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Do you know where your friends are? If not, Google wants to help you find them. Today, Google introduced Latitude, a new opt-in feature that lets smartphone and laptop users share their location with friends and allows those friends to share their locations in return. Although not pinpoint accurate, Latitude can display your general location based on information from GPS satellites and cell towers. Latitude works on both mobile devices and personal computers. What Latitude can do Once you and your friends have opted in to Latitude, you can see your friends' Google icon displayed on Google Maps. Clicking on their icon allows you to call, email or IM them, and you can even use the directions feature on Google Maps to help you get to their location. Google says Latitude works in 27 countries and with many mobile platforms including iGoogle with your computer. The list of compatible phones are: *Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1 *iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon) *most color BlackBerry devices *most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices *most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones) *many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)

Bank of America will pay Connecticut $350,000 as part of a settlement for a data breach by Countrywide Financial Corp., which the bank acquired last year, state officials said Thursday. The bank will also provide at least $25,000 to reimburse Connecticut residents forced to pay for freezing and unfreezing their credit reports because of the breach, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. The major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, charge about $10 to freeze and unfreeze credit reports. Affected consumers will receive about $60 for credit freezes and unfreezes for all three credit bureaus, Blumenthal said. Nearly 30,000 state residents were affected by the nationwide breach, which came to light last August after the FBI arrested a former Countrywide employee on charges of selling personal information, including Social Security numbers, for as many as 2 million loan applicants. To be reimbursed, consumers must send proof of payment for their credit freezes and unfreezes to Blumenthal's office, 110 Sherman St., Hartford, CT 06105, attn: Countrywide Credit Freeze.

This tip is part of Mitigating Web 2.0 threats, a lesson in SearchSecurity.com's Data Protection Security School. Visit the lesson page or our Security School Course Catalog for additional learning resources. Social networking, a term relatively new to the computing vernacular, has already become part of the cultural norm for a great proportion of Internet users. Even more recently, the use of online communities to establish and build connections among those with shared interests has become part of the corporate world as well. As professional social networks such as LinkedIn and Blue Chip Expert continue to grow, and professional groups gain in popularity on once-personal sites like Facebook and MySpace, enterprise security and risk management professionals must face the reality that these sites are emerging conduits for the unauthorized disclosure of confidential corperate information. Add the use of public social networking tools to the list of concerns, and the effectiveness of the traditional corporate security perimeter is further diminished. However, a robust set of policy, process and architecture aids in mitigating the risks of being social. Broadly, social networking is described as software that lets people interact, rendezvous, connect, play or collaborate by use of a computer network. This definition covers the popular social networking sites, including those mentioned above, as well as blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, tags, and more recently, search engines. While there are numerous benefits to social network solutions, including reducing costs and increasing collaboration, we'll focus on addressing the risks.

The Veterans Affairs Department has agreed to pay up to $20 million to veterans for exposing them to possible identity theft in 2006 after losing their sensitive personal information. In court filings Tuesday, lawyers for the VA and the veterans said they had reached agreement to settle the veterans' lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy. The money will be used to pay for veterans who suffered actual harm, such as emotional distress or expenses incurred for credit monitoring. The lawsuit came after a VA data analyst in 2006 admitted that he had lost a laptop and external drive containing the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of up to 26.5 million veterans and active-duty troops. The laptop was later recovered intact.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico-An identity-theft ring that catered to illegal immigrants seeking to establish themselves in the U.S. stole the personal data of 7,000 public school children in Puerto Rico, officials said Tuesday. Members of the ring broke into about 50 schools across the U.S. island territory over the past two years to steal birth certificates and Social Security numbers to sell to the illegal immigrants, the FBI and other agencies announced at a news conference. The victims were largely unaware their information had been stolen-and likely would not have learned of the thefts until they became adults and tried to buy something on credit, said assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Diaz Rex. "A kid is going to have a perfect credit history," Diaz said. "They reach 18, 20 years of age. They go buy a car and their credit is damaged." The authorities did not disclose how they uncovered the ring but said seven people have been arrested and one more is being sought. At least some of them were illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Investigators determined the birth certificates and Social Security numbers were sold as a package in a number of states including Texas, Alaska and California, for up to $250, authorities said. Two suspects are accused of possessing nearly 6,000 birth certificates and Social Security cards. One was accused of intending to sell 40 Social Security cards for nearly $3,000, while another was seeking the same amount for 12 cards. The suspects in custody were being held on charges that include aggravated identity theft and social security fraud and face up to 15 years in prison, said U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez. One suspect had been previously arrested for the kidnapping of a Dominican man last year that led to the shooting of a police officer during an FBI raid, said Luis Fraticelli, special FBI agent in charge of Puerto Rico. It is unclear if other members of the ring are at large, and whether they received help from sch

Top attorneys for Microsoft and Google today reiterated their companies' support for tougher government rules to protect consumer privacy. But when it comes to the details, some watchdog groups say they are concerned that Web firms will continue to fight against specific provisions that would limit the ways they can collect and use people's information to serve more targeted ads. Today's panel discussion, held here at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, revisited a longstanding policy debate over the government's role in online privacy. The talk ran along some familiar plotlines, with Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy thundering about the detailed personal profiles being assembled by advertising companies who are using neuroscience to manipulate consumer behavior, while industry representatives assured the audience that their data-collection practices are benign, not to mention essential to providing free content and services on the Internet. But this wasn't just an idle debate. Rep. Rick Boucher, the Virginia Democrat who chairs a House subcommittee on the Internet, is developing legislation that could seek to impose sweeping restrictions on behavioral targeting. A few blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue at the Federal Trade Commission, the principal regulatory agency with authority over online advertising, newly minted Chairman Jon Leibowitz has spoken often about the need for industry to get serious about privacy. "The FTC's central concern here is transparency, consumer control," said Jessica Rich, assistant director of the agency's privacy and identity protection division. "We don't think consumers really know what's happening with their data."

Advertisers are your friend, and the government is here to help. If consumers don't take responsibility for their data, then all the regulation in the World won't matter.

An Orange County woman accused of using a false identity to obtain breast implants from a plastic surgeon is now facing three felony charges, including commercial burglary, grand theft and identity theft. Yvonne Jean Pampellonne, 30, nicknamed the 'Breast Implant Bandit', appeared in a Westminster court Wednesday. She did not enter a plea and asked that her arraignment be continued so she could hire a new attorney. Pampellone surrendered to police in March after detectives caught up with her using breast implant tracking numbers. Police say that in September of 2008 Pampellonne used the personal information of another woman to establish a line of credit at the Pacific Center for Plastic Surgery in Huntington Beach. Doctors performed $12,000 in liposuction and breast augmentation surgery at the center, police say, charging $12,000 to the phony line of credit and exchanging her existing implants for new ones. Medical staff at the center became suspicious after Pampellonne never returned for follow-up appointments. Because Pampellone had old breast implants replaced, they were able to track her down using the serial numbers that appear on every set of implants. Pampellone faces 3 years, 8 months in prison if convicted. She remains free on $20,000 bail and is due back in court on June 29th.

IT practices such as identity management, email and URL filtering, virus scanning and electronic monitoring of employees can get companies that do business globally into a heap of trouble if deployed without an understanding of global data privacy laws. The warning was one of several alarms raised in a presentation on global privacy best practices by Gartner Inc. analysts Arabella Hallawell and Carsten Casper at the recent Gartner Risk Management and Compliance Summit in Chicago. Always a thorny issue, the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) is made more complicated in a world where there is limited agreement on how best to do that. According to the Gartner analysts, the world is divided into three parts when it comes to data privacy laws: countries with strong, moderate or inadequate legislation. The European Union, under the European Union Directive on Data Protection, possesses the strongest privacy regulations, followed by Canada and Argentina; Australia, Japan and South Africa have moderate to strong, recent legislation; laws in China, India and the Philippines are the least effective or laxly enforced. The United States has the dubious distinction of occupying two categories -- the strong column, due to the 45 state breach notification laws on the books, and the weak column, because of the lack of a federal law. Even among the three categories, nuances abound. Under the European Union Directive, member countries enact their own principles into legislation, and some laws (like Italy's) are more stringent than the directive's standards. Russia's very recent law is modeled after the strong EU laws, but how it will be enforced remains questionable. And in the U.S., state breach notification laws vary, with Nevada and Massachusetts proposing the most prescriptive data privacy legislation to date.

Indianapolis - New developments suggest another drug store giant may face punishment for trashing your privacy. Now, Walgreens wants to settle its case - whether the state wants to or not. 13 Investigates discovered personal information in drugstore dumpsters in Indiana and across the country. WTHR exposed the problem at CVS and Walgreens pharmacies three years ago, and the Indiana attorney general's office has been investigating ever since. Walgreens says it finally has a settlement with the state - or does it? "We reached an agreement on the material terms of a settlement agreement," Walgreens attorney Stacy Cook told the Indiana Pharmacy Board Monday morning. The attorney general's office disagreed. "There was never an agreement that was reached," said Deputy Attorney General Morgan Wills. The attorneys met with the pharmacy board at Walgreen's request because the nation's second-largest drug store retailer says it had a deal the attorney general's office backed out on. "It's simply that they've changed their mind," Cook said. The attorney general's office admits it had started to negotiate terms of a settlement with Walgreens in January, but the state later decided to halt its settlement negotiations when the federal government announced a $2.25 million settlement with Walgreens' rival CVS.

For months somebody (I don't know who) has been running a Facebook profile that bears my name, my personal information and several photos of me. An old high school friend had connected with the faker, instead of me. Several of the people with whom fake Matt is friends also appeared to be fakes, including a copycat of Vertex Pharmaceuticals ( VRTX - news - people ) founder and chief executive Joshua Boger. (Boger has a real Facebook profile but isn't friends with me. He declined to comment on the fakesters.) I couldn't see this Fake Matt's profile myself, even by searching for my name.

Google never fails to surprise. It's the scope and scale of their ambitions that impresses me ranging as they do from relatively simple applications that are just way cool such as Sky Map, through their Chrome Web browser (which is now looking pretty stable), to the subject of this newsletter: Google Health. Google Health, which was launched as a beta (of course) in spring 2008, is a free repository for your personal health information. Using the service you can create online health profiles for yourself, family members or others you care for (these profiles can include health conditions, medications, allergies and lab results), you can import medical records from hospitals and pharmacies, share your health records with "your care network" (which may include family members, friends and doctors), and browse an online health services directory to find services that are integrated with Google Health. After you sign up you can import your medical records from Allscripts, Anvita Health, The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, The Cleveland Clinic, CVS Caremark, Healthgrades, Longs Drugs, Medco Health Solutions, Quest Diagnostics, RxAmerica and Walgreens. What you'll wind up with if you update all of the sections is a pretty complete health profile, which means that privacy has to be a concern. Interestingly, because becoming a subscriber is voluntary it appears that the service is exempt from the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

Facebook has agreed to make changes to better protect users' personal information on the social networking site and comply with Canadian privacy laws within one year, Canada's privacy commissioner said Thursday. "These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected," said privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

It's become the familiar refrain this year. Each time we see a major data breach related to payment card data, the breached entity says 'Gee, well we were told we were PCI compliant - how could this happen?' The PCI marketing machinery then gets into motion, reminding us all that PCI compliance is but a snapshot in time - not a warrantee against future breaches. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of consumers have their personal information exposed to potential compromise. They probably don't know or care what PCI is. They just want to know 'Why wasn't I protected?' Fair question, and it deserves an answer.

With mounting concerns over online privacy and information gathering by search engines, Google has come up with a solution, Opt-out village, a 22-acre remote mountain enclave for those obsessed with privacy. According to trusted news network, ONN, access to the new privacy feature is simple. Just click the opt-out button on the Google home page. Within minutes, a van will arrive to sweep you away to Opt-Out Village nestled in the Pacific NorthWest. A team of privacy experts will eliminate your personal identifiers and guarantee that your name and address will not appear on Google local searches.

Network Solutions Hack Compromises 573,000 Credit, Debit Accounts Hackers have broken into Web servers owned by domain registrar and hosting provider Network Solutions, planting rogue code that resulted in the compromise of more than 573,000 debit and credit card accounts over the past three months, Security Fix has learned. Herndon, Va. based Network Solutions discovered in early June that attackers had hacked into Web servers the company uses to provide e-commerce services - a package that includes everything from Web hosting to payment processing -- to at least 4,343 customers, mostly mom-and-pop online stores. The malicious code left behind by the attackers allowed them to intercept personal and financial information for customers who purchased from those stores, Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade said.

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.

If you think the biggest threat to your sensitive information lies in network security, think again. Once a criminal is inside a building, there are limitless possibilities to what that person can access or damage. Take a look at your building's security. How easy is it to get inside?

Good awareness video to make employees & employers think about physical security ramifications

Cybercriminals are improving a malicious software program that can be installed on ATMs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system that records sensitive card details, according to security vendor Trustwave. The malware has been found on ATMs in Eastern European countries, according to a Trustwave report. The malware records the magnetic stripe information on the back of a card as well as the PIN (Personal Identification Number), which would potentially allow criminals to clone the card in order to withdraw cash.

Windows XP is an obvious choice to run ATMs! Sigh!

Urging Privacy Protections with Health IT Privacy safeguards are needed if funds are to be provided for implementation of health IT systems in economic stimulus package. At today's news conference, the Coalition for Patient Privacy is releasing a letter sent to Congress advocating for the inclusion of privacy safeguards with any funding given to implement health IT systems in the proposed economic stimulus package. In the letter, the bipartisan coalition, representing over 30 organizations, individual experts and the Microsoft Corporation, welcomes the renewed commitment in Congress to protecting consumers over special interests, but makes clear that trust is essential to health IT adoption and participation, and only attainable with privacy protections. The coalition is calling on Congress to "A.C.T.", by providing: accountability for access to health records, control of personal information, and transparency to protect medical consumers from abuse. Consumer trust is essential to health IT adoption and participation, and only attainable with privacy safeguards. Through these three tenets, implementation of health IT is not only attainable, but would protect the right to privacy for consumers, employees, and providers.

A Troy woman learned Tuesday that she will spend 180 days in the Livingston County Jail for stealing the identity of a local woman who was dying. Judge Stanley J. Latreille also sentenced Vershawn Jones, who earlier pleaded guilty to identity theft, to four years of probation. Assistant Prosecutor Pamela Maas said the victim, who was not in court Tuesday, wanted to know how Jones, 38, got his wife's identification. His wife, Maas noted, was dying in a Hospice facility at the time. Jones, who said she operated a mortgage business, said she got it from one of four employees who brought her applications from people seeking mortgages. Those applications included personal information, such as Social Security numbers, she said. When pressed for names, Jones glanced at her attorney and shrugged. "I apologize to the victim and the victim's family," she said. "I've done the best I can running my own business." Maas initially requested that the state be allowed to withdraw from the plea deal that called for her office to recommend Jones serve no more than 90 days in the county jail after noting Jones had twice been sent to jail for failing to show for court hearings. While Jones apologized, Latreille was unmoved, telling the defendant "you're fortunate you're not going to prison."