Gadgetopia

Start Panicking!: Think your browsing history is secure? It’s not.

Go here, and press the button.

If someone knows how they’re doing this, do tell.

Concerns loom as Google begins testing health records system: I can’t decide if this is scary or not. Dangerous? How do you manage security for something like this?

The pilot will involve transferring the health information of between 1,500 and 10,000 patients who have records at the Cleveland Clinic, which already has over 100,000 records stored in its own digital database. Patients will then be able to have access to their own records online, wherever they go (with an Internet connection), which Google thinks will help reduce conflicts in diagnoses and prescriptions between doctors.

Clarkson stung after bank prank: Jeremy Clarkson, host of the awesome Top Gear, thought people were too uptight about privacy breaches. So…

Clarkson published details of his Barclays account in the Sun newspaper, including his account number and sort code. He even told people how to find out his address.

“All you’ll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I’ve never known such a palaver about nothing,” he told readers.

Something tells me he won’t be doing that again…

“I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account,” he said.

I’m leaving tonight for FM’s Conversational Marketing Summit. I’m flying from Sioux Falls to Denver to San Francisco.

I need to work from my hotel room, and I can’t stand laptop keyboards or pointing devices, so I’m taking a full-size keyword and trackball in my carry-on. So, in the luggage that will go through the x-ray machine, I will have two mechanical-looking devices with wires coming out of them.

Anyone want to lay bets on whether or not this gets a second look from security? I’ll report on actual events when I get to my hotel late tonight.

Toll records catch unfaithful spouses: Big Brother pops up in all sorts of places.

Adulterers, beware: Your cheatin’ heart might be exposed by E-ZPass.

E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That’s because when your spouse doesn’t know where you’ve been, E-ZPass does.

E-ZPass has been used in court cases all the time. Tough to complain about the privacy implications, however, since it’s all voluntary. You give up privacy for convenience.

TorrentSpy ruling puts your RAM on trial: This is fascinating. Apparently you can be forced to persist your RAM so it can be turned over in court proceedings.

In a decision reported late Friday by CNET News.com, a federal judge in Los Angeles found that a computer server’s RAM, or random-access memory, is a tangible document that can be stored and must be turned over in a lawsuit.

If allowed to stand, the groundbreaking ruling may mean that anyone defending themselves in a civil suit could be required to turn over information in their computer’s RAM hardware, which could force companies and individuals to store vast amounts of data, say technology experts.

How would you even do this? RAM is ephemeral. Do you write it to disk every X number of minutes or something? When someone comes to you with a subpoena for your RAM, do they specify a time? And if that time is three weeks ago, how are you supposed to get that data unless you continually log all the contents in your RAM to persistent storage?

Google Photos Stir a Debate Over Privacy: Google’s new Street View is making some people nervous.

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.

What’s Street View, you say? It’s pretty cool.

NPR “Xeni Tech”: Jigsaw wants your data: This is a tricky little service that makes Plaxo look almost legit. If you upload someone’s contact information, you can search for and download someone else’s. So anyone who gives you a business card is currency for you to use to get someone else’s contact information.

Members pay $25/month to obtain 25 contacts from the site, or agree to put in 25 contacts a month to get 25 others out. Users maintain the data, but unlike Wikipedia, they don’t do it for love here — they do it to score points, so they can download more contacts.

This seems a little oppressive…

An antiterror law makes Internet cafe managers check their clients’ IDs and track the websites they visit.

…Maurizio Savoni says he’s closing his Internet cafe because he doesn’t want to be a “cop” anymore.

[…]

…Savoni had to obtain a new public communications business license, and purchase tracking software that costs up to $1,600.

The software saves a list of all sites visited by clients, and Internet cafe operators must periodically turn this list into their local police headquarters.

Eavesdropping on typists: This probably is not a practical concern for most people, but a little disturbing anyway.

Sounds from typing on computer keyboards are distinctive enough to be decoded, allowing security breaches caused by “acoustic snooping,” University of California researchers said on Wednesday.

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system: Tor is an anonymizer on steroids. It was built by the U.S. Navy, of all groups, and is currently maintained by the EFF.

Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going.

Found via this Wired article.

Talk about stupid background processes — I found this in my system tray this morning. Does InstallShield really need an update manager? I can’t imagine a program I use more infrequently.

Couldn’t it just check for updates when it’s run? Why does every company program feel like they’re so important that they need to take up memory on machine?

RFID For Dummies: Does the existence of a “For Dummies” book mean your technology just went mainstream? Half-tempted to buy this so I can RFID my kids.

Go Daddy Promotes Privacy Fight: I have some domains hosted with GoDaddy, and I got a scathing letter from the president — a guy by the name of Bob Parsons — about a recent NTIA decision:

A February decision by the US Department of Commerce requires new registrants of .US domains to submit their phone numbers and addresses for listing in publicly searchable databases.

More on that decision.

Here’s some of the letter. He went ballistic — it was way, way more impassioned than anything you expect to get from your domain registrar:

Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution. […]

I personally find it ironic that our right to .US privacy was stripped away, without due process […] For the NTIA to choose the .US extension is the ultimate slap in your face.

Here’s his personal blog and a Web site devoted to the cause.

A quick read discussing public perception in the world of online banking:

The updated report from the Better Business Bureau study shows that fear has unrealistically worsened. “Our numbers show that fears about online identity fraud may be out of proportion to the relative risk, causing consumers to ignore the most glaring issues,” Javelin’s founder and chief analyst, James Van Dyke, said.

Despite the rising perception among consumers that online transactions are very risky, this latest study shows results to the contrary. It concludes that identity fraud problems are not worsening. In fact, the total number of victims is declining.

I’m not sure I believe this last bit, though:

The average time to resolve an identity fraud crime dropped by 15 percent from 33 hours in 2003 to 28 hours in 2004.

A year or two ago, my friend’s debit card was compromised. Later, he found out that he’d purchased a bunch of stuff from Digital Blasphemy. That took several weeks to clear up! (I think the red tape at his bank was responsible for the length of time involved, though.)

Personally, I have no problem logging into my accounts online. I’ve even convinced my parents that its safe to do so — no easy task.