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Submission + - Startup Stealth Data working to uncover the identities of website users (bizjournals.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Data mining startup Stealth Data is working to help websites uncover the "individual names, phone numbers, emails and physical addresses" of the users who visit websites. This information "can include a website visitor's job title, employer, annual income, age, and personal and professional social media profiles" so that businesses can use this data for marketing purposes.

Stealth Data's third co-founder Chad Sneed experienced marketing frustrations firsthand through his family's dealership, Dennis Sneed Ford in Gower, Missouri. Sneed, who's a vice president and partner, said the dealership spends a significant amount on marketing, from search engines to third-party advertising. A bulk of the dealership's website visitors were anonymous, however, which meant it couldn't follow-up with visitors to try and close a sale. Sneed wanted to unlock that information and started talking to the dealership's outside marketing firm, Phame Influence, to see if it was possible. Puckett, who co-founded Phame with Paris, also is a trial lawyer.

"My lawyer hat instantly says no," Puckett said.

But after digging further, he discovered it's legal and that using the information for cold calling and emailing is fair game.

Co-founder Chad Sneed noted that he doesn't see any privacy issues.

Comment Re: Face masks (Score 1) 356

Masks obviously work. However as someone who is profiting greatly off of the current state of idiocy that we are experiencing in the US, thanks to your mindset, I ask that you please continue to stick your head in the sand. We're going to lose a couple of years because of this, but I will take the money.

Submission + - Miami Cop Doxes Innocent Woman, Anonymous Doxes Cop Back (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: After a woman saw a cop speeding down the freeway without a siren, she pulled him over and told him to stop going so fast. The cop's police union chief decided to take the woman's private details and put them on his Facebook account, asking friends to "call her." Of course, harassment ensued. Now, Anonymous hackers have doxed the police union chief back as payback. For once, these hacktivists did something useful.

Submission + - New HTTPS Bicycle Attack Reveals Details About Passwords From Encrypted Traffic (softpedia.com)

campuscodi writes: Dutch security researcher Guido Vranken has published a paper [PDF] in which he details a new attack on TLS/SSL-encrypted traffic, one that can potentially allow attackers to extract some information from HTTPS data streams. Attackers could extract the length of a password from TLS packets, and then use this information to simplify brute-force attacks. The new HTTPS Bicycle Attack can also be used retroactively on HTTPS traffic logged several years ago. Hello NSA!

Submission + - Need a Security Monitoring Company That Accepts VPN'ed Video Feeds 2

mache writes: My cousin is finishing up a major remodel of his home in Houston and has installed video cameras for added security. At my suggestion, he wired up all the cameras to be on a separate VLAN that only uses wired Ethernet and has no WiFi access. Since the Houston police will only respond to security alarms if the monitoring company is viewing the crime in progress, he must arrange for the video feed to available to a security monitoring company.

I told him that the feed should use VPN or some other encrypted tunneling technique as it travels the Internet to the monitoring company and we proceeded to try and find a company that supported those protocols. No one I have talked to understands the importance of securing a video feed and everyone so far blithely suggests that we just open a port on his home router. Its frustrating to see such willful ignorance about Internet security.

Does anyone know of a security monitoring company that we can work with that has a clue?

Submission + - EFF asks appeals court to "shut down the Eastern District of Texas" (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have asked a federal appeals court to make big changes to the rules governing venue in patent cases. The two public interest groups are seeking to file an amicus brief (PDF) which attacks the Eastern District of Texas as being one of the "most notorious situations of forum shopping in recent history."

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