Identity

In a likely setback to the MPAA and RIAA's antipiracy efforts, a federal judge has ruled that an IP address alone is not enough to accuse a specific individual of illegal downloads.

An IP address only identifies the location at which any number of Internet-connected devices may be located, much that a single telephone number can be used by many telephones, Magistrate Judge Gary R. Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York said in a ruling earlier this week.

"Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP … Read more

Recently Microsoft released the Service Pack 2 upgrade for its Office 2011 for Mac productivity suite, which primarily addresses issues and functions with Outlook for Mac, but also addresses problems with other aspects of the Office suite. After applying this update, a few people have had problems in which the Office identity database has become corrupted and when launching Office programs have received messages stating "Please upgrade the Office database."

Yesterday Microsoft acknowledged in a blog posting that some users have been experiencing this error, and has provided a couple of options for getting around it.

If you … Read more

A Texas company is releasing a free mobile app today that will alert people if their personal data has been stolen and makes it into the hands of criminals.

AllClear ID offers identity fraud protection services to consumers when their data has been exposed by an attack on a corporate database or other compromise. For instance, Sony hired the company to help its 75 million PlayStation Network customers after the system was hacked and their names, addresses, e-mail addresses and other information were exposed last April.

While very few of the data breach incidents actually result in harm to consumers, … Read more

Protecting yourself from identity theft starts at home, and the first step is to secure your own computer and the personal data it holds. Identity Finder Free is a powerful tool that scans your PC for unsecured passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal data and gives you the option to shred, secure, recycle, or ignore the scan's findings. It's free to home users on their personal systems. The full version searches for more data and also searches e-mail, compressed files, and removable drives, offers advanced options, and disables ads.

Identity Finder Free's installation wizard includes the … Read more

Almost since it debuted, Google+ has wrestled with the idea of how users can identify themselves on the social network.

The company wanted to create a service without pseudonyms or impersonation. But Google+, which now claims 90 million users, had plenty of people sign up who are better known by some other identity than their real name. Google has suspended many of those accounts, much to their users' chagrin.

Google is changing the policy to "broaden support" for some pseudonyms, Bradley Horowitz, a co-leader of Google+, wrote this afternoon in a Google+ post. Now Google+ will allow users … Read more

Hackers in China have found a way to infiltrate supposedly secure smart cards used by U.S. government employees, according to security company AlienVault.

The security firm said it has seen dozens of such attacks, which tap into a unique variant of a nasty bit of malware known as Sykipot.

The hackers appear intent on stealing data from the Department of Defense and other related agencies. The malware is capable of capturing the PIN numbers used by government smart cards, thereby allowing access to supposedly secure information.

"Like we have shown with previous Sykipot attacks, the attackers use a … Read more

Now that the Yuletide fog has cleared, details are emerging about the extent of an Anonymous hack on security think tank Strategic Forecasting that was first reported Christmas Day and appears to have affected some 50,000 individuals.

Austin, Texas-based Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, disclosed over the weekend that its Web site, which remains down, was hacked and information about its corporate subscribers--who include the likes of the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and Miami Police Department--was disclosed. AntiSec, an Anonymous-affiliated hacktivist group, quickly claimed responsibility and promised "mayhem" with plans to release even more documents.… Read more

Along with being home to Silicon Valley, California is also an epicenter of cybercrime.

That led California Attorney General Kamala Harris to announce today the creation of a new state Justice Department unit to combat crimes that enlist technology.

The eCrime unit aims to "make sure that vulnerable populations are safe, that consumers are safe, and that we allow good behavior to occur," Harris said at a news conference in San Jose, Calif (see video of news conference below). "But where there are predators and predatory practices, we want to ensure we have the skills and technology … Read more

You're responsible for securing the private information you store on your computer or transmit over the Internet. But what about your personal data that's in the hands of some organization you've trusted with it?

From the IRS to your local florist, your private information is widely shared. And every day some organization loses sensitive data about its clients or customers--whether due to a hack attack or (more likely) from the loss or theft of a computer or storage device.

Here are three recent examples from the Open Security Foundation's Data Loss Database: