Category: Privacy

  • You can never rely on encryption

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    Tom Raftery
    in ,

    Like most people in Ireland I listened to the story of how the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) had a laptop stolen in New York with the details of 171,000 blood donors on it, not least because, as a blood donor, there is a good chance some of my data is involved. The IBTS has…

  • 23AndMe? I don't think so!

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    Another one of the more interesting presentations at the DLD Conference was the sales presentation given by Esther Dyson, Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey. I call it a sales presentation because the 3 speakers in that session were all board members of 23andMe and they spoke the entire time about 23andMe’s product offering – your…

  • Data Portability

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    With the rising interest in, and use of Social Networks (FaceBook, Plaxo et al) there is growing unease in what those sites are doing with your data, never mind the inconvenience of uploading all your data every time you join a new site. Enter Dataportability.org a site whose philosophy is: As users, our identity, photos,…

  • BT Broadband users can be hacked!

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    Tom Raftery
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    James Galvin posted a couple of weeks ago about a recently published exploit which made hacking Eircom’s wireless routers trivial. As Eircom are the largest provider of residential broadband in Ireland, this is potentially a big deal. As Joe Drumgoole commented at the time: they have inadvertently created Ireland’s largest free WIFI network. Good man…

  • Throw away the key!

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    Tom Raftery
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    I’m delighted to see that Bill Lockyer, California’s attorney general has filed felony criminal charges against former HP Chair Patricia Dunn and four others for their spying on fellow board members and on journalists. The back story to this is that HP were concerned about leaks to the press from HP’s board meetings. An investigation…

  • AOL axes data leakers

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    Tom Raftery
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    I mentioned the AOL and user data cock-up a couple of weeks back. Now, according to a story on CNET today, 2 people have been left go from AOL and CTO Maureen Govern has resigned as a result. For the people whose data was leaked, many of whom were readily identifiable, this will be cold…