Privacy & data protection

People in English-speaking countries are targeted for identity fraud at twice the rate of many Europeans, according to a new study released by PayPal on Wednesday.

Ten percent of online shoppers in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada--not-surprisingly, places with high percentages of e-commerce transactions--reported being victims of identity fraud, compared with only 5 percent in France, Germany and Spain, the study conducted by Ipsos found.

The Germans had the lowest rate of identity fraud of the countries, with 3 percent reporting problems.

Meanwhile, the Germans were also found to be more cautious with their passwords. Only about … Read more

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation to a number of companies about the future of endpoint security. During this presentation, I had the opportunity to ask these folks a number of questions about their IT infrastructure and their plans for it.

There were only about 20 organizations represented, so this was far from a statistically significant research project. Nevertheless, there were some interesting trends:

1. Only one of the organizations was upgrading its endpoint to Vista. It turns out that the one company is a Microsoft business partner so it has to do so. Others said they have … Read more

Despite a down day for the broader markets Friday, a handful of tech stocks swam against the tide, posting modest single-digit gains.

Google, Symantec, and eBay were just some of the tech companies to finish the day in the black. The CNET Tech Index was down a modest 1.59 points to end the day at 1,185.55.

Google closed up 5.53 percent to $372.54 a share, which comes as little surprise considering the tech titan posted stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings results on Thursday. And on Friday, a number of analysts released largely positive comments on the quarter, … Read more

Regardless of whether you favor Barack Obama or John McCain, you have to admit that the next president will inherit a monumental mess.

Each candidate has been scrambling to explain how he plans to right the financial ship, reign in growing health-care costs, improve education, and balance the budget. Yikes!

As if this wasn't enough, the new president and Congress also have an obligation to figure out how to proceed with a strategic plan for IT and information security.

Now I understand that economic, social, and national security issues should have precedence, but the fact is that the federal … Read more

You click OK on a message while surfing the Internet and suddenly your computer is full of malicious software and viruses. That's bad. What could be worse worse, however, is when your brand new computer comes preloaded with malicious software.

Tuesday, according to ChinaTechNews.com, Asus announced a recall of it's Asus Eee Box PCs that it had sold in Japan because it was shipped with a virus.

The computers had a file called recycled.exe, residing on the D drive. Once executed, the file would copy itself to other drives, including USB drives, and install malicious software … Read more

The world's largest quantum encrypted network has been unveiled in Vienna, Austria, providing a glimpse of how data could be securely transmitted in the future.

The network is the result of more than four years of work, with 41 organizations from 12 countries working to integrate quantum cryptography into a modern business network.

The project has been overseen by the European Union-sponsored SECOQC (Development of a Global Network for Secure Communication Based on Quantum Cryptography).

Quantum cryptography is a technique of sending information in a way that makes it impossible for people to intercept without corrupting the information in … Read more

There was an interesting article recently in The New York Times about getting locked out of a Gmail account.

In August, blogger Alan Shimel of StillSecure wrote about his problems regaining access to a Yahoo e-mail account. Suffice it to say that if someone learns your Web mail password, it's a very difficult situation--one that may not end well.

For one thing, the Web mail provider may not know enough about you to determine the true account owner. Worse still, anyone using a free Web mail account from Google (Gmail), Yahoo, or Microsoft (Hotmail) can't expect to talk … Read more

WASHINGTON--The federal government is trying to find better ways to standardize and coordinate personal information about American citizens that is currently spread across thousands of databases, according to a White House official.

There are more than 3,000 programs or databases in the federal government that hold personal information--Social Security numbers, addresses, fingerprints, and so on--yet the government is only beginning to develop a plan for collecting, protecting, and using such information.

"You have a lot of duplication of data" among various agencies, said Duane Blackburn, a policy analyst in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. … Read more

WASHINGTON--Is the idea of widespread biometric data collection still too spooky to win over the American public?

At some level, it's already becoming commonplace: California and some other states demand fingerprints from driver's license holders. The Verified Identity Pass program includes iris scans, as does the U.K's border control system. And prisoners have their blood forcibly drawn for a DNA sample.

But more widespread use of biometrics, especially by the government, raises substantial privacy concerns that may alarm many Americans and prove difficult to resolve, panelists at a conference here said Tuesday.

"How would I … Read more