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Privacy & Data Breaches

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Former Googler Launches Disconnect, Browser Extension That Disables Third Party Data Tracking. You remember Facebook Disconnect, the browser extension that allowed you to remove Facebook Connect functionality from websites? After 50K active users in two weeks and hitting the top 10 Google Chrome extensions, creator Brian Kennish has left his job at Google to focus on building Disconnect, a browser extension for Chrome and Rockmelt that disables multiple third party data tracking while browsing. In the same vein as Facebook Disconnect, Disconnect prevents major third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo from gathering information (cookies) about the pages you go to and the searches you do. Says Kennish: “I called it quits at Google three weeks ago so I could help web users better understand the data they’re unintentionally sharing and develop tools that make it simple for them to control this data (I’ve been referring to this effort as Web 2.1, a privacy patch for the web).”

Kennish has a Disconnect for Firefox and Safari in the works. Bank Information | Tax US | Switz History | USB. Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. NEW YORK — It’s the inner sanctum of Swiss banking — the heavily-guarded nexus between numbered Swiss bank accounts and their owners' good names — and it’s the rare American that is allowed entry. Bradley Birkenfeld was one of the few Americans who held the keys to the kingdom. A Boston-born, high-flying, cross-border banker at Switzerland’s premier financial institution, UBS, he had access to the kind of secret account information that American law enforcement had only dreamed of through all the decades that terrorists, dictators, arms dealers, mafia dons and wealthy tax cheats had hidden behind the fortress of secrecy that Swiss banking promised. Subterranean bomb-proof vaults and state-of-the-art security systems are the superficial trappings of Swiss banking and its culture of secrecy, but the cornerstone of protection for its clients is the numbered account system that offers all but foolproof privacy.

Or so they thought. Cyber Crooks Leave Traditional Bank Robbers in the Dust — Krebs. Organized cyber criminals stole more than $25 million from small to mid-sized businesses in brazen e-banking heists in the 3rd quarter of 2009 alone, federal regulators said last week. In contrast, traditional stick-up artists hauled less than $9.5 million out of U.S. banks over that same time period last year. Speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco last week, David Nelson, an examination specialist with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), said online banking attacks against small businesses of the sort I have chronicled countless times over the past year netted thieves $25 million between July and September of 2009. I wondered how that stacked up against real-life bank robbers here in the U.S., so I had a look at the FBI‘s published bank crime statistics for that same time period last year.

Indeed, the FBI’s bank crime stats are extraordinarily detailed. What do we get about e-crime statistics from the federal government? Praetorian Prefect | Intel Breach Reveals Passport Information. Prefect | Dec 22, 2009 | 4 comments Unu, an active Romanian hacker (see hacker vs. cracker) who largely discloses SQL injection web application vulnerabilities on major sites including recently two Kaspersky international properties and a Wall Street Journal conference site has demonstrated an attack on an Intel web property, This site handles online registrations for channel partner events and that has been demonstrated to have a SQL injection vulnerability that outputs a database table appearing to contain personally identifiable information (PII).

What the Site Normally Looks Like While the site is down, we can still grab captures of what it looks like. The screenshot below shows the site in active use for events occurring between 10/22/09 and 12/03/09, so the site is active: Channel Conference Technical Solutions Training Lite Login screen, Intel Channel Conference North America A Timing Problem The Attack load_file mysql> Finally. Federal judge gives preliminary approval to settlement over Coun. Cloud Computing Data Protection World Map. Security and privacy in cloud computing are hot topics, and everyone has a take on it. Cloud computing providers deliver their levels of security and privacy by their internal policies and procedures, but the rigidity of these policies are strongly influenced by government regulations. If the country within which a cloud computing provider resides or is registered has lax provisions on privacy, do not expect wonders in the protection of your hosted data - especially since such lax provisions may even be created to allow government agencies to gain access to hosted data.

Forrester research felt the pulse of things by investigating the regulatory frameworks of countries throughout the world. Here is a brief of the results of this research Country-specific regulations governing privacy and data protection vary greatly. You can investigate the map here. Oh, and USA just got a proverbial slap on the face by being classified in the same category with Colombia, Paraguay and Russian Federation.