Infidelity — There’s a map for that.
How Google might know what you did last summer -- even if you forgot.
Google Latitude is a service that allows users to see and share their location on a Google map live and in real-time. The service runs on most smart-phones, regardless of service provider, including Apple's iPhone, Windows Mobile, the Palm Pre, and, of course, Google's Android. Latitude relies on a combination of GPS, cellular tower triangulation, and wi-fi triangulation. Having brushed-up on the service for a recent National Public Radio (NPR) Interview, I have since considered Latitude one-part creepy, and two-parts cool. However, the creepy / cool ratio may be shifting.
This week Google introduced a new and improved Google Latitude -- with enhanced features like "Location History". With Location History Latitude users can go back in time retrace their footsteps, and even see where they stayed-put, and for how long. Kind of cool...yet, very creepy. But practical?
Imagine, for example, you're the owner of a Palm Pre on Sprint's 3G Now Network , having trouble remembering where your were when you told your spouse you were somewhere else? Now, there's a map for that!
But wait -- there's more! How about "Location Alerts"? Certainly, a application that would alert you when a particular individual, say a family member, has left work or school, would be very practical. After a while of being alerted every time someone is, or has arrived, exactly where you would expect them to be, however, could get old. So, Google's geniuses stepped it up a notch. According to Google, Latitude will learn user's patterns and behavior so that alerts can be issued when a person has strayed from their routine -- left at a different time, or arrived at a different place.
For example, if you decide to staycation with your mistress, you can receive a handy alert when your spouse leaves the office earlier than usual. Or, if traffic is particularly light, Latitude will let you know when it's time for a quick window-exit.
Best of all, when the jig is up, no one has to know, because -- for now -- Google is making all these free services available to you, and no one else... at least, without subpoena powers.
This is deception... on the Now Network.
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- Google Latitude Now Tracks Location History, Alerts You to Nearby Friends :: Mashable!
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- Google Latitude Lets Users Follow Their Own Footprints :: TechNewsWorld
The problem is, banks have too many humans.
What do you call the sacrifice of one person's privacy in an attempt to save the privacy of over 1300? If you're a bank, you call it collateral damage.
When I was a kid I earned my first paycheck passing out fliers for a neighbor who was starting a pool cleaning business. With my first $13 in hand, my grandfather took me to the a bank in walking distance to my home, got me a tour of the vault from the branch manager, a neat pouch to hold all my coin, a full explanation of the principals of savings and loans, and helped me open my very first savings account. Believe it or not, back then, all my account information was stored on a double-sided index card behind the teller.
Today, things are much more complicated. Gone are the index cards and passbooks, most of the employees, tellers and branches, a good deal of the service, interest-bearing accounts with only $13 in them, and a lot of the customers' money. Today, it's all computerized, and most banks even attach various penalties to discourage human contact.
I know an awful lot about electronic data systems, but I don't pretend to fully understand how the modern banking system works. Sometimes, I think I do--from a mechanical (as opposed to financial) perspective. But then something convinces me that I don't. For instance, you know how every so often your bank emails its customers' names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and loan information to Gmail? ... CONTINUE READING »
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- Bank Sends Email to Wrong Gmail User, Sues Google For His Identity :: Mashable!
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You Tweet, therefore: YOU ARE HERE.
How Twitter says they'll hide your location from twits with subpoenas.
Recently, Twitter announced that they would be adding geolocation features to their service, allowing users to embed their physical location in their Twitter feed. As not to alarm: Twitter has always maintained that this would be an opt-in feature. But, frankly, any web site you visit is privy to some information about your physical location by virtue of the IP address assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from a group of IP addresses reserved for your neighborhood. The logs kept by a web server, combined with a subpoena to the appropriate ISP, usually yield a street address for the subscriber assigned that IP address.
SmarterWare's Gina Trapani (formerly of Lifehacker.com) is attending the Twitter Conference in LA. She's posted updates explaining how Twitter plans to deploy this service and how they intend to protect its Twitter geolocation users from subpoenas. According to Gina, "Twitter will scrub geo-data stored in tweets more than 14 days old to avoid getting subpoena’d about a user’s location in the past. They will outright delete the location information from their database, not just anonymize." ... CONTINUE READING »
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“Blood in the Birdcage” (Forensics: You Decide, Discovery Channel)
One body. One suspect. Two theories. A laptop. A birdcage. A bloody crime scene. Two trials. Two hung juries. No convictions. One unsolved mystery.
From Investigation Discovery:
"When a beloved music professor -- David Stagg -- discovers the dead body of his long-time partner, Bill Jennings, he claims he's walked into the aftermath of a tragic suicide. But as investigators descend on the scene, they immediately realize that this reported suicide is clearly a homicide. Is it possible the professor is behind this vicious crime, or has he been falsely accused? The forensic experts on each side battle it out. Which side will you agree with?" (60 min. - First aired 9/14/2009 on Investigation Discovery / Discovery ID's "Forensics: You Decide)
Suicide letter, or coverup?
Friends from the couple's active social group were in total disbelief. Few could imagine David Stagg involved in the murder of his long-time partner. Forensic evidence was inconclusive. Though blood evidence was found throughout the crime scene, no blood or defensive wounds could be found on David Stagg. An unknown set of fingerprints were found at the scene. Computer evidence from Jennings' laptop showed--at least from Jennings' perspective--a tumultuous relationship. But, enough to justify a motive for murder?
There were also a series of suicidal emails and typed letters left by Jennings that charted a history of both love for Stagg, and deep emotional turmoil. And, one final letter--typed on April 24, 2004, the night of the murder--would become one of the most contested pieces of evidence that two juries would have to consider.
On one thing, both sides agreed: Bill Jennings did not take his own life. ... CONTINUE READING »
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Germany, you’ve been Punk’d!
You've been punked!!!
How German filmmakers hijacked part of California, stole its identity, and used it to scam an entire country.
I think I've finally figured out the origin of the expression, "If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you": Bluewater, California.
The "bridge" to which I refer crosses the Colorado River, and connects Bluewater, California with its sister-city, Bluewater, Arizona. According to the city's web site, downtown Bluewater offers a range of bars and restaurants where you can dine on seafood fished from local waters, get locally-grown produce from the Farmer's Market every Wednesday and Saturday, and enjoy summer poetry in the park.
Imagine the shock when KVPK7, Bluewater's own local news channel reported that the tiny city had become the target of an attempted suicide bombing ... CONTINUE READING »
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Twitter sends mixed messages
Source: PoeticPixel.info
Twitter's co-founder says your tweets belong to you. Now read the fine print.
For as long as there's been a World Wide Web, there has been debate surrounding the question, "Who owns what users post online?"
Adding fuel to the fire, popular sites like Facebook have written (and withdrawn,) controversial statements into their Terms of Service (ToS) that seemed to suggest that they were asserting ownership over users' content, including photographs, and it's users' "likeness and image". After a massive user outcry, and even some backlash, Facebook was forced to rewrite its TOS, and even allowed users to vote between two versions.
Now, in an apparent attempt to get in front of this kind of momentum, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog post that new changes to the company's ToS would assure that -- though Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" its user's Tweets -- "they are your tweets and they belong to you". ... CONTINUE READING »
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Let’s play $100 Password!
You probably won't find much sympathy for Elane Cioni. A mistress scorned, she's been convicted of hacking into the email account of her former-boss, the man with whom she was having an affair, and then his wife, his other girlfriends, and even his kids. (I suppose, that doesn't engender much sympathy for her main-target either.) But, you might be surprised to find out Cioni's not a very good hacker.
You might also be surprised to learn that there's a market for professional hacking and, similar to many legitimate professions, the jobs are going offshore. When it comes to password hacking, those who can, do. Those who can't, outsource. When Cioni wanted back into her boyfriend's life she turned to one of an increasing number of web sites with offers like this:
"Need to monitor your Child? Your Spouse? Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend? We Hack Passwords for $100 USD. We Crack all major web based emails. This include Hotmail, Yahoo! AOL and Gmail. We Provide Proofs Before payment." ... CONTINUE READING »
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Electronic privacy is for the birds.
Source: Wikipedia
In a match between Bird-brain vs. broadband, you might be surprised to see who wins.
An old friend of mine pointed out what sounded like an interesting story out of South Africa. Tired of slow download speeds, a South African call center pitted a racing pigeon against Telkom South Africa Ltd.’s ADSL data service to see which could move a 4GB file faster. In total it took just under three hours for the bird to fly approximately 50 miles--about 30 times faster than the ADSL service, which had only downloaded 4% of the file in the same time.
I'm afraid we're not really comparing apapane to apapane, or even apapane to ostriches. I doubt, for instance, that the pigeon would fair quite as well over, say, a 500 or 5000 mile "data run". ... CONTINUE READING »
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Taking a dump 21st Century style.
Gordon Bell (Source: Gizmodo)
Every time Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell takes a dump he learns something about himself. For instance, he know knows that he's visited 221,173 web sites in the last 8 years, and written or received 156,041 emails. He also knows how well his heart is pumping, how many miles he's walked, where he's been, and even with whom he's spoken and visited. In fact, from what most of us consider a waste product, Bell can even decipher how many songs he's listened to, and see pictures videos of the places he's been and the things he's seen.
Fantastic as this may sound, Bell is not the only person on earth who can do this. The same product is flushed from nearly every person every day in North America, and other industrialized nations. More significantly, while most of us are ignorant or deny the very possibility, the government and large corporations are secretly extracting much the same information from each of us that Bell collects himself. ... CONTINUE READING »
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