Tag: privacy

Categories
Internet Security

Why “The Geeks” Are Upset About Privacy

Pete Warden on why everyone should pay attention to “the geeks”:

So why are the geeks so upset? They’re looking down the road and imagining all the things that the bad guys will be able to do once they figure out what a bonanza of information is being released. Do you remember in the 90’s when techies were hating on Windows for its poor security model? That seemed pretty esoteric for ordinary people because it didn’t cause many problems in their day-to-day usage. The next decade was when those bad decisions about the security architecture became important, as viruses and malware became far more common, and the measures to prevent them became a lot more burdensome.

I’d recommend reading the entire article.

That might be the best argument I’ve seen in a while for people who just don’t get it. When you spend enough time dealing with data you’re forced to understand the threat models that can impact your work. You become very tuned into what the potential exploits are and how it can be used to everyone’s advantage, and disadvantage. Despite surveys that show people are “concerned” about their privacy, and some “use privacy settings” I’d venture very few, likely less than 10% actually understand what harm any piece of data can have, and how exactly it’s being handled and shared.

There’s a reason the industry is so focused on this lately. There’s a reason why I’ve now dedicated a majority of recent blog posts to it.

Categories
Security

What Facebook Apps Know About You

The ACLU put together a clever quiz on Facebook that lets you see what a Facebook application knows about you.

I doubt most people realize how much they are giving an application, and how unnecessary the information is to the application. There is no legitimate need for something as simple as a quiz to require that much information. And yes, if your friend takes a quiz, your information is shared too.

I mentioned the other day that that Facebook changed the data retention policy. So this gives a little more context regarding what is actually at stake here.

I’ve been unable to confirm if Facebook gives applications the same data for minors (those under 18) as they do for adults. I know they restrict information shared via the website, but not sure if that extends to the API level. If anyone has a minor child and can shed some light on that, I’d be interested to see how they treat privacy of children in Facebook applications. I’m also not sure if they adjust what data is shared for users, in particular children in other countries where laws may be different. If you know, please share. If you can share a few screenshots of what’s revealed contact me (I won’t share unless you explicitly say so).

Yes, I know this is my third Facebook related blog post in a week. I promise to go back to ignoring them soon enough, but the privacy implications of their applications is pretty interesting to say the least. This is especially true if online privacy and security have long interests of yours.

Categories
Security

On Facebook Permitting Longer Storage Of User Data

Previously the rules only permitted storage of some data for 24 hours. Notice I said “rules”. The truth is that there is no technical means of enforcement that I can find. This is done on the honor system. Facebook in theory could look at usage and wonder “how are they doing this without refetching data?”, but monitoring all the apps in that way seems highly impractical. You’d need good knowledge of how the every app actually functions to make that decision. That still doesn’t cover the case of not deleting data when a user removes the application or changes privacy settings.

I’m sure there are some shady application vendors who have forever ignored this requirement. I’m sure some have also captured data they weren’t supposed to store. It seems naïve to think otherwise. That’s not to say everyone does it, or even a sizable number. I suspect most companies are honest and follow the rules. The change to remove the limit is actually more honest and straight forward. It is a step closer to reflecting reality.

Facebook should really have some sort of audit policy for apps over X number of users, or make it clear that there’s no real technical means limiting what an application can store once you share data with it. They don’t know for certain that just because a user deleted an application that the application has purged the data. There’s no technical means behind it, and that’s not something that’s easy to fix.

This is an important thing to clarify. Just because they had a policy of a time limit, that doesn’t equate to a technical solution. This is akin to passing a law that says “no identity theft”. It’s a novel thing to do, but it doesn’t prevent theft. It simply clarifies the official position on the activity. If this method worked, we wouldn’t need law enforcement or a legal system, just a few clever people with pens to write laws.

Facebook can obviously shut down anyone who it feels violated their policies, and can likely take legal action against such parties. I’m pretty sure they shut down applications, I’m not sure about legal action.

Bottom line: only share data if you’re willing to accept this risk. Their clarification of warning dialogs before you authorize an application is a good step in this direction.

Categories
Google

Google Chrome OS

The big news over the past 24 hours is the announcement of Google Chrome OS. Effectively Google Chrome OS is a stripped down Linux Kernel with just enough to boot Chrome/WebKit as it’s main UI. The exact UI paradigm hasn’t been reveled as of yet. Google claims:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start-up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

It’s an interesting and somewhat bold statement.

Continue reading “Google Chrome OS”
Categories
Google Security Web Development

Phorm’s UserAgent

There’s a fair amount of controversy regarding Phorm a company who plans to target advertising by harvesting information via deep packet inspection. They are already in talks with several ISP’s. I’ll leave the debate over Phorm from a user perspective for someplace else.

They claim to offer ways to let websites opt out of their tracking but it’s a true double-edged sword as they don’t play nice with a standard robots.txt file. Take a look at what they are doing here:

The Webwise system observes the rules that a website sets for the Googlebot, Slurp (Yahoo! agent) and “*” (any robot) user agents. Where a website’s robots.txt file disallows any of these user agents, Webwise will not profile the relevant URL. As an example, the following robots.txt text will prevent profiling of all pages on a site:

Rather than use a unique user agent they are copying that of Google and Yahoo. The only way to block them via a robots.txt file is to tell one of the two largest search engines in the western world not to index your site. This seems fundamentally wrong.

There is an email address where you can provide a list of domains to exclude, but that requires intervention and updating a list of domains when you create a site. This obviously doesn’t scale.

Now I’m curious. Is piggybacking off of another companies user agent considered a trademark violation? From what I understand they aren’t broadcasting it, just honoring it. If I were Google or Yahoo I’d be pretty annoyed. Particularly Yahoo since there are websites who will just block Slurm given Google’s dominance in search. Yes there are many user-agent spoofing products out there (including wget and curl), but nobody to my knowledge is crawling web pages for a commercial purpose hiding behind another company name.

robots.txt is a somewhat flawed system as not all user agents even obey it (sadly) though it’s one of the only defenses without actual blocks that exist.

Categories
Security

Locking The Front Door But Leaving The Back Open

Here is an amusing yet failing attempt at security available in the App Store called Spaghetti Pad. Here’s the description from the app developer:

Is somebody always looking over your shoulder, snooping on your iPhone? Sure, we know. That’s why we built Spaghetti Pad. It’s a semi-private notepad which obfuscates your notes so they’re more difficult for others to read — without login screens to slow you down.

How does it work?
Spaghetti Pad takes advantage of the amazing power of the mind to read words with mixed up letters. As long as the first and last letters are in the correct place you can still read the word. Just type in your note normally and Spaghetti Pad will mix the letters up for you. When you view the note later it’s all spaghetti text, slow for others to read but easy for you.

The Technique Is Real

The technique used is actually true, research is showing that we read at least partially the shape of the word rather than the individual letters. Take the following example:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This may be slightly more difficult for people whom English isn’t their native language, but most will read it nearly as quick as if it were all spelled out correctly. More research can be found here. I should note this was an Internet meme sometime around 2003.

The Use Case Fails

Now ask yourself: what allows me to read the text, but prevents someone next to me from doing the same? Does your brain hurt yet? Virtually all of us can read it because we all read the same way. It doesn’t even slow down reading very much. As a result it appears like security through obscurity, but in reality it’s less effective than Pig Latin or Ubbi dubbi. With Pig Latin, there is at least a little bit of knowledge required before decrypting it becomes natural (though you can sometimes guess). Igpay Atinlay isway otnay ecuritysay.

Your better off getting one of these privacy screens.

Categories
Google Security

Gmail’s Remote Signout And Logging

Google has recently upped their profile in regards to security and privacy. Last week Google made the subtle change of adding a privacy link to the homepage. This is common on most sites, but avoided by Google because they are very strict about cluttering their homepage. Privacy groups have wanted this for years, so this is a pretty large win.

Today Google announced it’s rolling out the ability to remotely sign out other computers from your Gmail account. You’ll also be able to view the IP address, interface (web, mobile, IMAP, POP3), and time that anyone has logged into your account. This is a groundbreaking change in regards to email security.

Now it’s possible for email users to review the logs and see if and when anyone else has accessed their personal email.

I suspect Yahoo, and Microsoft will be working to copy this feature, perhaps with their own enhancements (invalid password logging maybe?). I can also see Facebook and MySpace rolling out a similar feature in the near future. It’s an easy enough enhancement that provides a lot more comfort and security to the product.

Employers going through employees personal email has been hostile waters for a long time including a recent high profile case. This is certain to agitate that. I suspect there are a few companies who will be updating their policies in the next few weeks to try and protect themselves. There will even be a few who will sue Google claiming libel or that Google’s privacy policy should cover you when you log into someone else’s account provided you have one of your own. This is guaranteed to happen.

It’s a good move by Google. This feature greatly enhances the security of Gmail and puts it in a class well beyond what Yahoo or Hotmail currently provide. This is likely the biggest threat to email other than viruses which they all scan pretty well, and phishing, which they also do a decent job with.

Categories
Mozilla

No Secret Data Project

Those concerned about the “Mozilla Stealth Data Project” should really check out the Data snooping discussion on mozilla.dev.planning.

I think many who has spent some time on the project found that recent TechCrunch post was more an effort to scaremonger and generate buzz, than anything else. I guess one could argue “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Just my personal $0.02.

I’ll put a few noteworthy chunks of that thread in this blog post for those who don’t have too much time to read, and leave anyone interested to read the entire thread. All of this has been published out in the open on dev.planning today.

From Mitchell Baker, Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation:

…
Some people have jumped to the conclusion that this means Mozilla would adulterate our core values and the primacy of user control. They assert, or assume, or worry that thinking about data means somehow that Mozilla will simply join the existing model of gathering and commercializing personal data.

This is us not the case.
…

From Mike Beltzner, “phenomenologist” (I’m pretty sure he made up his own title, but he can get away with that):

…
– no, there is no secret data project.
– no, there is no secret plan to snoop or collect user data
– no, we are not already secretly collecting data
– yes, we are trying to figure out how we can accumulate better data about how users are using their browsers, and what they’re trying to accomplish; as with everything we do, this starts with public discussion to make sure we do it right in terms of respecting user privacy and our own community ideals – that’s what Lilly was saying.
– yes, any such program would be opt-in, not opt-out
…

Mozilla Corporation CEO John Lilly blogged about the topic recently as well.

Considering the past efforts to keep user data private, you’d have to wonder when your talking about one of the only websites on the internet to hold public discussions before using Omniture for analytics. (I should mention there’s an opt-out page for that). Not to mention a rather lengthy post from Mitchell about the topic.

So go ahead and download Firefox 3.0 and future releases knowing that nobody really cares if you like to watch videos of gorilla’s doing it. Err… did I say that?

If any data collection is done on users browsing the web. I propose it be done like this, so at least it’s comical to use for research purposes.

Categories
Firefox Tips Mozilla

Firefox Tip: Keeping Things Private

Using Firefox on a shared computer such as an office workstation, library, or school computer lab? Don’t want people seeing what you did/saw? That’s a very good idea. When your done browsing the web go to the “Tools” menu and select “Clear Private Data”. Check the data you want to delete and “Clear Private Data Now”. This will ensure the next person doesn’t see your browsing history, or have access to site you forgot to logout. Here’s a list of the options and what they mean in simple terms:

  • Browsing History – The list of sites web pages you visited.
  • Download History – The list of files you downloaded to your computer.
  • Saved Form and Search History – Every time you fill in a form your browser will store some info so that it’s easier to fill in next time (that’s why it can suggest your address when you signup for something). This data in addition to your history of searches.
  • Cache – Temporary files from the web pages you visited stored on your computer. Examples include images in the pages as well as the pages themselves.
  • Cookies – Data used by websites to store info, such as login information or preferences.
  • Saved Passwords – You’ll definitely want to delete these. 😉 Remember you can also disable the password manager.
  • Authenticated Sessions – Certain sites you are currently logged into that use a technique called HTTP Authentication. If in doubt, clear this.

Want to do this every time you close out of your browser? Go to “Tools” and select “Options”. Then click on the “Privacy” icon on the top. Check the “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox” checkbox.

Another option is to use Portable Firefox. This special download is designed to be installed and run from a USB drive. It saves all preferences/settings to your drive, so you take your data with you. This will only work in places where you are allowed to use a USB drive, and can open applications off of one (not every public computer may do so).

Categories
Mozilla

Someone should have used Firefox and Norton AntiVirus

A heck of a lot cheaper than this. Norton AntiVirus 2005 ($22.99 at time of writing), and Firefox (Free, forever) are not nearly as expensive as that phone bill.

It’s not hard to avoid that situation. It really isn’t. An 8 year old can do it.