Nowadays companies have a lot of information about their consumers and it’s important that they protect it. But sometimes, they decide that they can use an extra buck by selling your confidential information to the highest bidder. 

Turns out that Verizon has been sending its customers a notice encrypted with legal-lingo and beneath it all is a notice that unless customers opt out, their info will be shared with ’affiliates, agents and parent companies’. The sellable goods include ’services purchased (including specific calls you make and receive), billing info, technical info and location info,’ in other words – anything they have on you.

Great news for the unsuspecting victims (err… customers), but it gets even better – e-bill subscribers won’t even get the notice unless they go to their messages and click on the link that says “Not Available”. Great.

Companies selling your info is nothing new, but you have to give credit to Verizon – they openly (well, through a confusing notice) admit to it. *applause*

Source: ReadWriteWeb.

Yesterday Barack Obama chose Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, entrusting him with the task of overseeing the IT architecture of the federal government. Kundra is very fond of Google and what it has to offer.  ’Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It’s a win-win for me,’ he says.

This is one of the many ways the new administration is catching up with technology and its commitment to be a more open government with larger public involvement through available Web 2.0 tools.

The only question is, isn’t this too much power for one company, especially for Google, which has its hand on almost anything that’s on the Internet? You can also catch the announcement of the DC-Google Partnership a few days ago on YouTube:

The United Nations is trying again to enforce its believes and demands to the world, this time trying to pass a law that would make blasphemy punishable by law. In particular, the UN says “blasphemy against Islam” and is backed by 57 countries (many of which are muslim). Not that it has a chance, but a bill like that would strike right at the heart of the most basic human right – freedom of speech.

Watch and see Christopher Hitchens’s thoughts on that (I won’t spoil it for you)… oh and I was joking about the eating babies part, but I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Ticketmaster is a bigger scalper than those who do it for a living

Even though Ticketmaster is known for its ridiculous added fees (convenience charges, order processing fees, etc) which can effectively double the price of a ticket, it seems that is not enough. So in their evil mastermind plan, they decide to sell all the good seats on TicketsNow, an affiliated site. The only catch is, that the tickets are overpriced, sometimes by hundreds of dollars on top of the face value. That would explain why I can never find decent tickets for a concert, even if I look for them the instant they are available for sale.

It seems the Ontario government has received a lot of complaints recently from consumers that are redirected to that site and decided to launch an investigation. I really hope Ticketmaster gets burned badly for years of ripping off consumers.

Being as cool as they are, it comes as no surprise that most Germans aged 19-29 would ditch their girlfriend or boyfriend, and even their car in a heartbeat if they had to choose between them or an Internet connection. Over 84% of the 1000 people surveyed shared that opinion. If that is not enough, 97% of them wouldn’t know how to live without a mobile phone too.

It’s funny how hippocrates operate. Actually sad. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party has been going around the EU trying to enforce the “3 strikes” policy for filesharing and copyright infringement. Little do we know that his party used a song by American Indie band MGMT without paying the licensing fees. Needless to say, the band found out and was less than pleased. It actually threatened to sue the President’s party. But wait, it gets better — the party decided to make things right and offer €1, that’s right – 1 Euro, to the band for compensation. Can you believe it? I wish all those teenagers that got sued by the RIAA could do that. 

Not only did the band turn the offer down, but it rightfully called it an insult. And that’s just a week before the party is to present a new policy for online piracy that will have very strict penalties.

Good job, frenchies!

More at CBC’s site. Oh and in case you wanted to check out the now-infamous song, here it is:

President Obama's helicopter - Marine One

More in the world of weird and fun, highly sensitive Marine One blueprints  are apperantly exposed on a peer-to-peer network (my guess is Limewire and to see why check out this YouTube video). The IP of the uploader originated in Iran, and according to a security company that specializes on P2P networks, it’s a defense contractor who has top secret information on his computer and also happens to be running a file sharing program. In the holy words of Mother Mary, “WTF!”

“I’m sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went.”

To read the story, go to MSNBC

Seems like the government of Ontario is very determined to provide the best higher education learning experience in Canada, and as such is pumping out $51.6 Million to add about 3300 graduate spaces – both masters and PhDs. 

Good news for us students, especially considering University of Ontario is getting 97 spots. Read the full story here.

Well here we go again – the government is trying to protect consumer’s privacy and enforce net neutrality (which prohibits ISPs from collecting information about where and what you do on the net, except with a court order/warrant). Big Brother is not happy with this, as it prevents them from restricting their users and having complete control over what they do on the net. 

But that’s not all – one company in particular, VideoTron, told the CRTC that it ’could be beneficial not only to users of Internet services but to society in general.’ I just don’t see the connection between throttling my connection speed (for which I have paid for), keeping track of everything I click on the net, turning off my connection if I have a virus sent to me, and beneficial. But apperantly, Videotron has it all figured out – they claim it stops viruses and spam, amongst other threats. What would we do without our trusty ISP?

Read more here.

Facebook opens up with new TOS

Facebook has been under attack of accusations that it sells information out to third parties ever since it got popular. It seems that now the pressure is more than ever, especially with the recent change in TOS (Terms of Service) which sparked an Internet-wide debate.

In any case, Facebook is opening the doors to its parliament, and its users can vote on the new changes for the next 30 days or so. This is right after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced it is ready to file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission over the new changes in the TOS, which by the way, were unnoticed and unannounced for a little while.

No matter what the new TOS brings, I wouldn’t trust Facebook with my information. As far as I am concerned, it sells all of it to the highest bidder. 3rd parties can use it in a multitode of ways – they link your email, phone, name, and other contact information to your friends, pictures, surfing habits, personal preferences (what music you like, what is your favorite movie, to what activities you enjoy), and the school and job you have. That’s a lot of information, more than most other places on the web. Not to mention that once you enter it in there, it’s forever kept in your account, which can not be erased – only disabled.

To read more details on the story, visit PCWorld.