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      Erin Andrews still fighting to take down videos

      August 2, 2011 /
      ESPN television sportscaster Erin Andrews arrives at the 2009 ESPY Awards in Los Angeles in this July 15, 2009 file photograph. Chicago insurance man Michael David Barrett was sentenced to 30 months in prison on March 15, 2010 for making nude videos through hotel peepholes of television sports reporter Erin Andrews and posting them on the Internet. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/Files (UNITED STATES – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT SPORT)

      The beautiful Erin Andrews was violated a while back when some creep used a camera to film her undressing through the peep hole in the door to her hotel room. She’s still trying to deal with the videos taken from that incident.

      But Andrews was also traumatized when peephole stalker Michael David Barrett posted nude videos of her that went viral. Barrett was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for interstate stalking. That sentence wasn’t nearly long enough for Andrews who blasted him as a “sexual predator” in court.

      Andrews is buying copyrights of the videos in an attempt to take them down for good. Still, she’s reminded of her frightening experience every day on Twitter, where she has over 645,000 followers. She has a warning for any famous athlete, celebrity or media personality who wants to play the social media game. Learn to accept criticism. Ignore the urge to fire back — no matter how much you want to.

      Privacy, Security, Surveillance

      4 Ways to Guarantee Home Safety

      June 19, 2011 /

      They say an Englishman’s home is his castle, but the same idea could equally be applied to anyone no matter where they live. Your home is your private dwelling and naturally you want to feel secure in your home. Unfortunately, even the safety of the home can be compromised by various things from acts of nature to people breaking in and stealing your possessions.

      Luckily, there are a number of things you can do to protect your home and guarantee safety in your house.
       
      1. Get Contents Insurance
       
      Unfortunately, if you have any accidents in your home such as a fire, there is a good chance that you will lose a number of your precious and valuable possessions. One way to counteract this is to take out a contents insurance policy that will safeguard you in the event you lose any valuable or even everyday items. Many policies also have a clause that covers cash in your home, as well as valuables you may have in the garden. Of course, there may be some personal items and mementos that will be irreplaceable, but it is reassuring to know that other more common items can be insured and replaced should you have an accident.
       
      2. Flood Insurance
       
      Depending on where you live, you may also want to consider taking out a separate policy that offers flood insurance for your home. This is essential for people that live near large bodies of water, in low lying areas of land or near the ocean. Nature can be unpredictable at the best of times, and as a flood is a relatively rare occurrence, you may find that it is not covered on your standard contents insurance policy. Taking out an agreement that protects you from flood damage will give you peace of mind, especially during the next heavy thunderstorm.
       
      3. Home Alarm Systems
       
      Anybody who has been burgled will tell you that it is an invasive and horrifying experience. However, the sad truth is that many people could have helped prevent a burglary of their home by installing an alarm system. Not only will this precaution alert the local authorities should anybody try to gain unwanted access to your home, but the alarm box and system that works it are usually placed on the front wall of the house, acting as a clear deterrent for any passing burglar who thinks your home might be a soft mark and a good place to try to break into.
       
      4. Additional Locks
       
      If you employ the use of deadbolts and extra locks on your front and back doors and windows, your home is practically a fortress. Make sure you only give copies of the keys to people who live there or people you know you can trust to avoid anybody else getting their hands on a set and being able to let themselves in.
       
      By undertaking these four steps, you should be able to guarantee your home safety at all times. Which will you use first?

      Security

      Consult your local laws before recording anyone without consent

      June 8, 2011 /

      This story is crazy, and it demonstrates how many of our laws are outdated.

      In Illinois, it’s illegal to record anyone without their consent, including police officers! A woman is now charged with a crime for recording a conversation with a police officer who was assaulting her sexually.

      This has naturally sparked outrage from various groups.

      But the lesson here is you have to be very careful if you’re going to use surveillance equipment to monitor anyone. Check your local laws first!

      News, Policies, Privacy, Security, Surveillance

      The fight for the social web

      May 31, 2011 /

      The battle for privacy on social networking sites is heating up.

      Privacy. It’s a word we hear a lot in the digital age, especially now that Facebook and Twitter are signing on users practically straight from the womb. It’s also a concept very few people understand. Just type your name into the search engine pipl.com. If you’re like me, you’re fortunate enough to have a fairly common name, but even then an alarming amount of information can show up. The funny thing about that search engine is everything on it is either in the public record or was shared by the person to whom it pertains. That’s right, we’re to blame for the vast majority of private information that is publicly available.

      Legislators in California are trying to reduce the amount of information we accidentally share by imposing new privacy laws on social media.

      The arguments against these regulations are ridiculous, so you have to read the entire articles, which also includes a story of a 14-year-old girl who created all sorts of issues for her family with her online social media accounts.

      Internet, Policies, Privacy, Security, Social Media

      The cyber security issue

      May 9, 2011 /

      The recent Sony case highlights the depth of the problem:

      Sony is run by a bunch of greedy morons who stupidly left their systems vulnerable to an attack by hackers: This is the conventional explanation of how the company finds itself bent into a familiar pose of contrition, following news that cyber-pirates breached its defenses, potentially gaining access to troves of valuable information — credit card numbers, email addresses — for more than 100 million customers.

      If only life were so soothingly simple. The Sony data hack and the predictable pursuit of villains carries a dose of false comfort, implicitly affirming the assumption that someone must have fouled up to create such a menace to privacy and commerce; someone must have failed in a readily identifiable way, because this surely can’t be the ordinary state of events. But the blame narrative masks an unsettling question: What if Sony did the best it could to protect itself, and the pirates still won? What if the company employed the best defenses available, yet they proved inadequate in the face of a decentralized and proliferating threat?

      Sony has captured headlines because it is one of the world’s most conspicuous consumer brands, and the recent attacks on its network have been both brazen and successful. But the list of companies that have been targeted by similar plots is lengthy and growing.

      The problem is that we don’t focus enough resources on this issue, and we don’t go after simple targets.

      Take simple spam. It’s all over the place. But if we pursued these idiots aggressively, we would start to build an apparatus that would start to root out cyber criminals at all levels.

      We need to get serious about these issues, and stop wasting time on things like online poker.

      It’s also one of the few areas where the interests of security and privacy converge.

      Identity Theft, Internet, News, Policies, Privacy, Security

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