Sunday, December 02, 2012

If you are on a Board of Directors or are a Senior Manager and have trouble putting yourself in the shoes of a massive breach victim, try these shoes on instead. Comfortable, aren't they? (I don't get to blog about many like this...)
Disaster avoided by encryption? Yay….
December 1, 2012 by admin
I’m so used to reading news stories about thefts where data were not encrypted that my jaw still occasionally drops when it turns out the data were encrypted. Here’s a story like that from Lancashire in the U.K.:
[...]
Eddie Sutton, Lancashire County Council’s assistant chief executive, said: “I can confirm that a number of laptops were stolen from the Rising Bridge offices.
“These were used by staff from adult and community services and children and young people’s services.
Because of the high levels of encryption security protecting these computers, no one will be able to access files on the computers unless they are authorised to do so.”
Read more on the Lancashire Telegraph. The Lancashire County Council had gotten their knuckles rapped by the ICO over a 2009 incident when confidential files were left in filing cabinets sold at auction. It seems they’re keeping their data protective noses clean now, which is great to read.


Tools & Techniques Things every Internet user should know
Many of us at MakeUseOf are very firm believers in the Web of Trust browser extension. Though no solution goes without false positives and certain loopholes, it’s a great way to gauge if a website is helpful or harmful.
Without WoT, a lot of people would feel up in the air about unfamiliar websites. You don’t have to. In this post, I’d like to show you one of the easiest and most effective ways for the average internet user to make their own call on the legitimacy of a website


We should also be aware that some people believe that this success was given to these firms by the “luck fairy” and they not only don't deserve it, “It's not fair!”
December 01, 2012
The Economist - Concern about the clout of the internet giants is growing
The Economist: "The four giants of the internet age—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—are extraordinary creatures. Never before has the world seen firms grow so fast or spread their tentacles so widely. Apple has become a colossus of capitalism, accounting for 4.3% of the value of the S&P 500 and 1.1% of the global equity market. Some 425m people now use its iTunes online store, whose virtual shelves are packed to the gills with music and other digital content. Google, meanwhile, is the undisputed global leader in search and online advertising. Its Android software powers three-quarters of the smartphones being shipped. Amazon dominates the online-retail and e-book markets in many countries; less well known is its behind-the-scenes power in cloud computing. As for Facebook, if the social network’s one billion users were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. The digital revolution these giants have helped foment has brought huge benefits to consumers and businesses, and promoted free speech and the spread of democracy along the way. Yet they provoke fear as well as wonder. Their size and speed can, if left unchecked, be used to choke off competition. That is why they are attracting close scrutiny from regulators."


“We would like a direct link to your camera. And next we want to vaccuum out your wallet.” I wonder if they'll share those intimate photos of you and your significant other?
Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync
Facebook was already taking in 300 million photos a day, and that rate is about to dramatically increase. It’s now ushering users onto its background uploads feature Photo Sync with a big banner at the top of its mobile apps’ news feed. Just two taps and your last 20 photos plus every one you take in the future are auto-uploaded to a private album from which you can share and Facebook can mine metadata.


Now this is interesting...
App developers, privacy advocates work out suggestions for policy disclosure
December 1, 2012 by Dissent
Hayley Tsukayama reports:
Did you know which apps are looking at your contacts list? Your calendar? Your location? Even when apps provide information on what data they access, the notifications are often so cumbersome to read that users skip right over them.
To curb that problem, app developers and privacy advocates have collaborated to come up with ways to better display privacy policy information and cut through the long, legal liability documents.
The App Developers Alliance (ADA), Consumer Action, World Privacy Forum and American Civil Liberties Union will present mock-ups of screens that offer quick-scan information on what data app developers collect and that who else has access to that data. The groups will present their proposal Friday in Washington at a National Telecommunications and Information Administration meeting on app privacy and transparency.
Read more on Washington Post.


Cute Starts with the downside of asking for the password to employee Facebook pages.


Now this might be useful if you could load it into your e-book reader...
Online guitar tabs let you easily play popular songs on your guitar. But if you have a professional band with music training and you want to cover popular songs, you are going to need more than just guitar tabs: you are going to need music sheets. Music sheets are documents that explain which musical notes are played by which instruments in a song.

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