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“+100 geek points” – Alex Kent.

Had no idea they caught me on their wheeling cameras but they did. Pretty cool. I’m the only person I know on there. It really puts those privacy issues on to another level when it’s you. It’s the same with a lot of other things. We know that the ‘information technology workers’ at your ISP (or your company’s IT dept) ARE reading your email. Or that each of us are recorded some 100 time a day on CCTV. Or that everytime you pay at a parking meter, that coin is DNA analyzed and added to the states records. With your name on it.

But when this information is actually made easily available, to everybody, it becomes a little invasive. Especially 1) if you have something to hide and/or 2) if you’re bothered. I think Google Streetview still falls into the ‘security through obscurity’ category in that if I wasn’t now shouting of my existence there, nobody would know. And with that photo, nobody from outside my circle of friends would recognize me. I obviously don’t think Google is invading my privacy – but I also understand those caught in less favorable situations. What’s good about it is that it really reminds us that we are constantly being watched and recorded, and if we’re not happy about it, we better start behaving.

[Important Update] Just to be clear – and to make me not look like a Tory ***t – I am against bio-metric ID cards and governments cataloging our DNA just in case we might do something. There’s been too many cases of people being wrongly accused and arrested for that to make sense in anyway. It’s preemptive invasion of privacy. CCTV is supposed to prevent crime by making it clear that you’re on camera and your wrong doings can be proven with it. BTW, those records are public, you have the right to ask for the tapes and watch them. Within the last 6 months, I’ve reported to two crimes to the police, both of which were committed under CCTV cameras. What did the Police do? Nothing. CCTV didn’t prevent the crimes, neither did the Police use them to solve the crimes.

So, to sum up, and clarify the last few words in the original post; It’s not great that we’re being followed with all the cameras but we haven’t got that much to worry about either as we’re still pretty anonymous.

–kristian

You know when you’re login on to a website for the first time, your browser asks if you want to save the password? I often choose to save the login credentials on sites that aren’t in the circle of ‘important to keep secure’ sites. After all, my laptop locks up every time it goes to sleep or screensaver comes on so it’s not THAT easy to get on it.

Firefox obviously does this, too. It’s convenient to use it. But what I didn’t know before is how easy it is to get those passwords, in plain text. Go to Firefox Preferences and select the ‘Security’ -tab (those were air quotes) there select Show Passwords. Unbelievable. Anyone, who has access to your computer for about 30 seconds without you watching, will be able to LOOK at your passwords and copy them. In the following video, I will demonstrate how this is done, in under 20 seconds:

Of course some websites don’t let you save the password, banking websites foremost. But the problem is that so many people recycle their password. Using the same password for banking and facebooking is not a good idea.

I haven’t been using Firefox for a while now but when I did, I used to recommend it to people. I don’t anymore.

–kristian

ps. Safari saves passwords, too, but it saves them in Keychain. Keychain database has AES 128 bit encryption on it making it not far from un-hackable. You can still access them, but you need to be authorized as the admin.