Articles about Privacy

This time of the year is a great one to pick up some technology bargains and the Downloadcrew Software Store is no exception. In addition to the regular deals, there are some extra-special Black Friday/Cyber Monday offers that run until the end of November.

We open with some great savings from CyberLink. PowerDirector 11 Ultimate, which bundles PowerDirector 11 with 22 NewBlueFX effects, is yours for only $99.99, a saving of 23 percent from MSRP. Better still, you pick up a free bundle worth $59.90 with every order! PowerDirector 11 Ultra is yours for $79.95, a saving of 20 percent from MSRP, also shipping with the free bundle. Media Suite 10 Ultra, which is CyberLink’s 11-in-1 multimedia suite, is yours for $89,95, or 31 percent off MSRP. PowerDVD 12 Ultra, is yours for $50, or 50-percent off MSRP.

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Users are becoming accustomed to Adobe security flaws these days. After all the company did occupy five of the top-10 spots in the recent Kaspersky report. While the "occasional" Flash bug can be dealt with, having one's user information stolen is a whole different story, but that is exactly what sources are claiming and Adobe is confirming by shutting down the service in question.

"Adobe is currently investigating reports of a compromise of a Connectusers.com forum database. These reports first started circulating late during the day on Tuesday, November 13, 2012. At this point of our investigation, it appears that the Connectusers.com forum site was compromised by an unauthorized third party. It does not appear that any other Adobe services, including the Adobe Connect conferencing service itself, were impacted".

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From full commercial applications to simple freeware tools, it’s surprising just how many setup programs will now try to install unwanted browser addons on your PC. And too many of these can slow your system down, make it less stable, maybe even compromise your privacy.

The deceptive techniques used by some software means these “extras” can be difficult to avoid, too. But fortunately help is at hand in the shape of the free Toolbar Cleaner, which can assist you in reviewing and taking control of your IE, Firefox and Chrome addons.

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You’ve got to hand it to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Despite living under house arrest, his assets frozen, and facing the prospect of extradition to the United States and up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of copyright theft, money laundering and racketeering fraud, he’s pressing ahead with plans for a new file-sharing site.

Mega, his Megaupload replacement, was revealed yesterday, and despite just consisting of a holding page at the moment, was quickly overwhelmed. "Millions of users hitting at once. I'm delighted by the interest. But servers can't handle it. The new Mega will. WOW!!!" Dotcom tweeted an hour after the news broke.

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Like Microsoft in the late late 1990s and early 2000s, antitrust scrutiny confronts Google on two continents. Among the core issues emerging from the preliminary investigations: privacy. Your data, who has access to it, how clear are the search giant's privacy policies and how carefully does the company adhere to them. But Google is by no means the only concern. Facebook is renown for making user interface and feature changes that can suddenly and unexpectedly expose personal data, and there are problems past about third-party applications accessing what they shouldn't.

As more established tech companies offer more services in the cloud, increasingly there is lingering question: Whom do you trust with your personal data? Last month, Apple expanded cloud services with iOS 6 and iPad mini and the fourth-generation 9.7-inch model go on sale November 2, supporting them. On Friday, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and Surface and does same with Windows Phone on October 29. To get the most from these products, users must have a Microsoft account, like Apple and Google require for their cloud services. Meanwhile, Office 365 extends online sync, storage and collaboration features.

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Search engine DuckDuckGo released a video a few days ago that shows how Google personalizes results for all signed in and signed out users. It asked 131 people to search for the same Election related topics ("abortion", "gun control", and "Obama") on Google at the same time, and most of them received slightly different results.

That Google personalizes results in this way is hardly new information. The company has been doing it since 2009 and Eli Pariser covered the topic in depth in his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble (a great read). He also gave an enlightening Ted Talk on the subject in which he observes that "the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see."

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Following the introduction of two-step verification, the popular cloud storage service Dropbox has updated Dropbox for Teams to help team admins enable security features.

The service is updated starting today, and will allow admins to verify which team members have turned on two-step verification and to email those that have yet to enable the feature, all through the "Team" tab. The feature is implemented to aid admins instead of offering them the possibility to remotely enable an extra layer of security through two-step verification, and according to the blog post new features will be developed over time.

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"Most Recently Used" lists are generally a good feature in applications, as they allow you to reload recent documents without having to remember exactly where they’re stored.

But, of course, there are also privacy implications with doing this. And so if you don’t want other users of your PC to see exactly which documents you’ve been accessing recently, you may want to use a third-party tool, like MRU-Blaster, to wipe them all away.

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Lavasoft has announced the availability of Ad-Aware 10.3, an incremental update to the classic antivirus tool that delivers small but still worthwhile improvements all across the package.

Installation is now faster and more straightforward, for instance.

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When you have personal documents that you’d like to keep safe from snoopers then your first thought might be to encrypt them. But this isn’t always the best idea. Just seeing a “Mysterious.doc” file that they can’t open will be enough to tell others that you’ve something to hide.

The free DeepSound, though, offers a different approach. In just a few clicks it’ll take your documents and conceal them within WAV or FLAC files. And if anyone checks, now, all they’ll see is regular audio files that play as usual: there’s nothing to be suspicious about.

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If you’d like to find a good proxy server to keep you anonymous online then there are plenty of online sources which claim they can help. These lists aren’t always reliable, though -- some recommended servers may not work any more, others aren’t as anonymous as you might think -- and you can spend quite some time manually checking their various suggestions before you find anything that suits your needs.

If all that sounds too much like hard work, then, you might prefer to use the free A+ Proxy Finder, which automates the process of locating and evaluating HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS proxies.

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Last week, a federal district court made a ruling that has broad implications for your privacy on Facebook. The end result is that you should be much more careful about what you share on Facebook with whom, because regardless of whether your profile is private or not, the Federal Government can use your friends to gather evidence against you, which in turn can be used against you in a court of law.

This is what happened to accused gangster Melvin Colon. The Bronx, N.Y. man used his Facebook to brag about his apparent exploits, which according to reports included messages of loyalty to his gang, posts on violent acts and threats to other people. The US Government was then able to find a friend who worked against Colon, and allowed law enforcement to use his or her Facebook to gather evidence.

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A new tech startup that produces facial recognition camera systems tied to Facebook tagged photos, plans to offer the technology to more traditional physical stores so they could offer you appropriate deals as you enter their business. That’s great for stores that want to have more targeted information about you, based on a bit of your history and likes. But what about privacy, what are the implications?

For now, you are not included in this scheme unless you opt in via Facebook to a third party service. The service would then present tailored deals to your mobile device when you enter an establishment using the technology (currently being tested in Tennessee). Facedeals, the provider, says this simply bolsters and leverages check-ins so that local businesses have more personal information, and by knowing and targeting the products they offer you based on your likes and preferences they can seem more relevant, like discounted or free drinks for using the service at a bar & grill.

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The release of Windows 8 draws ever closer and this means that there is a slew of apps being updated to add support it. Paragon Image Backup for Windows 8 is one such program, giving you the chance to backup and restore your data free of charge. Fans of system tweaking and optimization should take a look at Auslogics Disk Defrag 3.5.0.0 and Auslogics BoostSpeed 5.4.0.0, which can be used to ensure the best possible performance from your hard drive as well as giving you a raft of tools to help boost the speed of Windows.

Whether you’re upgrading to Windows 8 or not, you should keep an eye on your internet connection to check how it is being used by different programs, or malware, and this is something that Net Guard 2.0.7.0 enables you to do. This week also saw the release of Windows Essentials 2012, the latest collection of free tool from Microsoft including Live Messenger, Movie Maker, SkyDrive and more.

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The rumors were true. Today, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for putting its hand in the Safari cookie jar. Technically, the amount is a settlement, but effectively a fine. The search and information giant circumvented Apple browser privacy controls to mine personal data.

Google isn't the only company accused of bypassing Safari privacy controls, but it is most answerable to regulators. The search company already is under 20-year oversight for violating the FTC Act. In October 2011, Google agreed not to misinterpret its consumer privacy practices.

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