records

A new study shows that it's possible to use mobile phone location data to find an individual. Researchers say that, in most cases, getting four confirmed locations for a person is enough to identify their handset. The study's findings appear in the ... latest edition of Scientific Reports. According to the researchers, most users understand and accept that mobile phone service providers track their locations. Customers are usually 'OK' with this because the data is kept confidential and only provided to law enforcement authorities after a warrant has been issued. (Source: nature.com ) Anonymous ... (view more)

With huge annual revenues, Google has the spare cash to try out all sort of different (often high-cost) experimental ventures. That's been demonstrated by the company's decision to dabble in health records and home energy. In both cases Google says ... the problem was a failure to scale: in other words, not getting enough users to make the fixed running costs sustainable. In Google's case, scale isn't just a financial issue though: as its search success has shown, more users means more data and thus more lessons that can be learned. (Source: blogspot.com ) Medical Records Tracked Interactions ... (view more)

The United States government is in court fighting for the right to track people's location via their cellphone, without warrant. It says the powers are needed to hunt down criminals, but civil rights activists say that tracking shouldn't be allowed ... without ."probable cause." Cellphone Tracking Uses Triangulation The case doesn't involve monitoring conversations or reading text messages, but rather using call records to track a user to within 150 feet. That's usually done by triangulation, which involves finding a cellphone's distance from the three nearest network towers. Cellphone ... (view more)

A barely-noticed letter from Yahoo to the U.S. Marshals Service has revealed surveillance policies that allow the US Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users. The 12-page letter (in PDF format), in response to a Freedom of Information Act ... request, claimed that Yahoo couldn't provide the information on their policies because their pricing scheme would 'shock' customers. (Source: rawstory.com ) A Yahoo lawyer wrote that if the pricing information was disclosed, it would be used to shame Yahoo and other companies and to traumatize their customers. (Source: rawstory.com ) Yahoo: ... (view more)

With the death of Michael Jackson now being investigated as a potential homicide, a number of cyber "walls" have been erected to keep the new online records confidential. However, coroner investigations now report that several vulnerabilities exist ... in the two computer systems where the death investigation reports of Jackson are currently stored. An Inside Job The problem is much more serious than the potential for a hacker to access these restricted files from a remote location. Rather, employees are being given unauthorized access to these secretive reports despite being told that this ... (view more)