Last year, IT security firm Sophos ran an experiment on Facebook to demonstrate just how willing people were to hand over their information to potential ID thieves. They created a fake profile page on Facebook for a small green plastic frog and sent out 200 friend requests to other Facebook users. Eighty-two of those people responded, and in doing so, divulged personal information like their email address, birthdate, workplace or school location, and phone number – all useful details for the aspiring identity thief.
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While there are certainly some novel uses for RFID technology out there (like studying the secret life of bees), RFID systems are increasingly being used for the more practical purposes of improving productivity and enhancing security.
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We know you didn’t watch the Oscars last weekend. Neither did we. And according to the latest figures from the Nielsen Company, neither did many viewers. Nielsen has been tracking the habits of TV viewers for decades now, and their research figures prominently in the business decisions made by television and advertising industry heads.
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Today is an important day for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
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BBC Radio 4 has a series of radio documentaries on Britain’s control rooms and surveillance systems…with a twist. In “Invisible People”, urban historian Joe Kerr interviews the people who work in these control centres about their jobs, tapping into the human side of Britain’s surveillance society.
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Last Saturday, the French newspaper La Presse published an article about the Nexus program. The article, written by Jean-Philippe Brunet from Ogilvy Renault, highlights the advantages of the program; in particular, its capacity to save travelers some time.
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We’ve blogged here before about the burgeoning data portability movement. The appealing aspect of data portability is that it would make it easy for us to essentially copy and paste our personal information from one place into a new place.
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Two weeks ago, the provincial government of British Columbia announced that it would be making enhanced driver’s licences (EDLs) available to eligible B.C. residents. These licences – a first in Canada – would be recognized as an alternative to a passport at the Canada-U.S. border.
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Today, we issued a news release celebrating Data Privacy Day, an initiative of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. In that release we made the assertion that “We have seen a proliferation of identity theft and spam as well as a tripling of reported data breaches around the world last year” – based on an analysis of data breaches first reported in USA Today, and similar reporting by the Associated Press.
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OK, be honest. When was the last time you read the full text of a website’s privacy policy?
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