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OCAU News |
How easy is it to remove parts of your digital past? A whole industry -- known as online reputation management -- has grown up around helping individual clients and corporate clients suppress negative information online by creating more positive and search-engine-friendly postings. But what if you don't just want something massaged, manipulated or suppressed? What if you want it gone? Is it possible for an ordinary person to get some damaging tidbit entirely erased from the Web?
But if you want a new identity, you only need to pay £80. The details packaged and sold online include names, addresses, passport numbers and confidential financial data such as credit card numbers. With six out of 10 people now managing finances online, experts say the public needs to do more to prevent e-crime.
And it could happen to anyone, with privacy breaches occurring once a week. [H]undreds of credit card receipts from a Bondi Junction chemist are strewn across Mascot Oval; names and dates of birth for 3500 customers of a Sydney restaurant are inadvertently attached to a mass email; detailed financial records for Aussie Home Loans customers are dumped in an unsecured bin; and, most worrying, a Tax Office CD of documents about 3122 taxpayers vanishes after reaching a courier. And those losses of personal information, all from last month, were the ones made public.
Google had an embarrassing slip up when it linked to a known malware site. Search giant Google is known for its "do no evil" approach. It goes to great lengths to protect the environment and it blocks sites on lists of known malware sites from being searched. However, security researchers made an alarming discovery of a major slip-up for Google. The site had allowed a known malware site to buy text ads and was placing these ads on its partner pages through its Google AdWords service.
IT policy could spur economic growth, according to analysts. As staffers on Capitol Hill know all too well, the growth of technology has created an economy increasingly reliant on energy consumption, as BlackBerrys, laptops, and other devices become everyday necessities. The right policies, however, can make IT growth a part of the energy solution rather than the problem, IT representatives said Monday at a forum, in a congressional office, hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
But Blizzard doesn't seem to care, as they are immune to the falling economy. Speaking to VideoGamer.com hours before the midnight launch of expansion Wrath of the Lich King at HMV Oxford Street last week, Blizzard executive Paul Sams said the MMO genre has the "opportunity to be touched less" than rival entertainment, like film, as long as the product is "priced fairly".
The Dark Knight is set to become the most pirated film this year. This week, in another round of leaks, DVD-rips of ‘The Dark Knight’ found their way to BitTorrent. Unsurprisingly, given the commercial success of the movie, these were downloaded well over a million times in just a few days. From the looks of it, Batman will crush Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Transformers, as it will easily become this year’s most pirated movie.
Left 4 Dead is debuting tomorrow in America. he second Left 4 Dead television commercial starts its run on network and cable television tomorrow - Tuesday, November 18- the same day Valve's zombie thriller launches on the Xbox 360 and PC at retail outlets in North America. The title will be available at retail outlets in the rest of the world this coming Friday, November 21.
There's also a new game for the iPhone: My Little Tank. You have your choice of seven tank colors (that whirring sound you hear is General George Patton spinning in his grave when you choose the pink tank). You can control My Little Tank with an onscreen virtual d-pad, by swiping the screen with your finger to move the tank, and accelerometer-based directional tilt. You can listen to the built-in soundtrack, or pick your own music to enjoy while playing.
Here are some free applications to help boost productivity. You're busy. We're busy. Everybody's busy. Thankfully, busy people are also creative software developers. And we've tapped into their treasures to find you five awesome, "keep your life together" applications. Forever say goodbye to the yellow sticky notes adorning your computer display. These free programs will ensure that you never miss a critical appointment, important task, or billing date.
If you've ever gone wardriving, then this scooter is for you. Geek Wheels boasts just about everything you’d need for a long- or short-haul journey. Underneath the seat rests the scooter’s processing “brain”, which consists of a 1.2GHz VIA CPU and 1GB of memory. It also has a 2GB SSD for the OS and other software. Just next to the wing mirror is an 8in LCD touchscreen which will display TV picked up by the scooter’s on-board “stealth” TV antenna. Since you mustn’t watch and drive, the scooter’s been fitted with a DVR.
A Google Android phone has been hacked to act as a garage door remote. Brad Fitzpatrick has hacked his HTC G1 Android smartphone to use it as a secure remote which can open his home's garage door as he gets close to it. Using Wi-Fi, the mobile phone automatically fires up an HTTP request to his home server as soon as it's near enough, which triggers the opening as well as other functions in the house.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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