This week’s Loose Wire column is about Gmail, Plaxo and privacy: PRIVACY IS ONE OF those things you either obsess over, or don’t see what all the fuss is about. You’re either someone who gets indignant when a shop assistant asks you for your home address at the checkout, or you’re not. You either hate… Read More »
Phishing carries on, but it seems to be attracting the dregs of the scamming world as well as its masters. Here’s one I just received which must be in line for Worst Phishing Scam Of The Year Award: From: Branch Banking and Trust Company[SMTP:SERVICE@BBANDT.COM] Subject: Online banking issue Dear Branch Banking and Trust Company valued… Read More »
Further to my post yesterday about whether other webmail providers are ahead of Gmail in scanning emails to target the user with ads, it would appear that they’re not. Microsoft is unequivocal in saying Hotmail does not. A MSN spokesperson says: Microsoft is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of users’ personal communications. MSN Hotmail… Read More »
(See this later posting for a response from MSN and Yahoo.) Here’s possible evidence that Gmail is not alone in scanning your email in order to target ads at you. MarketingVOX (‘The Voice of Online Marketing’) reports that “the strange mix of privacy advocates, anti-globalists and anti-commercial groups that seem to be swarming on Google… Read More »
Singapore has netted a trojan phisher, the Straits Times reports. A Vietnamese computer engineering student at the National University of Singapore, Nguyen Van Phi Hung, has been charged under the Computer Misuse Act for tagging a keylogger onto an email invitation to fellow students to play an online game called ‘Bubble’. He then captured passwords… Read More »