I don't bleepin' believe it - Insurers may raise your home insurance premiums if you use social networking.: Via Network World on computerworld.

From the Backspin "I don't believe it" department comes this week's top story: Insurers may raise your home insurance premiums if you use social networking.

Yep, according to Legal and General, one of the United Kingdom's biggest home insurers: "The insurance industry is aware that, with increasing acceptance of social media, the standard risk indicators may need to be reviewed. New risks and patterns in crime and claims are continually monitored to ensure the implications do not impact viable business models …. This social networking trend is clearly one that is making home insurers sit up and take note."

The rationale behind the interest in social networking can be found in L&G's "Digital Criminal Report". This document, based on a survey of "more than 2,000 social media users," found that "38% of users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted status updates detailing their holiday plans and ... 33% have posted status updates saying they are away for the weekend." [ Read more ... ]

Philly authorities target Facebook, Twitter after snowball fight turns ugly: Via The Social - CNET News.

Two members of Philadelphia's city council are considering legal action against Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace in the wake of a "flash mob" earlier this week that turned violent, according to a letter sent to the city's mayor and obtained by CNET. They claim that social-media sites don't do enough to keep tabs on violence that could be organized through their communication channels.

No charges have been drawn up, in the letter the councilmembers ask the permission of Mayor Michael Nutter to "pursue the possibility" of a lawsuit. [ Read more ... ]

Jurors: Stop Twittering: Via Threat Level.

A federal court policy making body is belatedly entering the internet age by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing.

It’s standard procedure to inform jurors to remain mum and not conduct any research about the case until a verdict. But recent gadget use by jurors has forced the hand of the Judicial Conference, the policy making body of the U.S. federal courts.

“You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cell phone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube,” (.pdf) according to the model jury instructions the Judicial Conference released days ago to the federal judiciary. [ Read more ... ]

Busting an iPhone thief: Via (Twitter via @clarinette02 @technollama) How to catch an iPhone thief Blog at BlogSpot.com .

The whole thing started when my plane landed in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon at 2:55pm coming from Cabo San Lucas. The guy sitting next to me on the plane asked me to loan him a pen so that he could fill out his customs form. I watched him fill out the form and clearly remember his birth year of 1984, but am a bit unsure about his name. I think it was -----, but in this story, we will refer to him as Pinche.

[...]

When I got to my office, I pulled up the MobileMe site and used the Find My Phone feature. To my surprise, the phone was in Sun Valley at a Daniel's Taco Stand!!! My conclusion was that the phone had actually fallen in Pinche’s bag and he was driving around without knowing that he has my phone!

Why did I assume this? Because if I were to steal an iPhone, I would unload it fast. I would not want to drive around with homing device after committing a crime! I wrote down the address in Sun Valley. [ Read more ... ]

China Accuses U.S. of Cyberwarfare: Via Threat Level.

In the wake of a recent speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning countries that censor the internet and engage in hacking, China has lobbed a return volley and accused the United States of hypocrisy and initiating cyberwarfare against Iran.

An editorial in the People’s Daily — the main mouthpiece for China’s Communist Party — accused the U.S. of doublespeak and of using “online warfare” to instigate violent unrest in Iran via Twitter and YouTube following that country’s national elections in June.

“We’re afraid that in the eyes of American politicians, only information controlled by America is free information, only news acknowledged by America is free news, only speech approved by America is free speech, and only information flow that suits American interests is free information flow,” said the Sunday editorial, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The editorial was taking aim at a speech by Clinton on Thursday in which she said that access to information, and the internet, is a basic human right, but that countries around the world were erecting virtual walls in place of the physical walls that generally characterize oppressive regimes. [ Read more ... ]

TSA Agent Used Twitter to Trick Source Into Revealing Himself: Via Threat Level.

A TSA agent who served a civil subpoena on blogger Steven Frischling last week also posed as the blogger in order to trick the blogger’s anonymous source into revealing his identity, according to someone familiar with the incident.

The agent, while in possession of Frischling’s BlackBerry, typed a message in the blogger’s Twitter account asking the source to contact him by e-mail. The message read: “To the gentleman who sent Flying With Fish the TSA Security Directive … Thank You! Can you drop me an email?I have a question. Thanks-Fish.”

The agent then handed the BlackBerry back to Frischling and asked him to click on the “send” button to post the message to his Flying With Fish Twitter page, the source said. [ Read more ... ]

Texas county to name drunk drivers on Twitter: Via Network World.

If you get busted for drunk driving in Montgomery County, Texas, this holiday season, your neighbors may hear about it on Twitter.

That's because the local district attorney's office has decided to publish the names of those charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI) between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam came up with the idea as a way of discouraging residents from getting behind the wheel while drunk. "It's not a magic bullet that's going to end DWIs, but its something to make people think twice before they get behind the wheel of a car and drive while they're intoxicated," he said. [ Read more ... ]

So, is it safe to tweet now?: Via The Social - CNET News.

Twitter stumbled again overnight on Thursday. But this time, it wasn't the work of the "fail whale," the cuddly cartoon personification of the site's excessive technical baggage. Rather, the site was replaced with a foreboding message from "Iranian Cyber Army" before crashing entirely, indicating that it had been the victim of a malicious attack that targeted its internal servers.

Co-founder Biz Stone posted a brief clarification on the issue late on Thursday night. "Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed," [ Read more ... ]

Twitter Tapping: Via NYT > Privacy.

The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.

In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. [ Read more ... ]

Trick or Tweet? Malware Abundant in Twitter URLs: Via Threat Level.

As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.

The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy.

Kaspersky, an anti-virus and computer security firm based in Moscow, created a tool called Krab Krawler, which extracts URLs from millions of Tweets a day. The tools expands shortened URLs to examine words in the web address for those matching known malware sites. For unknown sites, Kaspersky visits the webpage to determine if it’s hosting malicious code that could infect visitors. [ Read more ... ]

Google Adds Social Search to Labs: Via Reviews by PC Magazine.

On the heels of Google and Microsoft's decisions to incorporate Twitter postings into Google.com and Bing, Google on Monday announced an experimental Labs feature that will peruse a user's social networks for search results.

Google Social Search is intended to "find more relevant public content from your broader social circle," Google said in a blog post.

Social Search will pull from Google services like Gmail and Reader, as well as social networks like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. To participate, create a Google Profile and add links to social networking sites you want Google to search. You can then activate Social Search via Google Experimental Labs. [ Read more ... ]

Facebook, Twitter users beware: Crooks are a mouse click away: Via CNN.

If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

All you have to do is click. [ Read more ... ]

Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets: Via Danger Room | Wired.com .

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill. [ Read more ... ]

Med Students on Twitter, Facebook: No Patient Privacy?: Via TIME.

Personal profiles on Facebook and other social-networking sites are a trove of inappropriate and embarrassing photographs and discomfiting breaches of confidentiality. You might expect that from your friends and even some colleagues — but what about your doctor?

A new survey of medical-school deans finds that unprofessional conduct on blogs and social-networking sites is common among medical students. [ Read more ... ]

Call for papers - Privacy 2010 at Stanford - Intelligent Information Privacy Management Symposium: Via Laura S on Twitter.

Intelligent Information Privacy Management Symposium

March 23 - 25, 2010
CodeX: The Stanford Center of Computers and Law
Stanford University, USA

This symposium takes a transdisciplinary approach in its exploration of privacy management by drawing from the key areas of Law, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Business. It will focus on the need to develop effective information privacy management frameworks, tools and techniques by addressing the underlying tension between transparency and disclosure in the privacy versus business strategy arenas. There is a significant and growing need to identify privacy requirements in application development and to use intelligent technology-enabled solutions to assist users to monitor and manage their personal information in a more transparent proactive fashion. [ Read more ... ]

Social Networkers Risk More Than Privacy: Via InformationWeek.

Facebook and Twitter users post personal information that could be used by professional home burglars looking for targets, says a U.K. study.

People who use social networks are posting personal information that could be used by professional home burglars looking for potential targets, a study released Thursday found.

Nearly four in 10 people using sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted specifics on holiday plans and a third have offered status updates during a weekend getaway, according to the Digital Criminal report prepared by the U.K. financial services company Legal & General. Coupled with the fact that a high proportion of people often agree to be online "friends" with strangers, the easily accessed personal information increases the risk of home break-ins. [ Read more ... ]

Twitter Wants To Track Your Clicks: Via TechCrunch .

Just before Twitter went down today (yup, it was down again), I noticed something strange. Whenever I clicked on any shortened link in my Twitter stream and look at the address bar of my browser, I saw a fleeting click tracker before it redirected to the final site. It looked something like this: “http://twitter.com/link_click_count . . .” For instance, here is the full URL redirect for one link I managed to capture:

http://twitter.com/link_click_count?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F3omd6p&lin....

Others noticed this as well. When Twitter came back up, the redirects were gone. Maybe too many people were clicking on them. [ Read more ... ]

Hackers Use Twitter to Control Botnet: Via Threat Level.

Hackers are now using Twitter to send coded update messages to computers they’ve previously infected with rogue code, according to a report from net-monitoring firm Arbor Networks.

This looks to be the first reported case of hackers using the popular micro-messaging company to control botnets, which are assemblages of infected PCs that can be directed to spy on their users, send spam, or attack web sites with fake traffic.

Arbor Network’s Jose Nazario, an expert on botnets, discovered the so-called command-and-control structure. Infected computers were following the Twitter feed “Upd4t3″ (now suspended) through its RSS feed. [ Read more ... ]