It never fails that when any of the big boys of the web, like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or even Twitter, decide to make changes to any of their privacy policies the web erupts with various degrees of outrage and condemnation. You know – like how when Google announced the other week that it was going to unify all its various privacy policies into one homogeneous  policy.

The resulting furor over the news had the European Union calling for the to slow down and wait, The US Congress has voice concerns about the changes, and we are still in the early days of their move to unify everything.

Of course Google isn’t alone these days when attracting the eye of regulators from governments around the world as we have seen how every time Facebook make changes, even the smallest one, the uproar is immediate and forceful.

To help us try and gain some understanding what is behind all these privacy issues the folks at Frugal Dad has put together a well rounded infographic for you to look over and figure out what is going on. Be sure to let us know in the comments what you think about this whole mess.

via VentureBeat

About this whole web privacy thing – well, it’s difficult [Infographic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

People probably won’t remember this but back during the 1990′s there was a big uproar amongst security folks about a major intel gather project that the FBI was investing a lot of money and energy into called Carnivore that was designed to  monitor email and electronic communications.

Then around 2005 it got replaced by another software package, and not it seems that they are going to replace it with something much better, cheaper, and easier to monitor.

I am of course referring to Facebook and Twitter.

For the pas couple of years I have not so jokingly said that why does the FBI, or any ‘secret’ agency for that matter, need to spend any money on so-called expensive special software to track what we are doing and saying when all they have to do is get access to the Twitter and Facebook firehose of data.

Well it seems that this is exactly what they are going to do if the post over at The Next Web by Harrison Weber is any indication. It seems that the FBI is on the hunt for a development team to create specialized apps that will scrape the social media data pipes and map all that data out in easy to digest formats.

For a semi-detailed look at what the FBI is looking for there is the following badly scanned official document that was posted to the Federal Biz Opps site

“SIOC intelligence staff need a tool to analyse social media focused on the situation in support of crisis operations that meets the intelligence objectives stated above”.

While there are some making light of this and having fun with the idea of agencies like the FBI using Twitter or Facebook as a tool for gathering questionable intelligence the fact is that more and more of our lives are being recorded in one fashion or another by these social networks and it is all searchable if you have the right access – which you can be assured the FBI will have.

Who needs Carnivore says FBI when we have Twitter and Facebook is a post from: The Inquisitr

Robert Lee had a sore tooth in 2010 so he went to Dr. Stacy Makhnevich in New York.

ABC News reports that prior to treatment Lee was asked to sign several papers, inlucding one on Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy. The agreement required him not to publish any commentary or write something that would discredit the dentist.

After the treatment, Lee received a bill amounting to $4,766. He requested the dentist’s office to forward the paperwork to his insurance company. The office, however, sent it to the wrong company. As a result, Lee asked for the forms himself so that he can submit it to the right company. The dentist refused to hand over the papers and referred him to a third party that required five percent of the total bill for its services.

Annoyed with his experience, Lee headed to Yelp and DoctorBase and wrote negative comments.

Dr. Stacy Makhnevich did not take the negative comments lightly. The dentist sent Lee a letter demanding that he delete the post and reminding him of the agreement that he signed early on or face breach of contract. The dentist also asked Yelp and DoctorBase to take down the comments. Both sites refused to comply to the doctor’s demand.

Now the doctor is saying that she owns the “harsh words” that Lee wrote. She went on to send Lee an invoice for $100 for each day the comments remain online.

Paul Levy, Lee’s lawyer, commented:

“We are now seeking a declaratory judgment from the judge to show that my client was not doing anything wrong. Doctors and dentists are expected to behave in an ethical manner, and to impose this sort of requirement on people who are having emergencies is unethical.”

Arthur Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania Medical Center said:

“This is a form of bullying, and it’s absurd that this could possibly be an enforceable contract. It infringes upon free speech and you can’t just have that waived away on a silence contract. This doctor is overreacting and attempting to muzzle patients.”

If you’re Robert lee, would you take down the negative comments that you wrote? Would you sign such kind of agreement prior to getting treatment?

Dentist asks Yelp to take down negative comments; Threatens to sue patient is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the more interesting things about Amazon’s new Fire tablet is their own browser called Silk. What makes the browser interesting is that it uses a “split” design that has any browser traffic using Silk going through the Amazon servers.

This apparently has gotten a few folks in Congress concerned because of possible privacy issues. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has come out saying that the idea of Amazon funneling all the traffic through its servers is bothersome to say the least.

Not to be left out Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has sent a letter to Amazon seeking some clarification on the possible privacy issues. In his letter MArkey is asking:

• What information does Amazon plan to collect about users of the Kindle Fire?
• How does Amazon intend to use this information?
• How will Amazon convey its privacy policy to Fire and Silk users?
• If Amazon plans to collect information about its users’ Internet browsing habits, will customers be able to affirmatively opt in to participate in the data sharing program?

Congress is concerned over privacy issues with Amazon’s new Silk browser is a post from: The Inquisitr

Everything you do on the web, from surfing websites to wasting your life on Facebook, downloading files to sending and reading emails, it all has to go through your broadband provider and they keep track of it all, whether you like it or not.

In most case this really doesn’t matter, and part of the price we pay for being able to use the Internet; but we also hope that at some point that data gets purge, or at the very least doesn’t get shared with anyone.

However that may not be true if this leaked document from the Department of Justice is any indication. Called “Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers” (pdf) it is meant as a guide for law enforcement agencies who need to get their grimy mitts on our data. The data covers such areas as customer IP addresses, call logs, text messages, and browsing habits.

The document, marked for “Law Enforcement Use Only”, covers the data retention practices of the US telecom companies which include: AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile; and it seems they all have differences when it comes to retaining your data.

Where T-Mobile will keep a list of everyone you have exchanged text messages with for up to five years its competitor Sprint keeps them for five years. Verizon seems to be the best of them as they only keep the list, and the message contents, for a single year whereas AT&T will keep just the list for seven years.

The secret document was unearthed recently by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina via a FOIA request.

“People who are upset that Facebook is storing all their information should be really concerned that their cell phone is tracking them everywhere they’ve been,” said Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney. “The government has this information because it wants to engage in surveillance.”

via Wired

This should actually come as no surprise to anyone and is probably the tip of the iceberg.

So which big American telecom is the worst in data retention? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Technology is a great thing, I would be first to say that; but as great as it is it can also be misused; regardless of the intentions of those who dream up all these great new ideas.

Such is the case with MORIS, Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, and its ability when paired with Apple’s iPhone to be able to scan a person’s face from up to four feet away, in other words to potentially do it without a person knowing. On top of that MORIS can also perform a full iris scan, which is considered to be a much better way to identify a person.

This of course has set off alarm bells amongst civil libertarians and those who watch over privacy issues. Just in the past as we have talked about racial profiling privacy and civil liberty advocates are worried that this might become a tool used as routine way to identify someone, quite possibly without their consent or knowledge.

Needless to say police agencies are lining up to use the new technology as well as touting its positive aspects

“This is (the technology) stepping out of the cruiser and riding on the officer’s belt, along with his flashlight, his handcuffs, his sidearm or the other myriad tools,” said John Birtwell, spokesman for the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department in southeastern Massachusetts, one of the first departments to use the devices

via SiliconAngle

Countdown to the first lawsuit over this being misused begins … now.

MORIS joins forces with the police and their iPhones to scan your iris and face is a post from: The Inquisitr

Kids that wish to attend college have very little choice when it comes to the SAT exam- it’s generally either take the test or learn a trade, given its ubiquity as a college entrance requirement.

Two congressmen are requesting the College Board, owner of the SAT exam, explain how data is collected and shared in an effort to protect the privacy of the teens who don’t really have the option of opting out of the epic test. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX) hit up the ACT exam’s owners as well, asking about the sale of the data to entities like colleges. The push is part of a larger bill to expand laws protecting childrens’ privacy online to teens as well. (You can read the letter sent to the College Board here.)

Jeff Chester, executive director at consumer advocacy group the Center for Digital Democracy, said organizations like the SAT and ACT may lack proper oversight because they are non-profits:

“The Markey-Barton bill is focused on commercial businesses, even though many of these same disturbing practices are being conducted in a widespread fashion by nonprofit organizations,” Chester said. “Nonprofit organizations operate under a golden halo effect.”

Fordham Law professor Joel Reidenberg was a bit more critical when it came to the College Board and ACT’s sale of the information gathered from their captive audience:

“The College Board and ACT exploit their role as gatekeepers to college access and use that role to obtain consent from minors to sell their information,” Reidenberg said. “High schoolers are like deer in the headlights against a very sophisticated marketing industry. Parents have no idea and the law does not protect the students’ privacy. It should.”

Should the SAT and ACT quit making money off students’ information? Does disclosure need to be better when participation is essentially compulsory?

College Board Asked to Explain SAT Data Collection Policies is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the time-tested ways of deflecting criticism is blaming what you’re being accused of on the other guy.

Today in tech news, one of the stories I’ve seen bounced around centers on allegations Facebook engaged in a crafty campaign to accuse Google of being loose and free with GMail user data. Hmm… that sounds a bit like accusations I’ve heard lobbed at another tech giant… >scratches head< Anyway, the interesting thing is that the interpretation of the available information seems to draw two different conclusions.

To wit, ComputerWorld concludes, “Caught! Facebook admits running anti-Google campaign,” while ABC decides that, “Facebook Denies ‘Smear’ Campaign Against Google” is the more fitting headline. But curiously, both stories center around the following statement about the PR push to educate users about Google’s “Social Circles,” snipped from the CW piece:

“No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended,” a Facebook spokesman wrote. “Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles — just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst.”

The brouhaha was born from a string of emails between blogger Christopher Soghoian and PR firm Burson-Marsteller where the latter attempted to plant stories about Google’s Social Circles, and the PR firm admits to asking for Facebook’s name to remain “out of it.” And as we know, PR firms are paid insane amounts of money to boost the profile of their clients, which in this situation, would be Facebook… hmmm. Whatever the truth is in this situation, it does seem like a massive PR fail.

Do you think any less of Facebook after the admission? It’s not gonna make you any less likely to use it, is it?

Did Facebook run an anti-Google smear campaign? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Is anyone else beginning to think that Facebook’s entire focus is desensitizing users to privacy breaches?

The leaky social network has again exposed user data to third parties, this time inadvertently allowing advertisers to obtain “access tokens,” which have been described by experts as “spare keys” to a user’s account. So what could have been shared? Symantec, who discovered the breach, explains:

Third parties, in particular advertisers, have accidentally had access to Facebook users’ accounts including profiles, photographs, chat, and also had the ability to post messages and mine personal information.

However, the security site adds:

Fortunately, these third-parties may not have realized their ability to access this information. We have reported this issue to Facebook, who has taken corrective action to help eliminate this issue.

Worryingly, the breach allowed long term access even though tokens eventually expire:

By default, most access tokens expire after a short time, however the application can request offline access tokens which allow them to use these tokens until you change your password, even when you aren’t logged in.

Facebook has admitted the breach and said they’ve taken steps to correct it, but some tokens could still be out there. (In a blog post, the social network downplays the issue a bit.) Symantec recommends changing your Facebook password, just in case.

[Image]

Facebook is leaking, again- private data exposed to third parties is a post from: The Inquisitr

Renting to own a piece of electronic equipment is a pretty bad idea for a number of reasons, although the practice is not entirely uncommon because lots of people feel they can’t afford the items in question outright.

However, there’s another frightening possible downside you can add to the lengthy list of reasons not to engage in the practice. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes information from a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Erie, Pennsylvania, on behalf of a couple who allege unauthorized photographs of them were taken by a laptop they rented from the rent-to-own chain Aaron’s. The couple say the laptop’s capability to spy on them only came to light during a mistaken repossession:

The suit contends an alleged cyber-snooping component called PC Rental Agent was soldered or otherwise installed inside a Dell laptop that Brad and Crystal Byrd of Casper, Wyo., leased last year. The device came to light only after the manager of an Aaron’s outlet in Casper came to the couple’s home last December to repossess the laptop.

The manager, who mistakenly believed the Byrds hadn’t paid off the computer, showed the couple a photo taken by the machine’s webcam of the husband using the computer at home, according to the suit that was filed in U.S. District Court in Erie, Pa.

Even more worryingly, the suit hints, Aaron’s may have deliberately tried to conceal the spying from customers:

The manager of the store later told the Byrds, according to the suit, that “he was not supposed to disclose that Aaron’s had the photograph.”

The difficult part of the lawsuit is determining which laws, if any, were broken in the alleged use of spying programs. This is yet another incident that highlights the need to aggressively protect consumer privacy as technology to monitor and track individuals in their protected, private spaces is developed, as well as an opportunity to better define the protection individuals deserve from entities like schools and creditors.

Do you think companies should be legally allowed to encroach on privacy to a degree when a supposed debt is involved? (Of note: the Byrds ultimately paid $1200 for a Dell Inspiron that retails for about $400.)

Scary: Rent-to-own outfit accused of spying on customers via laptop cams is a post from: The Inquisitr

We’ve all heard the stories of people convicted on crimes where the evidence included things like their Google searches or their Facebook posting but in order to get that Facebook information the police first need to subpoena Facebook.

It apparently is pretty easy to do with a simple form that includes your Facebook email address, user ID or username. Then when Facebook has that form they will create an archive for the police to go through.

So what does that archive contain?

Well thanks to Matthew Panzarino at The Next Web we now have a good idea of what the police will be receiving.

• User ID number
• Email address
• Date and Time of your account’s creation
• The most recent logins, usually the last 2-3 days
• Your phone number, if you registered it
• Profile contact info
• Mini-feed
• Status update history
• Shares
• Notes
• Wall posts
• Friends list
• Groups list
• Future and past events
• Videos
• Photos
• Private messages
• IP logs (computers and locations you logged in from)

In other words just about everything you have done on Facebook is in the hands of the police, oh and as an extra bonus they get a complete list of your friends.

Apparently Facebook doesn’t put up much of a protest either.

What Do The Police Actually Get When They Subpoena Your Facebook Account? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Steve Jobs downplayed the level of data kept by Apple on users following a Gizmodo report last week that an extensive level of information is being compiled and stored from users’ iPhones.

Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle detailed how his iPhone 4 had literally tracked his every movement since July:

The data itself is jarringly accurate. And even though it appears to rely on tower triangulation rather than GPS pinpointing (meaning you’re not safe with location services switched off), the map I was able to generate with mapping software the security duo released visualizes my life since the day I bought my iPhone 4 in July. Everywhere I’ve been. Bus trips home. Train trips to visit family. Vacations. Places I’d forgotten I’d even gone. Zoom in on that giant blotch over New York, and you can see my travels, block by block. My entire personal and professional life—documented by a phone I didn’t know was also a full time location logging device.

Jobs has taken time out to explain the functions of the devices, minimizing the level of data regarding individual users. In a telephone interview, he explained:

“The files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there,” Jobs reportedly said.

Jobs said the issue was one of informing users:

“As new technology comes into the society, there is a period of adjustment and education,” Jobs said in the telephone interview. “We haven’t, as an industry, done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the past week.”

In an earlier Q&A, Apple said the volume of data stored is a glitch they plan on fixing:

“The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly… We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.”

In May, Apple is set to take part in a Senate privacy hearing.

[Apple Insider]

Jobs: Apple doesn’t track anyone is a post from: The Inquisitr

A very scary report has just shown up on Gizmodo written by Sam Biddle where he maps everywhere he has been over the last year.

So what is so scary about that?

Well all the data used to create the map of Biddle’s travels didn’t come from special tracking gadget but instead came from his iPhone.

It turns out that the iPhone sitting comfortably in your pocket has been recording everywhere you have been since last June. The data is stored on your iPhone; and apparently your iPad as well, and is easily available to anyone who gets their hands on it.

The data itself is jarringly accurate. And even though it appears to rely on tower triangulation rather than GPS pinpointing (meaning you’re not safe with location services switched off), the map I was able to generate with mapping software the security duo released visualizes my life since the day I bought my iPhone 4 in July. Everywhere I’ve been. Bus trips home. Train trips to visit family. Vacations. Places I’d forgotten I’d even gone. Zoom in on that giant blotch over New York, and you can see my travels, block by block. My entire personal and professional life—documented by a phone I didn’t know was also a full time location logging device. It’s all accessible—where I’ve been, and when. (The animated software doesn’t show location linked to any duration of less than a week, so it can’t be used to snoop that closely. But the actual underlying database is timed to the second.) I don’t really have anything to hide, which is why I don’t mind sharing my map above. But at least let me turn this tracker off.

For now, there is no fix. The only way to remove it from your computer is to wipe your back up files from your computer. But then you have no back ups to restore your phone in case you lose it. And every time you sync your computer, though, it’ll create a new file. And if you do lose your phone, all your tracking data goes with it, right into the hands of whoever found it. And if you upgrade your phone to the next iPhone, the location tracking history goes with it.

Washington DC to New York from Alasdair Allan on Vimeo.

That iPhone you love so much – it’s tracking everywhere you’ve been – all the time is a post from: The Inquisitr

There is being wired and then there is just being ridiculous. I get the whole idea of being always connected, even though I don’t agree with the degree with which we go to, but there is seriously something wrong with us if we feel the need to be connected to the point that we end up having something like the LunchCommunicator.

No this isn’t something out of Star Trek but rather the brainchild, or perhaps brainfart, of some Japanese researchers who have combined a plastic lunch container, a touchscreen, and a webcam into one unit.

The idea is that the person making the lunch can record some sort of message or whatever and then the person eating that lunch can play back the message.

Enough already.

via Switched

[Moron Dept.] Lunch box cam. No I’m not kidding. (Video) is a post from: The Inquisitr

The internet’s craft fair, Etsy, is taking a bit of flack right now for trying to make the site more social, and in doing so, revealing a bit more about Etsy users than users may be aware of, to the internet at large.

Last week, Etsy quietly rolled out a feature allowing people to search users, sellers and buyers alike- revealing information on items they’d sold, purchased or favorited. This feature was discussed in a not-very-visible forum thread, but not formally announced to users. The issue is underscored to great effect in a quote over at Ars Technica’s piece on the controversy. Quel horror, for internet sex toy shoppers everywhere:

“I just found a woman who’s Etsy profile comes up on Google as the 5th link. I was expecting 6 or 7 pages down, but it’s on the very first page, right after her online resumes,” wrote one concerned user on the Penny Arcade forums. “She signed up a year ago, under the old privacy policy, and hasn’t logged in since 2010. And now I know what dildo she uses. Right down to the curvature and coloring.”

Followed up by:

“Found an XXL glass dildo with veins and swirled gold coloring (beautiful piece really) and checked to see if anyone favorited it. Someone did. She also favorited some cosplay cat eat hats [sic] and a bell collar/necklace thing. Then I found her on Facebook.”

I must submit here that buying handmade sex toys (or “hillbilly bajingo wash“) is kind of a bit unnerving, but still, nobody’s business. If you’ve got a questionable Etsy history or merely want to conceal your love of etched Dolly Parton leather cuffs, you can opt out in your Etsy privacy settings. (That is, if you’re one of the few Etsy users who knows about the change.)

Have you checked your Etsy privacy settings?

[Ars Technica]

Etsy reveals your dildo preferences to the world is a post from: The Inquisitr

How would you like it if your boss listened in on your private, off-hours phone conversations or peeked into your bedroom as you engaged in whatever it is you do in there, I ain’t judging? Is the below scenario very much different, all things considered?

Facebook is a bit of an information sieve, dripping images and details about you onto the world wide web whether friends-locked or not, but the one on one and direct stuff is generally still considered a private, mostly unleakable thing. Like the messages you might send a friend with similar medical concerns or a child as unruly as yours. Or the totally legal, above board but perhaps embarrassingly intimate flirting in which you might engage. Permissible and understandable pursuits all, but would you like your current or future employer sifting through your private Facebook interactions? Is there any question that users are entitled to keep their private information private, especially being as information only accessible with a password to the account is not generally broadcasted across the internet unless the account is breached?

Not for the first time, an employer is demanding job candidates and current employees turn over their Facebook login information so superiors can skim through the personal details of their accounts, including private transmissions with friends, significant others and spouses. Yes, you read that right- employers are beginning to feel entitled to violate not only your privacy, but that of the people who cannot consent and are exposed merely by merit of associating with folks whose bosses have such designs. So if you were considering sharing your innermost deep, dark secrets with someone employed by or contemplating employment with the Maryland Department of Corrections, you may want to rethink that decision. Imagine being in the shoes of corrections officer Robert Collins, required to turn over his login during a re-certification interview and sit there while his supervisor scrolled through his Facebook page. One wonders if it’s frowned upon to change your password shortly thereafter, or if any forewarning precedes the practice at all.

Thankfully, the ACLU is stepping up and trying to arrest this practice in its infancy. Nationwide outcry occurred when the city of Bozeman, Montana attempted to pull the same shenanigans on employees, but the town eventually backed down and stopped trying to intrude on workers’ private, online interactions. An online petition over at the ACLU’s website points out that such egregious privacy violations are illegal under the Federal Stored Communications Act, but the scary part is that it hasn’t stopped two state agencies from attempting access the info.

Would you turn over your Facebook password to your boss or a potential employer? Do you think this request will become more common in hiring and spying on employees?

[ACLU via AllFacebook]

ACLU objects to Maryland DOC request for employee Facebook logins is a post from: The Inquisitr

Hmmm… reading this particular blog post on the Official Google Blog, I have to say my initial reaction was “not sure if want.”

While I (and many others) have had a block-list field day with the anti-content farm Chrome extension Personal Blocklist, Google’s social searching efforts seem to be a bit less likely to be a step in the right direction for improving Google search results overall. Of course, this is just one Google-user’s opinion, and albeit could be heavily influenced by some of the scarier aspects of Google’s failed Buzz venture.

I think part of the problem for Google is they know way too much about us. It’s kind of like seeing a biological function up close- we have an idea how it happens, but ruminating too heavily on the specific way it works can make you feel a bit queasy. With Google’s social search, the search engine giant plans to pepper your search results to feature commentary from people with whom you’ve connected on social networks.

…you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture.

Google’s taken steps to avoid some of the privacy concerns that landed it in hot water with Buzz. And perhaps this kind of relevant information will come in handy. But given the way YouTube prompts me to log in and out when I’m just trying to view a sexy video kind of sets my “oh my God, people know I’m looking at porn” sensors a bit to “tingly,” it gives me a little pause. Plus, over several years of participating in social media, I have know way of knowing the sum of what I’ve endorsed, evangelized, loved on or bitched about to such an extent I’d feel okay exposing colleagues, clients or old high school classmates to it. (“Kim shared a Foursquare check-in to Babes in Toyland on February 17th when she was supposed to be in a meeting with you- she says, “half off french ticklers! SQUEE.”)

And of course, I can’t help but think of how hard it is to make Twitter personally relevant given the amount of self-promotion that weighs down every aspect of it. I’d hate to have to do that kind of wading on Google when I just want to find a local Indian restaurant or VD clinic. Right now, Google is one of the few places we can go on the web with minimal social input on the information we receive, and part of the draw of Google is the idea of impartial little relevance-bots serving up web links based on algorithms, or math, or something else geeky that has nothing to do with whether the guy who lived two floors down from you junior year of university once got a dirty look from a barista at the local coffee shop.

Of course, nothing Google has said on the matter indicates any of these things will actually be a problem with social searching. Does the idea of Google social searches seem like an improvement to you, or a scary way for the world to find out about your unhealthy love for lady-cop porn?

Google steps up social aspect of searches… does this scare anyone else? is a post from: The Inquisitr

C’mon guys- this totally looks legit!

A dating site that opens with a pic of creepy basement guy and his mail-order Eastern European bride clad in Walmart attire and smiling unnervingly has gotten in a bit of hot water for scraping all the info for their 250,000 “profiles” from publicly available, not-deliberately-shared personal information culled from Facebook. The site was shut down for a spell when the controversy first broke, but it’s back up and running, classing unwitting Facebook users as “sly,” “climbers,” “smug,” or “mild.”

The site’s about page leads to another site, which reveals the “social experiment” behind lovely-faces.com:

Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating – unfortunately, without the user’s control. But that’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in general. If we start to play with the concepts of identity theft and dating, we should be able to unveil how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be. And how fragile enormous capitalization based on exploiting social systems can be. And it’ll eventually mutate, from a plausible translation of real identities into virtual management, to something just for fun, with no assumed guarantee of trust, crumbling the whole market evaluation hysteria that surrounds the crowded, and much hyped, online social platforms.

Spokesman for Facebook Barry Schnitt responded to the actions of lovely-faces.com in a Facebook statement regarding the “dating” site:

“We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’ve already been in touch with Lovely-Faces to demand that they delete the data and we will take additional action as necessary.”

Interestingly, though, Facebook is in a bit of a funny position when it comes to defending itself against this kind of information scraping. The site itself sprang out of Mark Zuckerberg’s first social networking venture, Face Mash- a hotness-comparison engine that culled pics of female Harvard students, and pitted them against one another, without their permission.

Dating site makes waves by swiping 250,000 Facebook profiles is a post from: The Inquisitr

A Michigan man is facing five years in prison after police say he logged into his wife’s Gmail account without her permission with the intention of spying on her.

33-year-old Leon Walker is charged with a felony ‘hacking’ count following the incident, during which he discovered his wife had been unfaithful to him. Although evidence gathering using social networking in a divorce is becoming far more common, the Walker case is of particular note because experts say it could establish legal precedent for email privacy standards in a domestic setting:

“It’s going to be interesting because there are no clear legal answers here,” said Frederick Lane, a Vermont attorney and nationally recognized expert who has published five books on electronic privacy. The fact that the two still were living together, and that Leon Walker had routine access to the computer, may help him, Lane said.

“I would guess there is enough gray area to suggest that she could not have an absolute expectation of privacy,” he said.

Walker, a computer technician, said he discovered his wife had been sleeping with her second husband, and turned the information over to her first husband due to concerns about previous incidents involving domestic violence. His defense attorney questioned the necessity of the charges.

“I’ve been a defense attorney for 34 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “This is a hacking statute, the kind of statute they use if you try to break into a government system or private business for some nefarious purpose. It’s to protect against identity fraud, to keep somebody from taking somebody’s intellectual property or trade secrets.

“I have to ask: ‘Don’t the prosecutors have more important things to do with their time?’ “

Walker’s trial is set to begin in February of next year, and the couple’s divorce was finalized earlier this month.

Man faces prison hacking into wife’s Gmail account is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you gave personal information to McDonald’s in exchange for free McRib or a Shamrock Shake, you might be one of the customers whose information was exposed after a security breach involving an email marketing management firm.

McDonald’s released a statement explaining that information was obtained by an “unauthorized third party,” but added that financial information and social security numbers were not part of the data accidentally exposed:

“We have been informed by one of our long-time business partners, Arc Worldwide, that limited customer information collected in connection with certain McDonald’s websites and promotions was obtained by an unauthorized third party,” McDonald’s said in a statement. “Arc retained the services of an email database management firm whose computer systems were improperly accessed by a third party.”

Although the riskier data mentioned above is irrelevant to the breach (who would give up their SSN for cold fries and a rubbery burger?), other identifying demographic information as well as phone numbers, physical addresses and full, real names were exposed to the hackers. McDonald’s informed customers via email that their information had been compromised, and reminded those affected not to disclose any further information to people claiming to represent McDonald’s.

McDonald’s says customer data exposed in security breach is a post from: The Inquisitr