Entries Tagged 'Privacy'

EFF privacy advocate and unhappy Street View model Kevin Bankston made good on his vow to try out Google’s take-down policy after THREAT LEVEL found a picture of his unwitting mug stalking the sidewalks near EFF’s offices. What he learned: Google is happy to remove you from Street View … provided you give them a wealth of additional information, including a photo of your driver’s license.

The State of Utah has a huge data security problem. They’ve somehow allowed the social security numbers of up to 20,000 children to be stolen by illegal immigrants who use them to get jobs in the United States and obtain credit cards. Kirk Torgensen, the Utah Attorney General’s Office Chief Investigator, seems to be at a loss on how to stop the practice.

Torgensen said the high number of illegal immigrants coming into Utah helped create a lucrative underground counterfeiting business where crooks can sell a fake Social Security card for $150 each.

“It’s hard to catch them, they move around a lot, as soon as you get some information on they move,” Torgensen said. “There are more of them than you probably think.”

Of course you know that the Social Security number was never intended to be a personal identifier, but we’re well down the road on that issue. Most of these kids won’t know they’re screwed until they are 18, and try to get a loan or a job. Parents should consider keeping an eye on their child’s accounts by going to the Social Security Administration web page at www.ssa.gov.

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages that no one except the intended recipient knows is there. This is in contrast to cryptography, where an interloper can see the message is there, but the hope is that they can’t crack it and read it.

Lifehacker has some excellent tips on this arcane privacy art:

Remember those invisible ink kits from when you were a kid? You’d write a secret message that no one could see unless they had a black light or the decoder marker. The digital equivalent of invisible ink is steganography software, apps that embed files and data inside other files, hidden from everyone who doesn’t know any better.

Check out the excellent tips Lifehacker offers with the post Hide Data in Files with Easy Steganography Tools.

The Washington Post tracks the life of a Realtor for one day to show the multitude of ways we are watched in the 21st century.

The tracking of Kitty Bernard begins shortly after she wakes up. All through the 56-year-old real estate agent’s day, from walking in her building’s lobby to e-mailing friends and shopping and working, the watchful eye of technology records her movements and preferences.

You are watched pretty much every waking hour, even if you don’t leave the house (thanks to the Internet). It’s an elightening read.

Via Bruce Schneier.

What do we do when bombarded with over 200 marketing messages before you arrive at work in the morning?

We tune out.

But technology is working against that problem while continuing to erode personal privacy.

Soon, malls across the country will implement new technology to serve customers and boost the bottom line. Plasma screens will analyze a customer’s features to determine age, gender, and ethnic background. Stores can then gear advertising to a customer’s personal profile.

I often hear people say, “What’s the big deal if I get more relevant offers?”

That’s true in this particular context, but what’s not being taken into account is what happens down the line when these “personal profiles” have been constructed, stored, and combined with other personal data, and impact decisions about jobs, healthcare, insurance and more.

Databases are often wrong, and they never forget.