#privacy concern

So T-mobile just called my husband’s phone, and as it was late at night, he didn’t answer. After the ringing stopped, we heard a mechanical noise, and both went silent after we heard a “Hello?” On the other end of the line. He proceeded to talk to the agent on the other line, but both of us were confused after the call ended. Neither of us pressed accept call and the phone wasn’t near us.

*that's where all the silliness is

With newer and newer technologies emerging the demand for researches has risen substantially and the studies for these technologies are just cherry on the cake since they provide a detailed analysis of what goes where and why is it there.

Duck Duck Go, a privacy-focused online search engine, recently surveyed the general public's view on the importance of privacy on the internet and published a study. The results indicated that people care about the amount of information being collected about them online, and many respondents even claimed they have taken action to better protect their personal data. According to the DuckDuckGo survey, which involved a random sample of 1,114 Americans aged 18 and older, nearly 80% of respondents reported having adjusted their privacy settings or reduced their use of social media in the past year for privacy concerns. Additionally, almost a quarter of those surveyed claimed they had deleted or deactivated social media accounts due to privacy concerns and rising data issues and data theft.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=596tbMGax48)

States confront digital life after death

TOKYO: When you die, what transpires to your online accounts? If you’re like most Americans, you probably haven’t considered the issue, much less prepared for it. But states have been diligent legislating the fate of virtual assets in recent years, pitting lawmakers and technology companies against one another in a war over whether your digital afterlife should be kept private.

Google If your…

One of the greatest discoveries made by spammers is web bugs.  Most of you have heard about cookies and know how to avoid or delete them, but what do you know about web bugs?  Well, they are a form of spyware and are very efficient in what they do:  tracking your every move.  When a spammer places a web bug into one of his e-mails, he will be able to tell exactly when you opened that e-mail, and if the e-mail address he has for you is valid.  The scary part is that you will not even know you’re being tracked by these web bugs.  If you think you’re safe from this tracking, you are wrong.

Even if you don’t open any e-mail unless you know who it’s from, you are still at risk.  Besides spammers, Internet marketers make use of the advantages of web bugs.  Did you ever notice the ads for items that you shopped for popping up when you open your browser?  That is because there were web bugs placed in a web site you visited. 

There is a difference between cookies and web bugs.  Browsers are able to reject cookies, but web bugs are generated as a Graphic Interchange Format (GIF).  Because GIFs are so frequently used all over the Internet, browsers will normally just accept them.  Anyone familiar with GIFs knows that they are images, so how is it that they’re not visible in e-mail and web sites?  Spammers and marketers are very shrewd when it comes to web bugs.  Spammers insert a tiny GIF, no larger than 1 X 1 pixels into their e-mails.  Marketers “hide” their web bugs right in the web site’s logo.  Since the GIF is disguised as a color in the background, you could look for it and still not see it. 

Have you ever sent or received an e-greeting card?  This is becoming common practice for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.  It’s so much simpler than going out to buy the card, then running to the post office to mail it.  When you send an e-greeting card, you are asked if you want to be notified when the recipient sees it.  Most people agree to this because they want to make sure it was “delivered”.  Web bugs are then set into action and will notify you about the receipt of your e-greeting card.

What really has privacy advocates up in arms about web bugs is the amount of personal information that is gathered.  Putting all of this information in a spammer’s hands could be very risky.  Think about it; a simple web bug will let the spammer know your IP address, the exact URL the web bug was attached to, when that web site was opened and what time it was opened.  In other words, your Internet activities are being monitored by teeny little stalkers. 

Privacy advocates are most concerned about the fact that web bugs are placed on web sites, tracking your Internet travels, when you never consented to this tracking.  You also were never aware of it.  The marketers that place the web bugs do not have to follow the web site’s privacy policy because they are third parties.  The terms of the privacy policy doesn’t apply to them, so there is nothing that you can do, because there was no violation.