Monthly Archives: August 2008

Hurry! Get your personal data on eBay now!

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From BBC NEWS…

A computer containing a million bank customers’ personal data has reportedly been sold on an internet auction site.

The Daily Mail says an ex-worker for archiving firm Graphic Data sold it for £35 on eBay without removing sensitive information from the hard drive.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its subsidiary, Natwest, have confirmed their customers’ details were involved.

RBS said Graphic Data had told it the PC had apparently been “inappropriately sold on via a third party”.

It said historical information relating to credit card applications for their bank and others had been on the machine.

The information is said to include account details and in some cases customers’ signatures, mobile phone numbers and mothers’ maiden names.

It is thought the problem came to light when Andrew Chapman, an IT manager from Oxford, bought the computer, noticed and raised the alarm…

Blogging the Convention

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Dave Winer’s there, and he’s not impressed…

Here’s a quick picture of the blogger’s space at the DNC, and after working here for a few minutes I ache to get back on the road. This is a far cry of the space we had at the DNC in 2004. We were in the nosebleed seats, but we had a constant view of the whole scene, the stage, the floor, and could walk around among the other press.

This year we’re on the Administrative level, in a concrete bunker, flourescent lighting, and a view of nothing but TV screens. I’d do better in my office at home. I’m going to have to figure out a way to escape these confines or I’m getting on I-70 tomorrow morning and heading west.

According to the DNC Schedule, there are 15,000 reporters at the event. If that isn’t overkill, then I don’t know what is.

Kelly’s back!

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.. to his column in the Washington Post. First column is a meditation on his time in Oxford (where he was a Reuters Fellow and where, apparently, “all the stores close at 5:30 p.m. and you can’t get a jar of low-fat chunky-style peanut butter to save your life”).

Ah, yes: England. There are worse places to spend a year, though to hear my Stilton-hating teenage daughters tell it, not many. I think in time, after years of quiet reflection and expensive therapy, they will come to appreciate having been rudely plucked from their schools, their friends and their familiar surroundings and deposited in a country where it rains all the time. I did it for them, you see, to broaden their horizons…

Wonder what will happen to his Voxford blog. Apparently he will now be required to blog for the Post. He’s soliciting suggestions for a name for the blog.

Apple’s ‘Kill Switch’

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Useful Economist.com piece about “the struggle to balance openness and control”.

“I AM RICH” is an iPhone application that made a brief debut on Apple’s software store this month. It cost $999.99 and did nothing more than put a glowing ruby on the iPhone’s screen. Seeing it as cynical rather than practical, Apple yanked it (after eight people bought it).

Apple has fought with developers and killed applications before. Indeed Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, acknowledged that the iPhone has a “kill switch” that lets the company remotely remove software from people’s handsets. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Apple’s corporate culture is famously closed. By closely overseeing their hardware and software, the company believes it can better ensure that everything works properly. Opening their systems to independent developers entails a loss of control that they find hard to handle. Other companies can sympathise…

The article also mentions Jonathan Zittrain’s book.