Monday, April 02, 2012


That's up a bit from the 50,000 reported earlier.
Up to 1.5M credit card numbers stolen from Global Payments
As many as 1.5 million Visa and MasterCard accounts may have been compromised by the recent Global Payments security breach, the payment processor announced this evening.
Credit card numbers may have been exported, but no customer names, addresses, or Social Security numbers were accessed, the company said in a statement. The company believes the breach, which was revealed Friday, was confined to North America.
The nature of the breach, which was originally pegged at 50,000 accounts, has not been revealed.
… As a result of the breach, Visa removed Global Payments from its list of approved service providers. Visa told The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that the move was in response to "Global Payments' reported unauthorized access." Visa said it has invited Global Payments to re-apply for validation by submitting evidence that its security is in compliance with Visa's standards. [It will likely come out that they were in compliance all along, but this way Visa looks tough. Bob]


Of course it's only “public data,” that's the scary part!
Developer defends Girls Around Me app
The Girls Around Me app, which used Foursquare and Facebook data to automatically pinpoint the location of specific women near users, was blocked by Foursquare after a firestorm of criticism over user privacy.
Russian developer i-Free Innovations insisted in a statement that the app, which many blogs criticized as creepy and stalking, used publicly available information and provided the same functionality as many other apps.


That's one problem with having all those young whipper-snappers who have no memory of (nor interest in) promises made by politicians from the stone age... Attention Class Action Lawyers?
The census’ broken privacy promise
April 2, 2012 by Dissent
Adam Marcus reports:
Seventy-two years ago, the federal government made a promise to the American public: “No one has access to your census record except you.”
So said a radio ad intended to promote participation in the 1940 census by assuaging privacy concerns. President Franklin Roosevelt even proclaimed, “No person can be harmed in any way by furnishing the information required. There need be no fear that any disclosure will be made regarding any individual or his affairs.”
Yet today, the government is posting online all 3.8 million pages of the 1940 census rolls for all to access — at no charge and with no need to register before viewing them. Eighty-seven percent of Americans can find a direct family link to one or more of the 132+ million people listed on those rolls. The 1940 census included 65 questions, with an additional 16 questions asked of a random 5 percent sample of people.
Read more on Cnet.


Is this a true surprise in the land that invented “1984?” No doubt someone in Congress will be convinced that we need to “keep up” and the NSA will be granted similar power...
UK: Privacy under assault: Internet activity ‘to be monitored’ under new laws
April 2, 2012 by Dissent
Under legislation expected in next month’s Queen’s Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ – the Government’s electronic “listening” agency – to examine “on demand” any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed in “real time”, The Sunday Times reported.
A previous attempt to introduce a similar law was abandoned by the former Labour government in 2006 in the face of fierce opposition.
Read more on The Telegraph.
The BBC reports that civil libertarians are criticizing the plan roundly.


Why Counterintelligence? Are these scams being looked at as funding for Al Qaeda Al Qaida the bad guys? Do these two pages represent everything they know? Why release this on April 1st?
April 01, 2012
FBI - Social Networking Risks Outlined in Latest Counterintelligence Brochure
  • "Internet-based social networking sites have created a revolution in social connectivity. However, con artists, criminals, and other dishonest actors are exploiting this capability for nefarious purposes. So warns our Counterintelligence Division in its latest informative brochure, Internet Social Networking Risks, which not only depicts the hazards present online, but also describes common tactics used criminals and spies in the cyber world as well as counter-tactics and preventative measures you can employ to protect yourself. View the other brochures in our collection for information and security tips on topics such as insider threats, intellectual property protection, and keeping safe abroad."


For the Criminal Justice students
"The New York Times has published a large collection of law enforcement training documents obtained by the ACLU. The documents describe in detail what kind of information can be obtained from cell phones and cell phone carriers, and how to obtain it. The 189-page PDF also contains dozens of invoices from the major carriers for their services to law enforcement that describe the fees for those services."


For sending obscure messages to my students: “Dude! OMG STINO” (Oh, my grade! Study time is never over)
MobiTexter – Text from Any Browser, Anywhere
MobiTexter, too, is an Android application that lets you send text messages from your browser. This time, through a webpage instead of a browser extension. This way it’s not bound to any specific browser. Contrary to MightyText, MobiTexter has a very rudimentary interface. Among other things, MobiTexter does not create message threads, but shows all your messages in chronological order.
MightyText – Seamless Google Chrome Integration
MightyText is a twofold application. The MightyText extension goes in your Google Chrome web browser, the MightyText application on your Android phone. With hardly 2 minutes worth of work, your Android messages finds a second home on your computer.
Right now, MightyText is only available on Google Chrome, but support for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer is in the pipeline.


I will add those “online magazine” subscriptions that I can't stop even after going through their 62 step “unsubscribe” process...
… Grey mail is the new productivity killer, and it’s only going to get worse.
… Spam is easy to define – you don’t want it, and you never asked for it. Grey mail on the other hand is more difficult. You perhaps don’t want it – not all of it anyway – but you probably asked for it. Typical grey mail includes:
  • Offers or newsletters from an online shop you use (or purchased something from, just once).
  • Groupon or Living Social “daily deals” that are generally only relevant for the day they’re sent, yet they still collect in your inbox.
  • Mailing lists such as Freecycle which generate an enormous volume of emails and are mostly useless.
  • Social media updates, as if we didn’t already get enough on Facebook.
Last year, Hotmail introduced a new Sweep button to help you deal with inboxes full of grey mail.
Here’s a quick video from Microsoft to explain the process (you can view it full size on the Conquer Greymail site):

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