computers spamming us for the next six months.
READ MORE \| 1 comment since 2005-11-21 21:18:00 \| Comment on this Article

Google Comes Back To Haunt Man On Murder Trial Posted by Pile (8247 views) [E-Mail link]	[Mean People]
Be careful what you search for... Robert Petrick searched for the words "neck," "snap," "break" and "hold" on an Internet search engine before his wife died, according to prosecutors Wednesday.
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Court Shuts Down 3 Companies Bundling Spyware with "Free" Stuff Posted by Pile (5641 views) [E-Mail link]
A U.S. court shut down three Internet companies for secretly bundling malicious "spyware" with ring tones, music programs and other free high-tech goodies, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday. The malicious software tracked victims' Internet activity, hijacked their home pages and deluged them with unwanted "pop up" ads, the FTC said. It just goes to show you, nothing is "free."
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White House Has Dossiers On 10,000+ Citizen "Political Enemies" Posted by Pile (5609 views) [E-Mail link]
Spurred by paranoia and aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies. The �enemies list� dates back to Bush�s days as governor of Texas and can be accessed by senior administration officials in an instant for use in campaigns to discredit those who speak out against administration policies or acts of the President. The computerized files include intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, spoken out against the President or Administration.
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Your Printer Is Spying On You! Posted by Pile (5960 views) [E-Mail link]
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer-privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible barcode of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed. The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard, Canon and others, though its team has so far cracked the codes for only one type of Xerox printer.
READ MORE \| 2 comments since 2005-10-26 22:13:44 \| Comment on this Article

Fox News "Terrorizes" Suburban Family Posted by Pile (6083 views) [E-Mail link]	[News Media]
A couple whose home was wrongly identified on national television as belonging to an Islamic radical has faced harassment, and police are providing special protection. After the report ran on Fox News on Aug. 7, people have shouted profanities at Randy and Ronnell Vorick and spray-painted "terrorist" (spelling it "terrist") on their property.
READ MORE \| 1 comment since 2005-08-28 09:17:39 \| Comment on this Article

Google Talk ..is Cheap (If You Don't Care About Privacy) Posted by Pile (8025 views) [E-Mail link]
Today Google has announced Google Talk. This is their competition to AIM, ICQ and all the other instant messaging applications on the net. Since it centers around Google's Gmail account system, you can safely assume this is more information exchanging between people that Google will archive forever and exploit later. Nothing to be worried about, if you are comfortable sacrificing your personal security to a big corporation. Don't get me wrong. I like Google. I enjoy their services. But I know that online privacy policies are worth the paper they're written on. Any single company that has that much information passing through it, that never deletes anything, is a privacy accident waiting to happen.
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Feds Demand Your Net Connection Be Insecure Posted by Pile (5217 views) [E-Mail link]
Today the Federal Communications Commission issued a release announcing its new rule expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers - as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband communications � to build insecure backdoors into their networks, imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet. It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements. The EFF is fighting this invasive new policy. If you care about your security and privacy, you should contribute to the EFF and help their efforts... before it's too late.
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Google Upset With CNet For Using Google To Profile CEO Posted by Pile (5635 views) [E-Mail link]
Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story. It seems last month CNET did an article on Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, and used his own company's search engine to find lots of interesting tidbits that apparently, Mr. Schmidt didn't appreciate.
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Comcast Caught Filtering Political E-Mails Posted by Pile (62482 views) [E-Mail link]
American online activist David Swanson alleges that Comcast and Symantec have blocked emails drawing attention to the so-called Downing Street memo, which activists have seized on as proof that the last Iraq war was planned in advance.
READ MORE \| 48 comments since 2008-12-25 09:33:16 \| Comment on this Article

Your Friendly Public School Army Recruiter Posted by wizeGurl (6023 views) [E-Mail link]
Did you know that the "No Child Left Behind" Act has a sneaky section requiring high schools to turn over student information to military recruiters? What exactly are we not leaving our children behind from, a tour of duty in Iraq? That's fine if that's what you want, but what if you want your kids to follow the example of the president's kids and the congress's kids, and stay out of the military?
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Your Macromedia/Flash Browser Plug-In Has Been Spying on You! Posted by Pile (7767 views) [E-Mail link]
Who knew? Though we probably should have suspected, that Macromedia's Flash Plug-in, which most browsers are using to view cute animation and annoying ads, also has the ability to store personal identification information and even listen in on your computer's microphone or internet-enabled camera!
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Berkely Grads Identity Information Stolen Posted by Pile (7888 views) [E-Mail link]	[Edumakashun]
A laptop was recently stolen from the Berkely campus that contained personal information (including SSN) for more than 98,000 graduate students (or people that applied to grad school) at the college. What's more interesting about this latest heist is that this is primarily being made public because California is one of the only states in the country which has a law requiring companies to notify the public if they have a security breach. We'd never know about these things in most other parts of the country.
READ MORE \| No comments \| Comment on this Article

New Swiss Public Toilets Posted by Pile (6017 views) [E-Mail link]	[Humor]
Apparently the Swiss are just too clever for their own good. They've developed a public toilet which is covered with one-way glass so that while you're inside you can see out, but nobody can see in. Would you use this thing? (See the full article for the picture from the inside)
READ MORE \| 14 comments since 2006-04-27 15:07:46 \| Comment on this Article

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Pursuant to Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC � 230), BSAlert is a user-contributed editorial web site and does not endorse any specific content, but merely acts as a "sounding board" for the online community. Any and all quoted material is referenced pursuant to "Fair Use" (17 U.S.C. � 107). Like any information resource, use your own judgement and seek out the facts and research and make informed choices.