Blog

Microsoft is empowering users to control their own experience by blocking annoying adware by default!

Microsoft has toughened its criteria for classifying programs as adware and gave developers three months to conform with the new principles or risk having their programs blocked by the company’s security products.
The most important change in Microsoft’s policy is that adware programs will be blocked by default starting July 1. In the past such programs were allowed to run until users chose one of the recommended actions offered by the company’s security software.
Read more: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2140240/microsoft-to-start-blocking-adware-that-lacks-easy-uninstall.html
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Keep an eye out for Facebook’s Privacy dinosaur – it just might keep you from over sharing!

If you’ve posted to Facebook recently, you may have noticed a new graphic with a prehistoric twist: the privacy dinosaur.
The company is testing a pop-up reminder that encourages users to pay attention to who they’re sharing with on its platform, and the privacy dinosaur — a blue laptop-wielding cartoon dinosaur — accompanies the message.
Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/04/01/facebook-privacy-dinosaur/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Don’t believe the hype. Privacy is not Dead!

Look at the behavior of teenagers, supposedly the ones among us who care least about privacy. Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd has investigated how they use social media; it turns out that teens are both very public and very private, often at the same time. In a behavior called whitewalling, users post to Facebook—sometimes in great detail — but then quickly delete everything, creating a blank timeline. That’s a new form of privacy for the social media age: a mass release of information that eventually disappears. Boyd also describes “social steganography,” in which teens use things like slang, inside jokes, and song lyrics to hide private messages in plain sight; one audience understands the meaning of a post while others (adults or more distant friends) scroll right by.
Read more: http://www.wired.com/2014/03/privacy-is-dead/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Anonymity is nice but…”Beware of the Dark Side!”

When mobile social app Yik Yak swept into Auburn University, some of the coolest kids were quick to start posting on it.
But no one knows who is saying what because the comments are anonymous.
“It spread pretty fast,” says Nickolaus Hines, a junior at the school in the US state of Alabama.
“The majority of things are jokes or things which are obviously funny,” said the 21-year-old. But “some … are pretty mean.”
Yik Yak, which allows smartphone users to see posts in a radius up to five miles (eight kilometers), is part of a flurry of new apps that offer novel ways to interact on social networks without revealing one’s identity.
Read more: http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/computer/402517/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

After getting caught reading customers’ email, Microsoft says it will use legal channels in the future.

Microsoft has scrapped a policy which allowed it to peek at Hotmail messages to plug leaks or investigate intellectual property theft.
The change came after news broke last week that the U.S. technology titan peered into the account of a French blogger who had gotten hold of inside information about Windows software in 2012.
While the tactic seemed unsavory, it was deemed legal because Microsoft terms of service grant permission for the company to access or disclose information about a user to protect its “rights or property.”
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/28/microsoft-will-stop-snooping-through-hotmail-to-investigate-security-leaks/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

The dangers of social media sharing in the workplace!

A young generation brought up with no qualms about sharing absolutely everything on Facebook is presenting a real challenge to data privacy policies in the workplace, says solicitor Robert Bond, head of data protection and information security at law firm Speechly Bircham.
Bond expressed his concerns while speaking as part of a panel discussion about managing privacy and ethics in an age of big data atComputing’s Big Data Summit 2014. He used the example of a teenage girl’s blasé attitude to sharing confidential information which almost ended in disaster while on work placement at the law firm.
Read more: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2336739/big-data-summit-2014-youth-social-media-oversharing-a-real-challenge-for-workplace-data-privacy
Posted by DontMineonMe

An investigation is the only way to restore full public confidence to the energy sector and depoliticize the whole issue!

Regulators will investigate whether the “big six” UK energy suppliers prevent effective competition in the UK energy market.
A report by regulator Ofgem has called for an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which could take 18 months.
Centrica boss Sam Laidlaw said it would cause delays to investment and “an increasing risk” of blackouts.
The BBC’s Industry Correspondent John Moylan said the report also cited low levels of switching by consumers and the fact that the market shares of the big six suppliers had not changed significantly over time.
Richard Lloyd, executive director of the consumer group which, said the regulator’s report was effectively admitting that it had not done enough to regulate the market.
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26734203

A Wolf in Sheep’s clothing!
Would you be happier being spied on by these “cute” surveillance cameras?


Surveillance cameras often look sinister as they invade your privacy, but the Italian design firm Parsons created the Animals series to lighten the mood by turning them into cute creatures. The firm worked with product designer Eleanor Trevisanutto to make sand-cast aluminum covers in the shapes of animals like a squirrel, a grasshopper, and a bird to enclose all the working parts of a surveillance camera. They look like things you’d see hanging on the corner of an elementary school building or looking over a zoo, and the thought of seeing a colorful, metallic animal watching you is both charming and ridiculous. Surveillance cameras will always be tools for hidden monitoring, but the Animals’ misshapen, geometric design language makes these cameras abstract, recognizable, and less intimidating than most.
Read more: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/26/5549680/eleanor-trevisanutto-parsons-animals-surveillance-camera-series
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

A Bipartisan step in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go!

Following Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA collecting massive amounts of data about phone calls flowing through several companies, President Obama announced limitations on the use of that data in January and said more reforms would follow. Now, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post report a bipartisan bill is about to be unveiled that makes several large changes to the NSA’s controversial bulk collection of phone call metadata. A bill that will be unveiled tomorrow in the House of Representatives by Mike Rogers (R-MI) and “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) will instead see phone companies store the data only as long as they normally would (18 months or so, under other federal regulations). If the NSA suspects a terrorism link, it can make requests for information from specific phone numbers, and related records up to two hops away.
Read more: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/24/ruppersberger-rogers-bill-nsa-phone-call-metadata/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

We need to be more vigilant protecting our Personal Data!
Personal Clouds will help solve this problem.
Keep watching this space to learn how to get your Personal Cloud

It does not matter where you are right now, but basically all companies should always do their utmost best to make sure that they do not end up as a victim of a credit card data breach. I suppose one can chalk up the California Department of Motor Vehicles as the latest victim in an ever growing list, where this wide-ranging security breach could have affected up to thousands of citizens, at least according to some sources. It was earlier in the week that MasterCard issued an alert that noted that credit cards which were used online in transactions that had California’s DMV could have resulted in the theft of data and personal information, where among them included credit card numbers, expiration dates, and three-digit security codes.
Read more: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/03/california-department-of-motor-vehicles-suffers-credit-card-data-breach/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me