privacy | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

The Privacy Plug-in You Need standard

Sometimes I’m a bit behind the times on all this new fangled technology stuffs, so I wanted to make sure that everyone else knew that I caught up to 2015 and installed Ghostery. Ghostery is a cross-platform browser plugin that will help you select which tracking networks you want to participate in and which ones you want to block. If y0u have ever been annoyed by countless ads for some product that you Googled late one Saturday night that one time, this is a product for you. Here are my two reasons for keeping this installed on my machines: It allows me to selectively whitelist both certain ad networks and certain sites. So, for example, if I want to support ...

Cracking iOS Privacy standard

I had an article pop up on my radar yesterday on iOS Privacy, specifically where a researcher found that a particular app (Path) was uploading data without explicit permission. iOS, in some respects, feels like it has been given a pass with the type of traffic it passes (and how it does so) because a significant number of iOS users are in fact iPhone users, where traffic often moves over cellular networks. Those networks are coming under increasing scrutiny as the equipment required to disrupt or spoof cellular communications is quite affordable whereas in years past that was a massive barrier to entry. With Facebook getting in all kinds of hot water over privacy concerns, how did iOS get a ...

The End of Subscriber Privacy standard

I’m not sure if anyone actually believes in internet privacy anymore, but what little we may have had may now be completely eroded thanks to a new bill in the US House of Representatives, Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (H.R.1981). If the bill in its current state becomes law, internet service providers must maintain the following subscriber data for a period of 18 months: Names Address(es) Temporarily-assigned IP addresses While this measure does not aim to maintain detailed activity logs of subscribers, it is designed to be a point of reference for companies to trace actions to individuals. For example, if a temporary IP address of a home internet subscriber is found to be used in an ...

Hey Friends, I’m Over Here! standard

I recently gave a presentation to a graduate advertising class about social media with ideas on how it might be used as a part of an overall marketing and advertising strategy ((I’ll get this posted soon. I’ve just gotten my templates fixed (Thank you Angry Porcupine!) and will be able to move the material shortly.)). One of the things I covered was the concept of geo-tagging and how it relates to social media. There are tremendous privacy concerns related to geo-tagging, but also interesting market opportunities as well. We ignored the unintended geo-tagging that occurs when people use location services in their mobile phones, or use cameras that are location aware and focused on check-in applications. Some examples of these ...

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