Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category

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Free Anti-Tracking Services Catch On With Privacy-Minded Consumers

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Privacy, Technology at January 3rd, 2012 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

Here comes yet another software program consumers are having to use to protect their privacy. For those companies that continue to collect our personal data, it is possible they will continue to create more programs to do so; hence, the need for new software to block their new software…You get the picture. It’s like a vicious circle.

Upon reading recent news stories about how Facebook tracks almost everywhere he goes on the Internet, Jim Kress grew outraged. I can sympathize with him.

The business process consultant from Northville, Mich., subsequently learned Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe and many other companies also exhaustively track his online activities. “I was very unnerved to discover the extent of all the other tracking that was done by nearly every site on the Web,” he says.

Kress, 61, decided to fight back and did some homework about a powerful class of online tools and services — most of them free — designed to block online behavioral tracking. He began using a new free service called Do Not Track Plus from Internet privacy start-up Abine.

Kress is part of a grass-roots movement that began to grow late in the year and is expected to continue growing in 2012 – where consumers are taking online privacy into their own hands. I am glad to hear this – I will be looking to join this movement and downloading this software. I have tracking software on my computer and have the capability of blocking sites, etc., but I would be curious to see if this software is more extensive and less difficult to use.

Suppliers of the best-known anti-tracking tools — Ghostery, Adblock Plus and TrackerBlock — all reported big jumps in usage in the second half of 2011. Ghostery, for instance, is being downloaded by 140,000 new users each month, with total downloads doubling to 4.5 million in the past 12 months, says Scott Meyer, CEO of parent company Evidon.

Adblock Plus has been downloaded more than 140 million times and is currently in daily use by more than 17 million Internet users worldwide, managing director Till Faida says. Read the full article »

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Under Pressure – Sprint Says It Is Disabling Controversial Carrier IQ Software

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Privacy, taps, Technology at December 30th, 2011 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

On December 1st, I wrote a story titled, “Your Smartphone Is Spying on You.” In that story I discussed a controversial software discovered to be in millions of smartphones. The software is called “Carrier IQ Software” and has the ability to track your phone activity, including text messages.

After coming under fire, Sprint recently announced it is disabling this software from their phones, along with AT&T and T-Mobile, who were using Carrier IQ’s controversial key-logging software. Sprint now says it is “disabling the use” of software from customer’s phones.

In a statement by Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge, she said, “We have weighed customer concerns and we have disabled use of the tool so that diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected.” “We are further evaluating options regarding this diagnostic software as well as Sprint’s diagnostic needs.”

Carrier IQ has also come under fire over the past several weeks after an independent researcher discovered the software can track the activities of phone users, including text messages. Carrier IQ says its software is used only to help with network diagnostics.

Personally, I am grateful to this researcher for discovering this software and making the public aware of it as well as to those in Congress who are investigating this suspicious software and pressuring cell phone providers for answers.

Sprint, whose software is on 141 million cellphones around the country, claims this software does not track user activity. The company said that its software “does not record, store or transmit the contents of SMS (text) messages, email, photographs, audio or video. For example, we understand whether an SMS was sent accurately, but do not record or transmit the content of the SMS. We know which applications are draining your battery, but do not capture the screen.”

The use of the software has already resulted in some lawsuits over alleged violation of federal wiretap laws and government attention on privacy violations. On Dec. 2, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Carrier IQ for violating the privacy rights of millions of mobile phone users and expressed concern that the practices of Carrier IQ are possibly unfair or deceptive. “I have serious concerns about the Carrier IQ software and whether it is secretly collecting user’s personal information, such as the content of text messages,” said Markey, co-chairman of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus. “Consumers and families need to understand who is siphoning off and storing their personal information every time they use their smartphone.” Read the full article »

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Your Smartphone Is Spying on You

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, gps tracker, Hacking, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Privacy, Technology at December 1st, 2011 | No comments

Just yesterday, I told a friend that I am ready to return to using an old-fashioned cell phone because I am uncomfortable with the “behavior” of my new Android smartphone. This story I am sharing on this blog makes me realize I am not so paranoid after all. I took my phone to the store because applications keep adding themselves. I can delete some, but they only return a few days later. There are some applications that I can’t delete -ones that I don’t want on my phone and that put me at risk of my personal information, including my email, being accessed by someone other than me.

The store put an “application killer” on my phone because they agreed there are some weird applications running in the background and they can’t explain why after I delete the ones I can see, they keep returning or why new ones keep adding themselves. They agreed many were unnecessary applications. I have already added countermeasure software to my computers, but now I apparently need to add surveillance software to my phone to try and stay one step ahead of these companies who are gathering my personal information. They are watching me, so I guess I need to watch them watching me!

I didn’t even know how to find many applications that were running in the background. It seems that unless you are a technology expert, you are at the mercy of your phone doing as it pleases. The technician at the phone store told me my phone keeps “freezing up” because there are so many applications running in the background. I have added only four applications to my phone.

By the way, it seems Google has the most control over my Android phone. Ironically, Google and my phone provider are “partners.”

I am constantly receiving “updates,” but when you read the fine print, these updates allow for too many permissions. For example, they want my phone to automatically connect to available Wi-Fi networks. If I want my phone to access wireless networks, I will enable it to do so on my own. I should not be held hostage to not being able to update my phone unless I agree to this provision.

An Android developer recently discovered a clandestine application called Carrier IQ built into most smartphones that doesn’t just track your location; it secretly records your keystrokes, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Is it time to put on a tinfoil hat? That depends on how you feel about privacy. Read the full article »

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Police Tracking Your Every Move With License Plate Readers

By Dawn in gps tracker, invasion of privacy, Investigations, MSI Detective Services, Police Records, Privacy, Security at November 28th, 2011 | No comments

Privacy vs. personal freedom. The blurring of online and offline privacy. Concerns that we are becoming a  “surveillance society.” How much of your personal freedoms are you willing to sacrifice to give the police and government the tools they can use to catch criminals? It is a very tough question because it seems the answer depends on whether the use of those tools, such as surveillance cameras or online tracking, are properly used or whether they get abused. For me, the line is crossed when companies or social sites capture my personal information and store it in databases. However, if I or a member of my family were a victim of a crime and it was caught on a surveillance camera, I would be glad if it led to the investigation and capture of the criminal.

The Washington Post is reporting that police in D.C. are beefing up their areas covered by license plate cameras. More than 250 cameras in D.C. and its suburbs are constantly hard at work, grabbing license plate numbers and sticking them into databases. The police aren’t exactly doing this quietly, but it’s being done with “virtually no public debate.”

The highest concentration of these plate readers in the entire nation exists in D.C. (one reader per square mile), so that means that District police are building the biggest location database based on license plates in the whole country.

First, these are apparently different types of cameras than the cameras cities have been affixing near stoplights and other places to catch people running red lights or speeding – the “here’s a ticket 2 weeks later in the mail” cameras.

These plate readers cost about $20,000 each and can snatch images of numbers and letters on cars traveling nearly 150 mph and across four lanes of traffic. These plate readers in D.C. take 1,800 images per minute, every one of which is stored in a database. Read the full article »

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