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Tweet from David_Risney

2016 Jan 27, 10:28
Identify coder from binary based on code style. https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/aylin/when-coding-style-survives-compilation-de-anonymizing-programmers-from-executable-binaries/ … Following company style guidelines is now a privacy issue.
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Guardian - Secrets, lies and Snowden’s email: why I was...

2014 May 21, 2:11


Guardian - Secrets, lies and Snowden’s email: why I was forced to shut down Lavabit

"For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don’t have the right to much privacy in the first place"

PermalinkCommentslaw legal encryption technical

In Depth Review: New NSA Documents Expose How Americans Can Be Spied on Without A Warrant

2013 Jun 21, 10:43

What It All Means: All Your Communications are Belong to U.S. In sum, if you use encryption they’ll keep your data forever. If you use Tor, they’ll keep your data for at least five years. If an American talks with someone outside the US, they’ll keep your data for five years. If you’re talking to your attorney, you don’t have any sense of privacy. And the NSA can hand over you information to the FBI for evidence of any crime, not just terrorism. All without a warrant or even a specific FISA order.

Not sure if this is saying all Tor data is collected or saying if someone uses Tor then start collecting that someone’s communication.

PermalinkCommentstechnical legal tor nsa eff spying security privacy

Visitor Tracking Without Cookies (or How To Abuse HTTP 301s) (scatmania.org)

2012 Nov 11, 1:26

Moral: laws should cover behavior not specific technologies. The implementation can change, laws shouldn’t take such dependencies.

PermalinkCommentshttp law legal technical 301 cookie privacy

Privacy through Obscurity

2012 Mar 9, 3:30

With Facebook changing its privacy policy and settings so frequently and just generally the huge amount of social sites out there, for many of us it is far too late to ensure our name doesn't show up with unfortunate results in web searches. Information is too easily copyable and archive-able to make removing these results a viable option, so clearly the solution is to create more data.

Create fake profiles on Facebook using your name but with a different photo, different date of birth, and different hometown. Create enough doppelgangers to add noise to the search results for your name. And have them share embarrassing stories on their blogs. The goal is to ensure that the din of your alternates drowns out anything embarrassing showing up for you.

Although it will look suspicious if you're the only name on Google with such chaff. So clearly you must also do this for your friends and family. Really you'll be doing them a favor.

PermalinkCommentstechnical facebook stupid internet privacy

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did (forbes.com)

2012 Feb 17, 12:17

What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.

“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”

PermalinkCommentsad target pregnancy humor privacy

I Know What You Downloaded on BitTorrent… (torrentfreak.com)

2011 Dec 10, 6:49

Public site that tracks who (by IP address) downloads what and lets anyone view this.

PermalinkCommentsprivacy torrent technical

Sprint loaded spyware on its Android phones

2011 Nov 30, 4:22

“TechCrunch and others are reporting that a program called “Carrier IQ” that comes pre-installed on Sprint phones has some pretty amazing spyware capabilities, right down to keylogging everything you do on the phone.”

PermalinkCommentstechnical cell-phone privacy security

LulzSec manifesto: "We screw each other over for a jolt of satisfaction"

2011 Jun 20, 2:09"Why did the hackers at Lulz Security ("LulzSec") invade Sony Pictures websites, take down cia.gov, and release 60,000+ e-mail addresses and passwords? For the lulz, of course—but what might look lulzy to one person could certainly enrage another. In honor of its 1,000th tweet, the witty wankers of LulzSec released a manifesto of sorts, defending their actions to the angry Internets."PermalinkCommentsinternet security privacy hack technical

Why We Need An Open Wireless Movement | Electronic Frontier Foundation

2011 Apr 27, 2:23"The gradual disappearance of open wireless networks is a tragedy of the commons, with a confusing twist of privacy and security debate. This essay explains why the progressive locking of wireless networks is harmful — for convenience, for privacy and for efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum."PermalinkCommentslaw eff wireless internet technical privacy security

Internet probe can track you down to within 690 metres - tech - 05 April 2011 - New Scientist

2011 Apr 8, 2:07"On average their method gets to within 690 metres of the target and can be as close as 100 metres – good enough to identify the target computer's location to within a few streets.", "When a landmark machine and the target computer have shared a router, the researchers can compare how long a packet takes to reach each machine from the router; converted into an estimate of distance, this time difference narrows the search down further."PermalinkCommentstechnical internet privacy geo geolocation security

Liminal Existence: Private Webhooks. Private Feeds.

2011 Mar 29, 2:52PermalinkCommentsreference privacy twitter technical feed

BBC News - Polar bears get the better of spy cameras

2011 Mar 10, 6:14Polar bears destroy hiddern cameras (filming them for Science!) It is a well known fact that polar bears are very protective of their rights to privacy.
PermalinkCommentsvideo science nature animals bbc humor

Securely Overwrite Files with a Built-in Command Line Trick

2010 Jun 25, 2:58"... all you need to do is specify the /W switch and the file or folder you want to overwrite—after you have already deleted it. cipher /W:C:\Path\To\Folder"PermalinkCommentstechnical cmd privacy security windows cipher delete

Android App Aims to Allow Wiretap-Proof Cell Phone Calls « The Firewall - Forbes.com

2010 May 27, 8:53
PermalinkCommentsandroid cellphone security encryption privacy cryptography technical google

Senators call for end to anonymous, prepaid cell phones

2010 May 27, 8:52Time to stock up on prepaid anonymous cell phones before its too late! Or just use the call encryption Android application...PermalinkCommentsprivacy security cellphone anonymous politics government technical

Schneier on Security: Alerting Users that Applications are Using Cameras, Microphones, Etc.

2010 May 24, 6:26"What You See is What They Get: Protecting users from unwanted use of microphones, cameras, and other sensors," by Jon Howell and Stuart Schechter.

"We introduce the sensor-access widget, a graphical user interface element that resides within an application's display. The widget provides an animated representation of the personal data being collected by its corresponding sensor, calling attention to the application's attempt to collect the data."

Not sure how well that scales...PermalinkCommentstechnical security privacy research

Feasibility and Real-World Implications of Web Browser

2010 May 23, 4:32"The ability to detect visitors' browsing history requires just a few lines of code. Armed with a list of websites to check for, a malicious webmaster can scan over 25 thousand links per second (1.5 million links per minute) in almost every recent browser."PermalinkCommentstechnical privacy security web browser

FBJS - Facebook Developer Wiki

2010 May 6, 7:25Another subset of javascript and DOM access to make a sandbox: "FBJS is Facebook's solution for developers who want to use JavaScript in their Facebook applications. We built FBJS to empower developers with all the functionality they need, and to protect our users' privacy at the same time."PermalinkCommentssandbox web browser facebook html javascript technical security web-sandbox

What data does Facebook publish about you? - Boing Boing

2010 Apr 26, 3:03"Find out what personal data Facebook publishes about people by entering their Facebook username here: zesty.ca/facebook."PermalinkCommentsfacebook privacy technical
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