Imminent threats
Google execs to give closed-door briefing, CEO stays home
January 31, 2012
Google CEO Larry Page won’t be testifying before Congress this week. In response to an invitation last week from Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., who asked Page to appear and explain the company’s user policy changes, Page sent two subordinates to handle the matter.
Google deputy general counsel Mike Yang and public policy director Pablo Chavez are preparing to deliver a closed-door briefing on Thursday, says …More
Will Larry Page show up to testify before Congress?
January 30, 2012
Google CEO Larry Page on Friday evening received a strongly-worded letter from Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., challenging the privacy policy changes the search giant announced last week.
Starting March 1, Google will be capable, policy-wise, of cross-referencing Internet user activity data compiled from its most popular services, including search, Google Apps, Gmail and YouTube.
And it will be able, policy-wise, to do this …More
Google, Facebook say privacy rules bad for economy
January 27, 2012
They may be battling each other tooth-and-nail to win over online advertisers. But Google and Facebook are on the same side when it comes to opposing new data-handling privacy laws fast-gelling in Europe and the U.S.
On Wednesday, the European Union formally proposed strict rules that could restrict much of the systematic tracking and profiling Google and Facebook routinely do of Internet users, as part …More
Risks rise as Google, Facebook intensify profiling
January 26, 2012
Google and Facebook might have finally gotten the average consumer riled up about privacy.
For the past two years, each company has experimented with different ways to divine more and more about how people live their lives on the Internet, without sparking a revolt.
But the plans the rivals announced on Tuesday, which critics say could dramatically rev up their respective abilities to gather intelligence on individual Internet …More
Zappos hack shows risk of using e-mail as your account username
January 16, 2012
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
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
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
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