We interrupt our - well, my - scheduled programming to bring to your attention an article in "The Register" that I think deserves your attention. I put up what was intended to be a brief pointer on the AVIEN blog (http://avien.net/blog/?p=253), but I found myself kind of warming to the subject, to the extent that I think it's worth covering the same ground here.
Rik Myslewski's article says (among many other things in a three-page article that particularly focuses on Apple and Google) that “Waiting in the wings are corporate entities eager to exploit your personal information, and government agencies watching your every step.”
To which I responded in the blog cited above that:
The issue of government monitoring spends a lot of time under the spotlight, of course, and so it should. (Craig Johnston and I considered some of the law-enforcement issues in an AVAR paper this year, but there’s much more to it than that, obviously.)
But I’m seriously concerned about the consequences of the increasing amount of personal data (good, bad, and purely mythical) available to anyone with a browser (or even a USB port). It’s an issue I’ve had occasion to think about several times recently, and I expect to return to it a lot more in the coming months.
I also cited some previous ESET blogs that made related points:
http://www.eset.com/threat-center/blog/2009/12/14/your-data-and-your-credit-card
http://www.eset.com/threat-center/blog/2009/12/12/the-internet-book-of-the-dead
http://www.eset.com/threat-center/blog/2009/06/09/data-protection-not-a-priority
I also use this quote from the ESET Global Threat Trends report for December, which will be available shortly.
“Criminals and legitimate businesses will mine data from a widening range of resources, exploiting interoperability between social networking providers. Sharing of data in the private sector will be an increasing threat until the need is accepted for more data protection regulation on similar lines to that seen in the public sector, especially in Europe.”
I wish I could believe that this issue is going to be resolved satisfactorily soon. :(
David Harley
Director of Malware Intelligence
