joe, beta

While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can't be turned off, and they are trackable. Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.

Read more about RFIDs at Wikipedia, but basically they're little tags that can be read remotely from a limited distance and are used by retailers to track physical inventory.

They cost about a dollar and you can buy them here, but why pay when you can pull 'em off your skivvies.

The privacy concerns are real, but probably not as big an issue in this case since the information seems to identify the brand and possibly the specific store location from which the items were purchased.

As long as people are telling consumers there are RFID tags in their merchandise, and offering a brief definition of what they can do, things look okay.

I get nervous about the seeming proliferation of these tags, and whether or not a time will come when they near ubiquity and consumers aren't made properly aware of their presence in most merchandise.

Source: Wall Street Journal

EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg testified today before the House Committee on Science and Technology regarding Planning for the Future of Cyber Attack Attribution. In his prepared statement, Mr. Rotenberg discussed "the risks and limitations of a mandatory Internet ID that may be favored by some as a way to address the risk of cyber attack." He explained how such a proposal would implicate human rights and online freedom, and questioned the constitutionality of such a measure.

Addons to help you stay safe and secure and maintain your privacy on the web while using Firefox. Some are more complicated to use than others, but consider reading and asking other users for help.

The title isn't very pretty, but sitting in Cyberprivacy class compelled me to make sure I was mentioning some of the better extensions I've come across. Targeted, contextual advertising, done well and with full disclosure, can be mutually beneficial to both consumers and marketers.

These extensions are particularly useful if you find yourself bombarded by poorly or nefariously implemented online marketing strategies.

Hopefully, I'll dig up their equivalents for other browsers soon. Any comments, criticisms, suggestions are welcome.

[ View the collection ]

We believe it does not violate US law to collect payload data from networks that are configured to be openly accessible (i.e., not secured by encryption and thus accessible by any user's device)

Google says yes.

Source: The Register

This study by Edison Research focused on the demographics of the most avid users of social networks, and the rest of the chart gallery offers a fascinating look into the state of things on the social web.

But what struck me was the massive lead Pandora has over Last.fm in mindshare among these folks. Maybe because the latter is a UK-based service? Or most people are still too shy to share their listening habits with the world?

Whatever the reason, I found it interesting because the study focused on people likely to be early adopters, and nearly all the early adopters I know are avid Last.fm users, while less geeky people gravitate toward Pandora.

Plus, Aol Radio placed second, between top finisher Pandora and bronze medalist Last.fm? I don't even know anyone who has ever mentioned Aol Radio. Maybe their Winamp integration helps?

Takeaway: Last.fm needs to look at ways in which it can reach a wider audience, at least in the United States. Their excellent privacy settings allow you to fine-tune who can see what you're listening to, and Last.fm should trumpet those settings and their ease of use from the digital hilltops to capture users weary of confusing privacy paradigms like the one that got Facebook in hot water recently.

Privacy is a massive strength, as long as you're doing it right from the gate, which Last.fm seems to have accomplished. The next step is to make sure potential users know about that accomplishment and the value controlled scrobbling can have to even the most cloistered music fans.

Source: Silicon Alley Insider

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Social Networks >
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The complaint database contains everything, from someone who has heard something somewhere from someone, to detailed accident investigations. Want to beat a ticket? File a report. Try to get out of jail where you landed due to vehicular manslaughter? File a report. Want to smear a manufacturer you don’t like? File a report. Have a serious problem? File a report. It’s all there.

Until yesterday, some of the more carefully filed reports had PDFs of scanned documents attached. These documents ran the gamut from lawyer letters to accident reports prepared by uniformed police. You could find search warrants for black boxes. You could find data readouts from black boxes. You also could find a lot of personal information. That is all gone.

See the video of how it all worked before the NHTSA (presumably) read the story and shut down the database: