The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and India are now planning to ban Blackberrys in their countries. The Blackberry service uses encrypted connections between devices and the email and web browsing service, which are operated from North America. The above countries have a policy of monitoring the email, messaging and browsing of their citizens, and even of foreign visitors to those countries.
It seems that RIM, the maker of Blackberry, is looking to add security back-doors so that governments in these countries can spy on Blackberry users in those areas.
Facebook takes on the issue is the data that was scraped wasn’t private at all. To a degree, I agree. The data is being shared through the site, it’s already public.
Here’s how it went down: a good guy hacker developed a program that went through all 500 million profiles and was able to skim (scrape) all the data from Facebook that wasn’t locked down via the users Facebook privacy settings. Basically if you didn’t lock your privacy settings down, it’s now available in this file. If you lock down your settings today, it’s still in this file.
What’s the point? Hackers like to tinker, and some like to make a point. It seems the hacker here wanted to make a point that your data on social media is up for grabs whether you like it or not.
What’s the risk? It seems the format and way the data was compiled is now searchable in a way that can benefit advertisers and marketers. Can it be used by thieves? It’s too early to tell. In this situation my first concern would be data that you may not want to be around in 20 years that may damage your reputation down the road.
This incident should highlight the lack of privacy and lack of security that exists in social media. Recognize that what
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If you are short of cash and are in need of some quick money, you can get a payday loan. Payday finance loans are a small loan that you must pay when you get your next salary. Because of its short-term nature, some states have laws that set a maximum amount that can be lent to borrowers. This allows casual borrowers to have just enough cash to get through to the next payday without worrying too much about long-term commitments.
When you acquire a payday loan, make sure that you’re not trapped into excessive interest rates. The last thing you want is to spend all your hard-earned money into paying off your loans. You must not get into the habit of always seeking out loans and accruing ridiculous interest rates. Make it your goal to live a life that is free from stress and loan commitments.
You can find loan companies from the internet. They will require you to fill out an application form where you state personal information such as your bank statement, Social Security number, and address. Some institutions would require you to write a voided check which you will have to fax over to their office.
Just a word of advice: Don’t ask too much. Ask Read more…
Today, it is difficult to have a loan approved because of the present economic problems. Everyday, numerous people are being laid off from work that is why it is not surprising that lending companies thoroughly scrutinize borrowers before they grant loan requests.
Most people do not have the capability to pay off debts anymore because plenty of them are out of jobs. Nevertheless, acquiring a home, going to college, buying expensive things, and improving homes are still possible in these tough times. Yes, these are all possible with home equity lines of credit and home equity loans.
A home equity line of credit is an amount of loan that a person can withdraw whenever he needs it. If he uses the funds from this kind of home equity debt, he has to pay the interest that is often at a flexible rate. Otherwise, he pays for nothing except for the annual fee. On the other hand, a home equity loan is a home equity debt that pays him lump sums that are often at fixed interest rates. Home equity fast cash loans also offer great advantages.
For instance, they are immediate sources of money. A person can easily avail of them if he has an available equity in his home. Read more…
Identity theft has been occurring more often lately. Protecting against identity theft has become more increasingly important nowadays because of this. It is estimated that approximately 10,000,000,000 people are affected each and every single year because of this crime.
This crime has no prejudice. Children are affected and elderly are also affected. Basically if you have an ID card or a Social Security number you will at one point be possibly become a victim of id theft. It is estimated that 70% of the victims of id theft will never get rid of negative information on their records as a result of this crime.
A lot of people think that simply shredding all their important documents with their information on it will be enough to stop this crime. Some even go as far as to hide their Social Security number and avoid using it whenever possible.
Unfortunately 45% of the people who do these things have a chance at becoming a victim of identity theft at some point. In order to safeguard yourself from the damaging effects of ID theft it is much better take your protection to the next level.
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A recent news report of a skimming scam in Long Island, N.Y., netted thieves more than $200,000 from ATMs at five branches.
Skimming today is far more sophisticated than in the past. Skimmers can include blue tooth and texting technology that send the data to the criminal anywhere. Keypads can be compromised by devices that overlay the exiting pad and transfer the data remotely.
ATM scams and fraud go beyond skimming to crimes that are very physical such as ram raiding to remote malicious software hacks.
Bankinfosecurity.com published “7 Growing Threats to Financial Institutions”.
#1 Skimming; Hardware readily available online that is attached to the face of ATM records user card information and pin codes. In this case you may still be able to perform a transaction.
#2 Ghost ATMs; A card reader is blocked off and replaced with hardware that supersedes the machine and records all your data without allowing a transaction. The machine reads “Can’t complete transaction”.
#3 Dummy ATMs; In some cases an ATM is bought off of eBay (do a search) or elsewhere and installed anywhere there is foot traffic. The machine is set up for one purpose; read data. The machi
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