A Chinese woman managed to enter Japan illegally by having plastic surgery to alter her fingerprints, thus fooling immigration controls, police claim.
Lin Rong, 27, had previously been deported from Japan for overstaying her visa. She was only discovered when she was arrested on separate charges.
Tokyo police said she had paid $15,000 (£9,000) to have the surgery in China.
via BBC News - ‘Fake fingerprint’ Chinese woman fools Japan controls.
BANKING giant ANZ has admitted a branch manager breached privacy regulations to access a customer’s personal information.
But the woman whose private details were “inappropriately” viewed by the manager - who is also her next door neighbour - is demanding the man be sacked according to the bank’s own code of conduct regulations.
At the very least, Golden Grove resident Susan Clayton wants ANZ manager Phillip Saredakis transferred from her local Golden Grove branch.
“This is a serious breach of my privacy. I was brought up to believe you could trust a bank manager but I feel violated and he should be sacked,” Mrs Clayton, a 46-year-old hairdressing salon owner, said.
“It’s bad enough to live next door to him let alone having to see him at my local branch after what he did.”
China is the world’s most successful Internet censor. While the Great Firewall of China isn’t perfect, it effectively limits information flowing in and out of the country. But now the Chinese government is taking things one step further.
Under a requirement taking effect soon, every computer sold in China will have to contain the Green Dam Youth Escort software package. Ostensibly a pornography filter, it is government spyware that will watch every citizen on the Internet.
Green Dam has many uses. It can police a list of forbidden Web sites. It can monitor a user’s reading habits. It can even enlist the computer in some massive botnet attack, as part of a hypothetical future cyberwar.
China’s actions may be extreme, but they’re not unique. Democratic governments around the world — Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.
Rakuten Inc., operator of the online retail site Rakuten-ichiba, has been selling customers’ credit card numbers and e-mail addresses–at a charge of 10 yen per name–to retailers selling items to those people, it was learned Friday.
Companies that bought the numbers include Joshin Denki Co., an electrical appliance store based in Naniwa Ward, Osaka, that is listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Rakuten said it had not acted improperly because it makes clear in its privacy policy that the personal data of customers who make purchases may be provided to retailers that appear on the site.
Computerworld - What great timing! I had no sooner returned from the RSA Conference, where my focus was on cloud computing, than I was invited to a meeting to discuss our first venture into “the cloud.”
The IT department has decided to contract with an infrastructure-as-a-service provider to host a portion of our development environment. If this trial is successful, some of our production environment could be next. Having read up on the subject in white papers and attended seminars at RSA, I felt informed enough to ask the questions that needed to be answered before I could feel comfortable about an initiative that was going to open new portals to our network and our data.
And there’s no question that this could expose us to new dangers. Read the rest of this entry »
More than 200 laptops, PCs and memory sticks containing confidential data have been lost by councils and health boards, according to the Lib Dems.
A report published by the party said entire school servers, clinical studies and patient videos had gone missing over the past 18 months.
Lib Dem MSP Jeremy Purvis called for “urgent steps” to protect data.
The Scottish Government said it had been working to raise awareness of good practice in data security policies Read the rest of this entry »
This video of hackers taking over the lighting controls in an urban skyscraper in order to play the world?s most awesome game of Space Invaders is ominous proof that intruders really are eyeing utility control systems as targets, warns security vendor McAfee. Read the rest of this entry »
Unlicensed advocates disagree
Have a Wi-Fi router? If you do ? and it uses an unlicensed frequency ? you could be subject to a warrantless search of your home.
Federal Communications Commission guidelines stipulate that the agency can enter property when it suspects radio frequency energy is being abused. The provision, which was originally intended to aid the monitoring of unlicensed radio and tv stations, now has a broader range of application as more consumers join the wi-fi ranks.
?Anything using RF energy ? we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,? FCC spokesman David Fiske told Wired for an article Thursday. The FCC spokesman said the scope included Wi-Fi routers.
?The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts,? Wired?s Ryan Singer wrote. ?That?s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC?s purview, making the commission?s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.?
via Raw Story ? FCC can search homes without a warrant, agency says.
identity in crisis
Cnet reports on the latest cybercrime, Yes you read it correctly - V for …
You might have heard about online “phishing” scams designed to steal money from unsuspecting Web users, but now criminals are using another type of scam called “vishing” to commit the same crimes.
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed lawsuits against two telemarketing firms in Florida and a company claiming to sell extended automobile warranties for violating the Do Not Call registry and fraud for selling bogus warranties for between $2,000 and $3,000 a pop. Since 2007, the companies supposedly made 1 billion calls and generated more than $10 billion.
These companies likely used spoofed caller ID numbers to hide their identities from consumers and law enforcement authorities.
via Protecting yourself from vishing attacks | Wireless - CNET News.
Kiel, Germany - Web browsers are not particularly loyal programs. When pushed, they reveal more about our surfing behaviour than we might prefer. A few tweaks can help protect your private sphere, but they do impact browser performance.
It’s amazing just how well online shops understand the preferences of their buyers. Simply registering with an online website reveals much to curious third parties about your PC and the user’s origins.
Want to see for yourself? One trip to http://www.anonym-surfen.com/anonym-surfen/test, a free self-diagnostic site, will show you have much of your data is there for the taking. Tracking services like Google Analytics are also dedicated to following and analyzing your behaviour. Read the rest of this entry »
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Mr Richard is the Head of ICT at a leading Bilingual International School in the Middle East and keen privacy advocate.