mass distraction Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? - Stephen Marche Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, best known for her role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, would have been 83 last August, but nobody knows exactly how old she was when she died. According to the Los Angeles coroner’s report, she lay dead for the better part of a year before a neighbor and fellow actress, a woman named Susan Savage, noticed cobwebs and yellowing letters in her mailbox, reached through a broken window to unlock the door, and pushed her way through the piles of junk mail and mounds of clothing that barricaded the house. Upstairs, she found Vickers’s body, mummified, near a heater that was still running. Her computer was on too, its glow permeating the empty space. The Los Angeles Times posted a story headlined “Mummified Body of Former Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers Found in Her Benedict Canyon Home,” which quickly went viral. Also see: Live Chat With Stephen Marche The author will be online at 3 p.m.
Five Hidden Dangers of Facebook A Facebook login page is seen on a computer screen in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Thursday, August 27, 2009. Facebook is agreeing to give users more control over their information in response to concerns raised by Canadian privacy officials. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld) AP Photo/Adrian Wyld Facebook claims it has 400 million users. Not according to Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online. She says your privacy may be at far greater risk of being violated than you know when you log onto Facebook, due to security gaffes or marketing efforts by the company. Facebook came under fire this week, when 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, charging that the site, among other things, manipulates privacy settings to make users' personal information available for commercial use. In two words, asserts Goodchild - not very. • Your information is being shared with third parties No.
Online gambling a bigger risk than you think: Column Online gambling might be coming to a computer near you, and while it may seem like the only risk is on the player, the FBI fears it will be used by terrorists and organized crime rings to launder money. In a September 2013 letter to Congress, the FBI warned that while many industries are vulnerable to money laundering, Internet gambling goes a step further by providing an anonymous forum for bad actors to move money undetected: "Online gambling, therefore, may provide more opportunities for criminals to launder illicit proceeds with increased anonymity. Individuals may use a wide array of mechanisms to conceal their physical location, or give the appearance of operating in a different jurisdiction, when accessing a website." So, could innocent Americans find themselves gambling with dangerous criminals or terrorists and unknowingly help them move money? In New Jersey alone, which just legalized Internet gambling two months ago, the number of accounts has already reached nearly 150,000.