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A Harvard University fellow has developed a browser extension that stops advertising networks from tracking a person's surfing habits, such as search queries and content they view on the Web. The extension, called Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO), enables its users to opt out of 27 advertising networks that are employing behavioral advertising systems, wrote Christopher Soghoian, who developed it, on his Web site. Soghoian, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and a doctoral candidate at Indiana University, modified a browser extension Google released under an Apache 2 open-source license. Google's opt-out plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox blocks cookies delivered by its Doubleclick advertising network. A cookie is a small data file stored in a browser that can track a variety of information, such as Web sites visited and search queries, and transmit that information back to the entity that placed the cookie in the browser. Google's opt-out plugin comes as the company announced plans last week to target advertisements based on the sites people visit. Targeted advertising is seen as a way for advertisers to more precisely find potential customers as well as for Web site publishers to charge higher advertising rates. But the behavioral advertising technologies have raised concern over how consumers get enrolled in the programs, what data is being tracked and how the data is protected.

Traditionally, we trust doctors with confidential information about our health in the knowledge that it�s in our own interests. Similarly, few patients object to the idea that such information may be used in some form for medical research. But what happens when this process is subject to scrutiny?How explicit does our consent have to be? Since the introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998 medical researchers have raised concerns over the increasing barriers they face to accessing patient data.These concerns have heightened amongst some researchers since the passing of the Human Tissue Act 2004 introduced in the wake of the Alder Hey and Bristol Royal Infirmary scandals. When scientific advances are unraveling the secrets of DNA and the decoding of the human genome has opened up substantial new research opportunities.Clinical scientists and epidemiologists argue that the requirements being placed upon them are disproportionate to the use they are making of either datasets or tissues samples and, besides, their work is in the public interest.At the heart of the debate lie key questions over trust and consent and how these can best be resolved.To complicate things, it is no longer just medical researchers, but also public health bureaucrats who are keen to have access to our data.Quasi-official bodies have been charged with persuading individuals to change their behaviour and lifestyles in connection with all manner of issues such as diet, exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption.Social Marketing � the borrowing of commercial marketing techniques in the pursuit of 'public goods' � is in vogue amongst public health officials. Empowered by advanced data collection and computing techniques, armed with the latest epidemiological research, and emboldened by a mission to change unhealthy behaviour, public health officials are keen to target their messages to specific 'market segments' in most need of advice.Are government researchers abusing patients' trust? Can an

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.

Now that behavioral targeting has become more pervasive (and more effective), it is being talked about not only by publishers and advertisers, but also by privacy advocates -- organizations like the NAI and IAB and, in Washington, the FTC. At issue is if BT players are doing enough to disclosure to consumers how BT works and offering them the opportunity to opt out of being tracked by BT vendors and publishers. There has been much discussion about how to regulate behavioral marketers; but no solution that satisfies everyone. The BT industry so far has contended that website privacy policies are sufficient disclosure since many of them contain links to opts out opportunities like the NAI site. Google and Bluekai have announced 'preference pages' or registries that allow Web users to say what type of BT they are interested in receiving. But, the other, more common option is to put that information in the Privacy Policy of the site. But the problem with that is that no matter where disclosures are placed on the service provider's site, most people won't ever see them. How will a customer visiting Retail SiteX know that Company Y is going to use their browsing behavior to later display relevant ads to them as they surf the Web on Network Z? The average customer won't. The only way a customer will know what forms of BT advertisers are using is if the advertisers themselves tell them. I think that it's time for advertisers to step up in this privacy debate. Thus far the pressure for disclosure has been placed on networks, behavioral marketing providers and publishers. The key players in those industries have done a good job of becoming more transparent (though there is still work ahead of us), while advertisers haven't been asked to do anything. Advertisers are clearly benefiting from behavioral marketing, and its time they disclosed what type of behavioral marketing they participate in, and allow customers to opt-out. How they do this is open for discussion: Tag each

Is it a violation of privacy that should be banned or a tool necessary to keep the internet running? Canada's privacy commissioner has opened an online discussion on deep packet inspection, a technology that allows internet service providers and other organizations to intercept and examine packets of information as they are being sent over the internet. "We realized about a year ago that technologies involving network management were increasingly affecting how personal information of Canadians was being handled," said Colin McKay, director of research, education and outreach for the commissioner's office. The office decided to research those technologies, especially after receiving several complaints, and realized it was an opportunity to inform Canadians about the privacy implications. Over the weekend, the privacy commissioner launched a website where the public can discuss a series of essays on the technology written by 14 experts. The experts range from the privacy officer of a deep-packet inspection service vendor to technology law and internet security researchers. The website also offers an overview of the technology, which it describes as having the potential to provide "widespread access to vast amounts of personal information sent over the internet" for uses such as: * Targeted advertising based on users' behaviour. * Scanning for unlawful content such as copyright or obscene materials. * Intercepting data as part of surveillance for national security and crime investigations. * Monitoring traffic to measure network performance.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is planning to regulate online viral marketing that uses blogs and social networking sites. Marketers are spending billions worldwide to get the endorsements of key bloggers and groups on social networking sites. One tactic, used by Microsoft and others, is to send products to bloggers on 'long-term loans' on the understanding that they will comment about them on their sites. AdvertisementUnder the new regulations being proposed, such bloggers would be legally liable if they make untrue statements about the products or services. The companies too would face sanctions. "This impacts every industry and almost every single brand in our economy, and that trickles down into social media," Anthony DiResta, an attorney representing several advertising associations, told The Financial Times. This is the first revision of the rules on this kind of advertising by the FTC since 1980 and is needed, according to the organisation, because new forms of communication have opened up new fields to marketing. "The guides needed to be updated to address not only the changes in technology, but the consequences of new marketing practices," said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the FTC's division of advertising practices. " Word-of-mouth marketing is not exempt from the laws of truthful advertising." Advertisers are resisting the changes, however, which threaten a highly effective form of marketing new products and services. "Regulating these developing media too soon may have a chilling effect on blogs and other forms of viral marketing, as bloggers and other viral marketers will be discouraged from publishing content for fear of being held liable for any potentially misleading claim," Richard O'Brien, vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said in an advisory to the FTC.

Though Facebook has sometimes been criticized for sacrificing the privacy of its users in order to monetize the service, Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, has presided over the social network's efforts to build out the most sophisticated privacy options in the industry. On a granular level, Facebook users can now control what bits of information they share with each individual friend, group or network. Facebook users have taken notice. According to an annual study by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research firm, Facebook ranks within the top 20 (15th) most trusted companies for privacy as rated by U.S. consumers. Kelly's job sometimes appears tricky, however. He must ensure that users feel they have control over their information, while weighing that need against Facebook's business model, which relies heavily on a culture of openness and sharing. Here is the full interview CIO conducted with Kelly during our reporting for a special feature on social networks and privacy. Kelly talked about what constitutes Facebook's overall view towards privacy, and how that affects its ability to serve up ads.

Consumers save their e-mail and documents on Google's data centers, put their photos on Flickr and store their social lives on Facebook. Now a host of companies including Amazon and Microsoft wants government agencies to similarly house data on their servers as a way to cut costs and boost efficiency. But federal officials say it's one thing to file away e-mailed jokes from friends, and another to store government data on public servers that could be vulnerable to security breaches. The push toward "cloud computing," so named because data and software is housed in remote data centers rather than on-site servers, is the latest consumer technology to migrate to the ranks of government. Companies such as Amazon and Salesforce, which do not typically sell services to the government, want a piece of the business. Google opened a Reston office last year to sell applications such as Google Docs to federal employees. Silicon Valley-based Salesforce, which has focused on selling to corporations, established a team dedicated to government contracting. Microsoft spent $2.3 billion in 2007 to build data centers for cloud computing, and IBM, Sun Microsystems and HP want to provide the government cloud.

I have an open question for the people who complain about the potential of advertising networks to track your behavior on the Internet: What is a better way? Some might say that all behavioral targeting should simply be banned. But if you don't think that showing Chevy ads to people looking for cars is equivalent to poisoning the peanut butter, we need a middle ground that explains to people what's going on and lets them decide what is acceptable. This is much harder than it sounds: Any one Web page you visit can have a dozen advertisements and invisible bits of code that each send information about you to different companies, each with different ways of using that data. The privacy policy of the site you are looking at - not that anyone reads privacy policies - can't even try to explain this to you, because the site owner doesn't even know what all of its advertisers are doing. I'm coming to the conclusion that each advertisement on a page has to speak for itself. That's implicit in the approach Google is taking for its new behavioral targeting system. It puts the phrase "Ads by Google" on all its advertisements. Click that link and you'll get some limited information about Google's targeting system and an ability to adjust some of the interests that Google is tracking. But Google's approach is presented in a way that glosses over what they are doing and discourages people from reading the disclosure and exercising control, says Joseph Turow, a marketing professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Turow has developed a plan that is simpler and more comprehensive: Put an icon on each ad that signifies that the ad collects or uses information about users. If you click the icon, you will go to what he calls a "privacy dashboard" that will let you understand exactly what information was used to choose that ad for you. And you'll have the opportunity to edit the information or opt out o

Over the past six months, many of us have become desensitized to the staggering number and size of layoffs that continue to occur almost daily. But the reality for the IT industry is that layoffs have a different effect on those of us in the industry whose mission it is to protect the company's reputation, intellectual property, confidential data (both electronic and hard copy) and business operations. Knowledge Center contributor Gregory Shapiro outlines seven steps IT professionals can take to protect their company's data before a layoff is implemented. Unlike individual employee terminations, which are customarily unannounced and immediate, layoffs present a larger threat to corporations because they leave the door open to both intentional and unintentional data loss, leakage and integrity problems. When employees sense impending layoffs or are told in advance and kept on for a limited time to transition, that is when rumors and panic consume the employees. It's then that the company's sensitive data can be compromised. For this reason, the strategy for any corporation planning a layoff should include setting policies and making sure practices are in place to secure their sensitive data now. Steps to protect company data before a layoff is implemented

Ironic

Global employers still have trouble finding the right people for open positions, even as candidate resumes pile up amid recession. A global talent crunch has eased slightly, but is set to worsen in coming years because of demographic trends, according to an annual survey by global employment services company Manpower Inc. Worldwide, 30 percent of employers reported trouble filling positions because of the lack of suitable talent, down slightly from 31 percent who said so a year ago, according to Manpower, which polled 39,000 employers in 33 countries. While many more people are looking for work, they often lack the skills, or experience, that employers need.

More likely, a lack of competent recruiting talent.

Hundreds of credit union members are starting their holiday weekend off without their debit cards after a credit compromise forced the Winthrop Federal Credit Union to deactivate customers' cards. The credit union stayed open Friday until 6 p.m. to give cash to affected customers for the weekend. CARDS FROZEN AS A PRECAUTION Credit union officials say its card processer, Metavante, noticed suspicious activity on three of its MasterCard debit cards and notified the credit union about them. While it was not a security breach, the Winthrop Federal Credit Union decided to freeze a block of cards as a precaution, something that Metavante did not advise them to do. "We really know very little. We are working with the credit processor to identify the possible cards," said bank spokeswoman Cathleen Clark. "We always feel it's better to be safe than sorry." Because of the suspected credit compromise, the credit unions says it felt it was necessary to freeze the cards.

Ignorance is bliss!

IT professionals are under pressure from upper level executives to open the floodgates to the latest Web-based platforms, relaxing Web security policy, according to a new survey of 1,300 IT managers. The survey, conducted by independent research firm Dynamic Markets Ltd., was commissioned by Web, DLP and email security vendor Websense Inc. Dynamic Markets conducted interviews with IT managers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. Nearly all those surveyed said they allow access to some Web-based services, such as webmail, mashups and wikis. But more employees are turning to online collaboration platforms; some are turning to Google Apps, which are integrated with Google's Gmail platform, and others are turning to popular social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Some users are bypassing Web security policy to access the services, according to 47% of those surveyed.

The state's highest court told Bergen County yesterday to release 8 million pages of real estate documents -- including mortgage information -- to fulfill a request filed under the state's public records law, but that Social Security numbers included in them must be kept private. The justices also said the company requesting the information should pay the $460,000 it will cost the county to remove the Social Security numbers from records spanning more than two decades. The court unanimously agreed that the documents, requested by a business that wants to sell electronic access to this information, are public records under the state's Open Public Records Act. But it stressed some of the personal information, if released, would hurt residents. "The request was made on behalf of a commercial business planning to catalogue and sell the information by way of an easy-to-search computerized database. Were that to occur, an untold number of citizens would face an increased risk of identity theft," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote for the court. Bergen County officials called the decision a victory for all New Jersey residents concerned about identity theft.

Consumers, who become victims of identity theft through access to public records, do not have a clue as to how they became a victim. They cannot know unless the fraudster who "legally accessed" the public information is caught and confesses that they used or sold the information for identity theft. Most often end users of stolen identities are caught, not the kingpins. Illegal immigrants who purchase identities on the street sometimes for hundreds of dollars do not know the source. * What can an identity thief do with a name and SSN? Here is a short list. * Make a fake Social Security Card (see image below) * Make a fake Medicare Card and get medical treatment and Medicare benefits * Use the fake Social Security Card to get a driver's license or passport * Get a job and government benefits. * Get credit and open new financial accounts * Get housing, utilities and phone service * Get insurance * Thieves use fake ID to elude law enforcement by pretending they are you.

Diplomats and civil servants are to be warned about the danger of putting details of their family and career on social networking websites. The advice comes after the wife of Sir John Sawers, the next head of MI6, put family details on Facebook - which is accessible to millions of internet users. Lady Sawers disclosed details such as the location of the London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their three children and of Sir John's parents. She put no privacy protection on her account, allowing any of Facebook's 200 million users in the open-access London network to see the entries. Lady Sawers' half-brother, Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat, was among those featured in family photographs on Facebook. Mr HaigThomas was an associate and researcher for David Irving, the controversial historian who was jailed in Austria in 2006 after pleading guilty to Holocaust denial. Patrick Mercer, the Conservative chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said that the entries were a serious error and potentially damaging.

Weak security policies and practices in nearly all 24 major federal agencies in 2008 have resulted in exposing personally identifiable information of Americans, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). "An underlying reason for these weaknesses is that agencies have not fully implemented their information security programs," according to the GAO report, issued Monday. "As a result, agencies have limited assurance that controls are in place and operating as intended to protect their information resources, thereby leaving them vulnerable to attack or compromise." Federal agencies have reported some progress, providing awareness training for employees and testing system contingency plans, the GAO said. Still, employees with significant security responsibilities are not getting enough security training and known vulnerabilities remain wide open. The GAO conducts a periodic review of information security policies and procedures at federal agencies. Inspectors general review agency conformity to the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) and report their findings to Congress.

Hackers will soon gain a powerful new tool for breaking into Oracle Corp's database, the top-selling business software used by companies to store electronic information. Security experts have developed an easy-to-use, automated software tool that can remotely break into Oracle databases over the Internet to simulate attacks on computer systems, but cybercrooks can use it for hacking. The tool's authors created it through a controversial open-source software project known as Metasploit, which releases its free software over the Web. Chris Gates, a security tester who co-developed the Metasploit tool, will unveil it next week at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, where thousands of security experts and hackers will gather to exchange trade secrets. "Anyone with no skill and knowledge can download and run it," said Pete Finnigan, an independent consultant who specializes in Oracle security and who advises large corporations and government agencies.

Hunch.com helps users search for answers -- but first, it performs a detailed search on the users themselves. Launching today after a year in development, Hunch aims to supply users with computer-generated advice on thousands of lifestyle and consumer questions: What kind of dog should I buy? What should I get dad for Father's Day? Which book by George Orwell would I like? Most important, though, Hunch is not a search engine. Rather than scouring the open Web for information, as Google, Microsoft's new Bing and scores of others do, or collating written opinions, as Amazon.com does, Hunch computes answers by comparing what it knows about you to what it knows about people like you. "Ultimately, what we're doing is providing a kind of shortcut through human expert systems," said Hunch founder Caterina Fake, who also started Flickr.com, the popular photo-sharing site that was acquired by Yahoo in 2005. By first inviting users to answer as many as 1,500 questions about themselves -- an addictive kind of personality test that involves such diverse questions as political orientation, relationship status and whether you believe in UFOs and keep your closet organized -- Hunch looks to assemble a demographic profile whose depth could rival anything in the commercial universe. The New York company also believes that users stand to benefit from this kind of large-scale data farming -- not just from getting better answers, but also from discovering the many microdemographics to which they belong. Hunch also says it will not sell user data to marketers. But this promise, written into the site's privacy policy, is not precisely a legal contract, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a new-media scholar at the University of Virginia, and the difference leaves the data it collects in a fuzzy domain.

The problem with securing data and insuring its safety is that there is simply so much more stored electronically these days that opportunities for outside hackers or insiders to steal valuable, confidential information off a company's computer systems are growing exponentially, according to those in the insurance industry who make it their business to cover this expanding exposure. Indeed, "you can take out more data in a thumb drive now than people could take out in a super-computer 10 years ago," according to Kevin Kalinich, co-national managing director for Professional Risk Solutions at Aon. The risk of a data breach is very real for companies large and small across almost any industry, noted Mr. Kalinich. He cited a report from the University of California, Berkeley, that more data has been aggregated and stored in the last three years than in the entire history of mankind. He also noted that between 75 and 85 percent of Fortune 2000 companies have suffered a "material data breach," meaning there is a growing market for those selling insurance coverage for liability and repair costs, as well as loss control services. Companies that take an "it won't happen to me" approach to securing data need only look at news headlines to see that organizations are often hit by breaches, and as more data is being stored electronically, the potential for, and impact of possible breaches increase. Princeton, N.J.-based credit and debit processing company Heartland Payment Systems reported that it had been compromised in 2008 in a breach that involved up to 100 million records, which would be tops for number of records accessed in a breach. The Heartland incident would displace the 2007 breach of TJX, in which over 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. The TJX breach, in turn, took the record set by a breach of CardSystems Solutions in 2005.