Man Facing Charges For Reading Wife's E-mail

A Michigan man is charged with felony computer misuse charges after using the family computer to view his wife's gmail account in order to verify her affair with another man. 

According to the Globe and Mail "Privacy law writer Frederick Lane tells the Detroit Free Press the law typically is used to prosecute identity theft and stealing trade secrets. He says he questions if a wife can expect privacy on a computer she shares with her husband."

Leon Walker who faces trial on the charge February 7th calls the case  a “miscarriage of justice.” 

It will certainly be interesting to see how the law interprets this one...

Yet Another Facebook Privacy Issue - Oops, We Did It Again!

Another high profile security issue at Facebook has Canada's privacy commissioner again raising the possibility of a probe into the company's treatment of confidential user information. 

"If applications covered by [privacy law] are disclosing personal information without consent, that's a significant concern to our office," the office of Jennifer Stoddart said in a statement Monday to CBC News.

"We are looking at the situation and evaluating the possibility of launching an investigation."

The breach discovered by a Wall Street Journal investigation, indicates that at least 10 of the most popular Facebook apps, including FarmVille, Mafia Wars, FrontierVille, and Texas HoldEm Poker, all by game developer Zynga, were found to be sending user ID numbers to at least 25 advertising, marketing and internet tracking companies.

hmmm, the highest traffic games sending data to advertisers and nobody at Facebook knew about it? Just saying!

Source: www.cbc.ca

Much Fuss Over Facebook File Being Torrented

A lot of press over the past 24 hours regarding a file that has been made available for download via torrent sites. The file contains the publicly viewable profile information of approximately 100 million Facebook users. Firstly let me say that I am not a huge Facebook (the company) fan, nor for that matter am I what you would call an avid user, but I do have a Facebook account and it does suit a particular purpose for me... mostly serving up feeds of this blog. I do think however that a great deal of hype is surrounding this story unnecessarily and it's probably got more to do with the number of users and the sensationalism that a number like that can generate when being tossed around.

A "security consultant," Ron Bowes, used a piece of code to scrape Facebook profiles, collecting publicly available data and published the file on the internet. His motive was apparently to highlight privacy issues according to the BBC. While Facebook has been the target of much criticism over their privacy policies in the past, this type of attention is probably doing more for Ron Bowes, and his motives should be called to question. The information that you've made public via Facebook is what helps others using the service to connect with you, and if you are truly concerned perhaps you might like to reconsider joining such networks in the first place, or at least tweak your profiles to reflect your concerns. Ignorance is an excuse and not a defense, read the terms of service, limit what you share to what you are comfortable with, and pay attention to the notifications from the service providers. Just my thoughts....

The Story That Won't Go Away - Zuckerberg Grilled Over Privacy Policy

The New York Times runs down the grilling of Mark Zuckerberg by veteran reporters at an on-stage interview at the D8 conference. Zuck apparently took off his trade mark hoodie during the interview apparently feeling the heat of the questioning. At 26 years of age it's got to be tough running one of the largest plays on the internet... but perhaps the heat will mature him in a hurry.  The Facebook founder is said to have looked uncomfortable during questioning and skirted around answers. “Maybe I’m in denial,” he said. “I think our goals haven’t really changed that much at all.” He then added: “I just think we are a lot closer to the beginning than the end. As companies get bigger people expect you to slow down and do less crazy stuff. I guess I hope we never do that.”

Facebook Making Divorce Lawyers Job Easy...

Let this be a lesson to braggarts and cheaters everywhere! It's not only potential employers who are checking your out online. According to CNN the first place that divorce lawyers are turning to in aid of their clients is Facebook. In the words of Ken Altshuler a lawyer from Maine, "Facebook is a great source of evidence," "It's absolutely solid evidence because he's the author of it. How do you deny that you put that on?"

I've got news for you Ken... it's not that hard to update the status of someone in your own household if you really want to, my kids are masters at it, and unless the dumb schmuck is stupid enough to leave photographic evidence I wouldn't count on it being "absolutely solid evidence". None the less this does, once again, highlight the fact that more people are paying attention to your social media updates than you might imagine and while I don't condone the actions of the cheating spouses, I do think that people need to realize the potential implications of what they post and/or at least be aware that nothing is truly secret in the world of social media. Even though it's a mighty big pool, you are bound to be found if someone is really looking, as you are truly putting your fate in your loosest lipped friend's hands :) 

Follow Up To Quit Facebook Day

The CBC has some interesting insight into the reaction to Quit Facebook Day. Apparently some 31,000 Twitter users vowed to quit FB with "Quit Facebook" being a trending topic yesterday. On the other hand Facebook  faithfuls poked fun at the notion with comments like "Today is 'Quit Facebook day' … Tomorrow is 'Oh shit I deleted my Facebook' day … And Wednesday is 'Create Facebook day.'" (I like this... very witty)

Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said last year that some of Facebooks's policies break Canadian federal privacy law. "One of the biggest concerns we raised was the over-sharing of users' personal information with third-party developers who create popular Facebook applications such as games and quizzes," Stoddart said at the time.

LinkedIn Attempts To Assure Users That It Does Not Face Privacy Issues Of Facebook

Speaking at the annual Mesh web conference in Toronto Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn's vice-president of international operations, tried to assure attendees that his company was very different from other social sites and did not face the same issues that Facebook is under fire for."It's not about your personal life or your social life, it's about your professional engagement and success," Rajan said, and  "That, by its very nature, helps us differentiate ourselves from other social networks."

Rajan also eluded to the fact that his companies users are more sophisticated and perhaps more educated and mature than say Facebook's users. "Everything you do on LinkedIn is tied to your professional identity and brand," Rajan said. "Nothing's anonymous. Because of that, people are pretty careful about what they say because they don't want to look uninformed." The average LinkedIn user is said to be 41 years of age with a household income of more than $100,000 per year.

I can go along with that... very different audience on LinkedIn, that's for sure.

Read more: CBC News 

MySpace Making Promises After Facebook Miss Step On Privacy

MySpace has indicated in a post to users that a "simplified" version of it's privacy settings will be rolled out in the next few weeks. The announcement comes in the wake of the much publicized changes to Facebook's privacy settings which has drawn the ire of user over privacy concerns.

"While MySpace at its core is about discovery, self expression and sharing, we understand people might want the option of limiting the sharing of their information to a select group of friends," says MySpace's co-president Mike Jones. "We respect our users' desires to balance sharing and privacy, and never push our users to an uncomfortable privacy position."

This may just be MySpace's lease on life... while many Facebook users are abandoning ship.

Source: cnet and MySpace

Facebook Privacy... SNAFU

Facebook has suffered a security bug just as many have questioned the companies new policies and how they relate to privacy concerns. It is being reported that the social networking site suffered from a bug yesterday which allowed users to view the private conversations of friends they were following. “While this breach appears to be relatively small, it’s inopportunely timed,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with Forrester Research. “It threatens to undermine what Facebook hopes to achieve with its network over the next few years, because users have to ask whether it is a platform worthy of their trust.” Fortunately for Facebook they do have 400 million users, the breach was fixed within hours, and most people only use the site to play farmville and will be oblivious to the breach anyway!

Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president for public policy had this to say in response to the problem,

“For a service that has grown as dramatically as we have grown, that now assists with more than 400 million people sharing billions of pieces of content with their friends and the institutions they care about, we think our track record for security and safety is unrivaled,” and “Are we perfect? Of course not.” 

I guess they've never really come out with any "do no evil" mantras, so, all's well... nothing to see here!


Source: NYTimes

Just What Is Facebook Sharing About You?

In case you haven't heard, Facebook has made some changes and it's got a lot of people worried about what information exactly is being shared about them, between Facebook and app developers through the new open-graph API? Thanks to a developer by the name of Ka-Ping Yee, there is now a simple tool that shows you everything that Facebook sends to any developer whose app plugs in to the new API. Simply feed the tool your user ID or user name, which can be found in your Facebook profile, Yee tells you how to find it, and you will be presented with the data that's collected and shared. It's worthy of a look...

Canadian Privacy Czar Gives Harsh Assessment Of Facebook

Facebook keeps personal information indefinitely after users deactivate their accounts, contrary to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, according to a report released Thursday by Canada's assistant privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham. 'Although Facebook provides information about privacy issues, it is often confusing or incomplete,' said Denham.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner's report found that Facebook continues to breach the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in four ways and it made recommendations to correct the problem. It found:

• Facebook doesn't have enough safeguards to prevent 950,000 third-party developers around the world from getting unauthorized access to users' personal information, nor does it ensure users have given "meaningful consent" to allow their personal information to be disclosed to the developers. Recommendation: Developers should only get the information needed to run the application. Users would have to specifically consent to the release of that information after being told why it is needed. Information about anyone other than the user would not be disclosed.
• Facebook keeps information from accounts deactivated by users indefinitely. Recommendation: Facebook should have a policy to delete the information after a reasonable length of time, and users should be informed of the policy.
• Facebook keeps the profiles of deceased users for "memorial purposes" but does not make this clear. Recommendation: Information about use for memorial purposes should be in Facebook's privacy policy.
• Facebook allows users to provide personal information about non-users without their consent. For example, it allows them to tag photos and videos of non-users with their names, and provide Facebook with their email addresses to invite them to join the site. It keeps the addresses indefinitely. Recommendation: Facebook should only keep non-users’ email addresses for a reasonable, specific length of time and should make its users aware that they need to seek consent of non-users before posting information about them.

Source: CBC

New Bill To Give Police Access To Personal Data Without Warrant

At a news conference in Ottawa yesterday, Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan announced new bills aimed at providing law enforcement virtually unrestricted access to information gathered by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) regarding their customers and their activities online.

According to this CBC article:

"One bill, announced by Van Loan, would require telecommunications and internet service providers to:

• Install and maintain "intercept-capable" equipment on their networks.
• Provide police with "timely access" to personal information about subscribers, including names, address and internet addresses, without the need for a warrant.

Van Loan said the bill won't provide new interception powers to police, but simply update the legal framework designed "in the era of the rotary telephone."

He noted that police can already get the authority to intercept communications, but the network is often incapable of allowing such interception."

In addition a second bill introduced would:

• Allow law enforcement officials to obtain transmission data that is sent or received via telephone or internet if authorized by a production order or warrant
• Require telecommunications companies to keep data related to specific communications or subscribers if that information is needed in an investigation and requested via a preservation order.
• Make it a criminal offence for two or more people to agree to or arrange child sexual exploitation by means of telecommunications.
• Modernize the system for tracking warrants.

I'm all for police getting the tools they need to combat crime, however, "without the need for a warrant." seems a little scary to me...

Google Street View Privacy Suit Thrown Out

A law suit by a Pittsburgh couple against Google for invasion of privacy over images of their home that appeared on Google Streetview has been thrown out by the court. Aaron and Christine Boring sued Google last April alleged that "significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests" by taking photos of their home from a road that was clearly marked as private. They claimed that the images caused them "mental suffering" and devalued their home. The U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania ruled however that the Borings "failed to state a claim under any count."

Source: Cnet

Google Ordered To Hand Over YouTube Logs To Viacom

Viacom has been awarded the rights to view YouTubes logs in order to prove its assertion that illegal content has greater appeal than that produced by amateurs. The logs in question contain the username of the YouTube user as well has their IP address. The court however denied Viacom's request for Google's search code. While the intent is not to know what "you" have watched specifically but rather how many people are watching copy righted materials vs. skateboarding dog videos, the potential is there for someone to link you to what you have viewed on the site. From a privacy perspective it's a little scarey! PCWorld.com article here.

Facebook Investigated By Canadian Regulator

The federal privacy commissioner, in Canada, has launched an investigation into Facebook after law students at the University of Ottawa complained that the site breaches Canadian law by disclosing personal information to advertisers prior to obtaining proper consent. "There's definitely some significant shortcomings with Facebook's privacy settings and with their ability to protect users," said Harley Finkelstein, one of the 4 students who initiated the complaint. The students believe that Facebook's practices are contrary to Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). "We've reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors - most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users," Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said Friday in an e-mail. "The complaint also misinterprets PIPEDA in a manner that would effectively forbid voluntary online sharing of information." For the governments part "We take all complaints very seriously," said Anne-Marie Hayden, spokeswoman for the federal privacy commissioner's office. "We have no reason to believe that Facebook will not be co-operative."