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Karl Wabst

Privacy A Major Concern Among Web Surfers - 0 views

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    Following on the heels of Facebook's decision to rescind a highly controversial move to store all content posted on the social network, new data has emerged to support consumers' increasing alarm over online privacy. The vast majority--80.1%--of Web surfers are indeed concerned about the privacy of their personal information such as age, gender, income and Web-surfing habits, according to a survey of some 4,000 Web users administered and analyzed by Burst Media. More worrisome, perhaps, is the finding that privacy concerns are prevalent among all age segments, including younger demographics that are coming of age online. Still, privacy concerns do appear to increase with age, from 67.3% among respondents ages 18-24 to 85.7% of respondents 55 years and older. "Online privacy is a prevailing concern for web surfers," said Chuck Moran, vice president of marketing for Burst Media. The survey was administered by Burst with the purpose of better understanding how privacy is impacting Web users' experiences online, as well as its impact on advertisers. "Advertisers must take concrete actions to mitigate consumers' privacy concerns and at the same time continue to deliver their message as effectively as possible," Moran added. "In addition, and as recently seen in the news flare up regarding Facebook's privacy controversy, publishers need to be completely transparent about their privacy policies." Facebook recently changed its terms of use agreement, which gave the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company the ability to store user-posted photos and other content, even after it was deleted by users themselves. Earlier this week, however, the company reverted to a previous version of its legal user guidelines after thousands of members protested that Facebook was claiming ownership over the content. In addition, the Burst survey found that most Web users believe Web sites are tracking their behavior online. Three out of five--62.5%--respondents indicated it is likely that a W
Karl Wabst

Poor infrastructure fails America, civil engineers report - CNN.com - 0 views

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    America's civil engineers think the nation's aging and rusty infrastructure is just not making the grade. The American Society of Civil Engineers issued an infrastructure report card Wednesday giving a bleak cumulative ranking of D. "We've been talking about this for many many years," Patrick Natale, the group's executive director, told CNN. "We really haven't had the leadership or will to take action on it. The bottom line is that a failing infrastructure cannot support a thriving economy." Video Watch what the report had to say » The ranking -- which grades the condition of 15 infrastructure entities such as roads, bridges and dams -- is the same as the the last time such a report was issued, in 2005. In 2001, the grade was D+, slightly better but still poor. Roads got a D-, with Americans spending more than $4.2 billion a year stuck in traffic. "Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs. One-third of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 45 percent of major urban highways are congested," the engineers' report said. Drinking water, D-. "America's drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities," the report said. "Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day." Inland waterways, D-. "The average age of all federally owned or operated locks is nearly 60 years, well past their planned design life of 50 years. The cost to replace the present system of locks is estimated at more than $125 billion." Wastewater systems, D-. "Aging systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into U.S. surface waters each year." Don't Miss * Congress looks to boot zoos, golf from infrastructure list Levees, D-. Many levees are locally owned and maintained, but they are aging and their "reliability" is not known. "With an increase in development behind these levees, the risk to public health and safety from f
Karl Wabst

Two Data Security Breaches Give State Attorneys General a Chance to Exercise Their New ... - 0 views

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    "In a sign that state attorneys general may be flexing the HIPAA enforcement muscle granted by the HITECH Act provisions in the Recovery Act, the Connecticut and Arizona attorneys general are investigating health plans that recently experienced data breaches that they failed to disclose for several months. Typically, state attorneys general prosecute only violations of state laws, but they now have authority to investigate and levy fines for violations of HIPAA and the HITECH Act, which requires mandatory notifications within two months of knowledge of a breach. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) has emerged as possibly the first AG to take on a HIPAA investigation, and Arizona's AG may also be pursuing a similar course. The larger of the two breaches that have come to the AGs' attention was experienced by Health Net, Inc., which lost a portable external hard drive containing seven years of data for 446,000 Connecticut residents. The lost data came from 1.5 million individuals in total, who also hailed from New Jersey and New York. Health Net reported the loss to the Connecticut AG on Nov. 19, and on the same day Blumenthal issued a scathing statement demanding answers and promising action. He specifically said he was investigating whether Health Net may have violated "federal laws," as well as his state's own data protection laws."
Karl Wabst

The Case for Age Verification - Digits - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    For years, Attorneys General Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have been leading a coalition of 49 states that were pushing MySpace to add technology to verify the age of its members. The attorneys general argue that age verification will help keep younger children off the site, and therefore prevent them from being contacted by sexual predators and other unsavory characters. Tomorrow, however, leading researchers in online child safety are expected to submit a report to the attorneys general stating that age verification technology is flawed and will not protect children from online dangers. Excerpts of separate interviews with Attorney Generals Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who led the charge for social networking safety standards.
Karl Wabst

BBC NEWS | Technology | The Tech Lab: Bruce Schneier - 0 views

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    Bruce Schneier is the chief security technology officer at BT and a celebrated writer and speaker on privacy, cryptography and security issues. Welcome to the future, where everything about you is saved. A future where your actions are recorded, your movements are tracked, and your conversations are no longer ephemeral. A future brought to you not by some 1984-like dystopia, but by the natural tendencies of computers to produce data. Data is the pollution of the information age. It's a natural byproduct of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it's disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after effects are toxic. And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we're ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age. Increasingly, you leave a trail of digital footprints throughout your day. Once you walked into a bookstore and bought a book with cash. Now you visit Amazon, and all of your browsing and purchases are recorded. You used to buy a train ticket with coins; now your electronic fare card is tied to your bank account. Your store affinity cards give you discounts; merchants use the data on them to reveal detailed purchasing patterns.
Karl Wabst

Cities embrace mobile apps, 'Gov 2.0' - CNN.com - 0 views

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    "Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and a customer-service guru, was riding on a public train in San Francisco, California, recently when something common but annoying occurred: The railcar filled with people and became uncomfortably hot. If the inconvenience had happened a few years ago, Newmark said he would have just gone on with his day -- maybe complaining about the temperature to a friend. But this was 2009, the age of mobile technology, so Newmark pulled out his iPhone, snapped a photo of the train car and, using an app called "SeeClickFix," zapped an on-the-go complaint, complete with GPS coordinates, straight to City Hall. "A week or so later I got an e-mail back saying, 'Hey, we know about the problem and we're going to be taking some measures to address it,' " he said. Welcome to a movement the tech crowd is calling "Gov 2.0" -- where mobile technology and GPS apps are helping give citizens like Newmark more of a say in how their local tax money is spent. It's public service for the digital age."
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    Maybe Craig of Craigslist has finally found something to do with technology besides making it easier to find a prostitute in Los Angeles?
Karl Wabst

Rogue Marketers Can Mine Your Info on Facebook | Epicenter | Wired.com - 0 views

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    "Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each - such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you're looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list. But as Klein points out, a marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected - and upload those through a dummy account - which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook's ubiquity and most people's reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich. Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests. While that information isn't available for all users, Facebook changed its privacy settings in early December so that certain information can't be made private, including one's name, current city, profile picture, gender, networks and friend list (the latter can be somewhat hidden from public view). Anyone with your e-mail address can harvest that information, the company admits."
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    Probably not limited to FaceBook
Karl Wabst

Study: All ages concerned with privacy issues - Research - BizReport - 0 views

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    "Professors from the University of California - Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania have released the results of a joint study which indicates that young people and old are concerned about private information getting into the wrong hands. They found that approximately two-thirds of all consumers polled said they did not want tailored content if that meant they would be tracked via the Internet. Other interesting findings include: * 66% of respondents reported that tailored/targeted ads 'did not appeal' * 55% of 18-24 year olds reported not wanting tailored ads and 37% reported not waiting tailored discounts * 54% of 18 - 24 year olds report not wanting tailored news * For those over age 65, 82% report not wanting tailored ads and 68% report not wanting tailored news"
Karl Wabst

Facebook Connect: Your 8,000 Hidden Friends - BusinessWeek - 0 views

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    Facebook has gone a long way to protect the privacy of users on its own site. But what happens when users share their Facebook profiles and friend lists with other sites? Are social networks responsible for defending data its members decide to take elsewhere? Those questions have taken on added urgency following the introduction of tools by leading social networks, including Facebook and News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, that let users interact with their friends on partner sites. Facebook Connect, for example, lets a user instantly share a movie rating on Netflix (NFLX) with all or some of his or her pals on Facebook. Privacy advocates warn that these services pose a whole new set of concerns about how user data are collected and shared among sites on the Web. Using these open-networking tools, thousands of companies can unearth a trove of new data about a visitor-age, gender, location, interests, and even what a person looks like. "I'm wondering if people really understand when they're using Facebook Connect that other sites get access to their whole user profile and social graph," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. Announced last July, Facebook Connect has already signed up more than 8,000 partner sites, many of which plan to use data collected on Facebook members for their own purposes. Joost, a video-viewing site that integrated with Facebook Connect in December, checks the ages of viewers entered on their Facebook profiles to give its own content partners-CBS (CBS), for example-a better idea of which Joost users are watching CBS programming. Digg.com will let users display their Facebook profile photos alongside comments they make on the social news-sharing site.
Karl Wabst

Ads With Eyes - CBS News - 0 views

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    In the 2002 film Minority Report, video billboards scanned the irises of passing consumers and advertised to them by name. That was science fiction back then, but today's marketers are creating digital signs that can display targeted ads based on information they extract from examining the contours of individual human faces. These smart signs are proliferating in commercial establishments and public places from New York's Times Square to St. Louis area shopping malls. They are a powerful innovation in advertising, but one that raises compelling privacy issues - issues that should be addressed now, before digital signs that monitor our behavior become the new normal. The most common name for this medium is digital signage. Most digital signs are flat-screen TVs that run commercials on a continuous loop in airports, gas stations, and anywhere else marketers think they can get your attention. However, marketers have had difficulty determining exactly who sees the display units, which makes it harder to measure viewership and target ads at specific audiences. The industry's solution? Hidden facial recognition cameras. The tiny cameras can estimate the age, ethnicity and gender of people passing by and can track how long a given person watches the display. The digital sign can then play an advertisement specifically targeted to whomever happens to be watching. Tens of millions of people have already been picked up by digital signage cameras. While camera-driven systems are the most common, the industry is also utilizing mobile phones and radio frequency identification (RFID) for similar purposes. Some companies, for example, embed RFID chips in shopper loyalty cards. Digital kiosks located in stores can read the information on the cards at a distance and then display ads or print coupons based on cardholders' shopping histories. Facial recognition, RFID and mobile phone tracking are powerful tools that should be matched by business practices that protect consu
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    In the 2002 film Minority Report, video billboards scanned the irises of passing consumers and advertised to them by name. That was science fiction back then, but today's marketers are creating digital signs that can display targeted ads based on information they extract from examining the contours of individual human faces. These smart signs are proliferating in commercial establishments and public places from New York's Times Square to St. Louis area shopping malls. They are a powerful innovation in advertising, but one that raises compelling privacy issues - issues that should be addressed now, before digital signs that monitor our behavior become the new normal. The most common name for this medium is digital signage. Most digital signs are flat-screen TVs that run commercials on a continuous loop in airports, gas stations, and anywhere else marketers think they can get your attention. However, marketers have had difficulty determining exactly who sees the display units, which makes it harder to measure viewership and target ads at specific audiences. The industry's solution? Hidden facial recognition cameras. The tiny cameras can estimate the age, ethnicity and gender of people passing by and can track how long a given person watches the display. The digital sign can then play an advertisement specifically targeted to whomever happens to be watching. Tens of millions of people have already been picked up by digital signage cameras. While camera-driven systems are the most common, the industry is also utilizing mobile phones and radio frequency identification (RFID) for similar purposes. Some companies, for example, embed RFID chips in shopper loyalty cards. Digital kiosks located in stores can read the information on the cards at a distance and then display ads or print coupons based on cardholders' shopping histories. Facial recognition, RFID and mobile phone tracking are powerful tools that should be matched by business practices that protect consu
Karl Wabst

Kaiser patient medical records compromised - 0 views

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    "Medical records for about 15,500 Northern California Kaiser patients - about 9,000 of them in the Bay Area - were compromised after thieves stole an external drive from a Kaiser employee's car last month, Kaiser officials said Tuesday." Kaiser officials said the electronic device contained patients' names, medical record numbers and possibly ages, genders, telephone numbers, addresses and general information related to their care and treatment. No Social Security numbers or financial information was contained on the drive, and Kaiser officials said there's no evidence that the information has been used inappropriately. The device was not encrypted, but some of the information was password protected. Kaiser has sent letters to the 15,500 members and the employee, who Kaiser would not identify, has been fired.
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    Another hospital employee fired for inappropraite access of medical records. More damage to a medical group reputation because someone failed to get the message.
Karl Wabst

Typical lost or stolen laptop costs companies nearly $50,000, study finds - San Jose Me... - 0 views

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    A typical lost or stolen laptop costs employers $49,246, mostly due to the value of the missing intellectual property or other sensitive data, according to an Intel-commissioned study made public Wednesday. "It is the information age, and employees are carrying more information on their laptops than ever before," according to an analysis done for Intel by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, which studies organizational data-management practices. "With each lost laptop there is the risk that sensitive data about customers, employees and business operations will end up in the wrong hands." The five-month study examined 138 laptop-loss cases suffered over a recent 12-month period by 29 organizations, mostly businesses but also a few government agencies. It said laptops frequently are lost or stolen at airports, conferences and in taxis, rental cars and hotels. About 80 percent of the typical cost - or a little more than $39,000 - was attributed to what the report called a data breach, which can involve everything from hard-to-replace company information to data on individuals. Companies then often incur major expenses to prevent others from misusing the data. Lost intellectual property added nearly $5,000 more to the average cost. The rest of the estimated expense was associated with such things as investigative costs, lost productivity and replacing the laptop. Larry Ponemon, the institute's chairman and Advertisement founder, said he came up with the cost figure based on his discussions with the employers who lost the laptops. When he later shared his findings with the companies and government agencies, he said, some of their executives expressed surprise at the size of the average loss. But he noted that one of the employers thought the amount could have been even higher.
Karl Wabst

B. Jeffrey Madoff: Deeply Superficial - 0 views

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    There was no way I was ever going to convince my parents that Jimi Hendrix's music was good. More than anything, the youth culture was defined by its music. The chasm it created was called "the generation gap" a metaphor for the ideological differences that separated us. There is a new generation gap. It's not defined through music or politics or fashion, those ideas are shared much more among the generations than before. This time it's about privacy. My generation came of age thinking about "1984", the looming threat of "Big Brother" watching over all of us all of the time. It was the government or some group which would monitor all of our actions, know all our habits: who we associate with, what we watch, what buy. 1984 came and went. Nothing like "Big Brother" happened unless you count Apple computer's historic "Big Brother" commercial which ends with the slogan: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984". They were right - 2009 is. Personal details used to be considered private. We were careful about who knew what about us and certainly didn't post pictures of our friends, families and fantasies for all to see. Privacy does not seem to be valued anymore. Giving up one's privacy has become a rite of passage. It's what you leave at the portal when you sign up for any of the social networking sites on the internet. The sites are free - as long as you don't calculate the value of your identity, demographics, viewing and buying habits to advertisers. This isn't new, the Nielsen Ratings service has been assembling viewer information since the 1950s for television advertisers, but its methods were primitive in comparison to the two way constant information gathering that's done on the internet. In March 2009, Google initiated the use of "behavioral targeting", which uses information collected on someone's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to selec
Karl Wabst

The Associated Press: Congress to hold hearing on cable advertising - 0 views

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    Cable operators will sit in the hot seat Thursday as Congress reviews their plans to roll out targeted advertising amid fears that consumer privacy could be infringed if the companies were to track and record viewing habits. The House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet will hold a hearing that will look at new uses for digital set-top boxes, the devices that control channels and perform other tasks on the TV screen. Cable TV companies plan to use such boxes to collect data and direct ads more targeted to individual preferences. "We have recently called on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate cable's new interactive targeted TV ad system on both antitrust and privacy grounds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. He's concerned about Canoe Ventures, a consortium formed by the nation's six largest cable companies to oversee the rollout of targeted and interactive ads nationally. Chester worries that Canoe will track what consumers do in their homes. Currently, cable companies aim their ads based strictly on geography. Now, cable's goal is to take the Internet's success with targeted ads and transfer that to the TV medium. Thus, a household that watches a lot of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel eventually could be targeted for theme parks promotions. This type of targeting is something broadcast TV can't do. For starters, Canoe plans to offer ads this summer that consider demographic factors such as age and income. Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. and Cablevision Systems Corp. of Bethpage, N.Y., also have been testing or rolling out targeted ads outside the consortium. But cable operators are wary about being seen as trampling on consumer privacy and reiterate that they don't plan to target based on any personally identifiable information, such as someone's name and address. Canoe said it doesn't have plans this year to use set-top box data for ads. Instead, the first ads it pl
Karl Wabst

Survey: Financial crisis fuels identity theft fears - SC Magazine US - 0 views

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    Most Americans believe the world financial crisis has increased their risk of identity theft or related crimes, according to the latest Unisys Security Index. The biannual survey of consumers in nine countries found that more than two-thirds of Americans are "extremely or very concerned" about other people obtaining and using their credit or debit card details -- with 90 percent at least "somewhat concerned." In addition, computer security remains a major concern. More than 40 percent of Americans are extremely or very concerned about security in relation to viruses or unsolicited emails. Three-quarters of Americans believe that the world financial crisis will increase the risk that they will personally experience identity theft or related crimes. More than one-quarter believe that the risk will increase substantially. "Financial security for Americans has moved from third place to front and center, number one," Tim Kelleher, vice president of enterprise security at Unisys, provider of information technology consulting services, told SCMagazineUS.com Monday. "People feel they are much more financially at risk." This has major implications for banks and other financial institutions, as well as internet businesses, he said. "Banks and businesses need to understand that customers are more wary than ever about using services that may compromise their personal data," Kelleher said. "If economic concerns increase these fears, companies need new strategies to strengthen customer confidence through accountability and transparency, which also plays to part of the Obama administration's call to action for government and business." The U.S. Security Index is based on a random telephone survey of 1,004 persons ages 18 and over. The first wave of the study was conducted in August 2007.
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Karl Wabst

Data Breaches: What The Underground World of "Carding" Reveals (pdf document) - 0 views

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    Individuals have been at risk of having their personal information stolen and used to commit identity-related crimes long before the emergence of the Internet. What the Information Age has changed, however, is the method by which identity thieves can access and exploit the personal information of others. One method in particular leaves hundreds of thousands, and in some cases tens of millions, of individuals at risk for identity theft: large scale data breaches by skilled hackers. In this method, criminals remotely access the computer systems of government agencies, universities, merchants, financial institutions, credit card companies, and data processors, and steal large volumes of personal information on individuals. Such large scale data breaches have revolutionized the identity theft landscape as it relates to fraud on existing accounts through the use of compromised credit and debit card account information. Large scale data breaches would be of no more concern than small scale identity thefts if criminals were unable to quickly and widely distribute the stolen information for subsequent fraudulent use (assuming, of course, that the breach would be quickly detected). Such wide-scale global distribution of stolen information has been made possible for criminals with the advent of criminal websites, known as "carding forums," dedicated to the sale of stolen personal and financial information. These websites allow criminals to quickly sell the fruits of their ill-gotten gains to thousands of eager fraudsters
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Karl Wabst

Cell phone sex video clears man of rape charges - Cell Phones & Mobile Device Technolog... - 0 views

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    The sheer volume of amateur cellphone sex videos on the Internet's porn site - while certainly culturally edifying - illustrates the new truth about sex in the 21st century: don't let anyone record it, or everyone will be enjoying it. But sometimes, the all-seeing and voyeuristic eye of consumer video culture has a happy ending: a businessman who recorded himself having sex with a university student was recently cleared of the charges after the footage was shown in court. Before the footage was presented as evidence, the judge warned both the gallery and the jury: "You are going to see a clip which from what I have been told you may find extremely distasteful." Despite this warning, though, the defense failed to exhibit a scene from Dustin Diamond's sex tape, but instead a rather traditional recording of an enthusiastic coupling. After the tape had finished playing, the judge ruled in the favor of the defendant. "You and Mr Taylor were very familiar with each other and comfortable in each other's presence." There's the possibility, of course, that the judge made the wrong decision: there could have been drugs involved. But score one for the good guys. A lot is made, rightfully, of the eradication of privacy in the digital age, but when it can help a man avoid wrongful imprisonment and the total ruin of his life, there's a bright side. The moral? If you're actively swinging, pony up for a cell phone with a good camera. And PornHub commenters say, the more megapixels, the better.
Karl Wabst

How to Protect Your Children Online - MSNBC Wire Services - msnbc.com - 0 views

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    Mary Kay Hoal tried everything she could to keep her daughter off of MySpace. She put password locks on the computer and blocked the site. Still, her daughter found ways to log on. Hoal's concerns stemmed from statistics that showed 29,000 registered sex offenders were on MySpace, one out of every five kids are sexually solicited online, and nine out of ten children are exposed to pornography online. When she looked for alternative safe sites for kids, she found none, so she decided to do something about it. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Click Here! The result is www.yoursphere.com, the only social networking site for kids and teens that's backed by the Federal Trade Commission through the site's Privacy Vaults approval. The site's Chief Technology officer worked at the California Department of Justice tracking anonymous online sex offenders, as well as the Megan's Law database. Moreover, it requires verified parental consent for a minor to join. Other features include: -- Requires verifiable parental consent to join -- Confirms the identity of the parent providing consent -- Confirms that the parent or guardian providing consent is not a registered sex offender -- Is exclusively for kids and teens through age 18. -- Exceeds COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for protecting kids online through our approval by Privacy Vaults Inc. -- Whose policy is "no creepers allowed" -- lurkers are removed and banned. -- No fake profiles. (No one is anonymous on Yoursphere.com) "The bottom line is that we're the only place in the online world that that has taken extraordinary measures to help ensure the safety of its members and meets or exceeds standards set by the government," Hoal said. "Our opinion is that if it's a behavior that is illegal, immoral or unacceptable offline, then it's unacceptable online." About Mary Kay Hoal After researching the disturbing la
Karl Wabst

Google wins Street View privacy suit | Digital Media - CNET News - 0 views

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    A couple in Pittsburgh whose lawsuit claimed that Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy lost their case. Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet search giant last April, alleging that Google "significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests" when Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked "private road." The couple claimed in their five-count lawsuit that finding their home clearly visible on Google's Street View caused them "mental suffering" and diluted their home value. They sought more than $25,000 in damages and asked that the images of their home be taken off the site and destroyed. However, the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania wasn't impressed by the suit and dismissed it (PDF) Tuesday, saying the Borings "failed to state a claim under any count." Ironically, the Borings subjected themselves to even more public exposure by filing the lawsuit, which included their home address. In addition, the Allegheny County's Office of Property Assessments included a photo of the home on its Web site. The Borings are not alone in their ire toward the Google Maps feature. As reported earlier, residents in California's Humboldt County complained that the drivers who are hired to collect the images are disregarding private property signs and driving up private roads. In January, a private Minnesota community near St. Paul, unhappy that images of its streets and homes appeared on the site, demanded Google remove the images, which the company did. However, Google claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads, arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery. "Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the Borings' complaint Not long after the feature launched in May 2007, privacy advocates criticized Google for displaying photographs that included people's faces and car license
Karl Wabst

Facebook woes hit privacy officer - 0 views

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    Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, and that's not good news for Chris Kelly, who is the chief privacy officer for Facebook, and - as we've reported - is quietly exploring a possible run for the Democratic nomination for state attorney general. Kelly was at the center of a firestorm this week regarding changes in Palo Alto-based Facebook's terms of service, which critics argued gave the social-networking site control over members' uploaded material, including photos, seemingly forever. On Wednesday, Kelly told CNN that the company will listen to complaints. The company's official blog now outlines how it has pulled back but Facebook has faced other problems that could hamper Kelly's efforts to run for a California political post. Last year, as Cnet reported, the firm reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo after an investigation of complaints that Facebook hadn't addressed consumers' complaints of "harassment and inappropriate conduct" regarding underage members. Facebook officials have said they are cooperating with law enforcement to protect their users from predators. But with the Democratic AG race already looking crowded - with San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo in the mix, among others - Democratic consultants are watching with great interest. Poke this, friends: Could this be the juicy stuff of television ads in a Democratic law-and-order race in California?
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