Top Story
Chilling effect of MegaUpload raid takes hold
January 24, 2012 | Comment on this post
By Byron Acohido and Scott Martin, USA TODAY
Caution is spreading among popular file-sharing services known for letting users circulate pirated Hollywood content.
FileSonic, FileServe and Uploaded.to have abruptly cut off the sharing of movies, games and other software just days after the Justice Department closed down Megaupload, the largest such site.
“It looks like the chilling effect has already started,” says Dennis Fisher, editor in chief of security blog …more
Hollywood’s takedown of Megaupload stokes SOPA anti-piracy fears
January 20, 2012 | 1 Comment
The government takedown of Megaupload, a popular file-sharing site, has stoked simmering fears that hard-line enforcement of copyright infringements could profoundly disrupt Internet commerce.
File sharing has become a major way corporations collaborate with employees and partners and interact with customers. It fuels the sharing of rich content across Internet-connected devices in the home and office and distributed to mobile devices and has emerged as a major component …more
Zappos hack shows risk of using e-mail as your account username
January 16, 2012 | Comment on this post
If you’ve ever shopped at Zappos now would be a good time to take stock of the e-mail address and password you use most often to shop and bank online.
The popular online shoe retailer, a division of Amazon, disclosed on Sunday that hackers cracked its customer database to steal records for some 24 million customers.
The data thieves did not get any payment card numbers, because that data was …more
Stratfor hack demonstrates new strain of censorship
January 11, 2012 | 3 Comments
Hacking technology has become so accessible, and social network-based rabble rousing so prevalent, that hacktivists espousing confused motives can lash out indiscriminately — and cause crushing damage.
That’s the upshot of the Christmas Eve Stratfor.com escapade widely attributed to members of the Anonymous hacking collective. The online global affairs publication relaunched its website today, three weeks after hacktivists posted sensitive data for 50,000 Stratfor subscribers, then shut …more
2011: Year of the hacktivists
January 10, 2012 | Comment on this post
Stratfor.com remains inoperative nearly three weeks after a Christmas Eve hacktivist break-in. To add insult to injury, a prankster has begun sending bogus e-mail messages to the online publication’s subscribers asking them to rate the company’s response to the breach, according to Sophos’ analyst Chet Wiesniewski.
The attack on Strategic Forecasting — which supplies its subscribers with independent analysis on global affairs — capped an unprecedented year for …more
Facebook fails to provide clear answers on Web tracking
January 9, 2012 | Comment on this post
Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Tex., on Monday lashed out at Facebook for failing to clearly explain how — and why — the social networking giant systematically compiles tracking data on its 800 million members, and millions more non-members, as LastWatchdog disclosed in this page-one cover story.
Markey and Barton were left unsatisfied by this six-page explanation they recently received from Erin …more
Free anti-tracking services catch on with privacy-minded consumers
December 29, 2011 | Comment on this post
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 30Dec2011, P1B
Upon reading recent news stories about how Facebook tracks almost everywhere he goes on the Internet, Jim Kress grew outraged.
The business process consultant from Northville, Mich., subsequently learned Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe and many other companies also exhaustively track his online activities. “I was very unnerved to discover the extent of all the other tracking that was done by nearly …more