Tag: data
Disappointed eBay PC buyer finds boring old banking data stored on the hard drive
Honestly, what a disappointment. Of all the exciting things you could hope to find on the hard drive of a PC bought off eBay, rubbish old bank passwords has to be the last thing you’d want.
The computer in question was bought for £35 off the auction site, and apparently came pre-loaded with user data from the Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest. Both banks have confirmed that the data is indeed genuine…
U SND 200 MLN TXTS 2DAY, INNIT
Incredibly, the number of text messages us lot in the UK send is continuing to rise, according to the Mobile Data Association.
The MDA reckons we’re burning through our free text allowance at a rate of 200 million text messages a day, which, by my maths, is nearly four texts per person every day – a rise of 30% over the number we sent last year…
Facebook app Cityware using Bluetooth to spy on people without their consent
Research firm Cityware has hooked up thousands of Bluetooth scanners around the world and is using these to monitor how people move around the place – and dumping the data on Facebook.
The only problem is no one asked for the permission of some of the the scanees – so anyone with their phone’s Bluetooth powers enabled risks having their movements tracked by the freely-available Cityware…
Viacom "backs down" – doesn't want to know everything about every YouTube user any more
Angry media mega-corporation Viacom has lessened its demands for information about video watchers, says YouTube – but it still wants details of every item on the site.
YouTube says Viacom – which originally wanted to know what every user has watched on the site – has settled for a bit less data. The critical climbdown is regarding user-associations, so Google will still be handing over its database of stuff, only without the critical user details…
Viacom wins right to sift through YouTube user data, all four terabytes of it
In the long running battle between Viacom and Google over YouTube hosting copyrighted videos, Viacom has now won a ruling to allow it to access a complete set of video viewing records, totalling some four terabytes of data.
Google argues that the data, which lists every IP address and the videos watched, would infringe on its users’ privacy. The judge used Google’s own argument — that IP addresses don’t personally identify an individual — to throw out that objection.
3 mobile sees traffic rocket sevenfold thanks to USB broadband adaptors
It’s the future. It’s definitely the future. One little USB dongle that’s your broadband connection wherever you go. No hotspot fee rip-offs, no internet separation anxieties, no worries.
And this attainable futuristic dream has resulted in a traffic bonanza for 3, with its newly cheaper USB broadband adaptor making web traffic on its network rocket by seven times in the last six months alone. Here, look, it’s so happy it’s made a graph about it:
“Sometimes the core network has been running at 102 per cent of capacity, at other times…
Buffalo intros first dual format high definition drive
It’s not just LG sticking with both high definition disc formats, with Buffalo announcing their first external optical drive able to read and write to Blu-ray Discs, and read HD DVDs…
Apple's iTunes is now the second biggest music retailer in America
Not sure what’s the most shocking part about this news – the fact that iTunes is so big, or the fact that it isn’t already the number one.
Second only to Wal-Mart (the American ASDA) when it came to shifting “product” during 2007, iTunes has also now overtaken Best Buy (the American Dixons) to shuffle up a place in the sales league. iTunes is not just a little thing hardcore Apple fans use any more.
Also, during 2007, the statisticians at NPD said legal…
Euro operators cut roaming data charges. Well, some of them…
I’m off to Barcelona next week for the Mobile World Congress trade show, but I certainly won’t be firing up my mobile web browser while I’m there. Even small data consumption when overseas is outrageously expensive under current tariffs. Thankfully, the European Commission is on the case, pressuring operators to cut data roaming costs.
UK government contractor loses loads of personal data – again
More private details lost – this time the data of most of the UK’s learner drivers. But it’s OK – only three million people have had their personal details misplaced this time.
Bizarrely, the UK driving test data was being stored on a hard drive in the offices of a contractor based in Iowa, in the United States – and contained the names and addresses of three million…
