Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Check out the new SourceForge HTML5 internet speed test! No Flash necessary and runs on all devices. ×
Privacy

Submission + - LinkedIn is selling your clicks AND violating their own Privacy Policy (hive76.org)

Submitted by jmil
jmil writes: LinkedIn is selling your clicks and violating its own privacy policy.

As advertising for the LinkedIn Premium for-pay Service called "LinkedInPro" they advertise a feature:
"Who's Viewed Your Profile: Get the full list
Get the complete list of who's viewed your profile with Profile Stats Pro. You'll also see how your viewers found you, and learn more about the people interested in you."

This is a feature of their all of their Business, Business Plus, and Executive for-pay services, which range from $24.99-$99.95 per month.

Besides a clear invasion of privacy, this is also directly in opposition to their own privacy policy:
"We do not sell, rent, or otherwise provide personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent except where it is necessary to carry out your instructions (to process your payment information, for example) or as described in Section 2 of this Privacy Policy. Also, we may share information with affiliates (like LinkedIn Ireland, Limited) to provide the Services. We also provide you with the means to control whether or not your contact information is viewable to other Users through your profile."

That means LinkedIn is both actively tracking everything you click on specifically as a means to be sold as personally identifiable information to other users of the site, while at the same time promising not to do so.

At this point all you can do is deactivate your LinkedIn account (UnLinked?) since their customer service does not respond to inquiries. What a crock.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What If Customer Backups Contain Child Porn? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've worked for years in the computer repair industry and all the while made full backups of customer's drives. My boss was intent on keeping the backups forever. Suppose somewhere along the lines in the past ten years, we had backed up someone's stash of child porn, and now it's on our hard drives and our severs. Are we now breaking the law?
Google

Submission + - Opting Out of Google Services

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the years I have added on a number of Google services to my main account — sometimes accidentally (by hitting the "login" button on Youtube, etc.). Google Dashboard ( http://www.google.com/dashboard ) does not seem to have a way to close services selectively. I have found a few isolated links that allow me to close specific services (Orkut: https://accounts.google.com/DeleteService?service=orkut ); however, I can't simply swap in the name other services for them to be deleted. Others services, such as blogger.com don't seem to allow you to close your accounts at all. Is there a single page that allows me to choose which Google Account Services to shut down, and which ones to keep? I'd like to have my overall Google Service profile slimmed down by March First, leaving me with Gmail, Voice, and Groups.
Censorship

Submission + - Megaupload's Plan to KO the RIAA (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "While prosecutors and the FBI believe Megaupload.com earned most of its $175 million in revenue from copyright infringement, a new report has surfaced, which may explain why Megaupload was really shut down. It has to do with a Megaupload venture called MegaBox, and the greediness of the Recording Industry Association of America. In mid-December 2011, roughly four weeks before Megaupload was shuttered by the FBI, the file-sharing site announced a new cloud-based music locker similar to iTunes and Google Music, which integrates a download store, a music player and a DIY artist service, collectively called MegaBox. Unlike other music services that charge artists, Schmitz's idea was to actually pay artists, even for free downloads, and to allow artists to keep 90 percent of their earnings. At the time of the announcement, Megaupload was embroiled in a battle with Universal Music Group, one of the "Big 5" music labels that represents about one-third of the U.S. music market."

Submission + - Gaming PR firm nabs Worst of 2011 (examiner.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ocean Marketing, in what may go down in history as the worst PR move ever, has botched a situation following the posting of an email thread between Paul Christoforo, head of the PR firm and a customer known only as Dave on Penny Arcade early this morning. The debacle, which has incensed a majority of internet outlets, has only been exacerbated by the increasing lack of support Christoforo claimed to have in the condescending emails exchanged between initially Dave, and later on Penny Arcade and PAX cofounder Mike Kraulik.
Privacy

Submission + - Carrier IQ Bug Can Record Texts in Coded Format (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Carrier IQ, the embattled software company at the center of the controversy over alleged data collection on mobile devices, has released a new document that details the ways in which carriers deploy the software, how it works on devices and what data it is capable of collecting. The company also admitted in the document that its software has a bug that, in some specific cases, could cause the application to collect the contents of SMS messages.

In its report, released Monday, Carrier IQ says that under some limited circumstances its software will log the contents of SMS messages sent to a user's phone, but that that the contents of those messages would not be human readable. Instead, they would be in an encoded form that could not be decoded without special software and the carriers don't have access to the contents of the messages either. The company said it has worked on a fix for the bug, which affected devices running the embedded version of the Carrier IQ agent.
Android

Submission + - FBI Admits Carrier IQ Used For Law Enforcement (muckrock.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: A FOIA request has revealed that the FBI is using Carrier IQ data for investigative purposes. In response to a request for documents related to accessing Carrier IQ information, the FBI replied that it did have files but could not release them due to possible interference with an ongoing investigation. This would seem to contradict earlier claims by researchers that Carrier IQ isn't logging data.
Medicine

Submission + - 17-year-old wins $100K for creating cancer-killing (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 17-year-old Angeloa Zhang was recently awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project was entitled “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells." The creation is the so-called “Swiss army knife of cancer treatment” which allows a nanoparticle to be delivered to a tumor where is proceeds to kills cancer stem cells.
Government

Submission + - Senate Bill Allows Indefinite Imprisonment of Amer (blogcritics.org) 1

Submitted by Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk writes: With little public warning Democrat leaders in the Senate are attempting to rush through a National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) which includes controversial provisions which could open the door to authorizing the military to detain United States Citizens within the US and hold them indefinitely without charge or trial. They could even potentially face military justice instead of trial in a civilian court, with no regard for their Constitutionally protected rights.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/defense-bill-includes-authorization-for-indefinite/#ixzz1f72Bc2O4

You can see the live stream at http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/

Comment Resume Builder (Score 2) 523

by wiley001 (#38189360) Attached to: How Does a Self-Taught Computer Geek Get Hired?
As stated before..Take on some odd jobs (or do some demo work, not for a customer, but for building a portfolio). Once you have a decent size portfolio, showing how well you do in the field, you should be able to find an employer to 'take a risk' on you. (I say that loosely because although you could be the best programmer/designer ever, unfortunately you dont have a piece of paper backing that up). I was in a similar boat as you, only with Programming more so than design (C#, C++, AS3, etc). Once you build out a small little resume you can substitute a formal degree with work experience. I'm at my third programming job now (prior was a contract job and most recent was a game studio that shut down). All is well and the money is good, you just have to be patient and take your lumps. (Remember that youre technically 4yrs ahead of the curve. So even if you get a low(er) paying job, youre still coming out ahead.

Submission + - E-PARASITE Act Petition (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Straight from your favorite new government petition website, Stop the E-PARASITE Act.

This Bill would allow essentially allow A Great Firewall of America and would be a shameful desecration of free speech and any sort of reasonable copyright law. The new Law would allow copyright holders to force websites which have any copyrighted material to be blocked by ISP companies around the country, without requiring that the websites be given time to take the offending material down. It would also put pressure on ISP companies to monitor their users like never before, a gross invasion of privacy. This bill is a direct assault on a free internet and a shameful attempt by copyright lobbyists to destroy net neutrality. Essentially it's a censorship law that would end the internet as we know it in America.
Piracy

Submission + - Did ICE 'Pirate' Its Anti-Piracy PSA? (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You may have seen that the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has been seizing domain names. When it eventually takes over those domain names permanently, it replaces the seizure notice with a YouTube video. Some people noticed that the YouTube video was just a recut video that New York City was using. Since the whole point of the video is that people who work on films have to get paid, Techdirt wondered how much ICE paid for the video. After asking both NYC and ICE and receiving no responses, Techdirt filed some Freedom of Information Act requests. While they turned up that the videos were actually owned by NBC Universal (though neither government entity publicly admits that it's running NBC Universal propaganda films as its own), ICE appears to have no evidence that it properly licensed the videos or that it paid anyone involved in the making of the videos. Since the original video, featuring comedian Tom Papa, claims that "there's no such thing as a free movie" to define "piracy," is it possible that the federal government "pirated" this anti-piracy video?
Games

Submission + - Beat the Sony and EA EULAs with Gamers Opt Out (examiner.com)

Submitted by AndrewGOO9
AndrewGOO9 writes: In the wake of the issues with the Playstation Network, Sony has gone out of their way to remove any gamers ability to sue them collectively without an arbitrator chosen by the company as a result of the latest EULA, which coincidentally bars you from accessing the PSN, should you decline. Conversely, EA's Origin service is doing something similar, all the while trying to monitor what exactly you're doing on your PC, Big Brother-style. Well, that's where GamersOptOut comes in. They will send a letter on your behalf to Sony and EA to prevent just that — as long as you do so within 30 days.
The Internet

Submission + - LulzSec Arrests: A Warning to Dissidents? (owni.eu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI's arrest of LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger was assisted by a VPN service HideMyAss handing over log details of his use of their web proxy. They claimed this was in response to a UK court order but no evidence for this has been presented and the idea that US law enforcement agencies could easily obtain a UK court order seems unlikely. HMA is a commercial company that markets its services by exploiting the idea that it is supportive of the hacker’s cause – even somewhat cynically exploiting their role in aiding Egyptian protesters in circumventing government censorship to access Twitter. The question about all of this is why the LulzSec hackers didn't use Tor and chat logs suggest that this was because it was too slow. The actions of HideMyAss however is a stark warning to anyone — including dissidents about trusting commercial services for their protection.
Sony

Submission + - PSN New Terms and Privacy Policy (sonyentertainmentnetwork.com)

Submitted by Azmodan
Azmodan writes: "On September 15, 2011, Sony Network Entertainment America Inc. ("SNEA") will transfer its online services operations, including your wallet and the funds in it, to Sony Network Entertainment International LLC ("SNEI"). The first time you sign in to your PlayStation®Network account on or after September 15, 2011, you will be asked to enter into a new Terms of Service and User Agreement ("TOS") and Privacy Policy with SNEI if you wish to continue using your PlayStation®Network account. Please review all changes to the TOS and Privacy Policy carefully before indicating your agreement. In particular, please review Section 15 of the TOS, which now includes a class action waiver and requires that most disputes be resolved through arbitration. "

As IAMAL, I'ld like to ask the Slashdot folks what do you think about this? I'ld like to point out the 12 point in the TOS document : "[...] automatic updates or upgrades which may change your current operating system, cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities".

TOS here :
http://www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/SEN-legal-docs/TERMS_OF_SERVICE_AGREEMENT-EN.pdf

Privacy here : http://www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/SEN-legal-docs/Privacy_Policy_Changes-EN.pdf

Slashdot Top Deals

Happiness is a hard disk.

Close