Valleywag
your privacy is an illusion
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Your Privacy Is An Illusion
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your privacy is an illusion
your privacy is an illusion
Facebook redesign exposed birth dates
Here's a good way for Facebook to keep its demographic young: IT security firm Sophos reports that early on during Facebook's beta test of a new user-profile design, the site revealed its members birth dates, even if members had set that information to private. That'll keep the Olds who turn 43 every year off the site. Facebook needs to be very careful when it comes to privacy — the site would like to figure out a way to target ads based on user's personal data, and wants to make sure users are comfortable inputting accurate information. And Facebook is being hypocritical: When Slide's Facebook Top Friends app revealed users' birth dates, Facebook temporarily kicked the app off the website. Of course, we won't hold our breath waiting for Facebook to suspend its entire website. But maybe it could back down from its holier-than-thou pose that the platform is a level playing field and Facebook is just another player? Yes, please.
Photobucket's privacy problem finally solved
Photobucket has finally stopped allowing strangers to peek at users' private pictures. Byron Ng, a Canadian sysadmin with a penchant for finding Web security holes, found that knowing a photo's file name and the Photobucket link would be enough to expose the pics. This oversight allowed script kiddies to "fusker" — hacker slang for using an utility to extract images based on an identifiable sequence in the file name — to find uploaded naughty pictures or other interesting bits that weren't intended for public consumption. [News.com]
Photobucket has finally stopped allowing strangers to peek at users' private pictures. Byron Ng, a Canadian sysadmin with a penchant for finding Web security holes, found that knowing a photo's file name and the Photobucket link would be enough to expose the pics. This oversight allowed script kiddies to "fusker" — hacker slang for using an utility to extract images based on an identifiable sequence in the file name — to find uploaded naughty pictures or other interesting bits that weren't intended for public consumption. [News.com]
great moments in pr
5 questions Viacom doesn't want Valleywag to ask Philippe Dauman
Touchy Viacom flack Jeremy Zweig called Valleywag up to let us know personally that we'd been disinvited from next week's press-only screening of Tropic Thunder. Such a pity! Because we had a list of questions we were going to ask Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman: More »
copyfight
Viacom wants to know viewing habits of YouTube employees
As a part of its copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google and YouTube, Viacom lawyers have asked for data that will detail which videos YouTube employees have watched and uploaded. Google has so far refused to provide the information, delaying an already agreed-upon transfer of some 12 terabytes of data detailing what types of videos are most often viewed on the site. Here's why Viacom wants the employee information: More »
great moments in pr
Viacom says it never wanted to know all the videos you watched (but it did)
Despite reports to the contrary, Viacom did not, as a part of its copyright suit against Google and YouTube, ask for "any personally identifiable information of any YouTube user" the company now wants us all to believe. It will get data from YouTube, but anything personally identifiying will be "stripped from the data." It's nice bit of PR revisionism. According to court documents, Viacom did "seek all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed." Only after the court sided with Viacom, but public opinion did not, did Viacom agree to accept scrubbed data. (Photo by AP)
your privacy is an illusion
Sun Valley moguls spent $4,300 to $6,110 on shrubs to keep reporters at bay
Among the news from Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley retreat for the rich: Marc Andresseen continues his campaign to tell old media they are old; Carl Icahn would settle for any Microsoft offer that pays $30 or more per Yahoo share; some industrial chemical giant agreed to buy some other company no one's ever heard of. Yet none of the stories feature photographs of the deals going down. Why? Because unlike in years past, the retreat organizers have banned reporters and photographers from "the beloved cafe at the Inn," reports Reuters. What's more, to keep these reporters and photographers from stalking their prey on the hotel's grounds — as any good reporter would — organizers resorted to shrubbery to further shield the moguls' privacy. From the tags still left on the brand-new shrubs (how nouveau gauche), Reuters reporter Kenneth Li estimates organizers spent between $4,300 and $6,110 on the organic fence.
your privacy is an illusion
Mad about AT&T's wiretapping? Try suing your congressman
HR 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, cleared the U.S. Senate in a 69-28 vote today, including retroactive immunity for AT&T, Sprint, and other telecom carriers that helped the U.S. spy on people for five years. Is the fight over? No. Who voted for or against it? See the tidy summary by Congressional Quarterly and our hard-charging intern Alaska Miller: More »
your privacy is an illusion
Google Analytics under investigation by German privacy officials
My German sucks, so here are the basics: The Datenschutzbeauftragten — roughly "Data Protection Commisioners" — in Germany's Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein regions believe that Google Analytics, a service which Web publishers use to track their traffic, may violate a German ruling handed down in March. The ruling says website visitors' IP addresses cannot be stored unless the vistor has given prior consent — basically impossible unless Google makes us all sign up before we use the Internet. Why is this a big deal? Because an estimated 80 percent of top German websites have Google Analytics installed. While we're at it, Google has been vague about how their systems use cookies stored in visitors' browsers — another potential violation of German law that protects Web surfers' personal information. A German tipster summed it up thusly, in English: More »
your privacy is an illusion
What's obscene? If you ask Google, less and less every day
Do Floridians search more passionately for "bukkake" than "ethanol"?. Nobody thought to enter that data into the public record until Clinton McCowen, the proprietor of CumOnHerFace.com, was slapped with obscenity charges by the State of Florida, and his defense attorney turned to Google for aid. Last week, when the defendant settled out of court and accepted a three-to-five-year prison sentence, it seemed like the Google Trends defense was dead in the water. But McCowen's lawyer, Lawrence Walters, still believes Google's positive response to his subpoena — soliciting the frequency of sex-related search terms by community — bodes a shift in American morality. Simply put: Google has forced us all to confront just how kinky we are. More »
your privacy is an illusion
Slide's Top Friends back on Facebook after third-party privacy audit
Facebook's third-most popular widget, Slide's Top Friends, is back after Facebook suspended it on June 26. (The offense: displaying Top Friends' users birthdays and other private information that wouldn't normally be visible on Facebook.) What took so long? Following the suspension, Slide wanted to call its apps the most secure on Facebook. To feel comfortable doing so, it contracted a third-party audit firm to review its applications and source code, Slide exec Keith Rabois told us. "The issue with Top Friends was fixed immediately," Rabois told us, "But as you might imagine an independent audit takes time to perform." Elsewhere on Facebook, Slide's privacy troubles seem to be spreading. More »
your privacy is an illusion
Google's new privacy pages surely point to massive privacy violation
Cick the tiny little link that appeared on the bottom of Google's home page just before vacation. It opens up to 30 more pages of privacy policy specifics for dozens of separate Google services, such as GOOG-411. As a former documentation writer, I'm impressed at the breadth and depth of these disclosures. There's even a one-page summary for those of us with deadlines. But I also remember the ridiculous hatefest Google whipped up by posting an earnest, detailed Gmail disclosure when that service launched. All I ask is that after you blog about the Orwellian nightmare of unprecedented proportions hidden in Google's policy pages, you send it to us.
your privacy is an illusion
Pamphleteers at Google promise no privacy without representation
A few of the queen's subjects across the pond have taken issue with colonial incursions by Street View spies from Google. Privacy International will whinge to the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner if they don't get a prompt response from the Mountain View rebels about the company's privacy practices — all the activists have gotten so far is cheek: More »
Overreactards
Q: Does Texas law now require PC repair techs to get a private investigator's license? A: Sometimes
Internet libertarians and Texas-haters are eagerly piling on a new Texas law that they claim requires all PC repair techs to obtain a private investigator's license. Infurating? Yes. True? Not really. The bill's author has spent the day sighing to reporters that the law amends existing occupations code by defining any vendor who performs investigate services on computer data to be a private investigator. Recovering your own hard drive data? No license required. Snooping your wife's email off her Mac? That's not tech support, it's private investigation. But don't let me stop you from railing against this Orwellian clusterfuck and its chilling effects and how goddammit, if we all carried firearms this never would have happened. The relevant section of the bill: More »
your privacy is an illusion
Google to tell Viacom how many times you watched LonelyGirl15
Two rulings came down in Viacom's copyright infringement suit against Google and its video-sharing site YouTube yesterday. The first: Despite Viacom's wishes, Google will not have to turn over YouTube's source code. It will however, turn over to Viacom "every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses," reports Threat Level. Viacom's lawyers say they need to the information to prove that copyright-infringing content is more popular on the site than legally uploaded videos. We're hoping Viacom will go on to publish the list, just like AOL did with users' search queries back in 2006. Remember how much fun that was?
your privacy is an illusion
IBM employee directory mocks your company's lameness
Tech companies like to babble about openness and transparency. But try finding an engineer's phone number. Standard procedure is to hide company telephone and email directories from external eyeballs, lest a recruiter — or, more annoyingly, a reporter — use the phone list to cold-call staffers. One shining exception: IBM, the world's largest IT employer, with nearly 400,000 people on board in at least 90 countries. Why would the company publish its entire directory and risk attack from headhunters and snoops? Because in 2008 IBM doesn't sell servers, it leases brains. Customers don't want to submit a request to a faceless feedback form and hope the right person at the world's biggest, sprawlingest tech company sees it. I'm sure there was a fight over the decision. But they finally faced the truth: We already hunt their employees down on Blogger and LinkedIn.
your privacy is an illusion
Googler employee info hacked
Want your privacy protected? Better work for Google. Employees hired before December 31, 2005, recently learned that their personal data, including Social Security numbers and birthdates, had been compromised by a break-in at Colt, an HR outsourcing firm: More »
your privacy is an illusion
