Google+: big companies can cause big problems

Monday, July 25th, 2011

In its first three weeks of availability, Google+ reportedly attracted 20 million users. That’s a pretty impressive launch – especially since it’s been accompanied by what can only be described as a negative marketing campaign. Even as millions of users have poured onto the service, Google has insisted on calling it a “limited field trial”. At this rate, by the time they officially make it available to the public, everyone will already be on it.

Everyone, that is, except for Mr Matthew Brock of Swiss Cottage. I have it on good authority that the gentleman in question, an old friend of mine, is giving Google+ a miss. (more…)

Is the new Twitter Tsar a Ryan Giggs fan?

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Twitter is having another one of those ‘I’m Spartacus!’ moments. The last one was when the powers that be decided someone making a joke post about blowing up Robin Hood Airport was a potential terrorist and prosecuted the poor sod.

The Twittersphere responded by retweeting the posting in question, on the basis that the police couldn’t arrest everyone. The same thing has now happened following the ridiculous situation where everyone and their dog knows the identity of a footballer who stands accused of doing what footballers seem to do when not kicking a ball around and earning obscene amounts of money.

An MP even used his Parliamentary privilege to suggest the footballer in question was Ryan Giggs. Something the masses on Twitter have been doing for the past fortnight or so, with tens of thousands of tweets and retweets naming the Manchester United player.

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Privacy? Oh for fax sake

Monday, November 29th, 2010

When we think of data breaches, we remember lost CD-ROMs packed with personal details of tax payers that are lost in the post, Ministry of Defence laptops left in the back of taxis, and USB drives dropped in pub car parks.

Encryption is the key to battling such breaches, we are told, as locking down data helps keep it private in the event of hardware or media loss or theft. Who’d have thought, then, that these days anyone would really send private details out in a readable format without any obfuscation of data should the missive be intercepted?

Yet this is apparently what happens as a matter of course across the UK as the painfully decrepit fax machine lingers on like a paper-spewing ghost of offices past.

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Why the ICO has no idea if it can fine Google

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

The Information Commissioner’s Office has been telling journalists that it can’t fine Google over the Wi-Fi slurping scandal, saying the ability to apply monetary penalties to companies only came in after the incident in question — leaving its hands tied.

But this is simply not true. At the moment, the ICO does not know if it can fine Google, so the possibility of £500,000 in punishment remains (though it sounds unlikely).

Let me explain. (more…)

Creepy Facebook adds friend stalker tool

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Oh Facebook. You never do learn, do you?

The social networking service has unveiled a shiny new “See Friendship” button on the site, letting users see “the story of their friendships”. But instead of “See Friendship” being a nice little add-on feature, Facebook has again taken it one step too far and hurled itself crossed the creepy line. (more…)

Google Street View: Privacy, Transparency and Trust

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Google HQ has announced that its Street View cars are back out on the road so, if your house hasn’t been covered already, and you don’t want to suffer the same embarrassment as me (see screenshot), I strongly recommend that you go and cut your hedge.

On a related but rather more serious note, (more…)

The dangers of Google Buzz mobile

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Google’s already come in for a skip-load of criticism over the privacy implications of its new social-networking service, Buzz. And to be fair to Google, it’s reacted pretty swiftly to some of the worst excesses.

Yet, the problems with Buzz auto-following your Gmail contacts and then announcing who they are to the rest of the internet pale into “so what?” compared to what it (and other social-networking sites) are doing on the mobile front.

The Buzz app on the iPhone, for instance, uses the phone’s GPS radio to plot your every utterance onto Google Maps. Click the Nearby button in the Buzz iPhone app, and you’ll see lots of little speech bubbles appearing all over the map, pinpointing where people are issuing their updates from.  And this isn’t only your friends or people you’re following, it’s anyone who’s using the service.

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Intel kicks off IDF with an own goal

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Greetings from San Francisco! Back in the UK, I know most of you are probably gearing up to go home for the day; but out here it’s 8.15 in the morning and the Intel Developer Forum starts in 45 minutes. Over the next three days we’ll be learning more about 32nm CPUs, scoping out the successor (already) to Nehalem and – inevitably – enjoying more talk about Larrabee, Intel’s multi-core x86-based graphic system, now coming up to a glorious three years of development with no release in sight.

Still, leaving that aside, Intel’s doing pretty well right now. With Lynnfield barely out of the traps and a die-shrink already rumoured before Christmas, it’s clear that the company is, right now, at the top of its game in terms of innovation and engineering.

Which is why I was amused this morning when my very first interaction with IDF – the registration process – exposed a glaring security slip.

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The Government wants to track our cars… but should we care?

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

I’m not generally the type of person to be worried by CCTV cameras and the concept of Big Brother watching my every move (my every move is very dull), but even I was a little perturbed to read an article in this morning’s Guardian suggesting that the UK Government “is backing a project to install a ‘communication box’ in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe”. (Click here if you want to hear the author of the report discussing the story.)

Now it turns out this is a slightly over-dramatic first sentence to the Guardian article. (more…)

How easy is it to vandalise Street View?

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Answer: alarmingly easy. Last Friday, I asked Google to remove a photo of me and my young family standing on a Kensington street. This morning, I received an email confirming my image had been removed. Just one problem: it wasn’t me or my family in the picture. 

Google, it appears, will take down any image – without any checks or balances – if you appear to have a legitimate complaint. In my case, I argued the picture of my pretend family and I standing outside our house was a “privacy concern”. Google asked for no proof of identity, other than a contact email address (which was a generic Gmail account, with no surname to cross-reference against the address). On that flimsiest of pretext, we’ve been able to black out part of a Kensington street.

We will, of course, ask Google’s press office to reinstate our deleted image. But our little experiment highlights how effortless it is to vandalise the service. How easy would it be, for example, to remove a photo of a rival business from the high street, by claiming you’ve been caught walking past?  

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