Spy Review

Many people use BlackBerries because the phones offer so many features and are easy to use. The phone is often used by high end users and many confidential conversations take place with most people unaware how easy it is to eavesdrop on these conversations.

A new software, PhoneSnoop, which was developed by Sheran Gunasekera who is director of security for Hermis Consulting in Jakarta, Indonesia, can be installed with or without the knowledge of the user and used to eavesdrop on conversations. Sheran says that the software which is available free is supposed to highlight the fact that BlackBerries are not secure.

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All kinds of sensitive and personal data are stored by various organisations in the private and public sectors. Off and on the public hear about how sites were hacked or information lost or there has been breach of confidential data. What makes news, however, is only the tip of the iceberg – there are many more instances where cases are not reported and never come to light.

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There are many government web sites which citizens can access but currently they have to use separate and different keys for each site. The government is looking at technology which will make accessing the sites more secure and easy for an individual.

Directgov chief technology officer David Matthewman, while talking about various authentication methods, said, ‘It could be biometric fingerprints in the long term… In the short term, it could be an applet on an iPhone, it could be a smartcard,’ putting forward the idea that citizen could perhaps use their iPhones to identify themselves.

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A new scanner is in use at Manchester airport, working much like Superman’s X-ray vision to see through clothes and all outerwear. It actually reveals whether a person has breast augmentation, any piercings in any part of the body and even an extremely clear outline of the person’s genitals.

Even though this kind of scanner was in use at Heathrow airport on a trial basis, people in the main are aghast at this kind of invasion of privacy. The ‘naked’ pictures are supposed to be destroyed immediately, will be viewed by only one person somewhere far away, so both parties are not embarrassed and people can refuse to be scanned and will be patted down as usual.

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The centralised government database has not met with strict security requirements and so the Identity and Passport Service seems to have changed its plan to store sensitive ID card data on it. The Department of Work and Pension’s (DWP) Customer Information System (CIS) may, however, store biographical details on the CIS in the near future.

Earlier work on this was to start in 2009 for a roll out in 2010/2011. As far back as 2006, the government had announced, “For NIR biographical information, we plan to use DWP’s Customer Information System (CIS) technology, subject to the successful completion of technical feasibility work…DWPs CIS technology is already used to hold records for everyone who has a National Insurance Number — i.e nearly everyone in the UK.”

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Thousands of hotmail email accounts were the target of a possible phishing attack according to Microsoft. Login details of users were put up on a website and their security compromised.

Over the weekend, Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers’ credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a likely phishing scheme,” Microsoft said in a statement published on a company blog on Monday. “Upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that the credentials be removed and launched an investigation to determine the impact to customers.”

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Professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California carried out a survey on how Americans feel about online tracking. This first of its kind independent study is based on telephonic interviews of 20 minutes each of 1,000 people and has generated widespread interest and will probably start a debate on the pros and cons of the issue.

Web site tracking is a tool which marketers and advertisers use for web site analysis. It is a software tool which tells the web site hosting the web site as soon as somebody opens a web site, how often he or she goes there, what he or she does there. When advertisements on the page or other links are clicked on, that is also reported. As such it is a kind of ‘big brother is watching you’ program, except that it is geared to analyze potential customers’ behavior patterns.

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In two separate incidents the Ministry of Justice lost important and sensitive information. The first incident occurred when encrypted data of the MoJ staff on a memory stick (pen drive) was lost. A staff member lost the stick containing budget spreadsheets which had the names, national insurance and employee numbers of more than 1,500 MoJ staff.

Another instance involved the loss of a portable hard drive by IT supplier EDS containing data of 256 people. Unfortunately this had personal information about HM Prison Service staff and was being used to transfer data between systems.

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