The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010.
via Massive data leak exposes offshore financial secrets – World – CBC News.
Bloomberg News reports that within the past two weeks security contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have signed an agreement under the Department of Homeland Security’s Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program providing new revenue streams and, more notably, unparalleled access to personal information classified as “U.S. government data.”
via Defense Companies Cash in on Gov’t Hyped ‘Cyber-Security’ Threat | Common Dreams.
And if even this handholding isn’t enough, more successful ratters sometimes rent out slaves they have already infected. In other cases, they simply hand them off to others in a “Free Girl Slave Giveaway.”
Calling most of these guys “hackers” does a real disservice to hackers everywhere; only minimal technical skill is now required to deploy a RAT and acquire slaves.
via Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams | Ars Technica.
But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.
via K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents | Reuters.
Using software, rather than hardware, the latest update of Facebook’s Messenger app now lets U.S. users place voice calls over WiFi. The rollout follows reports of Facebook testing voice call features in Canada earlier this month.
via Facebook Messenger app change allows free calls via WiFi – The Washington Post.
You might want to be careful about this after reading this article on slashdot:
Staff examined hundreds of apps for children and looked at disclosures and links on each app’s promotion page in the app store, on the app developer’s website, and within the app. According to the report, “most apps failed to provide any information about the data collected through the app, let alone the type of data collected, the purpose of the collection, and who would obtain access to the data. Even more troubling, the results showed that many of the apps shared certain information with third parties – such as device ID, geolocation, or phone number – without disclosing that fact to parents. Further, a number of apps contained interactive features – such as advertising, the ability to make in-app purchases, and links to social media – without disclosing these features to parents prior to download.”
After gutting the laptop and putting it in a custom picture frame, Driftnet, a program that listens network traffic and picks out images from TCP streams, was installed. [AUTUIN] tested his build with an open wireless connection in his building. The results provided a wonderful narrative that started with pictures from news sites than slowly devolved to pictures from a hot-or-not style website, an online dating site and finally pictures from the inevitable conclusion of that browsing session.
Verizon Wireless has begun selling information about its customers’ geographical locations, app usage, and Web browsing activities, a move that raises privacy questions and could brush up against federal wiretapping law.
via Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits | Politics and Law – CNET News.
Verizon Wireless’ marketing literature acknowledges that it sells “mobile-usage data that offers insights on the mobile-device habits of an audience, including URL visits, app downloads and usage.” (Not all carriers do: Google guarantees that its proof-of-concept Google Fiber project “will not engage in deep packet inspection” except when necessary to fend off network attacks.)
The business of storing, decoding and analyzing unstructured data – think video, Facebook updates, Tweets, Internet searches and public cameras – along with mountains of facts and figures can help companies increase profits, cut costs and improve service, and is now one of the world’s hottest industries.
It’s called Big Data, and although much of the work is done in the United States, India is getting an increasing slice of the action, re-energizing an IT sector whose growth has begun to falter.
via Shopping or browsing on Main St? India’s Big Data firms know – chicagotribune.com.
A story about Facebook went around twitter last night that provoked quite a reaction in privacy advocates like me: Facebook, it seems, is experimenting with getting people to ‘snitch’ on any of their friends who don’t use their real names. Take a look at this:
via Facebook: snitchgate! « Paul Bernal’s Blog.
People in my field have known about this for a long time – it’s been the cause of a few ‘high profile’ events such as when Salman Rushdie had his account suspended because they didn’t believe that he was who he said he was – but few people had taken it very seriously for anyone other than the famous. Everyone knows ‘fake’ names and ‘fake’ accounts – my sister’s dog has a Facebook account – so few believed that Facebook was going to bother enforcing it, except for obvious trolls and so forth. Now, however, that appears to be changing.