This feed contains pages with tag "privacy".
Today I received some marketing bumpf from my employer, which on top of being a charming way to spend money while cutting my unit budget, is frankly an embarassment from the point of view of security and privacy.
Every link in this supposed communication from UNB is a link to a third party site, with the host name consisting mainly of digits. When we receive large scale phishing attacks every week so, training people to ignore funny looking urls doesn't seem like a great idea. All of these URLs contain tracking cookies, presumably so that Eloqua can sell UNB information about the mail reading habits of its employees and alumni.
It finishes with the following text.
UNB occasionally sends out important announcements to the UNB community. To unsubscribe from these emails, please click
here <http://s1961286906.t.en25.com/e/cu?s=1961286906&elqc=11&elq=my_cookie_deleted>.
To unsubscribe from all future UNB emails, please click here
<http://s1961286906.t.en25.com/e/u?s=1961286906&elq=my_cookie_deleted>.
Privacy Statement
UNB, the UNB Advancement Office and third party host Eloqua/Oracle are committed to protecting the personal information of
all UNB Alumni. The information collected will be used for the purposes of promoting and supporting UNB events, activities,
and endeavours and will be accessible to UNB Advancement database administrators. Connection to third party host is via
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. For more information on the protection of personal information at UNB please consult
the University Secretariat, University of New Brunswick, PO Box 4400, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3 www.unb.ca/secretariat (506)
453-4613.
Can you spot the lie? Of course I mean the technical error about about http and https. What kind of cynic do you take me for?
Never mind what the government said
They're either lying or they've been misled...Bruce Coburn, Burn, 1986
The Ottawa Citizen and CBC have coverage of the case of Mansour Moufid, who is alleged to have installed key-logging software and somehow reprogrammed magnetic student card-readers at Carleton. Mr. Moufid apparently faces criminal charges.
What makes it an interesting case from an ethics point of view is what Mr. Moufid did with the information he obtained, which was inform the university and his victims of the security weaknesses in the system.
UPDATED
The CBC reports on the punishment dealt out Mr. Moufid by Carleton. Personally
I find odd that the letter is signed by the Associate Vice-President Student Services. I would expect student discipline to be a matter for the academics at the university.
The requirement that Mr. Moufid allow computing and communication services to monitor his online activities as long as he is at Carleton rings several alarm bells. I think it is both unconscionable and an inappropriate quasi-judicial role for computing services.
According to Ryerson Prof. Avner Levin some of you may be under the impression that things you post on facebook are private. I guess you can figure out what I think.
The Globe and Mail has a more in-depth discussion of the same topic.
The CBC reported on how the BC Ministry of Health will no longer accept unencrypted health records. Welcome to the 1940's boys and girls.
The CBC reported the New Brunswick government has promised legislation to regulate a new electronic health records system.