Accidental Privacy Spills

ahem writes "A journalist attends the World Economic forum, and writes an email to a few friends. It's a chatty, casual conference report. The conference is a gathering of the 5,000 most powerful people in the world. The report gives a breezy insight into how stuff gets done at that level, and what the concerns are that keep the world's leaders up at night. That email was intended only for the journalist's friends. That email winds up getting plastered all over the net. Here is a very interesting discussion of the implications of this "privacy spill." Make sure you read down to the Epilogue. Here is the email itself." The Lawmeme discussion is quite thoughtful and in-depth, very good reading.

Comments

Re:Idiots...

[yali]

Poster says:

When will people get that email is not secure. Its the digital equivalent of a postcard, but idiots still email credit card numbers and worse.

Article says:

Encryption is fine for the digital connection, but the digital connection was already the secure part of the link. Garrett's expectations of privacy were compromised between the seat and the keyboard; the same place every technically foolproof scheme fails.

The article is more interesting than just a technological discussion, because it gets into issues of how social norms and technology interface. Of course, it's also waaaaaaay long.

Revlavent Links...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some links I got when I read this on rc3.org a few days ago:

Original email
MetaFilter thread
The reporter's reaction (harshly condemming internet users!)
Bruce Sterling's notes

C Library versus OS kernel

[TheMidget]

While it is correct that malloc does not guarantee that the memory will be cleared (even on Unix, it will contain random junk), it is still unacceptable that the OS leaks data from one application to the next. In Unix, if you find junk in a malloc'ed segment, it can only come from the application itself (previously allocated, used, and then freed memory), never from another app.

Just think about the privacy implication of such cross-application leaks on a multi-user system. Rather than relying on a broken word processor, an attacker could write a program that intentionnally malloc'ed large chunks of memory, and then went searching through them for interesting data of his fellow users...

Re:common example: Word documents

[thegoldenear]

the author hadn't flattened the layers. it got noticed I think by a reporter using a slower computer than many used at the time so they saw the names appear then get blanked over where-as for most people that happened too quick to see. it was reported here on Slashdot

Re:Insundry?

[ahem]

I think the word you're looking for is "mondegreen." It was coined by Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He actually uses it in reference to misheard song lyrics ("There's a bad moon on the rise"-->"There's a bathroom on the right").