The economics of security (another way
to view risk)
Why
It Pays to Submit to Hackers
Every big online security breach seems
to end in a big lecture. Use strong passwords, users are told. Make
fresh logins for every website. Back up your data. Encrypt all your
stuff.
… The lectures clearly aren’t
working and that, behavioral economists say, is because we already
know how we should protect ourselves online, we just choose
not to do so. Hardening your internet identity, whether through new
passwords, a backup regimen, or other means, costs time and energy in
the present, and pays dividends only in some far-off hypothetical
future. Humans are already
hard-wired to prefer small near-term pleasures over big long-term
benefits; throw in the possibility you might not ever actually need
a strong password or a computer backup, and it’s no wonder people
are so lax about security.
… It’s not only individuals who
are susceptible to this kind of negative feedback loop around
low-probability events. Dan Ariely, the Duke behavioral economist we
interviewed in June, says that organizations are lulled into
complacency as well. Apple and Amazon, for example, appear
to have routinely
allowed customer-support callers to authenticate using minimal
information and in some cases without knowing the answers to their
own security questions. Ariely likens this to the driver who learns
to run stop signs.
“Most reported” does not equal
“convicted” but When you want to make a movie deal... (Should my
Ethical Hackers claim they hold the Copyright on all the IRS tax
forms?)
An anonymous reader sends word of a
change Google will be making to its search algorithms. Beginning
next week, the company will penalize
the search rankings of websites who are the target of many copyright
infringement notices from rightsholders. Quoting The Verge:
"Google
says the move is designed to 'help users find legitimate, quality
sources of content more easily' — meaning that it's trying to
direct people who search for movies, TV shows, and music to sites
like Hulu and Spotify, not torrent sites or data lockers like the
infamous MegaUpload. It's a clear concession
to the movie and music industries, who have long
complained that Google facilitates piracy — and Google needs to
curry favor with media companies as it tries to build an ecosystem
around Google Play. Google says it feels confident making the change
because because its existing copyright infringement reporting system
generates a massive amount of data about which sites are most
frequently reported — the company received and processed over 4.3
million URL removal requests in the past 30 days alone, more than all
of 2009 combined. Importantly, Google says the search tweaks will
not remove sites from search results entirely, just rank them lower
in listings."
Look up the license plate registration
information and you have a complete dossier. How long before
something like it comes to the US?
"Brazil's National Traffic
Council (CNT) published Friday a resolution that institutes the
National System of Automatic Vehicle Identification (Siniav).
According to the Q&A published
(Google translation from
Portuguese), only 'visible and public' information will be
available (vehicle year or fabrication, make, model, combustible,
engine power and license plate number), without any personal
information about the owner or registration data. This system will
be mandatory for all vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc) and
should cost vehicle owners approximately R$5 (less than US$3)."
(Related) Trick question...
"The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
reports that Minneapolis police used
automated scanning technology to log location data for over
800,000 license plates in June alone, with 4.9 million scans having
taken place this year. The data includes the date, time, and
location where the plate was seen. Worse, it appears this data is
compiled and stored for up to a year and is disclosed
to anyone who asks for it."
Perhaps Google is too large for the FCC
to comprehend. Or perhaps too large a fine would reduce the PAC
contribution?
Google
$22.5 Million FTC Fine Has No Teeth
The Federal
Trade Commission on Thursday revealed that Google has
agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle charges that the company
misrepresented its claim that it would not place cookie tracking
files on the computers of users of Apple's Safari browser.
… For
the FTC, the main issue is that Google's actions violated an earlier
privacy settlement. Thus the fine is largely about saving face.
Agency chairman Jon Leibowitz notes that the penalty is
"record-setting."
However, FTC Commissioner J. Thomas
Rosch in a dissenting statement said the amount is a pittance as far
as Google is concerned. "$22.5 million represents a de
minimis amount of Google's profit or revenues," he said,
using the legal term for too small to matter in a given context.
… The
settlement is a win for Google. The "record-setting" fine
is less than Google's average daily profit in 2011 (about $32
million).
(Related) No money mentioned in the
settlement.
August 10, 2012
FTC
Approves Final Settlement With Facebook
News
release: "Following a public comment period, the FTC
has accepted as final a settlement with Facebook resolving
charges
that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep
their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing
it to be shared and made public. The settlement
requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it
lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers
clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before
sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by
maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers'
information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an
independent third party.
(Related) Has the government
deliberately reduced their responsibilities?
By Dissent,
August 10, 2012
An interesting federal case in the
Southern District of Ohio Eastern Division reminds us that the HIPAA
statute does not provide for a private cause of action. And so, when
the Ohio Hospital for Psychiatry sought to compel a former employee
to return patient information she had allegedly removed improperly,
the court had to deny their request. On the other hand, though, the
court held that it did have the authority to bar the nurse from using
the information in her court case.
It sometimes amazes me that people
(Congress-people in particular) don't seems to understand the stock
market. If you won't allow me to hedge by short selling, I'll dump
my stock now, signaling that I have no faith in the future of that
company. If short selling does result in “artificially low stock
prices” I'll buy. Still Econ 101...
August 11, 2012
Short-Selling
Bans Failed to Prevent U.S. Stock Price Declines
"Bans on short-selling imposed
during the financial crisis in the belief that short sales were
driving United States stock prices below fundamental values did
little to stabilize those prices, according to a new
study by New York Fed economists. In addition, the bans had the
unwanted effects of lowering market liquidity and boosting trading
costs. In
Market Declines: What Is Accomplished by Banning Short-Selling?
New York Fed economist Hamid Mehran and Notre Dame finance professors
Robert Battalio and Paul Schultz investigate the link between
short-selling and market downturns. The authors first evaluate
evidence on the bans’ effectiveness in limiting share price
declines in 2008. To provide additional evidence, the three then
consider the market effects of short-selling in August 2011, when the
debt-rating agency Standard and Poor’s lowered the U.S. sovereign
long-term credit rating, prompting the S&P 500 to fall 6.66
percent on the next trading day. At the time, there was no
short-selling ban in place in the U.S."
My tax dollars at work? An old Schwinn
and a 9-volt Duracell gets me $2500? Or does that put me in the
Manufacturer category where the potential to make campaign
contributions qualifies me for really big tax credits?
$2,500
Tax Break for Electric Bicycles, Motorcycles Approved by Feds
Electric-vehicle production just got
another boost from Uncle Sam. The Senate Finance Committee has
approved a $2,500 tax credit for electric bicycles and electric
motorcycles. The goal of the bill, backers say, is to create and
keep U.S. jobs by encouraging growth of American manufacturers like
BRD and Zero through consumer incentives.
Under the bill, electric bicycles and
motorcycles will be eligible for a 10 percent federal tax credit of
up to $2,500.
Perspective
Do people still have VHS players?
Transfer
VHS tapes to your computer
In this CNET How To video, and in the
gallery below, I'll walk you through the process of transferring
those VHS home movies over to your computer using a simple,
relatively inexpensive method.
Still not exactly Emily Post, but my
friend Dr. Post might be interested...
For more information on annoying your
Facebook friends, check out Dave Parrack’s article,
Another indication of the future of
education? (Note that they must have figured out how to confirm
understanding and award a grade, right?)
High
school offers credit for Udacity classes; Challenge expands winning
teams
… Fueled
by student momentum, the STEMx
network of high schools and Ohio's eSTEM
Academy in Reynoldsburg have announced that they will be
enrolling 41 students in Udacity's Intro
to Statistics class and 49 students in Udacity's Intro
to Physics class for fall semester credit. This will allow eSTEM
to tap into off-site teaching talent and help drive high school
students to excel in college-level courses.
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