DestructioN - Slashdot User

More Operation Ore fallout

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2007, @02:23PM

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is running a story which further investigates foul-ups at Operation Ore (previously on Slashdot), in which 7,000 people whose credit card details were found on a child porn website were automatically arrested. The problem, alleges the BBC, is that (a) credit card fraud was rife, so lots of people were wrongly accused, but (b) many of the wrongly accused may have accepted a police caution in order to end the matter quickly and discretely. Many committed suicide, but we'll never know the guilty/innocent ratio there. Meanwhile the police claim the fact that some genuine pedophiles were arrested makes it all OK. I don't know about my fellow slashdotters, but this story scares the bejesus out of me."

Alleged pedos really victims of credit card fraud?

Submitted by

clickclickdrone

on Thursday May 10 2007, @08:12AM

clickclickdrone writes "A large number of people in the UK accused of buying child porn via credit card are claiming they have been victims of credit card fraud. The people, identified by Operation Ore after details of the credit cards were found on a US website say they are innocent and that their card details were used fraudulently. Furthermore, they claim the police simply did not understand the concept of wholesale credit card fraud and targetted them needlessly. Whilst 2300 people have been guilty, another 2000 had charges dropped but not before damage was made to their reputation as well as having their lives turned upside down.
BBC News has the details."

Wisconsin Orders Gas Station to Raise Gas Prices

Submitted by

hahafaha

on Wednesday May 09 2007, @04:24PM

hahafaha writes "Raj Bhandari, a gas station owner in Wisconsin, offered a 2 cents/gallon discount for gas to seniors, and 3 cents/gallon to those that supported youth sports. However, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture is threatening to penalize him for each discounted gallon, with the fine at a judge's discretion. According to the Department, he is violating Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act, which requires stations to sell gas for about 9.2 percent more than the wholesale price."

22,000 names and SSNs stolen at the U. of Missouri

Submitted by

Ardeaem

on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:33AM

Ardeaem writes "The University of Missouri is reporting that a security breach has allowed over 22,000 names and social security numbers to be stolen. It appears that an insecure application is to blame; used by the help desk to track issues, the application allowed the retrieval of names and SSNs. The "hacker" simply used the application to get the SSNs one by one. Of course, if the person's name is known, getting more information about them is possible through the school's directory, enabling the "hackers" to possibly compile a disturbing amount of information about each person. Why do organizations still use SSNs for identification, and can they be held liable for it? When will they learn?"

Google begins Massive Roll out of Web History

Submitted by

untouchableForce

on Tuesday May 08 2007, @09:18PM

untouchableForce writes "It has been well known for some time that Google could record your search history and associate it with your Google Account. It was used to create service such as Personalized Search. A couple of weeks ago Google released a new tool called Web History and apparently it recently has began enrolling all of its new and existing users into it. I noticed it on my account today despite having previous disabled personalized search in my account. To their credit it was "paused" but I was still quietly enrolled in something I knew nothing about. Here is an overview of Web History can be found at this blog entry. Here is Google's FAQ regarding why it has suddenly appeared along with directions on how to remove it from your account.

Given all of the ways things are being interpreted in this world today I want absolutely no one having access to a complete history of what I searched. I submit this only to bring it to the attention of others who may have missed this. To Google's credit they do give you the ability to delete items from your web history, which will keep them from using it to make recommendations but they likely still have other records of it. The only positive aspect of this that I can see is at least we getting an additional glimpse on just how much information the search giant has on us."

Another DMCA Takedown Notice For Digg

Submitted by

ngottlieb

on Tuesday May 08 2007, @08:36PM

ngottlieb writes "Digg has received another DMCA takedown notice for a post containing a number used to decrypt a copyrighted poem. The hosting of the key violates the DMCA's "ban on trafficking in circumvention devices" in the same way the hosting of the AACS key violated it. Will Digg.com comply with this takedown notice, or continue it's stand against the DMCA, supporting its users all the way?"