FTC Cracks Down on Fake Word of Mouth Marketing


The Washington Post reports that the FTC has begun to crack down on false word-of-mouth advertising. This is where a company pays people to tell friends about their products. From the article:

Tracking People by RFID in their Shoes

In Schneier's blog today, he writes about a University of Washington study explaining how to track people using their Nike+iPod Sport Kit (which uses RFID).

Data Breach at UCLA




I've always said .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Data Brokering, Identity Theft, SchoolsNintendo to Look into “Remote Destruction”


Gamasutra reports that Nintendo is looking into possible solutions for the accidental destruction of TVs or nearby items/people when players in America get a little too excited when playing and accidentally throw the remote.
The article quotes Ninetendo execs as having considered ways to prevent people from getting so excited .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Gaming, Japan, Nintendo, Oops, WiihavaproblemNIST Recommends that E-voting Machines be De-certified


The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
In the article, they explain how NIST has found that the machines have no paper trail, and that a single programmer could rig an entire election. Uh…hello? This is not .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Diebold, EvotingSenate Banking Committee Member Denounces”No-Swipe” Credit Cards

From the CASPAIN newsletter:

DRM in Game Systems


I had to laugh when I read this today at Penny-Arcade:


For those who don't know, Penny-Arcade is a site that has been doing .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Defective by Design, DRM, Gaming, penny arcadeSome US Schools Fingerprint Students Like Criminals

In a recent newsletter, the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes:

Universal to Rip off MP3 Player customers

Reuters reports that the recent Microsoft Zune player (the competition portable MP3 player to the iPod) has a built in royalty fee that goes straight to Universal (one of the worlds largest music companies).
Slashdot's coverage quotes Universal Music's Doug Morris as saying the following:

IHOP Takes Driver’s Licenses

There was a recent case in Boston where a man was asked for his driver's license before being seated at IHOP. Apparently some gizmo thought it would be a great idea to prevent "dine and dashing". According to the article, the security person already had about 40 IDs on the desk by the time the subject .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Data Brokering, IHOP