Breach
by thoughtless... This was not an unknown bug. This was, “We
didn't follow procedure.” Or (worse) “We ain't got no
procedure.”
Wisconsin
Department of Revenue Inadvertently Posts Home Sellers’ Social
Security Numbers Online
August 2, 2012 by admin
Janine Anderson reports:
Personal,
confidential information from more than 110,000 people who sold homes
in 2011 was hidden inside a Wisconsin Department of Revenue report
used by real estate and appraisal organizations.
The DOR has ask
those organizations to destroy and replace the report, which was
posted online for download from April 5 to July 23. The department
said that while the information was in the file, it was not visible
when the report was opened. However, someone who opened the specific
file would have had access to the information, the DOR said.
Read more on Greendale
Patch.
Perspective
OR:
Hacking cases down, still a threat: by the numbers
August 2, 2012 by admin
Some interesting stats in a news report
by Queenie Wong in the Statesman
Journal:
Cybersecurity by
the Numbers
Since 2009, state
agencies have been required to report the number of suspicious
information security incidents to the state’s Enterprise Security
Office, which is part of the Department of Administrative Services.
All incidents are not necessarily considered information breaches.
In 2009, state
agencies reported 44 incidents. In 2010, that number increased to 49
incidents. In 2011, the number of reported incidents dropped to 21.
During the past
three months, 60 percent of reported incidents involved malware or
hacking, 30 percent involved lost documents or information breaches
and 10 percent were attempted attacks that were not successful.
More than 855
million emails, about 73 percent, the state receives every year are
spam or malicious software and blocked before delivery.
The
state thwarts about 2.2 million network device attacks per year —
or about 6,250 attacks per day.
It's
called “Caving in” But even the 'clueless' part of a huge market
is huge.
"BlackBerry maker Research in
Motion's (RIM) four-year standoff with the Indian government over
providing encryption keys for its secure corporate emails and popular
messenger services is finally set to end. RIM recently demonstrated
a solution that can intercept messages and emails exchanged between
BlackBerry handsets, and make these encrypted communications
available
in a readable format to Indian security agencies. An amicable
solution over the monitoring issue is important for the Canadian
smartphone maker since India is one of the few bright spots for the
company that has been battling falling sales in its primary markets
of the US and Europe. In India, RIM has tripled its customer base
close to 5 million over the last two years,"
The
Privacy Foundation has been pondering this question for some time.
Think the judge will get an honest answer?
Judge
Skeptical of Facebook ‘Sponsored Stories’ Privacy Settlement
A San Francisco federal judge declined
Thursday to approve a Facebook privacy settlement concerning the
social networking site’s “Sponsored Stories” advertising
program, saying he was concerned that the $10 million payout was not
adequately explained, and might not be big enough.
The deal, which does little to bolster
the privacy of Facebook’s approximately 150 million U.S.-based
users, provides $10 million to the lawyers who sued the
social-networking site and another $10 million to charity, in what is
known as a cy pres award.
“Why shouldn’t the cy pres
be $100 million?” U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg asked
attorneys on both sides.
He suggested he might order the parties
to return to provide more information on how it reached that amount.
He was concerned that Facebook said the deal might cost them $100
million in advertising revenues, but only $10 million is being paid
out. And that doesn’t calculate the amount of damages for the 100
million Facebook users who have already appeared in Sponsored
Stories, he said.
“I’m not suggesting there is
anything wrong with $10 million,” he said. “My question is: Why
is it $10 million?”
Was this a real 'plan' or just a
'want?'
EPIC
Files Lawsuit for Details of ODNI Plan to Amass Data on Americans
August 2, 2012 by Dissent
From EPIC.org:
EPIC has filed a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for
details of the agency’s plan to gather personal data from across
the federal government. The ODNI is the top intelligence agency in
the United States, coordinating the activities of the CIA, the FBI,
the DHS, and others. Under revised guidelines,
the ODNI plans to obtain and integrate databases containing detailed
personal information from across the federal government. The data
will be kept for up to five years without the legal safeguards
typically in place for personal data held by government agencies.
EPIC’s lawsuit asks the agencies to disclose the procedures it has
established to safeguard privacy rights. For more information see:
EPIC: Open Government
In
case “online” becomes unavailable.
And then you have sites, like TED,
that use their own web video formats. Finding an effective video
downloader for TED that helps you build and maintain an offline
library of educational talks can be difficult. There are few tools
available, and those that are available tend to be lacking in some
way.
… TED is an excellent source of
videos that are both educational and entertaining – something that
you can’t really guarantee with other video sites.
And if you want to download TED videos
for offline use, you’re in luck. Obin from Scenario Solution has
released TED
Downloader v3.0.
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