Entries from August 2008 ↓

Ars Technica is reporting that a federal judge has ruled to allow social security numbers to be posted on public websites, citing the First Amendment and freedom of speech in the ruling.

This decision comes about as a result of privacy advocate Betty Ostergren’s efforts to keep Social Security numbers off of the web. Quoting from the page:

For several years, Virginia has been making the real estate records available for a nominal fee from a commonwealth website. Ostergren, wanting to give public officials a taste of their own medicine, began reproducing the records of legislators and court clerks—Social Security numbers and all—on her website.

[SNIP]

[The Virginia] legislature changed the law to prohibit private parties from distributing individuals’ Social Security numbers even if they are simply reposting the very same records available from the government’s own website. Ostergren viewed this last clause as censorship, and with the help of the Virginia ACLU, she sued to block its enforcement against her.

This ruling evinces the importance of privacy and free speech in current internet case law. As the courts continue to rule about what can be posted online (see, for example, Viacom v. Google), internet privacy concerns will continue to grow.

My recommendation?  Be very careful of who you share your personal data with, and make sure you have a service that monitors where your data appears on the web.  MyPrivacy scans the internet for you each month.

We’re a low key crew here at ReputationDefender.  We don’t order fancy lunches.  We wear a lot of company t-shirts around the office and our highly-caffeinated sodas are mostly the Costco variety.  So you can imagine our surprise when our friends over at VentureBeat called to inquire about the funding that we took back in January from Maples Investment and others!  Well, I guess it’s no longer much of a secret that we’ve really tapped into something important and worthy of attention from a group of smart investors.  We’re delighted by the coverage from VentureBeat and are glad for the capital.  We will continue to build the best reputation and privacy management tools for the web.  Congratulations to our team and to our customers for this exciting step forward.

It’s not some industry secret that Google is the search engine to beat a formidable search engine. What began as a backrub has now morphed into a full-fledged powerhouse of search. But Silicon Valley can be somewhat of an insular place. Every day rumors fly about this start up, or that maverick VC or some crazy idea that is gonna change the whole game. But in the case of Google and market dominance, how much of it is just talk, and how much of it is real?

Turns out, it’s real.

The above image comes to us from the analysts over at Web-traffic research firm Hitwise. According to their numbers (and spiffy chart) Google claims 70.8 percent of all U.S. searches as of July. This is an up tick from the 60 percent share they held in July 2006.

Beyond the big data for the almighty G, things get a little depressing when we look at also-rans MSN Search and Live.com. In spite of the fact that their product has undergone continuous reworking over the past three years, Microsoft has steadily lost share as Google has grown voraciously. Think Bill Gates is trying to get the anti-trust guys that investigated him to turn their eyes on Mountain View?

The Denial of Service attack is an attack on a computer resource to render it unavailable to its intended users. Very often it is the work of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Recently ReputationDefender came across a news story where a man denied service to a would-be lover and was attacked, kind of a variation on the DoS attack.

It’s your typical boy-meets-girl-over-the-Internet-posing-as-a-woman-in-Second Life story, but with some zaniness thrown in for good measure. After meeting in first life (that is, real life), the 52-year-old male victim from Claymont, Delaware ended the relationship (virtual and otherwise). This apparently upset the real woman of the pair, but instead of resorting to the typical jaded Internet-lover tactics of weepy/angry blog posts and troll forum comments calling his manhood into question, she decided to get physical, and not in the Linda Ronstadt Olivia Newton John kind of way [Thanks Old Fox!].

image via laughing squid.

In August the jilted woman allegedly drove to the victim’s workplace in Pennsylvania and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. When that initial attempt at reconciliation failed (we can’t understand why not), she returned undaunted two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware home address. Unfortunately for her, he had recently moved, so she did what any sane person would do: she posed as a postal worker and searched for four days until she found the new address.

A truly compassionate soul, the woman brought her dog Gogi along with her to Delaware and then cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.

According to police, when our would-be beau arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. Recognizing that his apartment was not the location for an impromptu rave, he fled immediately and contacted the police.

Authorities soon arrived on the scene, only to discover that the dog Gogi had been bound with duct tape and put in the bathroom while the woman was nowhere to be found. In addition to the dog, she apparently left behind a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun.

Maryland authorities identified her vehicle approximately an hour after the incident at a rest stop on I-95. After a brief struggle she was taken into custody and now faces charges of attempted kidnapping, burglary and aggravated menacing.

The conclusion is one that we’ve brought up before, but it bears repeating: be careful with what you do on the Internet. It is a very short leap for a determined individual to go from cyber stalking to real world stalking. Both are very hurtful, scary and illegal, but at least you can’t get tased over email.

ReputationDefender recently ran across this clever video that points out the real world consequences of social networking for teens and students. It was put together by a great nonprofit called ConnectSafely.org and is very well done.

ReputationDefender encourages parents to educate their children about online safety and their online reputation. Any readers have online teen safety tips? Let us know in the comments!