I'm going to cover future DVDs with pepper and itching powder, so when those pesky sniffer dogs stick their moist snout in my private property they'll get a lesson in how olfactory senses can rebel.
It's all very well having RIP, and those in the forensic community will know that people hae been sent to gaol under this act. However, when faced with the choice of spending 12 years imprisoned because of the 5,000 indecent images of children found on your hard drive, or spending 2 years imprisoned for not revealing your encryption key to the police, most criminals opt for the 2 years and use the law to their advantage.
Of course, Vista is a real pain in the arse for the forensic community in the UK because (quite rightly) we have to abide by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) guidelines when dealing with digital evidence and maintaining evidential continuity. As soon as a computer is switched on the time/date stamps change and evidence is no longer admissible in a court of law. Windows Vista would not allow us to take hard drives out of computers and hook them up to writeblockers to image them, because booting up that drive requires it to be directly linked to the TPM chip.
One reason for retention times increasing in relation to terrorism is due to the vast amount of time it takes to retrieve digital evidence and prove innocence or guilt. If digital media is seized from suspected terrorists then 7 days is not much time in which to image the media in a forensically sound manner, analyse and investigate it. Add to the fact that most terrorists detained in the UK communicate in a foreign language and interpreters are required to sift through thousands of documents. The whole process takes time. Of course the results could be rushed through in 7 days and conclusions made but that isn't doing anybody justice.
Mike, you are correct to say that mail will be sent to dead people as it takes time for families to inform the relevant authorities and businesses.
However, to clarify this further, the mail was sent to deceased people who were already registered on the Mortality File (held by the Office of National Statistics and based on death certificates.) Their relatives had already informed all of the relevant authorities, and these were clear cases of fraudsters attempting to impersonate dead people.
I don't believe it's an overreaction at all. In the UK identity fraud is massive. There were 74,000 reported cases of identity fraud last year, compared to 53,000 in 2001. The first three months this year have shown a 12% increase already. In 2001 the cost of identity theft in the UK was estimated to be at least 1.3bn.
Bin raiding (known as "dumpster diving" in the US) has arrived in the UK from the States. It's the process of obtaining financial and other personal information from dustbins in order to commit transaction and identity fraud. Typically, bin raiders look for discarded credit and debit card transaction receipts, bank statements, utility bills an dother personal correspondence that can be used as proof of identity or address.
The exposure to fraud risk is very real. Documents are explosed to a number of compromises:
* interception in the mail * stolen following delivery to an address * fraudulently re-directed * stolen from homes in burglary * stolen from thefts from the person * stolen form bins * completely counterfeited * fraudulently altered * obtained by a fraudster using a pseudonym
Fraudsters aren't stupid. They will mix and match the available forms of document compromise to build up the identity to meet regulatory and good practice guidelines set down by the financial institutions.
I'm not a karma whore, I work in fraud prevention and have seen people's lives ruined by identity theft and fraud. If you've been a victim you will know it can take up to 300 hours to ensure your credit history is corrected.
Countermeasures include:
* Take care of your identity, personal information, transaction slips and proofs of identity by keeping your documents secure. * Never throw away whole receipts, bank statements, utility bills and other documents that can be used by a fraudster to assume your identity or compromise your credit/banking facilities. Your refuse is a target for fraudsters. Always thoroughly destroy personal information before throwing in the bin, preferably with a personal shredder - small ones can be bought from most stationery shops. * Check your receipts against your card and bank statements carefully. If you find an unfamiliar transaction, contact your card issuer or bank immediately. * Never disclose personal or financial details to anyone 'cold-calling', even if they claim to be from your bank or the police. It is always a good idea to phone them back on the number you have for them, not the one they may give you. * Use different passwords for different accounts. If a fraudster compromises one of your facilities, they are less likely to compromise all of them. * If you have documents stolen, there is a strong chance these will be used to commit fraud in your name. To counter and monitor this risk, I suggest that you get a regular monthly copy of your credit file. (This service is available through Experian / Equifax et. al.) Then, if a fraudster opens an account in your name, this will show up on your credit file report and gives you an opportunity to tell them so they can help you clear up the fraud and restore your credit rating. * In the event of credit ID fraud, the credit reference agencies can help prevent a repeat attack by adding security features to your credit file.
A lot of these may seem like common sense but it's surprising how many people don't follow them. Research on what is discarded by householders in their rubbish revealed that 72% of bins contained information with full name and address; 20% contained credit card numbers and 80% of these had expiry date; up to 27% contained bank account information; 16% contained utility bills and 25% contained official letters.
In the UK there has also been an 80% annual increase in impersonating dead people. Of 10 billion items of mail sent last year in the UK, 22 million were addressed to deceased people!
This can be done in the UK. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 anybody can serve a 'Subject Access Request' on any organisation holding data about you. The organisation has to respond quickly and has to act upon incorrect information and justify their reason for still holding this data about you. They are fined heavily if they don't comply with this.
Even more amusing is video footage of yourself is classified as "personal data" because it can identify you. So, I go to Tesco and do some shopping, then fill my car with petrol at the petrol station down the road and then drive through the village where they have CCTV cameras. I can legally write to Tesco, the Shell garage and the Council, tell them I was in their shop/area at X time and request the video footage of myself under the Data Protection Act.
And those suckers have to search through their video footage for me and send me copies of the tapes! So, if a shop really pisses you off and they have CCTV you can serve them with a subject access request and use the law to get your own form of revenge.
This isn't advertised (for obvious reasons!) but I work for a large credit reference agency and had to research the recent changes to the Data Protection Act, this is how I found out about it.
For those not in the UK, the above comment is actually very funny. Feel free to laugh heartily and mod up, therefore conveying the image that a lot of UK people are reading this, and consequently making us feel more at home with the content!
Joking aside, being able to track vehicular activity is one thing, being able to identify the person or persons within that vehicle is an entriely different matter.
My brother is serving in Iraq now. Although the army is able to track all vehicles and pinpoint their movements, during the war they still attacked and killed people on their own side because they could not identify the people in those vehicles.
Only a minor detail but one which is pretty significant.
They have discovered that the British Isles are tilting, with the north of the country gaining altitude and the south of the country 'sinking'
Well of course the South of the country is sinking. It's densly populated. More people mean more houses, more cars, more infrastructure, more tea shops, more cake shops selling sweet meats and pleasant fancies . . . . which all lead to more weight. It's what many non-scientists call "the see-saw effect".
Does this also mean Scotland's Highlands will be gaining altittude, and we'll have to change all maps and road signs to say "Higherlands"?
The US government has been doing this for decades. It may be illegal, but they've been bypassing the law. There is the UKUSA agreement: the US and the UK spy on each others' citizens then swap the information with each other. So yes, the NSA and M16 really does filter through your email and some phone calls to boot.
Of course they have, so has the UK government. Information is publicly available for download, such as the Bank of England sanctions file, OFAC sanctions file (Office of Foreign Assets Control - US Treasury), CIA listed Chief of States, GAS (Gone Away Suppression File), Associations and Alias File . . . the list is huge. This only scratches the surface, however.
UK Data Protection offers great protection for the public in terms of what data can be held about them, how it is held and for how long it can be stored. But if that data is necessary for law enforcement then goodbye civil liberties!
Data protection states Bureaus cannot go "trawling" for information, it has to be flagged up by something. So to get round it use a sophisticated matching engine, cross-match all of this data, find inconsitencies and then flag it up as needing further investigation. Set really poor matching rules and the amount of information you can legally flag up for investigation increases. AKA data trawling without actually trawling.
Law Enforcement crosses international boundaries, as does crime. The governmenrt needs to monitor communications to detect, for example, money laundering. Research shows money laundering is linked to drug trafficking, terrorism,organised crime. A bit of imagination in the name of "law enforcement" means governments don't need to bypass any laws to data mine and swap information with each other.
Admittedly, pestilent ringtones make me wince with annoyance. However, more of a concern is people using their mobile phones without a hands-free kit whilst driving. Particularly in the UK, where we have a lot more manual gearboxes and a greater need for two hands whilst driving! I have lost count of the number of retards I have seen driving dangerously whilst chatting to somebody on the phone. It should be made illegal to drive whilst holding a phone to your ear.
I just can't imagine anybody voluntarily using a phone which is going to give them an electric shock!
That's fantastic but I have a hard enough time remembering where I put my car keys, let alone an invisible cloak. Now . . . just where did I put that damn invisible cloak?
The slashdot effect in haiku
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 1
The website you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.
Credit card transactions such as this validate the credit card number against an algorithm, and ensure that number matches the bank who issued the card and the type of card (VISA, Mastercard et. al.)
Fine, the number may be legitimate, and the card may be legitimate, but is the actual transaction legitimate? In other words, there is no validation that the card being used for the transaction really does belong to the person making the transaction.
The practice of skimming credit cards and capturing numbers over wireless networks will continue, and credit card fraud will continue because it is easy to commit . . . probably until some form of smart cards encompassing biometrics are in mass use in the marketplace. Incorporate a finger print into a smart card and small recognition scanner at the point of sale. If your fingerprint doesn't match that on the card then the treansaction will be denied. This won't help on-line fraud or fraud perpetrated during transactions when the cardholder isn't present, but it will cut down on innocent people being ripped off.
So why don't banks incorporate this? It's purely down to cost. They're not interested in consumers being defrauded, what matters to them is the money the banks lose. Fraud is a big problem, but until the levels of fraud amount to more than the cost of issuing and installing smart card or biometric technology, banks aren't going to be interested.
In the case of validation, European countries with lower levels of credit card fraud are those with higher levels of validation. Many countries in Europe require a matching signature as well as a PIN number. Sure, the PIN number may be picked up over a wireless network, but it goes to show that more stringent validation checks will reduce levels of credit card fraud.
And as for using encryption - surely that is just common sense?!
I do not doubt that the media are going to exploit the internet to show things that would never get aired on public television. However, why are they doing it? Because there's profit to be made. Why is there profit to be made? Because there is a market for that kind of material. And unless there is no demand for it, the media will keep on providing it. True, they hype it up and promote it vehemently, but I don't think 100% of the blame can be dumped on the media for doing it.
Please, it can't be anywhere near as bad as Hurl Harbour, which made me want to puke. After 3+ hours of watching that I was rendered brain dead for a day, no cognition at all was going on in my head. And the reason I went to see it - I was intrigued by reports that they changed the true end of the battle in the film.
I find it sad that people feel they have to turn to fiction to learn (?!) about something that was historically documented.
At least, when I go to see Tomb Raider, I will expect it to be exactly what it is, a film based on a computer game. I'm not expecting fantastic dialogue. And if the computer graphics are crap, well, at least the film is true to the game - the graphics in the game were crap as well.
You have to remember this is Japan, and see it within that cultural context. Along with this comes different ideologies and different work ethics compared to the US. It seems to work for them, but probably wouldn't propagate very well in the US or here in the UK.
In the UK software industry there is a tendency for staff to leave a job and move on, sometimes only staying for several months. This brings with it some advantages, as programmers learn a whole new set of skills with each employer they work for, and carry these skills with them as they switch between jobs.
UK employers almost expect this to happen, it's common practice now for employers to ask for a reimbursement in training fees if an employee leaves after only a short time. This happens because salary and working conditions at most UK software houses aren't good enough to retain staff.
Japan has never had a problem with this, but Japanese companies find it hard to migrate their work ethics when they move operations abroad, such as Nissan in the UK.
It's no hindrance or obstacle to Japanese staff, as they aren't contractually obliged to stay with the same company until they retire. As long as staff are given credit for their work and creativity, which I think they are, then I see no real problem with this.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to cover future DVDs with pepper and itching powder, so when those pesky sniffer dogs stick their moist snout in my private property they'll get a lesson in how olfactory senses can rebel.
Check out how long it took to return these results: clicky Unfortunately no win. Scoundrels.
It's all very well having RIP, and those in the forensic community will know that people hae been sent to gaol under this act. However, when faced with the choice of spending 12 years imprisoned because of the 5,000 indecent images of children found on your hard drive, or spending 2 years imprisoned for not revealing your encryption key to the police, most criminals opt for the 2 years and use the law to their advantage.
Of course, Vista is a real pain in the arse for the forensic community in the UK because (quite rightly) we have to abide by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) guidelines when dealing with digital evidence and maintaining evidential continuity. As soon as a computer is switched on the time/date stamps change and evidence is no longer admissible in a court of law. Windows Vista would not allow us to take hard drives out of computers and hook them up to writeblockers to image them, because booting up that drive requires it to be directly linked to the TPM chip.
One reason for retention times increasing in relation to terrorism is due to the vast amount of time it takes to retrieve digital evidence and prove innocence or guilt. If digital media is seized from suspected terrorists then 7 days is not much time in which to image the media in a forensically sound manner, analyse and investigate it. Add to the fact that most terrorists detained in the UK communicate in a foreign language and interpreters are required to sift through thousands of documents. The whole process takes time. Of course the results could be rushed through in 7 days and conclusions made but that isn't doing anybody justice.
"...it's only a matter of time before we're arguing here about what looks better in 3D, Gnome or KDE."
Oh what joy! Proof I'm not a geek! My first thought was 3D pr0n. Gnome and KDE were the last things on my mind when I read about this.
You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
Actually, you'd think that after 20 years Joy could have developed a better hairstyle.
Mike, you are correct to say that mail will be sent to dead people as it takes time for families to inform the relevant authorities and businesses.
However, to clarify this further, the mail was sent to deceased people who were already registered on the Mortality File (held by the Office of National Statistics and based on death certificates.) Their relatives had already informed all of the relevant authorities, and these were clear cases of fraudsters attempting to impersonate dead people.
I don't believe it's an overreaction at all. In the UK identity fraud is massive. There were 74,000 reported cases of identity fraud last year, compared to 53,000 in 2001. The first three months this year have shown a 12% increase already. In 2001 the cost of identity theft in the UK was estimated to be at least 1.3bn.
Bin raiding (known as "dumpster diving" in the US) has arrived in the UK from the States. It's the process of obtaining financial and other personal information from dustbins in order to commit transaction and identity fraud. Typically, bin raiders look for discarded credit and debit card transaction receipts, bank statements, utility bills an dother personal correspondence that can be used as proof of identity or address.
The exposure to fraud risk is very real. Documents are explosed to a number of compromises:
* interception in the mail
* stolen following delivery to an address
* fraudulently re-directed
* stolen from homes in burglary
* stolen from thefts from the person
* stolen form bins
* completely counterfeited
* fraudulently altered
* obtained by a fraudster using a pseudonym
Fraudsters aren't stupid. They will mix and match the available forms of document compromise to build up the identity to meet regulatory and good practice guidelines set down by the financial institutions.
I'm not a karma whore, I work in fraud prevention and have seen people's lives ruined by identity theft and fraud. If you've been a victim you will know it can take up to 300 hours to ensure your credit history is corrected.
Countermeasures include:
* Take care of your identity, personal information, transaction slips and proofs of identity by keeping your documents secure.
* Never throw away whole receipts, bank statements, utility bills and other documents that can be used by a fraudster to assume your identity or compromise your credit/banking facilities. Your refuse is a target for fraudsters. Always thoroughly destroy personal information before throwing in the bin, preferably with a personal shredder - small ones can be bought from most stationery shops.
* Check your receipts against your card and bank statements carefully. If you find an unfamiliar transaction, contact your card issuer or bank immediately.
* Never disclose personal or financial details to anyone 'cold-calling', even if they claim to be from your bank or the police. It is always a good idea to phone them back on the number you have for them, not the one they may give you.
* Use different passwords for different accounts. If a fraudster compromises one of your facilities, they are less likely to compromise all of them.
* If you have documents stolen, there is a strong chance these will be used to commit fraud in your name. To counter and monitor this risk, I suggest that you get a regular monthly copy of your credit file. (This service is available through Experian / Equifax et. al.) Then, if a fraudster opens an account in your name, this will show up on your credit file report and gives you an opportunity to tell them so they can help you clear up the fraud and restore your credit rating.
* In the event of credit ID fraud, the credit reference agencies can help prevent a repeat attack by adding security features to your credit file.
A lot of these may seem like common sense but it's surprising how many people don't follow them. Research on what is discarded by householders in their rubbish revealed that 72% of bins contained information with full name and address; 20% contained credit card numbers and 80% of these had expiry date; up to 27% contained bank account information; 16% contained utility bills and 25% contained official letters.
In the UK there has also been an 80% annual increase in impersonating dead people. Of 10 billion items of mail sent last year in the UK, 22 million were addressed to deceased people!
This can be done in the UK. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 anybody can serve a 'Subject Access Request' on any organisation holding data about you. The organisation has to respond quickly and has to act upon incorrect information and justify their reason for still holding this data about you. They are fined heavily if they don't comply with this.
Even more amusing is video footage of yourself is classified as "personal data" because it can identify you. So, I go to Tesco and do some shopping, then fill my car with petrol at the petrol station down the road and then drive through the village where they have CCTV cameras. I can legally write to Tesco, the Shell garage and the Council, tell them I was in their shop/area at X time and request the video footage of myself under the Data Protection Act.
And those suckers have to search through their video footage for me and send me copies of the tapes! So, if a shop really pisses you off and they have CCTV you can serve them with a subject access request and use the law to get your own form of revenge.
This isn't advertised (for obvious reasons!) but I work for a large credit reference agency and had to research the recent changes to the Data Protection Act, this is how I found out about it.
For those not in the UK, the above comment is actually very funny. Feel free to laugh heartily and mod up, therefore conveying the image that a lot of UK people are reading this, and consequently making us feel more at home with the content!
Joking aside, being able to track vehicular activity is one thing, being able to identify the person or persons within that vehicle is an entriely different matter.
My brother is serving in Iraq now. Although the army is able to track all vehicles and pinpoint their movements, during the war they still attacked and killed people on their own side because they could not identify the people in those vehicles.
Only a minor detail but one which is pretty significant.
They have discovered that the British Isles are tilting, with the north of the country gaining altitude and the south of the country 'sinking'
Well of course the South of the country is sinking. It's densly populated. More people mean more houses, more cars, more infrastructure, more tea shops, more cake shops selling sweet meats and pleasant fancies . . . . which all lead to more weight. It's what many non-scientists call "the see-saw effect".
Does this also mean Scotland's Highlands will be gaining altittude, and we'll have to change all maps and road signs to say "Higherlands"?
The US government has been doing this for decades. It may be illegal, but they've been bypassing the law. There is the UKUSA agreement: the US and the UK spy on each others' citizens then swap the information with each other. So yes, the NSA and M16 really does filter through your email and some phone calls to boot.
,organised crime. A bit of imagination in the name of "law enforcement" means governments don't need to bypass any laws to data mine and swap information with each other.
Of course they have, so has the UK government. Information is publicly available for download, such as the Bank of England sanctions file, OFAC sanctions file (Office of Foreign Assets Control - US Treasury), CIA listed Chief of States, GAS (Gone Away Suppression File), Associations and Alias File . . . the list is huge. This only scratches the surface, however.
UK Data Protection offers great protection for the public in terms of what data can be held about them, how it is held and for how long it can be stored. But if that data is necessary for law enforcement then goodbye civil liberties!
Data protection states Bureaus cannot go "trawling" for information, it has to be flagged up by something. So to get round it use a sophisticated matching engine, cross-match all of this data, find inconsitencies and then flag it up as needing further investigation. Set really poor matching rules and the amount of information you can legally flag up for investigation increases. AKA data trawling without actually trawling.
Law Enforcement crosses international boundaries, as does crime. The governmenrt needs to monitor communications to detect, for example, money laundering. Research shows money laundering is linked to drug trafficking, terrorism
This would be great in the UK given the current exchange rate! CDs over here are still very expensive.
Typical 12 track CD here is on average £13, but at $1 a song this would equate to less than £8 for a CD.
I would be downloading like crazy!
Admittedly, pestilent ringtones make me wince with annoyance. However, more of a concern is people using their mobile phones without a hands-free kit whilst driving. Particularly in the UK, where we have a lot more manual gearboxes and a greater need for two hands whilst driving! I have lost count of the number of retards I have seen driving dangerously whilst chatting to somebody on the phone. It should be made illegal to drive whilst holding a phone to your ear.
I just can't imagine anybody voluntarily using a phone which is going to give them an electric shock!
That's fantastic but I have a hard enough time remembering where I put my car keys, let alone an invisible cloak. Now . . . just where did I put that damn invisible cloak?
The website you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
Not only do we have to watch out for bird crap raining down on us, we now have robot excrement to worry about as well.
Credit card transactions such as this validate the credit card number against an algorithm, and ensure that number matches the bank who issued the card and the type of card (VISA, Mastercard et. al.)
Fine, the number may be legitimate, and the card may be legitimate, but is the actual transaction legitimate? In other words, there is no validation that the card being used for the transaction really does belong to the person making the transaction.
The practice of skimming credit cards and capturing numbers over wireless networks will continue, and credit card fraud will continue because it is easy to commit . . . probably until some form of smart cards encompassing biometrics are in mass use in the marketplace. Incorporate a finger print into a smart card and small recognition scanner at the point of sale. If your fingerprint doesn't match that on the card then the treansaction will be denied. This won't help on-line fraud or fraud perpetrated during transactions when the cardholder isn't present, but it will cut down on innocent people being ripped off.
So why don't banks incorporate this? It's purely down to cost. They're not interested in consumers being defrauded, what matters to them is the money the banks lose. Fraud is a big problem, but until the levels of fraud amount to more than the cost of issuing and installing smart card or biometric technology, banks aren't going to be interested.
In the case of validation, European countries with lower levels of credit card fraud are those with higher levels of validation. Many countries in Europe require a matching signature as well as a PIN number. Sure, the PIN number may be picked up over a wireless network, but it goes to show that more stringent validation checks will reduce levels of credit card fraud.
And as for using encryption - surely that is just common sense?!
America wasn't "discovered", it was invented. The physical piece of land was discovered, but 'America' is definitely an invention.
I do not doubt that the media are going to exploit the internet to show things that would never get aired on public television. However, why are they doing it? Because there's profit to be made. Why is there profit to be made? Because there is a market for that kind of material. And unless there is no demand for it, the media will keep on providing it. True, they hype it up and promote it vehemently, but I don't think 100% of the blame can be dumped on the media for doing it.
To avoid confusion Apple have addressed this problem in OS X . When you drag a disk to the trash in OS X, the trash icon changes into an 'eject' icon.
Please, it can't be anywhere near as bad as Hurl Harbour, which made me want to puke. After 3+ hours of watching that I was rendered brain dead for a day, no cognition at all was going on in my head. And the reason I went to see it - I was intrigued by reports that they changed the true end of the battle in the film.
I find it sad that people feel they have to turn to fiction to learn (?!) about something that was historically documented.
At least, when I go to see Tomb Raider, I will expect it to be exactly what it is, a film based on a computer game. I'm not expecting fantastic dialogue. And if the computer graphics are crap, well, at least the film is true to the game - the graphics in the game were crap as well.
AC, it appears that you failed to notice the satire in the 'CD microwave' post.
You have to remember this is Japan, and see it within that cultural context. Along with this comes different ideologies and different work ethics compared to the US. It seems to work for them, but probably wouldn't propagate very well in the US or here in the UK. In the UK software industry there is a tendency for staff to leave a job and move on, sometimes only staying for several months. This brings with it some advantages, as programmers learn a whole new set of skills with each employer they work for, and carry these skills with them as they switch between jobs. UK employers almost expect this to happen, it's common practice now for employers to ask for a reimbursement in training fees if an employee leaves after only a short time. This happens because salary and working conditions at most UK software houses aren't good enough to retain staff. Japan has never had a problem with this, but Japanese companies find it hard to migrate their work ethics when they move operations abroad, such as Nissan in the UK. It's no hindrance or obstacle to Japanese staff, as they aren't contractually obliged to stay with the same company until they retire. As long as staff are given credit for their work and creativity, which I think they are, then I see no real problem with this.
. . . I don't see the word "porn" anywhere. What on earth were you searching for?
I'm just glad it's not called SPUNK. Oh . . . the connotations . . .