Tag: privacy
Street View gets the all clear from the Information Comissioner
Privacy International’s complaints to the Informational Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about Google’s Street View have been overruled, reports claim.
The introduction of the service to the UK hasn’t been without controversy, but the ICO says that Street View does not break privacy laws – it’s more like a televised football match where obtaining the consent of every attendee is impractical.
To try and quash privacy complaints, Google already blurs faces and number plates from its service, and will take down any pictures on request. The ICO said it would continue to monitor the situation.
(via VNUNet)
UPDATE: 3 releases 80,000 names and addresses on its website
Mobile phone network 3 is in trouble today after an enterprising chap called ‘Dan’ (no relation to our Dan) stumbled across 79,035 names and addresses on their website. 3 rapidly took the list down.
Names and addresses aren’t exactly confidential – they’re available in the phone book – but most curiously of all, 3 claims that less than five percent of the info comes from 3 customers. That raises the rather thorny question of who the hell the rest of them are.
Any ideas? Drop us a tweet at @techdigest with your suggestions as to who these people might be.
CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith, instructs protest group
The government is rather keen on the idea of creating a massive database that will store all your emails, texts, calls and internet use. It’s an idea that’s understandably raised a few eyebrows, even outside of privacy and consumer-based pressure groups. Even I’m a little alarmed about this one, despite generally not being that fussed about privacy issues.
In protest, some enterprising sorts have created a campaign called “CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith day”. On one day – June 15th – they want you to copy all your email correspondence in to [email protected], the idea being that they get so overwhelmed by a mountain of correspondence, so much of it inane and useless, that they realize it’s a rubbish idea.
Of course, it could backfire. On the FAQ section of the site under ‘is this legal?’, the organizers claim: “This is unclear. You personally are certainly at no risk from prosecution. But it is possible that if the volume of emails crashes the servers, it could be seen as a Denial of Service attack – although there is no precedent for such an attack coming from multiple people sending a small number of emails.”
There’s also a Facebook group, though as the Register points out, they’re fairly keen on keeping all your private data themselves, so you might just want to plump for the email option. Sign up on the website, right here.
“CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith day”
Facebook changes terms of service, outcry ensues
A couple of weeks ago, Facebook changed its terms of service so that users won’t be able to delete their data if they leave the site. The blogosphere immediately erupted with criticism and it prompted a blog post from Mark Zuckerberg himself on who owns the data.
Facebook had been criticized for allowing a situation where someone could take a photo of you, upload it to the site, and then neither of you would be able to stop Facebook from using it for whatever purposes they like. You essentially waive all rights to the data.
Zuckerberg’s response to concerns is basically ‘chill out – we’re not going to take the piss here’. He doesn’t apologize, or even offer to soften the language – just asks users to trust the company. But how can users trust a company slowly eroding their rights?
Sure, odds are that Facebook isn’t going to suddenly abuse millions of people’s personal info, but if that’s the case, then why not retain the original language? Facebook has a history of communicating changes badly, and this is just another in a long line of screwups that include the profile redesign and the “Beacon” fiasco.
TECHNOLOGY DEATHMATCH: Camera phone shutter clicks vs no camera phone shutter clicks
Not your traditional Technology Deathmatch today but when I saw this post on Wired last week my hackles were raised to the point of crowbaring the issue into my regular Monday feature and, well, here we are – cameraphones: should they have to make a sound when the shutter is released, or shouldn’t they?
See, the deal is that it’s already the case in Japan and they’re looking to make it so in the States after Republican Congressman of New York, Peter King, asked for a new bill to force all mobile phones sold in the US to have no option of a silent camera click. The idea, of course, is that you can’t then take photos of people…
Facebook bans Burger King ad campaign
A week or so ago, Burger King announced an advertising campaign where deleting ten friends would get you a voucher for a free whopper. It spread quite quickly, and 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week.
Facebook, unsurprisingly, isn’t too happy – it knows its value lies in those friend links. As a result, it’s banned the campaign, citing privacy reasons. Turns out that Facebook isn’t keen on apps notifying users when they’ve been ‘cut’ by another friend. Full statement over the jump.
Which? magazine's solution to data privacy – a big hammer
Most people, when selling on a computer second-hand, wipe the data by just deleting it. That’s not quite enough. A simple delete just removes the references to the data on the disk – rather than wiping it clean. Software available free on the net can recover it relatively easily, as long as it hasn’t been overwritten.
Which? bought eight computers on eBay and recovered 22,000 ‘deleted’ files from them in this way. Some of those files contained personal data, which could be used by identity thieves to steal your… etc etc. Yawn. You know all this.
Of course, there’s programs that’ll hard-delete data, too, but Which? prefers another solution. A big hammer. They recommend pulling it out of the PC and whacking it very very hard, until the thing’s in pieces. While I don’t doubt the effectiveness of that method, it’s a lot easier to use a program like SuperShredder to accomplish the same thing. Plus you won’t get bits of disk platter in your eye. Bonus.
Related posts: Which? takes on Davenport-Lyons for “excessive bullying” | Which? Computing names high street shops selling violent games to 15 year-old girls
Quick! Encrypt your hard drives now: Euro police could be hacking your PC
It’s very easy to become alarmed by some of the scaremongering stories which appear in certain sections of the UK press when it comes to technology and privacy, but this one – if abused – could be pretty serious indeed.
According to The Times, The Home Office has developed plans to give the UK police force the power to remotely hack into the personal computer of anyone it suspects might be involved with something dodgy — you know, terrorism, paedophilia, drug trafficking, that kind of thing — without a warrant, with the additional joyous notion that police forces from across the European Union can request information on any British Citizen.
Yes, it does all sound a bit Daily Mail, but unsurprisingly it’s raised the hackles of the human rights group Liberty, which has said that it will mount a legal challenge.
Twply takes a spam-and-grab approach to violating your privacy
When’s the last time you gave out your username and password for something crucial to a random web service? That’s what a lot of people have been doing with Twply.com. The site asks you for your username and password, and then promises to send any @replies that you get on Twitter to your email account.
However, it’ll also spam its own URL across your Twitter account – “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!“. That means they’ve got a big database of Twitter usernames and passwords, ripe for spamming. I wonder what could happen if they got bought by someone without a conscience… Oh, wait.
If you’ve used the site, now would be a great time to go change your password. If you’ve not, then remember basic security advice. If you’re not sure about giving out your username and password to a website, then don’t do it. Have you got any tales of Web 2.0 privacy woe? I want to hear them. Drop me a comment below.
Oh, and for a service which does the same thing without asking for your password, try replies.twittapps.
Twply (via Helloform)
Related posts: Twitterer liveblogs his own plane crash | Evening Standard fails in its meagre attempts to understand Twitter
BNP membership list leaks – Google map mashup created
Last night, a full list of the British National Party’s members leaked out to the public at large. Obviously, that’s a huge data breach, as a person has a right to privacy of their political beliefs, but many believe the BNP to be an extremist organisation. Members of the BNP are banned from the police force, and they’re refused a platform in many students’ unions.
Aside from looking up family members, several enterprising geeks have been doing some scary stuff with the data. One of the most popular mashups is a Google map that displays where the BNP members near you live – though the map appears to have just been taken down. It was just based on postcodes, so it’s not accurate down to the household – just the general area. Even so, the addresses are in the full list, so it doesn’t take much effort to track down a particular person in your town.
