Want to avoid getting mugged? Buy an Android phone – or even better yet, a Blackberry. No, they don’t have any crazy criminal-prevention apps or burglar whistles built in; thieves just don’t want them. Or at least one pair of thieves in Manhattan don’t want them. Apparently, two robbers have been accosting Columbia University students for their iPhones. No other phone will do! The crooks even let one victim keep a perfectly good Droid, police say.
What happened to a delivery truck carrying a videogame shipment in France over the weekend was so brazen and wild that it could have qualified as a game level. In this case, the action was real as a truck traveling in Créteil, south Paris, was rammed by a car on Saturday as part of an organized accident that involved masked men, tear gas, and the theft of 6,000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
When geeks get ahold of a 3D printer, they immediately start drooling over the prospect of custom-made Warhammer figures and replica BFGs. When crooked geeks get ahold of a 3D printer, they apparently start scheming up ways to bilk normal folks out of their money. Federal prosecutors say a ring of four individuals did just that when they used the nifty devices to create realistic-looking ATM skimmers to steal the debit card info – and soon thereafter, money – of Texas citizens.
You might not have heard of Airbnb, a feisty young startup out of San Francisco that lets users book lodging in the vacant homes of other Airbnb users, and rent out their own homes while they are away. The entire process is handeled by Airbnb, not directly by the users. In recent weeks, a firestorm of bad PR has hit Airbnb as a woman, blogging under the pseudonym EJ told the tale of how an Airbnb guest robbed and vandalized her home. In an attempt to diffuse the situation, Airbnb has now offered an unconditional apology and a $50,000 insurance guarantee, but not after a few missteps.
Hey bad guys, here's a news flash: unless you're Robin hood – and you're not – rubbing your fugitive status in the face of law enforcement doesn't make you cool, it only makes you stupid. Cracking jokes on social media networks may draw some traffic to your Twitter feed, but it also draws cops like white on rice. Victor Burgos is the newest member of the Dumbest Criminals club after using Facebook to taunt NYC police with his location.
Bitcoin is a new digital currency traded over p2p connections that is essentially untraceable and not connected to any bank. This has made it a favorite of the tech-literate crowd, but two US Senators are looking to crack down on Bitcoin after reports that it is being used to buy illegal drugs online. 
Log on to your Mom's Netflix account, get thrown in jail. Sounds silly, right? Not if you live in Tennessee. State lawmakers just passed a bill that makes it illegal to use somebody else's login for a paid Internet service like Netflix or Rhapsody. Did your computer automatically sign in to your buddy's premium Pandora account because he was screwing around on your PC earlier? You just crossed The Man! Say hello to Big Bubba for us.
Amidst the fallout from the PlayStation Network hack, Sony claimed yesterday that the Internet vigilante group Anonymous was responsible for the attack. But today the well-known hacktivist group denied any involvement with the theft of credit card numbers. The statement is carefully worded, though. Could there be more to this?
Sony has once again commented on the PSN outage and hacking incident. But this time we got a little more technical information than previous disclosures offered. Contrary to past reports, Sony claims that passwords were not stored in plain text, or in any easily accessible form. They were not encrypted, but were rather "transformed using a cryptographic hash function." Well, it's better than nothing. Connect with MaximumPC
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