Just in case you are feeling a bit paranoid, this should elevate “a bit” to “really really”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20376
Ranking People Search Websites: How rank are they?
February 4, 2011 by Dissent
I’ve been on a bit of tear recently about aggregators and data brokers after discovering that profiles I had deleted from Spokeo.com had seemingly reappeared. I am still in communications with Spokeo.com, which is why I haven’t published any update on my complaint yet, but hope to be able to blog more about it in the near future. I’ve also been in correspondence with 123people.com where you may not even be able to find a way to ask them not to show results for your name unless you can figure out where their relevant page is (hint: there’s no page linked from the homepage that refers to privacy at all – see how long it takes you to find the page with instructions).
Recently, I learned that the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse had compiled a list of 127 such sites and had annotated their list with some information about whether it’s possible to opt-out.
Even if all sites allowed it, why should consumers who did not consent to having their data aggregated and sold openly on the Internet have to opt out?
Why should stalking victims have to spend time – and in some cases money – and jump through hoops to try to prevent information about them being made readily available to their stalkers?
Yesterday, I learned that Abine, a company that specializes in removing personal information for people, had ranked a dozen of these sites on three factors:
Ease of opting out
Quality of customer service
Respect for individual privacy
The “respect for individual privacy” was defined as “Does the site share your information with third parties, like advertisers? How much of your information do they display?”
You can read the results of their rankings on their web site.
Not surprisingly to me, Intelius was rated the worst, and with it, ZabaSearch and PeopleLookUp. Abine writes:
We lump these three together because, try as they might to pretend to be different companies, they’re all the same thing. In fact, Intelius feeds its data to dozens of different sites, but these are the biggest and best-known. These sites made it on our ultimate worsts list because of their outdated fax opt-out procedure and their time-wasting (and very transparent) insistence that you complete a separate opt-out for each of their “separate” companies. Whenever we delete a customer’s name from these sites, we have to send separate faxes addressed to different companies all at the same fax number.
It’s like a game we play: they pretend they’re separate entities who just happen to have the same fax number, and we pretend that we don’t notice and adhere to their ridiculous procedures. Game’s over, guys: we see what you’re doing. (And we’re not the first to figure this out: check out Steve Klingaman’s funny and exasperated post on “Attempts to Escape the Clutches of Online Data Aggregators.”)
Intelius (we’re just going to call all three of these sites “Intelius” for ease of typing) gets additional marks against it because of how readily it sells your information, spreading it all over the web. For instance, 123people.com, a people search aggregator that collects information on you from multiple smaller databases, gets most of its information from Intelius.
In an exchange on Twitter yesterday, Jim Adler, Chief Privacy Officer for Intelius, agreed that the fax opt-out system was outdated and indicated that the firm was looking at a web-based approach to opt-out. While that would certainly be an improvement and I hope the company implements it in the immediate future, it still leaves consumers in the unenviable position of having to track down companies to opt-out instead of having one “Do Not Aggregate” or “Do Not Display” list that would prevent all people search sites from displaying profiles or results on the individual.
I would prefer that these sites got together and agreed on a common opt-out that they would all abide by – that if a user submits name/address/zip to a central “Do not aggregate or reveal,” all sites would respect that. Failing that, and despite the anti-regulation folks, I would support government regulation on this because these sites may cause harm in any one of a number of ways, not the least of which is increasing the risk of identity theft.
Because schools are better parents than parents...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20403
Teachers’ search powers would ‘exceed those of police’
February 4, 2011 by Dissent
Wow. When I started reading this article, I wondered what third world country the news was from. Then I discovered it’s from the UK. Double wow.
New legislation will give teachers “unprecedented” powers to search pupils that will exceed those of the police.
The Coalition’s Education Bill, published last week, will dramatically extend teachers’ search powers, which human rights group Liberty has described as being “proportionate to terrorism investigations”.
The bill gives teachers the power to seize any electronic device – including mobile phones – and examine all data they may contain.
It also allows teachers to erase any files or data, if a member of staff believes it is reasonable to do so.
Announcing the bill last week, education secretary Michael Gove said the legislation signalled that the Coalition was “absolutely on the side of teachers”, and it would free staff to “impose the penalties they need to keep order”.
Read more on TES Connect.
(Related) Clearly, if schools can monitor student off-campus activity, a “real” government can monitor their employees non-work lives.
Anniston, Alabama To Censor Employees' Facebook Pages
"If you're a city employee in Anniston, AL, you'd better watch what you say on Facebook. Under a proposal being considered by the City Council, employees would be banned from posting anything 'negative' or 'embarrassing' about the city. Note that they aren't talking about official city pages here, but employees' personal pages. Anyone care to educate these clowns on the existence of the First Amendment?"
(Related) After all, sometimes monitoring is required by regulation...
Big Brother Friends Facebook
"Clara Shih, who created the first business app on Facebook in 2007, is back with a new venture: Hearsay Social, which makes Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn more palatable to corporations by adding features like SEC and FINRA monitoring and compliance and analytics. Conversations are monitored around the clock, regardless of where employees access pages from — work, home or mobile — and workflow tools let companies approve or suggest content before it appears. Those features appear to be making financial companies a little more comfortable Facebooking, as State Farm and Farmers Insurance are two early customers. Shih is backed in the new venture by veterans of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube."
“Hey, you made the data public!”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20368
‘Dating’ Site Imports 250,000 Facebook Profiles, Without Permission
February 3, 2011 by Dissent
Ryan Singel reports:
How does a unknown dating site, with the absurd intention of destroying Facebook, launch with 250,000 member profiles on the first day?
Simple.
You scrape data from Facebook.
At least, that’s the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched LovelyFaces.com this week, with profiles — names, locations and photos — scraped from publicly accessible Facebook pages. The site categorizes these unwitting volunteers into personality types, using a facial recognition algorithm, so you can search for someone in your general area who is “easy going,” “smug” or “sly.”
Or you can just search on people’s real names.
The duo behind the site say it’s art, not commerce.
[...]
Cirio and Ludovic say they will take down a user’s profile, if a person asks and the site doesn’t have any indication they are actually trying to make any money. Instead, it’s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths.
Read more on Epicenter.
Adding a fake mustache isn't enough?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20343
The Deidentification Dilemma: A Legislative and Contractual Proposal
February 3, 2011 by Dissent
Bob Gellman always provides a lot of food for thought (see, for example, his recent comment on another post and the article he links to). Another one of his papers, mentioned in a past post, is now published in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal (2011, vol 21, 33-61) and is available online: The Deidentification Dilemma: A Legislative and Contractual Proposal. Here’s the abstract:
Deidentification is one method for protecting privacy while permitting other uses of personal information. However, deidentified data is often still capable of being reidentified. The main purpose of this article is to offer a legislative-based contractual solution for the sharing of deidentified personal information while providing protections for privacy. The legislative framework allows a data discloser and a data recipient to enter into a voluntary contract that defines responsibilities and offers remedies to aggrieved individuals.
Thanks to the World Privacy Forum for making me aware of this.
(Related)
http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=5806
UK: Patients are “misled” over confidentiality of health e-records, say Oxford researchers
By Dissent, February 3, 2011
Tony Collins reports:
Researchers from Oxford University say that patients are not being adequately informed about possible secondary uses of their medical data for research and are “misled about the level of anonymisation of their data and the likelihood of re-identification”
The criticism is in a paper, “The limits of anonymisation in NHS data systems“ which was published yesterday by the British Medical Journal [2 February 2011].
Read more on Computerworld (UK)
Because everyone needs to be anonymous?
Hotmail Launches Accounts You Can Throw Away
"Today, Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at 'e-mail enthusiasts,' which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep. ... The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they've provided to family and friends, which, if compromised, can end the usefulness of that particular account. Each user will be able to create up to five aliases, any of which can be deleted and replaced with another at any time. Over time, Microsoft will increase that limit to 15 aliases per account, making it so that the true heavy users won't need to juggle between two or more Hotmail accounts."
I wonder how many lawyers will submit questions?
http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=5827
Questions about HIPAA? CDT wants to know.
By Dissent, February 3, 2011
From the Center for Democracy and Technology:
As “Health 2.0″ tools – such as healthcare apps on smartphones – become more common, it’s increasingly important for both developers and patients using these tools to learn how HIPAA protects patient medical data. Yet it is not entirely clear how HIPAA intersects with many emerging services that use digital health data. CDT launched a project to get information on what areas of HIPAA are unclear to the Health 2.0 community. If you’re a healthcare provider, Health 2.0 developer, or e-patient, and you have questions about how HIPAA affects your rights and services, please submit them to CDT. We will use these questions to urge the Office of Civil Rights (which enforces HIPAA) to provide more clarity.
“Unlimited means unlimited for certain values of unlimited...” Will there be a “market for minutes” where the bottom 5% can sell time to the top 5%?
Verizon To Throttle High-Bandwidth Users
"Verizon has enacted a new policy today that allows them to throttle 'high' bandwidth users on their network. We're not sure exactly what 'high' means but it is probably over 2GB of data per month. This comes as the iPhone launches on Verizon's network. The policy is said to only affect the top 5% of data users on the network. When these 5% of users hit the soft limit they will be throttled during peak times of the day. From the note sent to customers: 'Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.'"
The Internet Kill Switch: If it isn't really going to protect infrastructure, how will President Mubarak use it? “We never let our ignorance of technology stop us from legislating technology.”
No, Hackers Can’t Open Hoover Dam Floodgates
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is shooting down a key legislative talking point: that the internet “kill-switch” legislation is needed to prevent cyberterrorists from opening the Hoover Dam’s floodgates.
The brouhaha started last week, when legislative aides on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee offered Threat Level examples of why the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act was needed. The bill, one aide said, would give the president the power to force “the system that controls the floodgates to the Hoover Dam” to cut its connection to the net if the government detected an imminent cyberattack.
(Related) If President Obama ever pushes the “Internet Kill Switch,” the younger generation will take to the streets!
PS3 Piracy Threats Cause Phone-Home DRM
"The last time game developer Capcom tried to impose Internet-based copy protection on one of its games, it was forced to backtrack over a storm of complaints. In that instance Final Fight: Double Impact was hobbled with a piracy-busting scheme which phoned home every time the game was booted, but Capcom forgot to mention that little nugget of information to potential purchasers — an omission which eventually led to the DRM scheme being hastily withdrawn. The company has decided not to repeat the mistake with its latest release, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, by making it clear that the game won't work unless it gets a sign-off from the company's servers."
...and people in my generation still use quill pens...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026423.html
February 03, 2011
Pew: Generations and their gadgets
Report: Generations, Mobile, Seniors - Generations and their gadgets, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Feb 3, 2011
Many devices have become popular across generations, with a majority now owning cell phones, laptops and desktop computers. Younger adults are leading the way in increased mobility, preferring laptops to desktops and using their cell phones for a variety of functions, including internet, email, music, games, and video. Among the findings:
Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults, especially for adults under the age of 65. Some 85% of adults own cell phones overall. Taking pictures (done by 76% of cell owners) and text messaging (done by 72% of cell owners) are the two non-voice functions that are widely popular among all cell phone users.
Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69% of Gen X, 65% of Younger Boomers and 64% of Older Boomers owning these devices.
Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.
While almost half of all adults own an mp3 player like an iPod, this device is by far the most popular with Millennials, the youngest generation—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).
(Related) I suppose it could be worse...
An Illustrated Evolution Of Media Content (Infographic)
Darwin was right. To really mis-quote Santayana: “Those who cannot understand technology are condemned to death by technology.”
'Death By GPS' Increasing In America's Wilderness
"Every year, more and more Americans are dying in deserts and wildernesses because they rely on their GPS units (and, to some degree, their cellphones) to always be accurate. The Sacramento Bee quotes Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan: 'It's what I'm beginning to call death by GPS ... People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere.'"
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