The Wall Street Journal posted a story yesterday about the Obama administration’s plan to add a privacy watching task force to evaluate rules on cookies, metacookies, flash cookies and all the other online threats to consumer privacy.
It’s part of a pretty useful section tracking privacy issues, privacy protection tools and the threats thereof from online marketers, from the point of view and on the technical level of a relatively savvy consumer — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Hacked and malicious sites designed to steal data from unsuspecting users via malware and phishing are a dime a dozen, often located in the United States, and are a key target for takedown by ISPs and security researchers. But when online miscreants seek stability in their Web projects, they often turn to so-called bulletproof hosting
providers, mini-ISPs that specialize in offering services that are largely immune from takedown requests and pressure from Western law enforcement agencies — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Mozilla have released the latest Beta of their Firefox 4 browser for Windows. Beta 7 is being billed as pretty much what will be released as version 4 in the first part of 2011, although it does seem that they are planning a beta 8 and 9 in the next few months. However, word out of Mozilla is that nothing fundamentally new will be added to the release version, and nothing present in this Beta will be removed — via dungbeetlemania.newsvine.com
One of the men responsible for the grotesque defacing of Facebook tribute pages, including that of dead Melbourne teen Cameron Lowe, is a high-ranking Ku Klux Klan member who served two years in jail for viciously beating a 16-year-old Latino boy.
Jarred Hensley, 28, from Cincinnati, Ohio, outed himself to a pair of Australian vigilantes on a website chat room used by his group to organise and gloat about desecrating scores of Facebook tribute pages — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A pioneering research effort could shrink a supercomputer to the size of a sugar cube, IBM scientists say — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Google has updated and re-released open-source software for cleaning, analyzing and transforming data sets, now called Google Refine.
The software, originally called Freebase Gridworks, came with Metaweb, a company Google purchased in July — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Remember the old saying about being innocent until proven guilty
? Well, the latest version of New Zealand’s Copyright Amendment Bill has a farcical reversal of this, which has created rightful outrage — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A Florida teen was arrested for burglary after he left himself logged into his MySpace account at the scene of the crime — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Consumer protection laws are being exploited as part of a new type of ticketing scam, the BBC has learnt — via redwolf.newsvine.com
US TV network Fox has joined its rivals in blocking Google TV from airing its programmes to viewers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Cybercrooks continue to abuse the Web, boosting their ability to produce what’s called search engine optimization poisoning so that individuals making use of search engines such as Google’s increasingly are ending up with choices that are dangerous malware-laden URL links — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Snow Leopard’s Column view is often the smarter way to look at your files, but having to drag around your columns constantly to see long file names is a pain. Macworld offers a handy, tucked-away option for fixing Finder’s widths. Double-clicking on the handle
at the bottom right of a column will quickly resize the column to fit the widest file name. Holding Option while dragging a column width sets that custom width for every future Finder window. But you can fix all your columns at once with a right-click — via lifehacker
We know that in times of crisis, it’s especially important for you to find the crucial information you’re looking for—and find it fast. Today we’ve started displaying special search results for searches in Australia for poisoning and suicide that point to emergency information — via redwolf.newsvine.com
$335,000 purchase in Entropia Universe breaks record for largest-ever ransaction.
EntropiaPlanets, a fansite dedicated to the world of MMOG Entropia Universe, reports that one of the games’ users, Jon Jacobs, has sold a number of in-game properties to another user, John Foma Kalun — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The right question is this: why is public Wifi
always synonymous with unencrypted WiFi
? Encryption has been a basic component of WiFi technology since the first versions of 802.11 were approved. I wouldn’t suggest we go back to using WEP like we did in the early days, but even WEP is an improvement over nothing.
While Facebook and other companies should be providing us secure methods of connecting to their services, those companies kind enough to provide us with free internet access at cafes, airports and other public places are also part of the problem.
I propose standard adoption of WPA2 and a default password of free
. Whenever you wish to connect to complimentary WiFi, you select Courtyard Marriott
or Starbucks
like you always have, but you are then prompted for a password.
Just type free
. It’s not hard. In fact, operating system vendors could even program your PC to automatically try the password “free” before prompting you for a password on the assumption that you might be selecting a free service — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A US court has heard that a couple conned at least $6 million from the great-grandson of an oil industry tycoon after he brought his virus-infected computer in for repair — via redwolf.newsvine.com
People who suspect they have been infected will be able to put urine or saliva on to a computer chip about the size of a USB chip, plug it into their phone or computer and receive a diagnosis within minutes, telling them which, if any, sexually transmitted infection (STI) they have. Seven funders, including the Medical Research Council, have put £4m into developing the technology via a forum called the UK Clinical Research Collaboration — via michaelsautter.newsvine.com
Researchers have devised a way to easily detect internet names generated by so-called domain-fluxing botnets, a method that could provide a first-alarm system of sorts that alerts admins of infections on their networks — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australian governments implementing smart card systems for public transport must include contactless payment methods in their roll-out, according to Visa’s ANZ general manager Chris Clark — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Google could be the biggest threat to the big four banks because of the trust online users place in it and its ability to engage with customers, according to banking executives — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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