No encryption, again.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070828150135236

CT: Computer Stolen With State Tax Data For 106,000

Tuesday, August 28 2007 @ 03:01 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

State officials say a computer laptop with the names and Social Security numbers of more than 100,000 Connecticut taxpayers has been stolen.

The state Department of Revenue Services says it will begin notifying affected taxpayers about the theft. Officials say the computer is password-protected and access is unlikely by anyone without specialized knowledge.

Source - Associated Press

Related - Connecticut Post

Sure to grow?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070828070415925

Ca: Security breach hits online brokerage

Tuesday, August 28 2007 @ 07:18 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Online broker TradeFreedom Securities Inc. has quietly notified an unidentified number of its customers that a computer security breach has compromised some of their personal information, potentially exposing them to fraud.

In what it described as a follow-up to an Aug. 17 notice to clients, it said in a Friday e-mail that it had finished its investigation into the "recent unauthorized intrusion" of one of its computer systems.

"We have subsequently determined that, despite our security systems in place at the time, this unauthorized intrusion has also resulted in the compromise of some of your personal information," TradeFreedom said. "This information is your name, social insurance number, city, province and postal code."

Source - Globe and Mail

Good idea, kinda late...

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070828073719101

Boss, I Think Someone Stole Our Customer Data

Tuesday, August 28 2007 @ 07:44 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

Case Study: A fictitious company, "Flayton Electronics," learns that the security of its customer data has been compromised—and faces tough decisions about what to do next.

Source - Harvard Business Review

Related - Rational Security (blog)

(Props, Emergent Chaos blog)

If you don't someone else surely will.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070828132659443

Is your school's Web site revealing too much?

Tuesday, August 28 2007 @ 01:26 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Minors & Students

It's back to school time, and Internet safety expert Linda Criddle has come up with homework for schools, students and parents: Do a safety checkup of your school's Web site to ensure that it is not making too much personal information publicly available. She has created Guidelines for Safer School Web Sites to help schools cope with the new realities of our information society. News that can be appropriately shared within a school community--student names, team affiliations, sports practice times, and photos, for example--can expose students to considerable risk for misuse when shared with the whole world online.

Source - C|net (blog)

How to guide?

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/08/wiretap

Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates

By Ryan Singel Email 08.29.07 | 2:00 AM

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

... Many of the details of the system and its full capabilities were redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they show that DCSNet includes at least three collection components, each running on Windows-based computers.

Keep an eye on this one.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/28/1821211&from=rss

FSF Positioning To Sue Microsoft Over GPLv3?

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 28, @02:36PM from the no-easy-out dept. GNU is Not Unix Microsoft

mjasay writes "Groklaw notes that the Free Software Foundation has decried Microsoft's attempts to distance itself from its obligations to abide by GPL Version 3 (press release here). Citing Microsoft's earlier declaration that they are not bound by GPLv3, the Free Software Foundation declared, 'Microsoft cannot by any act of anticipatory repudiation divest itself of its obligation to respect others' copyrights.' The press release implies that the Free Software Foundation may sue Microsoft over the issue."

Strategy?

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9768204-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

The rise of the "good enough" technology economy

Posted by Matt Asay August 28, 2007 9:34 PM PDT

I stumbled across this excellent commentary from Stephen Baker in BusinessWeek on "good enough" technology. It's actually a great foil to an earlier post I wrote on Software as a Service (SaaS).

Baker asks, "Are we helped or hindered by imperfect technology that is merely 'good enough'?" He comes down squarely on the "helped" side, and with interesting reasons:

Look, this has never bothered politicians before – what's really going on?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WIRELESS_CHICAGO?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Chicago Scraps Plans for Wi-Fi Network

Aug 28, 5:03 PM EDT

CHICAGO (AP) -- An ambitious plan to blanket the city with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it, Chicago officials said Tuesday.

Suspicions confirmed.

http://slated.org/windows_by_stealth_the_updates_you_dont_want

Windows By Stealth: The Updates You Don't Want

Sun, 26/08/2007 - 10:43pm — Homer

On the back of the recent WGA fiasco, further research has revealed yet another citation of what I already knew to be true: Windows updates itself without explicit permission, even if you turn off automatic updates.

The procedure is supposed to work like this (on XP at least):

Launch "System Properties".
Select the "Automatic Updates" tab.
Select the "turn off Automatic Updates" (or manual) checkbox.

And that, AFAIAC should be it. Off means off.

And yet, according to Microsoft, apparently it doesn't.

If Microsoft ever wanted to get caught with their pants down, they succeeded. For most people, the above doesn't make a whole lot of sense past the "you might have a virus" part. VerifyMyPC requires a little extra knowledge about computer systems when dealing with the details. Google is your friend in these cases. Running searches for 'wups.dll' and 'wups2.dll' turns up something about Automatic Updates. In particular, those DLLs provide Automatic Update functionality for Windows.

In other words, the Automatic Updates utility automatically updated itself. Now this might not seem like a big deal but I have automatic updates set to manual (both download and installation have to be approved by me) and not the usual 'automatic' setting found on most user PCs. In other words, Windows updated itself without my express permission. Such behavior is right in line with spyware-like activity.

Looks useful!

http://www.killerstartups.com/Video-Music-Photo/mefeedia--Video-Aggregator-Proposes-2nd-Gen-Videos/

Mefeedia.com - Video Aggregator Proposes 2nd Gen Videos

Mefeedia [ http://mefeedia.com/ ] claims to aggregate videos and weblogs from over 15,000 sites. Their index plays host to over 3 million episodes from around 25,000 video feeds. Other than those large, appealing numbers, Mefeedia also lays claim to better, higher quality videos—a second generation of online video.

Tools

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015838.html

August 28, 2007

LLRX.com Business Filings Database Guide Updated

Kathy Biehl's comprehensive, reliable and completely updated guide to Business Filings Databases was posted on August 25, 2007.

• "All 50 states make some level of corporate and business filings available online. In a few instances only limited information (such as name availability) is retrievable. The majority of the states, however, use their Web presence to disseminate a range of public business records -- and most of them offer access at no charge."

For my Web site class...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/27/fotoflexer-raises-the-bar-on-online-photo-editing/

FotoFlexer Raises The Bar On Online Photo Editing

Michael Arrington August 27 2007

Online photo editors keep getting better and better. For hardcore image manipulation, desktop software like Photoshop or Gimp will always have its place, but online editors are free, easy to use and a lot of fun. We covered most of the online editors back in February (Fauxto, Picnik, Picture2Life, Preloadr, PXN8 and Snipshot). But a relative newcomer on the scene, Berkeley-based FotoFlexer, is worth a look.