“BATON ROUGE — Just having perpetrators of identity theft register with local and state police, much like sex offenders do, isn’t enough, members of the House said Sunday.”
“A group of local investors last week acquired Philadelphia’s unfinished municipal Wi-Fi network from EarthLink Inc.”
“Google Inc’s famous employee perks — from providing “nap pods” for a quick break during the day to allowing engineers to spend 20 percent of their work time on side projects that may spark new ideas — have given the Internet leader the best reputation in corporate America, according to a study released on Monday.”
link: Google has best reputation in U.S.; airlines fall-survey
“CANNES: The growing advertising ambitions of technology powerhouses like Google and Microsoft, reflected in Google’s recent linkup with Yahoo and Microsoft’s efforts to keep pace, are creating alarm in ad agency executive suites.”
link: Ad executives keep a weather eye on Google and Microsoft
When I made the switch from Release Candidate 3 to the final version of Firefox 3, I lost the use of a couple add-ons, most notably the Skype extension that makes all phone numbers on the Web into click-to-call buttons.”
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. marshals seized animal food products from a PETCO Animal Supplies Distribution Center in Joilet, Ill., on Friday.
The raid came after inspections found rodent and bird infestations in the warehouse.”
“All evidence points to the fact that smartphone viruses will be a threat to your network even though they aren’t at this moment. After all, the latest mobile devices are packed with more and more applications and corporate data, are enabled for real Web browsing and online collaboration, and can access corporate servers. What’s more, they live outside your firewall and often make use of three wireless networks (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular).”
link: Are smartphone viruses really a threat to your network?
“CHICAGO — The famously discreet Citadel Investment Group draws many of the shrewdest minds from Wall Street to Chicago. Shanghai too.
Unknown people in that Chinese city cloned Citadel’s Web site, set up a link for investor passwords and exposed the $17 billion hedge fund to a “grave risk of theft of confidential information,” according to a federal lawsuit that shut down the fake site.
These kinds of nefarious schemes have become shockingly routine for financial institutions, security experts say, and exhibit an increasing level of brashness by people using search engines and customer identities to hijack sensitive data.”
“Friday the 13th is supposed to mean bad luck — but not for one lucky pet owner.
A seven-year-old Himalayan cat missing since Friday, August 13, 2005, was reunited with his owner almost three years later - with the help of Facebook.”
“Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time, according to one popular measure of internet traffic.”
“SUNDAY JUNE 22, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) — The Food and Drug Administration updated the ongoing salmonella Saintpaul outbreak on June 20 saying the source of the outbreak might be Florida or Mexico, but many of the tomatoes producing countries in the two regions have already been ruled out as the source.”
“For many employers, the data on a handheld is far more valuable than the device itself. According to Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach has now reached $197 per compromised record. The vast majority of breaches involve laptops, but it’s just a matter of time before some CEO’s lost BlackBerry makes headlines. Or is it?”
“Councils in England have been urged to review the way they use surveillance powers to investigate suspected crime.
Under laws brought in to help fight terrorism, councils can access phone and e-mail records and use surveillance to detect or stop a criminal offence.”
“Three out of five marketing staff have lost customers’ confidential data in the past two years, according to a survey.
A report for the data protection firm StrongMail and the privacy think tank the Ponemon Institute says that 61 per cent of marketing staff surveyed admit to having lost, or had stolen, confidential customer data over the past 24 months. In 90 per cent of these cases the customer is never informed that their data has been lost or stolen.”
“Do you trust your IT staff to do their jobs and mind their own business? If so, you could be in for a scandalous shock, as a third of whom have inexplicably volunteered in a survey that they’re looking at highly confidential data, sometimes even after they’ve left the company. Time to be alert – and alarmed!”
“Carefully managed virtual servers can make the job of attackers more difficult by reducing the time that any one version of a server is exposed to the Internet, according to a George Mason University professor who has developed software that phases virtual servers in and out of use.”
“Some marketing managers are prepared to give out key private customer data such as sexual orientation, political affiliation and credit card details to third parties in an attempt to increase sales, warns a survey.”
“Jail officials are revamping their phone system to make sure calls between prisoners and their attorneys are not recorded after defense lawyers began bringing complaints and in some cases threatened to sue.”
“ASUS has announced the release of the new Eee PC 901 and the reduced prices of the previous 701 and 900 models.
The 901 is the third-generation Eee PC and the first to sport Intel’s Atom processor, clocked at 1.6GHz, and, like its predecessors, will ship with Linux and Windows.”
“Washington - Congress is on the verge of ending a year-long struggle with the White House over a contentious intelligence surveillance bill.”
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It is with some regret that I am posting these personal developments on FlyingHamster. As many of you know, this site was started as an adjunct to the weekly newsletters that were done on Spywareinfo. With the speed of news, it was felt that the visitors of Spywareinfo would be best served if there was a daily posting of the news concerning the internet, privacy and security.
While Firefox 3 is making headlines with the number of downloads and the technical writers are singing the praises of the newer, better, shinier browser, Firefox 3 is annoying me. The simple reason is that some of the add-ons, which I have come to depend upon, do not work. For me, that drawback is major. It disrupts work and concentration. READ MORE»
“In a legislative move to stem piracy, France has introduced legislation that would ban violators from the internet: READ MORE»
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