Andrew Walser
“OMG! Did you hear that ___ tracks you through ___?!”
Whether it’s Facebook tracking you through cookies on their “Like” button, or Carrier IQ logging your android usage through a difficult-to-disable phone feature. It seems like the Internet community is ever-busy with new invasion of privacy complaints over the products that they are using.
Although the part that I’m most shocked by:
The tech world is STILL surprised every time a story like this comes out! It may just be me, but these stories have begun to have the same affect on me as when someone tells me the email they clicked on saying they won a free iPad turned out to be a virus.
That’s not to say that this isn’t a valid concern. I understand fully where people are coming from when they say they don’t want their activities to be tracked, or at least want to be notified by the tracker before they do it (Because we all read our terms and conditions before agreeing, right?).
With that said, I do feel there should be some differentiation and regulations for the types of tracking being done, as some cases are more severe than others.
Sony Hacked! (Again)
Sony is under fire again for a recent breach involving customer information. Sony announced Tuesday that hackers broke into at least 93,000 customer accounts. Although thanks to new security measures, no credit card information was lost.
How was it hacked?
Sony stated that this attack was carried out by hackers collecting account names and passwords of their customers from other websites that were not associated with Sony. Since many people use the same account name and password for multiple sites, logging into Sony’s was easy once they had the information.
Sony’s new Chief of Information Security Officer, Phil Reitinger, made an announcement on Tuesday of the breach on Sony’s Blog. He claimed that the majority of log-in attempts by the hackers failed, although they did manage to sign into 60,000 accounts on the Sony Entertainment Network and the PlayStation Network. Another 33,000 were successful on Sony Online Entertainment.
Project Cauã: Increasing Technology in 2nd and 3rd World Countries
As a new blogger for The Tech Fire, I would like to start out my first post discussing a conference that I had the pleasure of attending last weekend at the University of Illinois. Out of the many interesting presentations I was able to listen in on, the one I found to be the most innovative and world-changing was that of Project Cauã.
Project Cauã is a humanitarian effort to improve living conditions by utilizing open-source technology in Latin American countries. Similar to the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, Project Cauã aims to increase the use of technology in 2nd and 3rd world countries in the hope that increasing IT skills will have a positive impact on a country’s education and economy as a whole.
What are the goals of Project Cauã?
