Focus On: Privacy

It's the old safety versus privacy battle all over again. As Microsoft warps the phishing fear to remove the little privacy that remains, it's fair to ask,"Is our would-be protector competent enough to do the job?"

A guy may be going to jail for selling an e-greeting card that lets Romeo spy on Juliet, or vice versa. But he wouldn't have had anything to sell if administrators had a better handle on the SMTP and FTP protocols.

The insider sold 30 million AOL victims to spammers and worse. The Judge... plumbing the depths of Justice's blindness... billed him just US$84,000 then shipped him off for a 15 month all-inclusive vacation. As We the People will drop $32K in Jason Smathers-maintenance, the taxpayers' theoretical profit... assuming Jason ponies up the fine... is $54,000. That's a psuedo-gov't profit of two tenths of a penny per AOL victim. We're tempted to add that, in addition to the $200,000 to $400,000 AOL's sloppiness may cost stockholders, 30 million AOL victims have been robbed, passed around by scumbags and humiliated... but they're used to it. Hizzoner Himself abandoned a spam-strangled AOL account. Meanwhile, ever-awake Judge ...

Who can knock it? Keeping smut from minors is a noble goal... just a couple of steps down from Mom, the flag and apple pie. Current fashion among politicos is the Do Not [Your Cause Here] Registry. Politically, it's a gift from [Your Deity Here]. You get to stomp your feet, express your outrage and vote. Really show the ole constits you're doing something. Ladle on that customer service with no tax increases. And when a judge tosses it as stupid, unenforceable, un-Constitutional, or all-of-the-above... So what? They can't say you didn't give it your best shot. Update: The states of Michigan and Utah have passed Do Not Contact registries for "inappropriate" email to ...

Question: What do these companies have in common: AOL, Bank of America, ChoicePoint, LexisNexis, Time Warner? Answer: Each harbours giant databases containing sensitive details... including credit card numbers... for millions of consumers and businesses. And each has been breached. Big time. But that's just the big guys. Millions of small databases are breached by hackers every day, from florists to grocery stores, utility companies to retailers. Sadly, you don't even have to use the web to be robbed, because every database that can be reached from the Internet is at risk. So how can you protect yourself? First understand the crooks. Most depend on your sloppy record keeping. Foil them by scrutinizing your credit card bills and ...