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	<title>Tech &#187; Barton Gellman &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<link>http://techland.time.com</link>
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		<title>Tech &#187; Barton Gellman &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com</link>
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		<title>Why I Can Guess Your iPad Password</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2011/06/15/why-i-can-guess-your-ipad-password/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2011/06/15/why-i-can-guess-your-ipad-password/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:59:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ipad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passwords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tablet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=86705</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Friend of mine, a smart journalist, had his iPad stolen. He couldn&#8217;t help that &#8212; the thief broke into his house. But his private, personal data wasn&#8217;t stolen, exactly. Donated, more like. He had no passcode set on the iPad. All his email, calendar, address book, and work documents were free for the taking. Oh, yeah. He had the iPad browser set to save all his web passwords, including the ones for Amazon and his bank. You&#8217;re smarter than that, right? You set a passcode. (Settings&#8230;General&#8230;Passcode Lock.) You even tapped on the setting to erase your iPad after 10 wrong attempts. But it probably won&#8217;t take ten tries to guess your password. Once again, a large sample of real-world data reveals that we leave ourselves wide open to casual snooping. The top 10 iPad passcodes &#8212; which accounted for 15% of the whole sample &#8212; were: 1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, and 1998. Most were simple patterns on the keypad. 5683 spells &#8216;L-O-V-E,&#8217; as in love thy burglar. People seem to be using their birth years and graduation years as well: every number from 1990 to 2000 makes the top 50, and every one from 1980 to 1989 the top 100. Folks: there are 10,000 possibilities on that keypad. Try something a little more creative. If you&#8217;re on an Android tablet, use the option to choose a more complex password on the full keyboard. By the way, the guy who published this data obtained it with an app that tricked people into transmitting it to him. Clue! It was called &#8220;Big Brother.&#8221; Apple, belatedly, has banned the app. More on TIME.com: The 10 Most Popular iPhone Passwords, Starring &#8217;1234&#8242; Who ARE These People? Sony Hack Reveals &#8216;Seinfeld&#8217; as Most Popular Password Technician Arrested for Installing Webcam Peeping Software on Women&#8217;s PCs<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=86705&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2011/06/15/why-i-can-guess-your-ipad-password/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Tablets</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/gadgets/tablets/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>U.S. Surveillance, Chinese Espionage and My Impending Lockout from Faceboook</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/02/u-s-surveillance-chinese-espionage-and-my-impending-lockout-from-faceboook/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/02/u-s-surveillance-chinese-espionage-and-my-impending-lockout-from-faceboook/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:00:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cyberwar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[phishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surveillance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=65355</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unsettling developments, on several fronts: U.S. surveillance. The Obama administration, once again, is reaching farther than its predecessor on electronic surveillance. Now it wants a law requiring internet service providers to keep logs of their customers on the web &#8212; all of them, not suspected bad actors &#8212; just in case the government may want the data. Lots of ISPs keep logs already, but the government is trying to ensure that you can&#8217;t find one that offers greater privacy. This is not different in concept from requiring hotels and restaurants to install microphones and video recorders in every public space, lest the country&#8217;s 30 million existing surveillance cameras miss a spot. The Justice Department&#8217;s Jason Weinstein told Congress the proposed new law is &#8212; no, really &#8212; good for privacy: &#8230; malicious cyber actors do not respect our laws or our privacy. The government has an obligation to prevent, disrupt, deter, and defeat such intrusions&#8230;Privacy interests can be undercut when data is not retained for a reasonable period of time, thereby preventing law enforcement officers from obtaining the information they need to catch and prosecute those criminals. Can you spot the logical elision here? Surveillance is usually justified by reference to pedophiles and cyber spies, but most of the government&#8217;s data mining &#8212; involving hundreds of thousands of secret requests each year &#8212; do not even assert a reasonable suspicion that a customer has done anything wrong. The post-Patriot Act legal standard requires only that authorities can plausibly describe the information as &#8220;relevant to&#8221; an investigation. Authorities acknowledge that an enormous number of innocent Americans have had their private data swept up and stored (usually forever) in government archives. Chinese cyber-spying. Government sponsored hackers in China appear to have impersonated National Journal&#8216;s Bruce Stokes in a spear-phishing email attack on US diplomats. It&#8217;s a new twist on an old scheme, and it&#8217;s a reminder that you can&#8217;t assume the person on the &#8220;From&#8221; line is who he says he is: The e-mails that seemed to come from Stokes contained a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=65355&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/02/u-s-surveillance-chinese-espionage-and-my-impending-lockout-from-faceboook/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>World Web War I: Why Egypt&#8217;s Digital Uprising is Different</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/01/world-web-war-i-why-egypts-digital-uprising-is-different/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/01/world-web-war-i-why-egypts-digital-uprising-is-different/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:30:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cyberwar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=65339</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;ve seen cyberwar declared before, but the one playing out in Egypt is my own candidate for World Web War I. Hosni Mubarak fired the first shot,  switching off the internet and mobile phones after crude attempts to block Twitter and Facebook fell apart. The web fought back in ways we haven&#8217;t seen before, and it&#8217;s winning. It no longer counts as remarkable that Egyptians organized their uprising on social media. What&#8217;s new is the Newtonian reaction to Mubarak&#8217;s attempt to throw a &#8220;kill switch&#8221; on all electronic communications. Netizens from around the world are tracking Egypt&#8217;s security measures and defeating them one by one with TOR proxies (which offer anonymity and circumvent network filters), ham radio links, satellite communications and subtle attacks on the technical infrastructure of Egyptian state security. Here&#8217;s a hint from net freedom activist Jacob Appelbaum, who tweets under the handle @ioerror: &#8220;If there is a single network in all of the world worth sniffing right now &#8211; it&#8217;s certainly the MOI [ministry of intelligence] network!&#8221; Who do you reckon is smarter, Mubarak&#8217;s IT department or a volunteer consortium of the world&#8217;s best hacktivists? (More on Time.com: See TIME&#8217;s complete coverage of the Middle East revolt) It is hard to overstate the significance of the private sector&#8217;s enlistment against a sitting government. Internet service providers in Europe and elsewhere are deliberately thwarting Egyptian censors by distributing phone numbers and free access codes (here&#8217;s one example) for anyone who needs a dial-up connection from Egypt. (Land lines still work fine.) Over the weekend came the stunning news that Google and Twitter have joined forces to design and deploy a new way to tweet that bypasses the wall Mubarak built. Anyone in Egypt can dial a phone number, leave a voicemail, and the text is transcribed and posted with the #EGYPT hashtag. No computer required. Chris Soghoian points out that neither company is taking much economic risk, since they have no expensive infrastructure in Egypt, while Vodafone, which caved in to Egyptian censors, &#8220;likely has hundreds of millions<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=65339&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2011/02/01/world-web-war-i-why-egypts-digital-uprising-is-different/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Social Networking</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/apps-web/social-networking-apps-web/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Twitter, Wikileaks and the Broken Market for Consumer Privacy</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2011/01/14/twitter-wikileaks-and-the-broken-market-for-consumer-privacy/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2011/01/14/twitter-wikileaks-and-the-broken-market-for-consumer-privacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:43:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surveillance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=63269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Updated 2:30 pm near bottom of post, to clarify recipient of a letter from Yahoo&#8217;s lawyers. The tech world is abuzz with a remarkable display of backbone by Twitter in the Wikileaks case. It deserves wider notice. Federal prosecutors want to indict Julian Assange for making public a great many classified documents. In December the feds obtained a secret order instructing Twitter to hand over private account contents for Assange and four Wikileaks associates, including network addresses, connection logs, credit card information and identities of everyone they talked to. The order forbade Twitter to notify those affected, among them Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of Iceland’s parliament. Twitter stalled, fighting and winning a motion to lift the gag order, which is how we know about the case. (If the judge had believed government claims that lifting the gag would blow the investigation, she could equally have rejected Twitter&#8217;s motion.) Having obtained permission, Twitter notified its users and promised to hand over nothing if they filed a motion to quash within ten days. That is simply the gold standard of customer protection, enabling courts to balance the legitimate needs of prosecutors with the civil liberties of their targets. It almost never happens. The Obama administration, like those before it, promotes a disturbingly narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, misapplying the facts of old analog cases to a radically different digital world. I do not deny that there is a line of judicial precedents allowing government agents to search our emails, copy our hard drives and plant GPS trackers on our cars without anything close to probable cause. But there are also contrary cases, and the steady march toward a surveillance state would be unrecognizable to the Founders. Computer files and the contents of smartphones are indisputably the present-day equivalents of constitutionally protected &#8220;houses, papers, and effects.&#8221; Surveillance-happy authorities define the problem away. The search-and-seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment, they say, are irrelevant because you and I have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in digital records that tell vastly more about us<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=63269&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2011/01/14/twitter-wikileaks-and-the-broken-market-for-consumer-privacy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Update: McAfee and the Ghost License Issue</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/31/update-mcafee-and-the-ghost-license-issue/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/31/update-mcafee-and-the-ghost-license-issue/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Dec 2010 22:00:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[McAfee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[virus]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=61453</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After writing my last post on the way McAfee took me for a ride &#8211; charging me for five years of license renewals after I uninstalled its software &#8211; I heard pretty quickly from Francie Coulter, McAfee&#8217;s Director of WW Consumer Public Relations. On the plus side, there was no bluster. She apologized and offered a full refund. On the minus side, the refund seems to depend on public embarrassment on a high-traffic site like Techland, and I declined to accept special treatment. I invited Ms. Coulter to offer a method by which ordinary customers could obtain the same result. She sidestepped that question, saying McAfee has &#8220;improved its practices&#8221; and adding that there might be &#8220;a variety of instances in which people want to continue with a security subscription even though they may add or drop a computer or device.&#8221; That does not explain why anyone would want to continue paying when the license is not in use on any device. Here&#8217;s the whole exchange, most recent email first: Hi Barton- Here are some additional details about McAfee and auto-renewals/uninstalls. McAfee is in the business of providing a service to consumers. A subscription to McAfee is associated with the person and his/her account—not that person’s individual computer(s). There are a variety of instances in which people want to continue with a security subscription even though they may add or drop a computer or device. To bring provide greater transparency to the auto-renewal process, McAfee has improved its practices since 2006. During the purchase process, on the billing page, customers are advised: “Auto-renewal: Before your subscription expires, McAfee uses the credit card information that we have on file to renew your subscription automatically. Your credit card is charged at the rate that is current on the date of renewal. You can turn Auto-Renewal off from the My Account page after we process your order.”  Similar information is also contained in the EULA (end-user license agreement). If a person wants to turn off auto-renewal, he/she can do so anytime via the McAfee<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=61453&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/31/update-mcafee-and-the-ghost-license-issue/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8216;Security&#8217; That Makes A Grab For Your Wallet</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/22/security-that-makes-a-grab-for-your-wallet/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/22/security-that-makes-a-grab-for-your-wallet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=60163</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a little story about an inattentive customer and the price of inattention. I play the sucker. The company that takes me for a ride is a surprise casting choice: McAfee, a reputable security vendor. McAfee&#8217;s anti-virus software is an industry standard, even if reviewers have been saying since last year that Microsoft&#8217;s free alternative, Windows Security Essentials, is as good or better for home use. But McAfee does not make a product to guard against McAfee. And it turns out that the company has been charging me annual license fees for software I uninstalled years ago. A good Counterspy should be smarter than this. Read on and you may find your own wallet in the story. In 2004, I bought three inexpensive Dell laptops for my kids. Dell fills its computers with crapware, collecting fees from McAfee and other vendors to pre-install &#8220;trial&#8221; versions. I know the game, but I figured I was smart enough to use McAfee&#8217;s service free for a year. When the trial ran out, in 2005, I even decided to buy a license for another year. The McAfee web site tried to set me up with automatic annual renewal, but I was careful to uncheck that option. By the end of 2006, when my licenses expired, I had uninstalled the software and replaced the laptops. At about the same time, American Express canceled the card I used on the McAfee site and issued me a new one. As far as I knew, my relationship with McAfee was triply severed. Here comes the clueless part. McAfee kept charging me annual license fees, and I did not notice. I had marked email from McAfee as spam after a sufficient number of unsolicited sales pitches. Usually I scan my credit card bill for unfamiliar names, but the light bulb did not go off until this month. McAfee? Huh? I checked my old records and, sure enough, McAfee had collected $212 since I stopped using it in 2006. It took a while to find a phone number on McAfee&#8217;s<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=60163&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/12/22/security-that-makes-a-grab-for-your-wallet/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>IronClad: A Tiny, Secure Computer in Your Pocket</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/11/17/ironclad-a-tiny-secure-computer-in-your-pocket/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/11/17/ironclad-a-tiny-secure-computer-in-your-pocket/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=55305</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One common puzzle for the security-minded is how to work with confidential data on the road. Sometimes you can&#8217;t bring your laptop, or don&#8217;t want to. But working on somebody else&#8217;s machine exposes you to malware and leaves behind all kinds of electronic trails. Even if you keep your files on a portable drive, Windows will scatter pieces of them around the borrowed PC &#8212; in temporary files, browser histories, the Windows Registry, the paging file, the hibernation file and memory dumps. For digital self defense, the ideal solution would put the brains of your own computer in your pocket. The idea is to boot a borrowed PC from a portable device that holds not only your data but your software and operating system. You bypass the host computer&#8217;s hard drive and operating system, but get to use its keyboard, mouse and monitor. There are a number of geeky ways to accomplish this, and I&#8217;ll cover them in coming days. By far the most secure is a new commercial product called IronClad, an armored, encrypted thumb drive built in a partnership between Ironkey and Lockheed Martin. The bad news is you probably can&#8217;t have one. IronClad is intended for large corporate IT departments, and the minimum purchase is 200 units. I&#8217;m going to give you a tour of its features anyway, because it looks to me like the new gold standard for portable data security. In a coming post I&#8217;ll write about how you can mimic some of its most useful features on the cheap. (More on Techland: Is Google Launching Its Own Chrome OS Smartbook Soon?) The Ironclad is larger than an ordinary thumb drive (about 3&#8243; x 3/4&#8243; x 5/16&#8243;), with layers of epoxy under a solid metal case that&#8217;s designed to be tamper-proof. It self-destructs, quietly but irreparably, after ten wrong passwords. The encryption is done with a custom hardware chip, not with software. It&#8217;s biggest selling point is that it can be used as the boot device on most modern PCs. (It will not work with<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=55305&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/11/17/ironclad-a-tiny-secure-computer-in-your-pocket/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Adventures in Social Engineering: Why I Turned Down $10k and an Honorary Degree</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/25/adventures-in-social-engineering-why-i-turned-down-10k-and-an-honorary-degree/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/25/adventures-in-social-engineering-why-i-turned-down-10k-and-an-honorary-degree/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:46:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=50660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Social engineering,&#8221; the fancy term for tricking you into giving away your digital secrets, is at least as great a threat as spooky technology. We all know (right?) about the scam emails that inform you of a surprise inheritance or lottery win. Recently I came across a surprising variation: a scam that deliberately targets folks who should be too smart to fall for it. A fellow who called himself &#8220;Professor Dave Christopher&#8221; from England invited me to speak at a university conference. I do that kind of speaking now and then, and at first glance the email could have been legit. What intrigues me is that &#8220;Christopher&#8221; said he found me on the web site of the American Program Bureau, which does in fact represent me for speaking engagements. (I just noticed the bio needs updating.) The client list is filled with a lot bigger names than the likes of me: David Mamet, Spike Lee, Diane Keaton, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Wozniak, Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Bill Parcells, and a sprinkling of prime ministers and presidents. Did the good professor send invitations to all of them? They&#8217;d be ripe targets, I suppose, if they fell for it, but seriously &#8230; is that likely? Well, maybe so. Consider the list of Bernie Madoff&#8217;s Ponzi scheme victims. It&#8217;s not a bad reminder for all of us &#8212; don&#8217;t click, or hit reply, before you think. In this case, a closer look at the invitation made clear pretty fast that it was fraudulent. The good professor wrote from a gmail account, did not show command of English as a primary language, thought Northumbria University (in Newcastle) was in London (a three-hour train ride away), and so on. Your humble servant, Counterspy, decided to let the scam play out a bit. I wrote back with a three-part message: I didn&#8217;t know much about the conference topic, I&#8217;d require first class air travel and $10,000 an hour, and I&#8217;d like the university to throw in an honorary degree. I wondered whether that was overdoing it,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=50660&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/25/adventures-in-social-engineering-why-i-turned-down-10k-and-an-honorary-degree/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Social Networking</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/apps-web/social-networking-apps-web/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Facebook: You&#8217;re Not the Customer, You&#8217;re the Product</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:31:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=50697</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Man, I love Bruce Schneier. Here&#8217;s a pithy, pitch-perfect summary of your relationship with Facebook: Social networking websites are &#8220;deliberately killing privacy&#8221; in order to make a profit, according to renowned security author Bruce Schneier. Speaking at the RSA Europe security conference in London on Tuesday, the BT Counterpane CTO cited Facebook as the most heinous example of social networks cashing in on users&#8217; openness toward sharing personal details. &#8220;Don&#8217;t make the mistake of thinking you&#8217;re Facebook&#8217;s customer, you&#8217;re not – you&#8217;re the product,&#8221; Schneier said. &#8220;Its customers are the advertisers.&#8221; The whole article is here. I don&#8217;t say I never use Facebook, but I often think about closing my account. More on Techland: Skype Integrates Facebook For Windows Users Bing Gets Facebook Integration: Be Careful What You &#8217;Like&#8217; Facebook Finally To Create A Dislike Function&#8230; Sort Of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=50697&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Facebook</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/facebook/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Encryption (Part 3): How to Keep Secret Files in the Cloud</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/14/encryption-part-3-how-to-keep-secret-files-in-the-cloud/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/14/encryption-part-3-how-to-keep-secret-files-in-the-cloud/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Oct 2010 18:21:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=50548</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In an earlier post, I speculated that DropBox and TrueCrypt could be a killer combination &#8212; a painless way to keep confidential files encrypted while taking advantage of online backup and synchronization. I&#8217;ve been trying this out for a while now, and these two free tools work very well together. You&#8217;ll need an hour or two to set up the system, but after that it runs automatically. Your files are synchronized between your computers, backed up in the cloud, and unreadable to anyone else. For DropBox, you can sign up with my referral code (you&#8217;ll get an extra 250 MB of free space, and so will I) or do the standard sign up. To keep your files encrypted, download TrueCrypt, its beginner&#8217;s guide, and information on portable use. The portable mode is useful if you want to keep TrueCrypt on a USB stick and run it on someone else&#8217;s computer. Here are a few tips. Install DropBox first. Create a new TrueCrypt volume, following the wizard. You&#8217;re actually creating a large &#8220;container&#8221; file on your computer, but TrueCrypt will make it look to you like a second disk drive. Be sure to save the container in your DropBox folder. As you run through the wizard, keep all of TrueCrypt&#8217;s default options except one. When you get to the following dialog, click the Dynamic checkbox and change Filesystem to NTFS. This lets your encrypted volume start small and grow as you add more data. You have to specify an upper limit. For instance, you can say the volume may grow up to 1 GB, but if you add only 100 MB of files the container file will be about that size. This feature makes synchronization with DropBox much faster. I was wrong in my earlier post to say that the TrueCrypt container has to be completely uploaded again to DropBox every time you add, delete or edit a file on the encrypted volume. This is very good news. For technical reasons (if you really want to know, they involve TrueCrypt&#8217;s use<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=50548&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/10/14/encryption-part-3-how-to-keep-secret-files-in-the-cloud/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Making a &#039;Dynamic&#039; Volume</media:title>
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		<title>Commercial Spying: Worse Than We Knew</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/20/commercial-spying-worse-than-we-knew/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/20/commercial-spying-worse-than-we-knew/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:11:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=46224</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal, which has been doing great work on Internet privacy, has a disturbing piece today on the way online data companies build &#8220;profiles&#8221; of your intimate life &#8212; even if you try to stop them by deleting browser cookies. The disclosures are not entirely new &#8212; Wired, for example, has done good reporting on it before &#8212; but the Journal adds a lot to the conversation. The 50 most popular web sites &#8220;placed 3,180 tracking files in total on the Journal&#8217;s test computer.&#8221; About &#8220;two-thirds—2,224—were installed by 131 companies, many of which are in the business of tracking Web users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold.&#8221; Ever notice how slowly pages load in Dictionary.com? That site alone installed 233 separate pieces of tracking software. The Journal doesn&#8217;t say so, but industry spokesmen who claim the profiles they assemble are &#8220;anonymous&#8221; are fundamentally dishonest. When Lotame Solutions Inc. tracks Ashley Hayes-Beady around the web, the company assures the Journal that it knows her only as user &#8220;4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37.&#8221; Perhaps so, but Lotame could easily identify her by correlating her profile with other information that is widely sold by information brokers. And it is damn near certain that some of Lotame&#8217;s customers do exactly that. What do they know about you? Information about people&#8217;s moment-to-moment thoughts and actions, as revealed by their online activity, can change hands quickly. Within seconds of visiting eBay.com or Expedia.com, information detailing a Web surfer&#8217;s activity there is likely to be auctioned on the data exchange run by BlueKai, the Seattle startup. And this: The Journal found tracking files that collect sensitive health and financial data. On Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.&#8217;s dictionary website Merriam-Webster.com, one tracking file from Healthline Networks Inc., an ad network, scans the page a user is viewing and targets ads related to what it sees there. So, for example, a person looking up depression-related words could see Healthline ads for depression treatments on that page—and on subsequent pages viewed on other sites. Healthline says it doesn&#8217;t let<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=46224&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/20/commercial-spying-worse-than-we-knew/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Passwords: How To Stop Ignoring The Expert Advice</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/16/passwords-how-to-stop-ignoring-the-expert-advice/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/16/passwords-how-to-stop-ignoring-the-expert-advice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:08:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passwords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=45939</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By now you&#8217;ve heard endless warnings about the risk of short, trivial passwords. There&#8217;s a good chance you ignore them. Let&#8217;s talk about why that is and what you can do about it. To begin with, it really does matter. Easy to guess passwords (12345, pet&#8217;s name, kid&#8217;s name, birthdate, etc) really do expose you to snooping and identity theft. Believe me, you&#8217;ll be sorry if you find out the hard way. Even complex passwords are getting easy to break if they&#8217;re too short. That&#8217;s because today&#8217;s inexpensive computer chips have the power of supercomputers from the year 2000. Recent research shows that souped-up PCs can crack any password of fewer than seven characters with &#8220;brute force&#8221; techniques that try every combination of characters, even if your password looks like &#8220;a4T&#38;7u&#8221; and not &#8220;fluffy&#8221;. The researchers recommend that you choose passwords of at least 12 characters. Trouble is, most people can&#8217;t and won&#8217;t do what security professionals prescribe, which feels like a full time job. The pros tell us to (1) create long, random passwords using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters, including nothing that appears in any dictionary; (2) write them down nowhere, or only in remote, inconvenient places, (3) use a different password for every account, and (4) change them every few months. As Bruce Schneier argues, it&#8217;s foolish to blame ordinary people for failing to take impractical advice. So what might be practical? For most people, any of these would be a big improvement: Schneier commits the heresy of suggesting that people &#8220;write their passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper: in their wallet.&#8221; That&#8217;s because people &#8220;can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password too complicated to remember.&#8221; (An explanation and some other useful tips from the Electronic Frontier Foundation are here.) If you do write down your passwords, don&#8217;t make it obvious which password corresponds<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=45939&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/16/passwords-how-to-stop-ignoring-the-expert-advice/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>The Snoop In Your Browser: An Alternative</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/15/the-snoop-in-your-browser-an-alternative/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/15/the-snoop-in-your-browser-an-alternative/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:13:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gadgets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[browser]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=45542</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In my last post I said some companies do better than others at scrubbing your confidential search logs as time  passes. Google appears to be the worst of the major search engines from a privacy point of view; Ask.com, with AskEraser turned on, is among the best. But there&#8217;s a far better answer than looking for the search company that erases your history fastest and most thoroughly. The best way preserve your privacy is to use a search engine that does not keep your logs in the first place.  That&#8217;s the approach used by Startpage and its European parent company, Ixquick. Recently I took Startpage for a test drive, and after a week I made it my default search engine. (More on Techland: The Snoop in Your Browser) Startpage makes the simple promise to store nothing about your identity &#8212; not with a cookie, not with a flash cookie, not by IP address, and not with any other trick. To make your searches invisible at waypoints along the information highway, such as your office network hub or your Internet provider, you can and should connect to Startpage with an encrypted (SSL) connection, the same way you link to your bank. Just type https://startpage.com instead of http://startpage.com. Startpage says this adds security and slows your searches only slightly. Should you believe Startpage&#8217;s assurances? That&#8217;s always a valid question in the world of security. If your life or livelihood depends on it, no. But European data protection authorities, whose laws are much stricter than their American counterparts, certified the company&#8217;s privacy promises. There are enough whistleblowers and hackers and forensic watchdogs out there that we would probably have heard by now if Startpage and Ixquick were playing games with words. Startpage offers another big privacy benefit. When you find what you&#8217;re looking for and click a link, Startpage does not disclose your search terms to the site you visit next. For example, you might rather not tell the IRS webmaster that you found this information about tax fraud on www.irs.gov by searching<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=45542&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/15/the-snoop-in-your-browser-an-alternative/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>The Snoop In Your Browser</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/14/the-snoop-in-your-browser/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/14/the-snoop-in-your-browser/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:12:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=45113</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Everyone and his Big Brother wants to log your browsing habits, the better to build a profile of who you are and how you live your life &#8212; online and off. Search engine companies offer a benefit in return: more relevant search results. The more they know about you, the better they can tailor information to your needs. But you pay a price, whether you know it or not. A Thought Experiment Suppose a friendly fellow named Mr. Google turns up at your door. He offers to become your personal assistant, for free. He&#8217;ll follow you around during waking hours and help you find things. To get to know you better, he&#8217;ll take notes on where you are (by IP address, wireless access point, etc.), where you plan to go (&#8220;flights to Cayman islands,&#8221; &#8220;directions to AA meeting&#8221;), what you shop for (&#8220;ammunition,&#8221; &#8220;birth control&#8221;), what you read (&#8220;communist manifesto,&#8221; &#8220;where to hide money&#8221;), what you worry about (&#8220;symptoms of herpes,&#8221; &#8220;domestic protection order&#8221;), and so on. Soon Mr. Google knows a whole lot of your secrets. He stays with you year after year. He keeps his notebooks and files them carefully. And all you have to do is sign a document saying he can share what he knows about you, under vague or undisclosed circumstances, with business partners and government investigators. Sound good? Read Google&#8217;s terms of service and its current and coming privacy policies. Think about all the latitude Google gives itself when it says it can mine your information to &#8220;develop or improve our services,&#8221; can share it with &#8220;affiliated companies or other trusted businesses,&#8221; and can hand it over to government or other third parties if Google perceives a risk to &#8220;the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public.&#8221; It&#8217;s not entirely fair to single out Google, since many information companies impose similar legal terms, but Google is the industry leader and invented some of the most intrusive practices. Babes, Boats and Large-Breasted Men For a taste of what search engines know<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=45113&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/09/14/the-snoop-in-your-browser/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Encryption (Part 2): How to Back Up Encrypted Files</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/24/encryption-part-2-how-to-back-up-encrypted-files/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/24/encryption-part-2-how-to-back-up-encrypted-files/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:49:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=41369</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Encrypting your PC is one thing, but how do you keep it backed up? And how do you maintain easy access to the files if you work on several computers at different times? One author I know has two simultaneous book projects going, both of them full of juicy material. He wouldn&#8217;t want his notes, drafts or recorded interviews to be cast across the web, but he wants easy access to his files at work and home. When the author called on CounterSpy recently, he was keeping all his work on one laptop, with a copy on an encrypted thumb drive. (Let&#8217;s leave aside the quality of thumb drive encryption. Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim were badly embarrassed this year when it turned out their allegedly secure products were easy to crack. I&#8217;ll soon be reviewing a strong alternative.) &#8220;Where do you keep the thumb drive?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;In my laptop bag,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;So if you lose one bag, your book is gone?&#8221; &#8220;Well, yes,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m worried about.&#8221; My suggestion: combine Dropbox and Truecrypt to build an automated system of secure backups. Truecrypt provides strong password protection, and Dropbox syncs your secure files automatically, storing copies in the cloud and on updating them on each of your computers. Dropbox handles the backups for you, but you control the encryption. That means nobody at Dropbox, even under court order, can open your secret files. This is as close as you come to having your cake and eating it on CounterSpy. (If you&#8217;re a human rights activist in China, and you don&#8217;t want anyone to know you use encryption at all, this would not be a great idea. It would be evident to authorities that you&#8217;re using TrueCrypt, and that could attract unwanted attention. As always, security depends on the threat.) Turns out I&#8217;m not the first to think of the Dropbox-Truecrypt combo. You can find more detailed discussions of the technique here and here. Pitch in with a comment if you&#8217;ve tried this or have a better<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=41369&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/24/encryption-part-2-how-to-back-up-encrypted-files/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>What Is &#8216;Privacy&#8217;: a Professor&#8217;s Taxonomy</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/23/what-is-privacy-a-professors-taxonomy/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/23/what-is-privacy-a-professors-taxonomy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:15:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=40967</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mike Masnick over at Techdirt, who had a kind word for my first post about &#8220;nothing to hide,&#8221; draws my attention to a short scholarly essay on the subject by GW Law School&#8217;s Daniel Solove. By way of rebutting the claim that we don&#8217;t need privacy if we do no wrong, Solove lays out what he calls a taxonomy of the many issues involved: Information Collection Surveillance Interrogation Information Processing Aggregation Identification Insecurity Secondary Use Exclusion Information Dissemination Breach of Confidentiality Disclosure Exposure Increased Accessibility Blackmail Appropriation Distortion Invasion Intrusion Decisional Interference Well worth the 15 minute read. Want more CounterSpy? Click here.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=40967&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/23/what-is-privacy-a-professors-taxonomy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>The Case of the Stolen Laptop: How to Encrypt, and Why</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/06/the-case-of-the-stolen-laptop-how-to-encrypt-and-why/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/06/the-case-of-the-stolen-laptop-how-to-encrypt-and-why/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[encryption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[laptop]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=38771</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s an investigator I know, top of her profession, who once put her laptop in the trunk of a cab. By the time she reached her hotel, the laptop was gone. This happens thousands of times a year at airports, train stations, libraries and coffee shops. Sometimes the thief wants your hardware. Sometimes your data turns out to be more valuable, or its loss more damaging. (It&#8217;s pathetically easy to find examples.) And sometimes the victim is not a matter of chance. In this case our investigator was onto something hot. She was closing in on a high-profile scandal that disturbed the interests of powerful and resourceful people. Maybe her bag was jacked by a petty thief, but Occam&#8217;s Razor pointed another way. She had to assume her targets now knew anything they could glean from her computer. I found her to be oddly undisturbed by this. She said she had followed the first rule of prudence, which is not to write anything down &#8212; especially in digital form &#8212; that you really, really need to keep secret. But I thought she was nuts to believe she lost nothing sensitive. It is astonishing what current forensic tools can learn from your computer. And no, your log on password is not an obstacle. I&#8217;ve tried password cracking tools like this one on my own machines, and they work. More importantly, anyone can buy software that copies your hard drive and strips away all its secrets without even having to log on. For an example, take a look at the capabilities (PDF) advertised for EnCase, a leading forensic tool. Besides sorting, searching and reading the contents of every file on your drive, this software can recover your deleted files, list the URLs and times of every web site you visited, reconstruct email and instant messaging conversations, list every thumb drive you&#8217;ve ever attached, and a whole lot more. (More on Time.com: See photos on the history of the computer) What to do There&#8217;s no single answer to this problem, but one of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=38771&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>18</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Counterspy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/counterspy/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<title>Worst Government Snoops: Russia, China &#8230; and USA</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/04/worst-government-snoops-russia-china-and-usa/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/04/worst-government-snoops-russia-china-and-usa/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:55:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Big Brother]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=38495</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ah, the land of the free. Forrester Research has a depressing summary of international privacy protections for data stored in a cloud service like Mozy, Google Docs or Dropbox. (It&#8217;s a clever graphic done up as a &#8220;data protection heat map.&#8221;) The worst countries to live in, if you value your digital secrets, are marked with an exclamation point that stands for, &#8220;Caution Due to Government Surveillance.&#8221; That Big Brother icon goes to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the traditional heavyweights of state repression: Russia and China. Oh, and the United States. Highest marks go to Germany and Switzerland. I&#8217;ve always shied away from online data storage. I don&#8217;t even use my employers&#8217; network drives for anything sensitive. I want to control access myself. But there&#8217;s no denying that tools like Dropbox and SugarSync are valuable for syncing your files across two or more computers. Cloud services cut both ways in terms of security: you get off-site backup and disaster recovery, but you entrust your secrets to somebody else&#8217;s hands. Doing the latter increases your exposure to government surveillance and the potential for deliberate or inadvertent breaches of your confidential files. All good counterspies know there are tradeoffs. My compromise is to use the cloud for convenience if the files I&#8217;m storing are the kind I wouldn&#8217;t mind being stolen and passed around. For anything at all confidential, no way. If you share my privacy bias, though, you&#8217;d better find another way to back up your data. Well-secured files don&#8217;t do you much good if you lose them in a fire or hard drive crash. (Eat your spinach, exercise, and keep copies of your backups in more than one place.) I favor pocket-sized hard drives that travel between home and office, syncing with computers on both ends. Encrypted, of course. We&#8217;ll get to that in another post soon. Want more CounterSpy? Click here.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=38495&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/04/worst-government-snoops-russia-china-and-usa/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Digital Privacy: If You&#8217;ve Done Nothing Wrong, Do You Have &#8216;Nothing to Hide&#8217;?</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/03/counterspy-nothing-to-hide/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2010/08/03/counterspy-nothing-to-hide/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:00:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Barton Gellman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Counterspy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FBI]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.com/?p=38016</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few years back, I did a long newspaper story about the FBI snooping on the private records of ordinary citizens. As my old editor Michael Kinsley likes to say, the scandal is what&#8217;s legal. The Patriot Act unleashed the FBI to search your email, travel and credit records without even a suspicion of wrongdoing.  The FBI was doing it, in secret, tens of thousands of times a year. As I dug into the story, government officials kept telling me that law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear. Why object to surveillance if you have nothing to hide? Joseph Billy Jr., a top FBI supervisor for whom I had great respect, told me, &#8220;I&#8217;ve had people say, you know, &#8216;Hey, I don&#8217;t care, I&#8217;ve done nothing to be concerned about. You can have me in your files and that&#8217;s that.&#8217; Some people take that approach.&#8221; I&#8217;m not one of those people. CounterSpy is a new blog about privacy and security in our digital lives. I come to it by temperament and professional necessity. My principal work is investigative reporting, and efforts have spiked in recent years to find and punish my confidential sources. (Update Aug 3, 10:40pm: My son Michael points out that this link is broken and asks if that&#8217;s a joke about confidential sources. Um, no. Here&#8217;s the correct link.) I learned the technology and tradecraft of electronic security in self defense, with a lot of expert help. If that sounds exotic, and you think you have nothing to hide, I invite you to reconsider. As Trotsky didn&#8217;t exactly say, you may not be interested in electronic snoops, but snoops are interested in you, whether or not you keep Coke&#8217;s secret recipe on your iPhone. Pay attention to security or you&#8217;ll let others make free with your medical records, those emails about your friend&#8217;s crumbling marriage, your gambling debts, the layoffs you&#8217;re planning, the job you&#8217;re thinking of jumping to, the cool idea you want to pitch, your candid thoughts about your boss, your forthcoming quarterly earnings or that<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=38016&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/security-news/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">gellmanb</media:title>
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