The SmartSwipe Online Security, Shopping and Technology Blog

Once upon a time, there existed this little lovely town called Cybera. People in Cybera were using open source systems happily while having trust in those systems as they could see all what is happening to their precious data. But one day, the big ugly Googa monster came into Cybera with a very very open source platform called ComatOSe. Cybera's wise guys sat together and went through the ComatOSe source code. Here is what they found there:

And here is how the wise guys changed the ComatOSe:

And then they asked all Cybera people not to use it! Why? Because the ugly Googa monster was so strong that he could break any "encrypt" function and he could also filter any noise added. Not mentioning he could monitor all the onion activities too!

The news team over at CBS2 in Utah put SmartSwipe to the test to see if their 'hacker' can steal credit card information while the shopper is using SmartSwipe.

Here is what they found:

We have been getting a lot of emails lately asking about whether SmartSwipe will work on the new Windows 7 OS. The answer is yes! SmartSwipe works very well on Windows 7. If you experience any problems our Support Team will get you taken care of...support@smartswipe.ca

Alright, I do not really know how you would feel when you read in the news something like this: "ALIBI: Facebook Status Update Saves Teen from Jail". Would such a news increase your trust in a justice system? Though, this had happened in the US court system which does not surprise me at all. I wonder if any courts in other countries would fall for such an "alibi"! This makes me so disappointed, reading news about either how someone got convicted in a trial based on cyber-evidences or got away with something based on a cyber-alibi! I believe, the application of cyber-evidences by people who are not qualified for cyber-prosecution could completely compromise a justice system. I am not against using cyber-evidences in right shape and form. What concerns me is seeing that this new field of prosecution is being very badly misused. Just enough to say that if this type of prosecution is acceptable in a court system, then in that system, we can demonstrate the truth of the biggest lies! I guess I am going to study a bit about the theory of evidence and then I might be back with a more scientific blog on this matter.

Yep! It seems like I am going to kick it for a bit without my pseudo-identity. Into the wild! Now, the only thing I need to do is to find a magic bus. Chris McCandless chose to gave them all up, but I did not have a choice. So, here I roll pseudo-identity-less!

Internet security news can often be rather bleak and depressing, but every once in awhile, you come across a truly funny news article. CNet came out with an article a couple of days ago that made me laugh/shake my head and I would like to share it with all of you.

A Masters of Fine Arts student named Zach Gage came up with an interesting idea for his thesis. So, he programmed a game that runs on MacIntosh computers. Resembling Space Invaders (Space Invaders gave an entire generation carpal tunnel syndrome), Gage's project has a twist - every time you destroy an alien ship, Zach's game deletes a random file on your computer. Gage is incredibly upfront about this - his web site warns you that you will permanently lose data and the game also warns you of this when you start it!

Those of you who follow this spot know that I am a big fan of Phonebusters and that I like to re-print and promote their statistics on identity theft in Canada. Further, you may have noticed a rather troubling trend - identity theft seems to be on the rise.

With that trend in mind, I was especially happy to see Phonebusters' October numbers. In October 2009, only 295 people called Phonebusters and reported being a victim of identity theft! These people were defrauded out of a total of $609,933.79. Those numbers compare favourably to September 2009, when 808 people were defrauded out of a total of $1,143,206.95.