http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081218220920648
Your Spying iPhone
Thursday, December 18 2008 @ 10:09 PM EST Contributed by:PrivacyNews
Careful, iPhone users: Your smart phone may be smarter than you think.
On Thursday researchers at Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure said they have spotted the first known instance of iPhone "spyware" called Mobile Spy, a piece of commercial software that sells for $99 a year.
Mobile Spy developer Retina-X Studios says the software can invisibly track the call logs, text messages and even the GPS data of any iPhone it's installed on, allowing the eavesdropper to track the user's whereabouts on a Web site that hosts the stolen data.
Source - Forbes
Fortunately, I can order these through my local library's website.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081219065114968
For your reading list
Friday, December 19 2008 @ 06:51 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Dan Solove and PaulSchwartz have a new casebook out: Privacy and the Media. You can read more about it on Concurring Opinions..
Dan also lets us know about the publication of William J. Cuddihy's The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602 - 1791: "The book has just come out in print, hot off the press, and it's an absolutely essential volume for any scholar of constitutional history, criminal procedure, or the Fourth Amendment." You can read more about it here
They are coming for you!
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F18%2F1417232&from=rss
Personalized Spam Rising Sharply, Study Finds
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 18, @10:16AM from the no-i-don't-want-a-yearbook dept. Spam
designperfection9 writes
"A new study by Cisco Systems Inc. found an alarming increase in the amount of personalized spam, which online identity thieves create using stolen lists of e-mail addresses or other poached data about their victims, such as where they went to school or which bank they use."
[From the article:
Cisco's annual security study found that spam is growing quickly--nearly 200 billion spam messages are now sent each day, double the volume in 2007--and that targeted attacks are also rising sharply.
More than 0.4 percent of all spam sent in September were targeted attacks, Cisco found. That might sound low, but since 90 percent of all e-mails sent worldwide are spam, this means 800 million messages a day are attempts are spear phishing. A year ago, targeted attacks with personalized messages were less than 0.1 percent of all spam.
...and apparently, they are finding you!
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008121812321166
Hundreds of Stolen Data Dumps Found
Thursday, December 18 2008 @ 12:32 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A comprehensive new study that peers into huge troves of financial data stolen by cyber thieves confirms what experts have surmised from looking at much smaller, isolated caches of digital loot: That criminals can make hundreds, even thousands, of dollars a day selling data stolen with the help of widely available software toolkits.
Recent reports by security firms Finjan, RSA, SecureWorks and Symantec have shown that stolen identities, bank accounts and credit card numbers are sold in bulk every day in shadowy online forums, often for pennies on the dollar. In its analysis, Symantec found in 2007 that the going rate for the keys to assuming someone else's identity was between $14 and $18 per victim.
Those reports either presented conclusions based on examining a single cache of stolen data, or by observations based on watching transactions between cyber thieves. But a report released today by researchers at the University of Mannheim, Germany, offers a disturbing glimpse at the sheer abundance of this stolen data.
Source - Security Fix
File this under “I'll believe it when I see it.”
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F19%2F131227&from=rss
RIAA To Stop Prosecuting Individual File Sharers
Posted by kdawson on Friday December 19, @08:16AM from the declare-victory-and-withdraw dept. The Courts
debatem1 writes
"According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign."
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
Call for a national breach notification law?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020104.html
December 18, 2008
FTC Issues Report on Social Security Numbers and Identity Theft
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission issued a report today recommending five measures to help prevent Social Security numbers from being used for identity theft. Principal among the report’s recommendations is that Congress consider taking action to strengthen the procedures that private-sector organizations use to authenticate their customers’ identities...The FTC report states that adopting nationwide standards for how businesses and other organizations verify the identity of new and existing customers would make it harder for identity thieves to use SSNs and other stolen information to consummate their fraud...The FTC report also recommends that steps be taken to reduce the unnecessary display and transmission of SSNs, but noted that such restrictions must be approached carefully. A number of important functions in the U.S. economy depend on use of and access to SSNs, and the report concluded that overly restrictive attempts to limit the availability of SSNs could unintentionally curtail those functions. Finally, the report recommends steps to improve data security, increase outreach to consumers and businesses on the protection of SSNs, and enhance coordination and information-sharing among organizations that routinely use SSNs."
Security In Numbers: Social Security Numbers and Identity Theft: A Federal Trade Commission Report Providing Recommendations On Social Security Number Use In the Private Sector (December 2008)
[From the report:
Recommendation 3: Establish National Standards for Data Protection and Breach Notification
The business models are changing, will the attitudes?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10126439-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Universal Music seeing 'tens of millions' from YouTube
Posted by Greg Sandoval December 18, 2008 1:18 PM PST
YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine.
For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners. In an interview with CNET News this week, Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group's eLabs, said the largest of the top recording companies is bringing in "tens of millions of dollars" from YouTube.
"(YouTube) is not like radio, where it's just promotional," said Caraeff, who heads up Universal's digital group. "It's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."
Lots of sites like this one. Perhaps a more targeted site (computers, law) would be a better business model.
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/smashwords-com-publishing-platform-for-ebook-authors
Smashwords.com - Publishing Platform For Ebook Authors
A visit to this online resource is an appealing prospect for the many authors out there that are looking for ways of extending their outreach, and who can’t seem to attain transcendence however much they try.
In a nutshell, this site is a platform that gives independent authors the chance to publish their works in multiple ebook formats, which are ready for being sold online immediately. The site provides such writers with all the necessary viral marketing tools, too, and the author sets the price personally. Once a sale is made, he will receive 85 % of the net sale itself.
For its part, readers benefit from a system that empowers them to sample a significant part of the book beforehand (up to 50 % and even more), and they are also supporting indie authors that are just starting on the long literary journey.
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