data

Google says it will allow users to decide what should happen to their data after they die. It will allow users to have data deleted or passed on to somebody else. The new feature is called 'Inactive Account Manager' and is accessed through the main ... account settings page for your Google account. It's an opt-in service, so it will only take effect if you actively set it up. (Source: google.com ) The feature isn't triggered by your death, but by you failing to carry out any actions that require you to be logged into an account, such as checking emails. You can set the feature to activate after ... (view more)

United States government employees are being told to avoid placing too much personal information on social media sites or other public pages. Phishers recently used that sort of data to target public workers in the energy sector. A phishing campaign ... involves using fake forms and websites to lure victims into providing sensitive personal information, from names and addresses to credit card data. Conference List Used for Email Attacks According to reports, phishers used a public list of conference attendees to attack public energy sector workers. The conference list provided the phishers with ... (view more)

A new study shows that it's possible to use mobile phone location data to find an individual. Researchers say that, in most cases, getting four confirmed locations for a person is enough to identify their handset. The study's findings appear in the ... latest edition of Scientific Reports. According to the researchers, most users understand and accept that mobile phone service providers track their locations. Customers are usually 'OK' with this because the data is kept confidential and only provided to law enforcement authorities after a warrant has been issued. (Source: nature.com ) Anonymous ... (view more)

Chances are you've never told your Facebook friends which brand of toilet cleaner you use. But if you buy a bottle at the grocery store, you might see an ad for it the next time you log in to Facebook. The social networking company has announced ... deals with four companies to supply data to make Facebook advertisements more relevant. This means that, for the first time ever, the ads you see on the site won't be based on your activity on the social networking site. The four companies collect data in a variety of ways. Two maintain a database of purchasing activities in retail stores. Another ... (view more)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has agreed to pay Amazon $600 million over the next ten years. However, the CIA isn't purchasing books or DVDs -- instead, it's buying access to Amazon's massive, private data system. The deal is with Amazon's ... Web Services department, which already offers cloud computing to individuals and businesses. Cloud computing doesn't simply mean offering online storage, but also online data processing. The Amazon cloud service works on a pay-as-you-go basis. This makes it ideal for organizations that need data processed intermittently rather than all the time. ... (view more)

A man who illegally accessed personal data stored on Apple iPads has been sentenced to a 41-month prison term. However, defenders of Andrew Auernheimer believe the sentence is unduly harsh and question whether his actions should even be considered a ... crime. Auernheimer was among a group of computer enthusiasts who discovered a flaw in AT ... (view more)

Hacktivist group Anonymous is preparing to wage a new and expansive war on America's major financial institutions. In what it calls "Operation Wall Street," Anonymous says it will carry out attacks designed to expose "the crimes of Goldman Sachs" ... and other, similar firms. "It should be the duty of any Anonymous, any hacker, in solidarity with Occupy, to release the Dox on the CEOs ... (view more)

A US government contractor has produced software that can track a person's movements and predict their behavior. The software hasn't yet been sold to commercial firms but has been tested, with success. The project is the work of Massachusetts-based ... Raytheon and the US government. The software is called "Rapid Information Overlay Technology," or RIOT for short. RIOT doesn't do anything that humans couldn't do themselves -- it just does it much quicker. It works by gathering together data from people's online activities. Location-Tagged Photos Help RIOT Software One of the keys to the ... (view more)

StartMenu8 1.0.0 Final You might have seen SmartMenu8 on Infopackets before -- but that was the beta version. Now, developer IObit has released the final edition of this very popular tool, which adds the traditional Start Menu to Microsoft's new ... Windows 8 operating system. http://www.iobit.com Data Crow 3.9.19 Data Crow is designed to help you organize your favorite media files. This program allows you to attach all kinds of useful information to your media files, thereby creating a full-fledged media library. This program easily connects to online databases to retrieve relevant data. http:// ... (view more)

Google has, for the first time ever, detailed exactly what it does when a government agency or court demands to see a user's personal data. That data includes the terms someone has used for an online search and the content of Gmail messages. Google ... says that it's reporting on this issue in an attempt to show that it aims to protect privacy wherever possible. The search giant has for several years produced statistics about how many requests for personal data it gets in each country and what percentage of those requests it complies with. This publication is an attempt to draw attention to the ... (view more)