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Survey Says: 88% of IT Professionals Would Steal Your Data

Paul Lilly — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:18:38 -0500

In the end, it might be easier keeping a problematic IT administrator on board than to let him go. Top level execs take note - according to a new survey, which pinged 300 IT administrators still with a job, a staggering 88 percent admitted they would steal company secrets if they were laid off.

The information IT professionals not-yet-scorned said they'd take include the CEO's passwords, the customer database, R&D plans, financial reports, M&A plans, and the company's list of privileged passwords. And when it comes to that last one, administrators don't even need to be laid off in order to start poking around. More than a third of those surveyed claimed to have used privileged passwords to snoop on the network, look up salaries, and peek at other personnel details assumed to be private.

"Our advice is secure the most privileged data, and routinely change and manage them, so that if an employee's contract is terminated, whether sacked or made redundant, they can't maliciously play havoc inside the network or vindictively steal data for competitive or financial gain," said Udi Mokady, chief executive of security firm Cyber-Ark.

Sound advice, but is it futile?

Congressman Wants Web Tracking to be Opt-In Only

Paul Lilly — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:48:43 -0500

From smart displays capable of identifying its viewers to a recent push for more rich media ads, privacy seems to be taking a backseat to ad revenue. But while companies toy with ways to make more money through online ads, at least one person in Congress wants to make sure your rights aren't getting trampled in the process.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass) has seen enough and believes online monitoring services working on behalf of the advertising community should make their intentions clear and be required to obtain approval before tracking your online activities. He's not talking about innocent cookies, but deep packet inspection (DPI) technologies.

"First, there is a distinction in the detail, type, and amount of data collected," Markey said. "As opposed to individual websites that know certain information about visitors to its websites and affiliates, deep packet inspection technologies can indicate every website a user visits and much more about a person's web use," he said.

Not everyone shares Markey's same concerns. Robert Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, claims his company doesn't run afoul of privacy rights and translates visitor's IP addresses it gathers into anonymous identifiers. Furthermore, Dykes claims an opt-in program would cause "major harm" to the current infrastructure of the internet, which thrives on advertising revenue.

Does Dkyes have a point, or is markey right on the money?

Google and Viacom Reach Deal to Keep User Info Private

Chris Moody — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:52:52 -0500

It seems that either Viacom came to their senses about making Google turn over user data on YouTube, or they didn’t like the bad press that their suit was generating. They have reached a deal to protect the privacy YouTube watchers everywhere and will allow Google to anonymize YouTube user data.

Previously Viacom succeeded in getting Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order Google to turn over as evidence a database what videos users watch, the users' computer addresses, and their usernames. Many groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the order "threatens to expose deeply private information" and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act. Whether the Act, created when VCRs were high tech, could be applied to YouTube was debatable. Viacom and Google’s deal avoids the legal snarl all together.

If you are into deciphering legalese (and we can assume you are into self flagellation too) you can read the details here.

Google Asks Viacom to Respect User Privacy

Chris Moody — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:13:51 -0500

Following up from a previous post, Google is asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and let them to anonymize the logs before handling them over to Viacom under the court order. “We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” Google said.

Efluxmedia.com says that Viacom had said in a New York Times interview, “The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisors who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube.”

So the data is going to go to third parties. Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better about user privacy. We can hope that there will be a legal challenge mounted in the next few days against releasing user data unfiltered to Viacom.

Ruling to Expose Your YouTube Viewing Habits

Chris Moody — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:08:06 -0500

Have you been uploading copyright protected content on YouTube? Have you even been looking at it? Viacom wants to know, and a Judge has ruled in the recent Viacom v. Google case that Google has to turn over “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website”.

Kurt Opsahl with the Electronic Frontier Foundation disagrees with the courts ruling arguing that the court, “erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users”. The VPPA was passed in 1988 as a result of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history being published during his Supreme Court nomination.

I agree with Opsahl, someone’s YouTube history should be just as private as their video rental history. Privacy is harder and harder to maintain in a world where technology is outstripping existing laws, which often must be judged by people with little experience in technology. We certainly don’t need which version of Star Wars Kid we were watching to be available for anyone to look at, or for companies to go trolling for lawsuits in data. Where do you come down on the issue?

Why Immunity Matters: What Could Be Behind AT&T's Bizarre Proposal to Filter the Internet

Erin Simon — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:07:05 -0600

Filtering its network for copyright infringement could expose AT&T to enormous liability. Why would the telecom be proposing to do just that?

Pretty Good Privacy is Pretty Legally Protected

Erin Simon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:17:00 -0600

The legal right not to turn over your encryption password.

New Year in Spyware

Erin Simon — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:13:07 -0600

Sears adds surreptitious tracking software to its catalogue