43 items tagged “privacy”
2008
eval() Kerfuffle. The ability to read supposedly private variables in Firefox using a second argument to eval() will be removed in Firefox 3.1.
Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and - possibly - sky marshals. Everything else - all the security measures that affect privacy - is just security theater and a waste of effort.
2007
Google Reader ruins Christmas (via) New sharing feature automatically reveals shared items to Gmail contacts, causing political rows.
Deconstructing Facebook Beacon JavaScript. How Facebook’s new Beacon service (also known as “Facebook ruined Christmas”) actually works.
Is Facebook Really Censoring Search When It Suits Them? Apparently MoveOn’s group “Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy!” stopped showing up in search results for “privacy”—the search claimed 17 results but suspiciously only showed 16.
Amazon Gets an SLA (But I Still Can’t Use It). “Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Acts (FIPPA) don’t allow me to store sensitive information (e.g., students’ work) in jurisdictions that permit secret warrants, like those mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act.”
Designing for a security breach
User account breaches are inevitable. We should take that in to account when designing our applications.
[... 545 words]Firefox 3 Antiphishing Sends Your URLs To Google. Stories like this crop up every now and then, but no one ever seems to mention that the Google Toolbar has been doing this since it was released (more than five years ago) provided you have PageRank display turned on.
Sun’s OpenID IdP: Real vs Fake. The thinking behind Sun’s decision to allow users of their OpenID provider to pick fake names and assign personal e-mail addresses.
Sun’s OpenID IdP: Data Governance. Lauren Wood explains the checklist used to ensure Sun’s OpenID provider adequately respected user privacy and data governance (what happens to the data that is stored).
It's still a privacy concern. If, for example, I work at and post from Microsoft all day and my identicon is that of the MS Proxy Server then I would be able to identify other mefi users who are my co-workers because our identicons would match.
Visual Security: 9-block IP Identification. Smart (and pretty) trick for showing a representation tied to a commenter’s IP address without affecting their privacy.
2004
non-consensual http user tracking using caches. Interesting security issue involving HTTP caching headers