Amazon.com Kicking Customers Out of the Store
Amazon.com has been closing accounts that have "too high a percentage of returns" or "[ship] to too many different addresses".
I've never liked Amazon.com's policies but this kind of anti-customer activity is even worse than Yahoo. To be fair, there's not much detail on which accounts have been closed and what counts as abuse to them, but .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Amazon.com, Big Business, Your RightsPossible Trend: Movies on USB Drives
Ghostbusters has become the first movie to be distributed on a USB drive. It includes a strong form of DRM that they hope will prevent people from copying it. Whether that proves more effective than the DRM they've tried on DVDs remains to be seen.
.... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Tags: DRM, MoviesStealing Cellphone Data Takes Only Seconds
There's a small device that when plugged into many cellphone brands (and the list is growing) that can copy all data on the phone. In other words, if someone wanted to know every bit of data you have on your phone, they could ask to "borrow it for second", plug this thing in when you weren't looking and .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: CellphonesHow RFID Tags in Products You Own Can Be Used to Track You
Katherine Albrecht has written has written an article for Scientific American that everyone should read. For those who don't already know her, she's the leader of CASPIAN and one of the world's foremost experts on RFID privacy issues.
Here is a mini summary of some of the major points:
- Companies intend to replace barcodes with RFID .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Beware Google Browser’s License Agreement
As I suspected, a product from a company like Google shouldn't be trusted without scrutiny. They've developed a new open-source Internet browser to compete with Firefox and Internet Explorer, but if you read carefully, you might notice this:
You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
One-sided Agreements Don’t Always Survive in Court
I really hate the kinds of things companies pull in their contracts and terms of service. Even more I hate when people say, "you signed it so quit complaining!" What they don't seem to understand is that even if the information is there, that doesn't mean that people can understand it or its implications. Thus was the case in .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Big Business, Customer Abuse, Good Stuff, Washington StateHow to Fly If You’re On the “No Fly List”
Bruce Schneier explains how easy it is to get past security and fly on a plane even if you're on the supposed "no fly list"
Buy a ticket in some innocent person's name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Stupid Virginia Slapped By Judge
When Betty Ostergren, otherwise known as the "Virginia Watchdog" and on of my personal heroes, started posting social security numbers and other private data about state senators, she turned a few heads.
She got the information from the state's own public records websites where the senators were quick to .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Congress, Doublestandards, SSN, VirginiaDiebold Finally Admits Voting Machines Lose Votes
Though they originally blamed it on anti-virus software on the machines, Diebold has admitted that it was coding error that leads its machines to drop votes. Hopefully that will help in the lawsuit against Diebold and encourage others states to recoup their losses as well.
.... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Tags: Accountability, Diebold, EvotingSave on Textbooks
Funny that I was just talking about this with someone yesterday, but today there's an article on Lifehacker about saving money on textbooks. I have used their first suggestion, Bigwords.com many times myself though I've often found even better deals by simply looking for a previous edition book. For example, if your class .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Schools, Textbooks