Privacy

Concerns About Flash Player Security

This entry was posted in Marketing Privacy Technology on by

Have you all updated your Flash Player configuration to stop marketing folks and others from using it like cookies? Modulator reported on this back on April 1 and it was not an April fools joke!
Last Friday Internet Week wrote:

Macromedia’s Flash media player is raising concerns among privacy advocates for its little-known ability to store computer users’ personal information and assign a unique identifier to their machines.

Read the article. Fix your Flash settings!

Marketing Intrusion…

This entry was posted in Internet Marketing Privacy Spam Technology on by

I have a few words for this guy:

Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says the company is trying to help consumers by preventing them from deleting cookies that help website operators deliver better services.
“The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works,” Tanembaum said.

Mookie, take a used hot poker and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
We can make our own decisions about which cookies or other server generated markers we want to keep on our systems! For a fee I might consider letting you keep a few more markers on my system but you damn well better ask first.
I’m rather perturbed that I now have to spend time learning how to configure Flash Player to kill off the stuff ol’ mookie is trying to spawn and then propogating that accross all the family systems.

Keeping Track of You

This entry was posted in Culture Information Law Enforcement Privacy on by

You are being monitored:

It’s hard to travel incognito these days. As you go about your business, you leave a trail of data for others to collect, merge, mine, analyse and even sell, often without our knowledge or consent. And we are increasingly subject to electronic or visual surveillance, often without our knowledge or express consent.
At the bottom of the linked article is a hypothetical one day data capture timeline. Read it and be comforted….
I take a pretty basic position on personal information privacy. All information gathered by any entity about an individual must be kept private unless the individual specifically authorizes the release of that information. No exceptions. Penalities for unauthorized disclosure should be high.
So, with the above constraint, I think it is just fine for Safeway to keep track of my buying habits and, if they have my permission, to disclose this information to third parties.
And, no, I do not think it reasonable to grant governmental entities an exception to this. They should have to get my permission to disclose information that they have gathered.
Thus, none of these entities, government or private, would get to disclose information in response to any kind of subpoena without the target individuals permission.
Meanwhile, use cash when you can.

Gmail

This entry was posted in Gmail Google Privacy on by

Cool, I just activated a new Gmail account.
Now I need to decide just what I’ll use it for as I’m not really inclined to use it for my blog email or for my main personal email.
It was very slick at autofilling the Gmail address of my benefactor. It only took, I think, two characters and there it was. Of course, zombyboy is a unique name and he is a good guy! Thanks!