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‘Microsoft We Don’t Feel So Good About’

‘Microsoft We Don’t Feel So Good About’: “

David Gelles and Richard Waters, in a piece titled ‘Google Ditches Windows on Security Concerns’ in the Financial Times:

New hires are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system. ‘Linux is open source and we feel good about it,’ said one employee. ‘Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.’

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(Via Daring Fireball.)

New King of Technology – Apple Overtakes Microsoft – NYTimes.com

New King of Technology – Apple Overtakes Microsoft – NYTimes.com: “New King of Technology: Apple Overtakes Microsoft
By MIGUEL HELFT and ASHLEE VANCE
Published: May 26, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple, the maker of iPods, iPhones and iPads, overtook Microsoft, the computer software giant, on Wednesday to become the world’s most valuable technology company.

In intraday trading in the afternoon session, Apple shares rose 1.8 percent, which gave the company a value of $227.1 billion. Shares of Microsoft declined about 1 percent, giving the company a market capitalization of $226.3 billion.

The only American company valued higher is Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $282 billion.

This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history, as Apple had been given up for dead only a decade earlier. But the rapidly rising value attached to Apple by investors also heralds a cultural shift: Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.

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(Via .)

Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers

So now we know

Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers: “Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers
By Eric Bangeman | Last updated about 14 hours ago
The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users’ personal data with advertisers without users’ knowledge or consent.

The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it. The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed (PDF) by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn’t until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.

Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook’s users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. ‘If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are,’ Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Advertisers contacted by the paper said that they were unaware of the additional data and did not make use of it.

Facebook has tweaked its privacy policy throughout its history, with the most recent moves to open up more user information to the public drawing heavy criticism and FTC complaints. Users have also had a tough time navigating the site’s often-Byzantine privacy controls, which has led to a trickle of user defections. With these latest revelations about Facebook ignoring industry standards, not to mention its own privacy policies, that trickle may turn into a torrent.”

(Via .)

Anti-identity-theft huckster has had identity stolen at least 13 times

We’ve ben talking about security at the Clubhouse and we mentioned this guy

heh  heh

Anti-identity-theft huckster has had identity stolen at least 13 times: “
Todd Davis’s identity has been stolen at least 13 times. Davis is CEO of LifeLock, a company that sells anti-identity-theft services, and their ads feature Davis’s Social Security Number (because their service works so well he can afford to publicize his SSN without being compromised. Collection agencies across the country are trying to get him to cough up for debts that other people have racked up with the SSN they cleaned from the ad.

LifeLock has already been fined $12,000,000 by the FTC for deceptive advertising. The Phoenix New Times has a long, investigative story on LifeLock’s business practices and the (in)efficacy of its services. It’s a pretty comprehensive look at how to make something that doesn’t work very well and compound that with bad business practices.

LifeLock’s co-founders, Richard Todd Davis and Robert J. Maynard Jr., told reporters across the country that Maynard had once spent a week in the Maricopa County jail, falsely accused of crimes, because his identity had been stolen. The 2003 incident was the inspiration for the company, they said.

Official records and interviews with authorities in Nevada proved the story a fable. Maynard had been arrested and jailed here, all right — because he’d failed to pay back a $16,000 gambling marker at the Mirage casino in Las Vegas. Like bouncing a check, that’s a crime. Nevada authorities dropped the charges after Maynard, from his cell, managed to scrape together the cash.

The article also revealed that Maynard, the Valley businessman who was principally behind LifeLock during its 2005 inception, was banned for life in the 1990s from the credit-repair industry.

Then there was this ironic tidbit: Maynard’s own father, Valley optometrist Robert Maynard Sr., accused him of identity theft.

 

 

Cracking LifeLock: Even After a $12 Million Penalty for Deceptive Advertising, the Tempe Company Can’t Be Honest About Its Identity-Theft-Protection Service

(via Threat Level)



 

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(Via Boing Boing.)