Reunion.com is using a deceptive marketing strategy where they pretend to be someone you know who is inviting you to Reunion. If you go to Reunion.com to see who it is, sign up, and make the horrible gross mistake of giving them your e-mail address password, they will automatically send out false e-mails to all the people in your contact list.
Two things are going horribly wrong here. One is that Reunion.com is using false and deceptive practices and is doing nothing less than what a virus or hacker would do. I hope the hammer of law hits them hard and fast
The second thing is that people somehow believe it's ok to give up their e-mail address password which is a huge no no.
TJX has settled under charges that they had insufficient computer security protecting their systems, but the only thing TJX must do under the settlement is upgrade their security. Woo.
And this:
"By now, the message should be clear: companies that collect sensitive consumer information have a responsibility to keep it secure," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. "Information security is a priority for the FTC, as it should be for every business in America."
B.S.. Here's a clear message for you Chairwoman Platt Majoras, those words coming out of your mouth are nothing but hipocrasy.
Josh discovered a mysterious $13 fee on his parents' phone bill, and as he tracked down the source of the bogus charge, he learned a lot about cramming. The FCC describes it as "the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill" by third party companies, who bank on you being too confused/distracted/annoyed by your hard-to-read bill to notice.
Can and would they use your DNA results against you? Do credit card companies raise your rates according to unrelated things on your credit report? Do insurance companies raise your rates due to traffic tickets that have little to do with telling how good or safe a driver you are?
Like I said, avoiding a record of your DNA is a smart idea.
It turns out that this group called Improve Anywhere did a funny prank where they got about 80 people to dress in khakis and blue shirts and had them all enter a Best Buy and stand around. I heard about the prank last year sometime (and I saw the video).
Now they are selling joke t-shirts based on their famous stunt and Best Buy (not surprisingly) doesn't like it. Whether they have a real claim or not, I don't know (or care), but they've issued a take-down notice to the guys over at the Laughing Squid. Who's that? Well, the Laughing Squid is a blog, not unlike many other blogs online and the key issue here is that Best Buy is trying to surpress the blogger's right to cover information by saying that he's "promoting" the shirts.
Here's one for you Best Buy, I'm covering all his articles, and the original story, plus I'm promoting blogging! Oh horrors. I wonder what they'll do now.
A depressing report from a few California universities shows that most people have no idea to what extent their online activities are tracked and used against them. This report doesn't offer any solutions other than to try to opt-out of tracking (if it's even possible to do so) though they also state that many companies find clever ways of circumventing promises not to track and do it anyway.
In an attempt to remove all doubt that AT&T is a evil-infested, garbage-brained, scum-sucking, low-life, mucus-eating sot of a company, it has been recently discovered that they built a custom algorithm to: "crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" — i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom".
Translation: "conduct" that AT&T "believes" "tends to damage" its name, or the name of its partners, can get you booted off the service. Note the use of "tends to damage": the language of the contract does not require any proof of any actual damage.
First the spying issue, then the privacy issue, now this. I sure as hell won't be using any AT&T products or services any time soon and I recommend that you don't either.
Google, trying to hold up their former image of being a rebel company who "doesn't do evil", has proposed a universal privacy standard that they say all companies should follow. The main idea is that there should be a minimum set of standards that everyone agrees to follow when dealing with private user data.
Fortunately, there's no chance this will work for long. First there's the SET technology for filesharing that uses generic chunks from files unrelated to copyrighted material to speed up sharing. If this gets implemented, not only will it improve filesharing speeds and allow people to finish files that have lost their seeders/sources, but it will prevent AT&T from filtering copyrighted material without blocking legitimate shares as well.
Secondly, it won't be long until filesharing networks introduce a quick encryption to packets that scramble them randomly using an IP address so the chunks of data won't be recognized by AT&T filters. I'm sure there are plenty of other techniques as well, but one thing's for certain: even honest non-hackers and non-sharers are still rooting against the copyright holders and AT&T.
I mean, come on! The article says the copyright companies lost billions of dollars due to filesharing? All they're doing is talking about the value of the files they know have been shared without taking into account that many of the people who are downloading these files would never have bought them in the first place! They're not losing money they would have had, they're losing money they never would have had.
As the article itself says, the RIAA and MPAA should just focus their money and resources in finding ways to turn downloaders into honest customers (perhaps cutting prices? Offering slick downloadable options? Removing all DRM so people can do what they want with it?)
KFC used a high-pitched tone as a promotional “buzz� device for a recent “interactive advertising campaign.� The MosquitoTone™ was embedded in TV commercials to launch KFC’s new “Boneless Variety Bucket™.� In its press release, the company explained that the popular cell phone ring tone “is too highpitched for most adults to hear because most people begin to lose the ability to hear high frequency tones starting at age 20. This is a fact not lost on young Americans who seek the sound for clandestine ring tones that don’t turn the heads of nearby adults.�
For those who don't realize how desperately the business world wants to connect to your kids, snare, and keep control of them, wake up! Many businesses will pull any dirty trick they can to make money.
When asked why they need personally identifiable information in the first place, their answer is for service optimization. I, as others, question what identifying someone has to do with search engine optimization at all.
Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye.
In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories.
"My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive. . . . I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private."
You know all those times I've complained about Data Rape and how companies are able to hit us where we are weakest because of all they learn and profile about us?
Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.
InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,� 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,� and “Suffering Seniors,� 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies� contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.
Would someone in congress please start paying attention to this?
Myspace was originally criticized for not doing so when first asked, but has now decided to cooperate. I have no problem treating repeat sex offenders as sub-citizens (because they are), but what's to stop them from just re-registering under false data?
You will be amazed by how much you can learn about a person if you only pay attention to the signals they give off. Read this book to learn the language.
