Now, THAT is how you get attention… A security consultant decided to execute some code, scan Facebook for publicly search-able profiles, and publish that information in a 2.8GB download via torrent at thepiratebay.org. I don’t have first hand knowledge of what’s in the file, the download has about 40 minutes left before finishing.
In light of this, I have a question. So what?
It’s not like this was some hack; he mined publicly available data. All 100 million of these people had the opportunity to change their security settings if they didn’t want to be found. Maybe, just maybe, they WANT to be found.
Isn’t it handy to search for long lost friends on facebook, and actually find them? If people were unaware of how easy this was to do, hasn’t he done them a favor in pointing it out to them, so they can, again, go change their settings if they don’t like it?
From what I can tell, phone numbers and email addresses were left out. It sounds like it’s just names, photos, and URLs of publicly search-able profiles. It seems, also, that most people really don’t care. Frankly, you can count me among them. Should Facebook change the default security settings to lock people out, and make you opt in instead of opt out? Probably. Will they? Probably not, and everybody using the service is well aware of that fact.
I’ll let you know how much of your information is in this list, once it finishes the torrent.
Seriously, guys. How many times have I trumpeted this horn? If the MPAA wants to substantially slow digital piracy, they should make content available online for a small monthly fee, and people will pay for it. That’s precisely what some of our friends across the pond are doing, and the MPAA says they are a threat – bigger than people downloading via P2P.
So, let me get this straight. Phase 1: make movies available online within a few days of release and people will pay a monthly fee to watch them. Phase 2: sell banner ads to some small companies, like KFC and Netflix. Phase 3: profit! Or, if you are the MPAA, you can launch international campaigns against such practices, and spend, I’m assuming, millions of dollars to stop giving people what they want.
My suggestion is, stop treating your customers like the enemy. Take a page out of the pirates’ book, and offer up quality versions shortly after release in theaters. Now, instead of the Interwebz costing you money, it’s actually going to generate income! People will pay for a quality product, if you can be a little less confrontational about the delivery method.
Or, just go back to collecting underpants, and try to figure out Phase 2 on your own.
This raises an interesting point. Does connecting with a former colleague on LinkedIn (or another form of social media) constitute a violation of a non-compete agreement?
Here’s the 30 second version: TEKsystems Inc. has filed a lawsuit against former employee Brelyn Hammernik. In this lawsuit, they claim that Hammernik is in violation of a non-compete agreement because she is using LinkedIn to connect to (and solicit) people she used to work with while at TEKsystems.
This raises a couple of questions. First, was there any explicit, or overt attempt to recruit her old co-workers from TEKsystems? If not, is the act of connecting on LinkedIn enough to violate a non-compete agreement. She downloaded contact information from her computer before leaving, but why wouldn’t she? She spent time building a relationship with people; why would leaving a company now mean she couldn’t speak to any of them for a year (or whatever the term of her contract was)?
I remain in contact with people I used to work with, and I would think many of you do as well. It’s a part of working with other people on a daily basis – you become friends, keep each other sharp professionally, maybe even send a birthday greeting from time to time. Do these continued relationships violate a non-compete agreement? I think not.
I’m curious to see where this case goes. I’m also curious to know why TEKsystems Inc. has information about who their former employee connected with. Did they actually search through every one of her possible contacts looking for a connection with her, or was she foolish enough to leave her profile public so the information could be seen?
At a minimum, we have this takeaway: when you leave a company, make sure all of your social media accounts are as private as you can make them, and de-friend your former employers. Otherwise, you may be in hot water for trying to keep up a friendship with someone you used to work with.
Picture this… You need to get from point A to point B, and you are walking. So, you pull out your smart phone, and ask Google maps to give you directions. The directions given include a 1/2 mile walk down State Route <insert number here>. Would any reasonable person choose to walk down the center of that road?
Well, one unreasonable person did. Not surprisingly, this soon-to-be-victim of Natural Selection walked down the center of a State Highway, and was struck by a car. Her (allegedly) bloodsucking lawyer is now describing Google’s actions as “careless, reckless and negligent.” Full complaint here. I missed the part in that complaint where the fool plaintiff decided to walk down a highway, despite the absence of sidewalks or pedestrian paths or whatever you want to call them.
Look, I’m not callous. I feel bad that she suffered “…sever permanent physical, emotional, and mental injuries, including pain and suffering.” However, it’s her fault, not Google’s, that she couldn’t figure out it might be a bad idea to go strolling down the middle of the highway. Besides, what kind of lawyer would take this case? Chasing ambulances much, counselor?
We all know that Google maps and Mapquest have a little error in them, right? To the plaintiff: take some responsibility for your own actions. You did something stupid; we all have. Don’t blame Google for your idiocy. You’re lucky you lived through this – learn from it.
**Just to cover my bases…. I am not trying to imply that plaintiff’s attorney is, in actuality, undead. The terms ‘bloodsucker’ and ‘ambulance chaser’ were carelessly, recklessly and negligently taught to me as a child by society. Accordingly, if counselor takes offense to these phrases, I welcome them to sue the deepest pockets they can find that are even tangentially related to me or those terms. I, of course, am not responsible for my own words.
Seems to be the M.O. currently used.
I love it when this happens. Let’s think back over the last several years, and collectively recall when Apple would accuse Microsoft of using its power and market share unfairly. “Antitrust!” they shouted. Now, Apple is being accused of unfair practices, of using its power and market share unfairly. They are (gasp!) trying to convince music labels to not give exclusive access to songs to Amazon. That’s just business, isn’t it?
Well, maybe. According to the story, they are ‘punishing’ those labels that do give Amazon a daily exclusive, by withdrawing marketing support in iTunes for those songs that Amazon got a day early. So, Amazon asks for exclusive access to upcoming songs, for 1 day. In exchange for that 1 day of exclusive access, they offer to market the song as a daily mp3 deal. Sounds reasonable, no? In response, Apple says “If you give Amazon something more than you give us, we won’t market your songs.” How is this any different, really?
Yes, Apple is the big cheese in the online music business. Yes, Apple sold something like eleventy trillion songs last year (OK, it has been about 10 billion songs since 2003). That said, why are they wrong to want the same access to the music that Amazon has? And why would they not incentivize such a ‘level playing field’ given the chance? It’s not like they are imposing an iTunes tax, where you must give Apple a nickel for every song that is sold on Amazon, just for the right to sell it on iTunes as well. THAT is using your huge market share unfairly.
I’m no Apple fanboy, um… apologist, but I don’t see how they are under scrutiny for antitrust here. Maybe I just don’t understand the law well enough.
This one made me laugh heartily. Attendees at AusCERT, and Australian computer security conference, took home complimentary USB drives from IBM, but those drives had been infected with malware. The good news is, it was an old malware (2008) that is detected by pretty much every antivirus product out there.
OK, so it’s unfair to blame the intern. Probably IBM ordered them and they were shipped that way from the manufacturer, but, still, that’s good stuff. IBM did the right thing, more or less, and sent a ‘mea culpa’ email to conference attendees explaining about the infected USB drive. They made 2 recommendations, though, that I found to be a bit over the top.
1: Return the drive to IBM. Really? Should any hard drive infected at any point with a virus be shipped back to the manufacturer? Also, I would hope IBM will ship a replacement drive to anybody who does send theirs back, but that was unclear from the email.
2: This is my favorite… basically, update your antivirus, do a full system scan, clean the system if needed, then do a second scan with a different a/v product. Then..backup your data and reformat your drive. Wait…what? I’m happy to agree with 2 antivirus scans, although that is a bit much for a 2 year old malware, but a complete reformat/reinstall? That’s a bit heavy on the CYA, isn’t it?
Either way, it’s a good reminder to always keep your a/v software updated, and scan anything you get from anybody. If you have the other systems available, open it up on a Linux or Mac box to see what’s on it first if you are paranoid. If you do happen to get a USB drive at a conference, though, and it’s infected with virus/malware – calm down, scan your system, reformat the USB drive if you like, but rarely will there be a need for the over-the-top response IBM is telling people is necessary.
Oh, and, if you are handing out drives at a conference…maybe spot check a couple, just for fun.
I’m so glad I don’t have my site hosted there. Seriously, this can’t be acceptable at all. Long story short, sites hosted at GoDaddy are being hacked. It seems to have nothing to do with the sites themselves, and everything to do with something wrong internally at GoDaddy. It’s not breaking news, either – it’s been going on since last week!
Maybe GoDaddy should spend a little more time on protecting their customers, and a little less time making commercials. Don’t get me wrong, I think Danica Patrick and Candice Michelle are pretty hot really good actresses, but we could pay a bit more attention to security details, no?
Hopefully, GoDaddy can get their act together here. If not, and you host your site there, maybe you should consider jumping ship to a host that isn’t ignoring your security. There are plenty of good hosts available, spend 5 minutes and find one, just in case. This should also serve as a nice reminder to always have a backup of your site. I know, it’s so easy sometimes to make changes to the page on the fly, but you really should do that offline and upload. Just in case, you know, GoDaddy decides to ignore some security problem or something.
I actually cannot figure this one out. So, you pay for AT&T service, but you don’t get service at your place, so you pay AT&T $150 for a device to boost their service at your house? Really? How can I get into the business of providing you with poor service for a monthly fee, and then you paying me extra?
AT&T should be pumping billions of dollars into upgrading their network. Let’s be honest, the iPhone has crippled it. Instead of improving service, though, they are charging their customers more and convincing them that it’s a good deal! Really, is the iPhone THAT cool? Is it really worth poor cell service and an additional $150 just so you can play with a lightsaber?
In my opinion, anybody who buys one of these is enabling AT&T to give poor service. Instead of paying them another $150, why not call their customer service number (from wherever you can get a signal without a dropped call) and demand they upgrade their own network? Don’t take the bait, get what you are paying for instead. Worst case, get a non-iPhone on a network that actually gives you the service you need, and are already paying for.
So, the good news is,Microsoft Web Apps goes live in June. Bad news? I’ll get to that in a minute…
Web Apps is the free version of Microsoft Office 2010 – a direct competitor to Google Docs. Free versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will all be available once Office 2010 hits retail stores. Currently, the beta is available only to those customers with 2010 Software Assurance already purchased. Microsoft claims that Web Apps will have more features than Google Docs (but less than the paid version of Office), and a nicer interface. So far, I can’t find a feature list, though.
If they can pull off a full-featured rendering of the document in browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari are planned) that will be a huge improvement over Google Docs, which I have seen destroy formatting on more than one occasion. This looks to me to be an excellent entry point into cloud computing for home users who are reluctant to give up the interface they are used to, and have been paying for Office just to keep the look consistent. For what it’s worth, I hacked out this blog post over atdocs.comand easily found the features I needed available. There was a reasonable choice of fonts, spell check, etc. I assume this is a reasonable facsimile of what will be available in the free version of Word when Web Apps launches.
What’s the bad news? I had to write this up twice. I had finished my typing, clicked on the view tab to see the reading view instead of editing view, and the document was blank. I guess I should have saved it first, sure, but why would I assume that a view change would delete my work? Grrrrrr. To be fair, it’s still in beta, but that is a pretty basic function, and a HUGE annoyance. Google saves as you go, like a web app should.
Update: when I tried to copy and paste the post from the Word Web App to WordPress, it would only do one paragraph at a time. Copy/Paste into a local copy of Word was flawless, though, so it may be a WordPress issue.
What’s the catch? Oh, they are the ones who get to determine if you didn’t get the service level promised…
In a nutshell: if you signed up for AT&T DSL at any point after March 31, 1994, you may be eligible for a payout from AT&T. Assuming a judge approves the settlement, AT&T will pour through customer records to determine if customers were capped at lower-then-promised speeds. The payout? Customers will get a massive check of, up to, $2.90 per month that AT&T determines they didn’t give what they promised. Oh, and if you say you were shorted, and AT&T disagrees? You get a $2 payout. Yes, $2. Total.
It’s not that I don’t trust them, but I don’t see a whole lot of money being paid out to customers. The lawyers, however, are getting about $11 million, and there is a charitable donation of about $3.75 million. The absolute maximum a customer can get? If they signed up on April 1, 1994, and have maintained service for the last 16 years, and AT&T determines that for all of those months the customer has been shorted, that customer can get $556.80. I’m sure we’ll all be getting that check… Enjoy your $11 million, attorneys!
Either way, you have to specifically opt in for the payment. You can do so online here. If you don’t opt in, you are considered part of the class, but you won’t get paid.
Good luck! Let’s all compare notes to see what we get. I’m guessing this settlement will cost AT&T $14.75 million, plus exactly $2 for each person that signs up.
