Social Networking Security — News

Caution: Should You Share Your Location on Facebook?

Facebook recently rolled out a number of changes to the social networking site. One of the changes eliminates the <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/238708/facebook_revamps_locationsharing_feature_in_places.html">concept of Facebook Places</a>, but instead incorporates location-aware updates at virtually every level of Facebook. You might want to think twice, though, before <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/209709/facebook_deals_bring_customers_to_your_facebook_place.html">broadcasting your location</a> to the anonymous masses online.

Tony Bradley | 30 Aug | Read more

Google+ Policy on Names Runs Afoul of Tech Writer

Google+ is taking its "<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/236531/naming_names_google_wrestles_with_anonymity.html?tk=rel_news">real names</a>" policy seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it threatened to suspend sex and tech writer Violet Blue's account. Google’s only problem is that Blue’s real name is Violet Blue.

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal | 24 Aug | Read more

OPINION: Is Google being evil?

Recently, I contended that "Freedom and privacy, in any meaningful sense, are dead" and discussed the two types of privacy, "factual" privacy, which concerns "static" data such as your age and cholesterol level, and "lifestream" privacy which is the realtime data about things such as where you go and who you talk to.

Mark Gibbs | 24 Aug | Read more

This Is No Time to Skimp on Security

Have you been paying attention? <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/topic/17/Security">Security</a> threats around the world have changed over the past few years. One of the fundamental differences is that the motives for security breaches have multiplied.

Scot Finnie | 22 Aug | Read more

'Related' Browser Add-On: Handy, But at Cost to Privacy

A nifty Google browser extension called "Google Related" makes finding associated Web content a snap, but for privacy-minded Web surfers the convenience will come with a hefty cost. The Chrome Web browser extension creates a navigation bar at the bottom of the browser, and as you roll your mouse cursor over the bar Google generates content relevant to what's on the page you're viewing.

John P. Mello Jr. | 18 Aug | Read more

Lessons learned from a recent Amazon outage

Another <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/681894/amazon-s-cloud-failed-how-can-your-cloud-be-better-">Amazon cloud-services outage</a> occurred on Sunday, August 7th in a Dublin, Ireland data center. This one occurred due to a lightning strike that hit a transformer near the Dublin data center. It led to an explosion and fire that knocked out all utility services thereby leading to a total data center outage. Amazon had its only European data center located there.

Gregory Machler | 16 Aug | Read more

Opinion: Breadth First Hacking

Recent publicity for online hacking groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec has seemed to show that nobody is immune from attack on the Internet. Once targeted, it seems that these groups are capable of breaching security systems and retrieving data, including identity information, from the most secure systems.

Robert Layton | 13 Aug | Read more