The German government warned job-seekers Friday to avoid posting potentially compromising pictures or remarks on social networking sites such as Facebook, citing a study about their use by employers. Consumer affairs minister Ilse Aigner “calls on citizens who use the Internet often to think about what they put online,” a spokeswoman for her ministry told…
ISP criticised for distributing the same password to all new users with no firm instruction to change it
A European ISP has admitted that all new subscribers are given the same password. The Dutch branch of Tele2 claimed that when a new subscriber signs up, they can choose a login or are assigned one and they are then sent a letter by Tele2 with their login name, password and the date their new…
Has there been a failure of anonymization?
Paul Ohm recently put out an article where he makes the dramatic claim that de-identification has failed (see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006). I have heard that argument before and the argument’s primary weakness is amplified in this article – therefore I feel compelled to comment. Paul Ohm’s argument about the failure of anonymization is based on evidence that…
Do DNA ‘prints’ invade privacy?
Being fingerprinted upon arrest is so commonplace, few people think twice about it. But what if the arresting agency wanted to take DNA? And run it against an index of unsolved crimes? And then store it in a database for eternity? Over the past several years, DNA collection has become more common, and it’s regularly…