Linux Privacy - Page 42
We have thousands of posts on a wide variety of open source and security topics, conveniently organized for searching or just browsing.
We have thousands of posts on a wide variety of open source and security topics, conveniently organized for searching or just browsing.
Identity theft is the major security concern facing organisations today. Indeed, for the banking industry, it is the number one security priority for 2006. In a recent survey of security budget holders and influencers of UK banks, 73% of respondents cited identity management as the top transaction security concern.
Along with the benefits of networked systems – easy information sharing and the ability to work wherever and whenever – comes responsibility. Professionals in all industries have the responsibility to protect their customers’ (and their own) confidentiality. When professionals access their office networks and exchange information with other organisations, confidentiality is paramount, though not always easy to achieve.
With controversy swirling around ID theft and electronic surveillance by the government, what should corporations do to protect customer data? Jim Dempsey, policy director at The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), spells out controversial advice such as "gather less data" and seemingly dire warnings such as "if you gather the data, the government will come calling." Whether you view CDT as an advocate or an adversary, its voice is being heard on Capitol Hill, so it's important to be aware of its stance on important corporate data policies and related issues.
At the center of the square off over the access to private personal data online -- a much publicized debate that extends from Beijing to Washington -- stands an uncertain arbiter: the search engine. The companies that operate the most popular search engines -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft -- are making decisions about how the information they collect about user behavior should be protected, in some cases from the eyes of governments that want to take a closer look but lack a clear legal right to do so.
IBM and Novell Monday announced their support for an open source project aiming to give users more control over how information such as passwords and financial details are shared across multiple Web sites.
The U.S. Justice Department has denied requesting anything from Google that could threaten the privacy of the search engine's users, as the company recently contended. And by trying to block the government's efforts to review a week's worth of search terms, Google is holding up efforts to protect children from pornography, according to a brief filed Friday by the Justice Department.
Computer users' identity information is managed online today by several different data collection agencies. But imagine the freedom people would feel changing their address with one keystroke? Microsoft is working on such technology with its InfoCard identity metasystem. Now IBM, Novell and startup Parity Communications are joining the Eclipse open software foundation and Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society to tackle the challenge. The three companies and are contributing code to the "Higgins Project," designed to give people more control over their online identity information.
While we start to see a shift in the market of SSL certificates ,with the costs getting lower and lower - specially for low assurance certificates, there are some providers, which try to tell you otherwise.
A new report by CDT details a widening gap between the technology that collects sensitive personal data and the laws designed to protect that data against government misuse. The National Security Agency's domestic spying program, the Justice Department's efforts to obtain millions of Internet search records, the government's use of cell phones to track suspects, and other developments highlight the law's failure to keep pace with technological advances, according to "Digital Search & Seizure: Updating Privacy Protections to Keep Pace with Technology." Stronger laws are needed to ensure that Americans retain their constitutional privacy protections, the report finds.
A new report by CDT details a widening gap between the technology that collects sensitive personal data and the laws designed to protect that data against government misuse. The National Security Agency's domestic spying program, the Justice Department's efforts to obtain millions of Internet search records, the government's use of cell phones to track suspects, and other developments highlight the law's failure to keep pace with technological advances, according to "Digital Search & Seizure: Updating Privacy Protections to Keep Pace with Technology." Stronger laws are needed to ensure that Americans retain their constitutional privacy protections, the report finds.
The CEO of Sun Microsystems,--infamous for his pronouncement, "You have zero privacy anyway--Get over it."--took a conciliatory tone on the stage here, allowing that privacy might be something for which consumers should fight. He warned companies that, unless they protect consumer privacy, they could lose out on significant online growth.
Perhaps the best way to deal with rootkits is to outlaw them. At least when it comes to such mishaps as the Sony BMG Music Entertainment fiasco, that's what an official from the Department of Homeland Security suggested Thursday. "The recent Sony experience shows us that we need to be thinking about how we ensure that consumers are not surprised by what their software programs do," Jonathan Frenkel, director of law-enforcement policy at the US Department of Homeland Security said in a speech in San Jose at the 2006 RSA Conference.
"Hacking Google" isn't exactly new. That is, using the search engine to look for confidential information. But as McAfee's senior vice president for Risk Management George Kurtz demonstrated today at RSA conference, that didn't prevent users and organisations to post those goodies online for anyone to find.
Privacy and anonymity on the internet are as important as they are difficult to achieve. Here are some of the the current issues we face, along with a few suggestions on how to be more anonymous. Online privacy issues are in the news every week now. This is good for us, because when it's newsworthy and notable it means people still care about the privacy of their personal information in some fundamental and important way. Privacy on the internet (or rather, a lack thereof) has been with us for ages, but as technology converges we are all forced to make some important new choices about what we are willing to disclose. Let's start with a few examples.
The UK government has come out with yet another questionable study to support its obsessive bent to impose ID cards on the British public. Once again, ID fraud figures as the reason why Brits need expensive biometric proofs of identity.
Q: So what does the rewritten law now say? The section as amended reads like this: "Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Reports of the unauthorized sale of personal telephone records may be sending chills up the spines of callers across the county, but the practice does not occur underground or on the black market. It occurs right out in the open, and according to regulators it's a growing problem. Numerous data broker Web sites advertise personal phone records for sale, including the numbers called, the length of calls, and sometimes the location of cell phones.
The High Court has ordered 10 ISPs to hand over the customer details of 150 individuals accused of illegally sharing and downloading desktop software on the web. The illegal file-sharers were identified after a 12-month covert investigation by the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast), called Operation Tracker.
After years in which suppliers have absorbed most of the blame for government IT failures, the case for there being equal measures of ineptitude in the civil service is gaining momentum behind the concerted campaign against ID Cards. The latest evidence was submitted as a statement this week by Intellect, the UK's IT trade association, in a thinly veiled case of passing the blame.
A division of the Marriott International hotel empire has notified more than 200,000 clients of back-up security tapes missing from the company’s Orlando corporate offices. The breached records contained personal information of about 206,000 associates, timeshare owners and timeshare customers, the company said this week in a statement. Stephen P. Weisz, Marriott Vacation Club International president, said the company was assisting affected customers.