Security

New standards concerning how businesses collect, store and use consumer data for advertising are being developed by a new advocacy group called "The Future of Privacy Forum." The group is comprised of privacy scholars, lawyers, and corporate ... officials and will be led by Jules Polonetsky, who was recently in charge of AOL's privacy policy until earlier this month, and Chris Wolf, a privacy lawyer. The organization is sponsored by AT ... (view more)

They say curiosity killed the cat. Well, apparently it also gets Verizon Wireless workers canned. According to reports, several employees for the popular cellphone provider were suspended under suspicion that they may have peeked at President-elect ... Barack Obama's call records. Verizon Wireless CEO and president Lowell McAdam was forthright with the media when he announced that Obama's personal cellphone account had been accessed by employees. "This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama's ... (view more)

According to an online safety group, complete financial identities, including names, addresses, passport numbers and confidential data such as credit card numbers, are being sold online for 80 GB pounds for a bundled package, and as little as 5 GB ... pounds for a single piece of data. The Get Safe Online group, backed by police, government and banks, says ID theft is a serious problem because of an international trade in stolen identities and data. The bundles of data are harvested in concerted attacks against poorly defended computers in wealthier nations and are often sited in countries with ... (view more)

Details of more than 500,000 online bank accounts and credit and debit cards have reportedly been stolen by a virus described as "one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created." (Source: bbc.co.uk ) The RSA Fraud Action Research Lab, ... part of EMC's security unit, discovered log-in information on more than 270,000 banking accounts and 240,000 credit and debit card accounts that had been compromised from hundreds of thousands of financial institution in countries including the U.S. the U.K., Australia and Poland by a cybercrime gang using the Sinowal Trojan, first detected in ... (view more)

Disgruntled Republicans may find some solace in recent news that Chinese and Russian hackers recently hacked the computer systems of president-elect Barack Obama -- unfortunately, they also infiltrated John McCain's system, too. The news appears ... much more serious than it sounds. These aren't your average basement-dwelling nogoodniks, but instead are reportedly sophisticated hackers that may even represent government elements in both China and Russia. The news stunned the Obama campaign. According to reports, the FBI and Secret Service recently visited the Democrats to tell them that their ... (view more)

No matter how protected we think our computers are, no matter how much money we invest in acquiring the latest antivirus software, hackers still find a way to target our computers. While computer viruses are almost as old as computers themselves, a ... new type of spam has surfaced that not only victimizes computers, but shames the good name of the innocent end-user. If you have experienced "undeliverable" email messages that bounce back into your inbox, or if you notice this happening in the near future, it may be the result of "backscatter". The latest rave in the field of spamming is the ... (view more)

Think a blog site could compromise national security? Well, the military feels that it's certainly a possibility. A recent report on the American Scientists web site by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion believes Twitter has become a tool for ... a number of threatening groups. The American intelligence community clearly isn't tickled with Twitter. The 304th warn that the web site's combination of GPS (Global Positioning System) technologies, digital maps, and other mobile tools could help terrorists plan and execute attacks on U.S. targets. The military isn't just worried about terrorists ... (view more)

A new variation of a fake Microsoft security notification email is reportedly being circulated. Attackers appear to be taking advantage of Microsoft's Patch Tuesday to send legitimate looking emails claiming to be a security email from Microsoft ... with an executable file attached, which it claims is the latest security update. It encourages the recipient to run the attached executable so their computer will be safe. The email is different than previous versions as it claims to be signed by Steve Lipner, an actual Microsoft employee, and has what appears to be a PGP signature block attached to ... (view more)

In a stunning turn of events, hackers have broken into vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account, brazenly publishing several critical messages. The chaos isn't just limited to the Republican party, however; according to reports, ... the son of a prominent Democrat is under suspicion following an FBI raid. Serious questions are being raised this morning about the security of Palin's account, and whether the Alaskan senator should admit some responsibility for using Yahoo Mail for official business. The hacker, from a group calling itself Anonymous, published some of the stolen ... (view more)

Last fall, several communications companies reportedly conducted trials, in some cases lasting up to 6 months, of network-based technology designed to track a customer's Internet actions, attempting to amass refined data on web-surfer habits that ... may be sold at premium rates to advertisers. Cable One's 'trial' affected about 700,000 customers. Bresnan Communications conducted a similar 'trial' that was limited to about 6,000 broadband customers in Billings, Montana from April 1 to June 26, 2008. Knology tested it on about 230,000 of their customers from January until July 2008. WideOpenWest ... (view more)