April 16, 2002 -
Treasury warns of U.S. bank scam
- By Bob Sullivan, MSNBC,
Organized crime, identity theft used to
withdraw from savings. An agency inside
the Treasury Department has issued an
alarming warning to all U.S. banks about
a fraud scheme involving organized
gangs, newly hired bank tellers, and
identity theft. In the simple scheme,
gang members use “friendly” tellers to
cash forged savings account withdrawals
from innocent victims. While the alert
is just 24 hours old, MSNBC.com has
learned the loosely organized gangs have
been operating for at least a year...
April 25, 2002 -
RIAA wants tax dollars to combat piracy - By Gwendolyn
Mariano, Special to ZDNet News, The Recording Industry Association
of America is calling for additional federal funding to combat the
ongoing wave of piracy, saying that the number of arrests and
convictions for copyright crimes has skyrocketed over the course of a
year. In a congressional hearing Tuesday before a subcommittee of the
House Appropriations Committee, the RIAA requested additional funds
for federal anti-piracy law enforcement efforts and is pushing for a
renewed agenda on protecting intellectual property. The RIAA, which
did not request a specific amount, said the additional funds are
needed for investigations and cases...
April 23, 2002 -
The Devil Is in the E-Mail - SECURITY NET, By Alex Salkever,
Once, brokerages could bury prosecutors in mountains of irrelevant
paper. Now, as Merrill Lynch is learning, e-dirt is much easier to dig.
In computer-security circles, Wall Street is considered a premier
customer. Each major brokerage and investment-banking house spends huge
sums to ensure that no one, but no one, breaks into its computer
systems. Now, it turns out that the biggest digital-security threat
facing giant brokerage houses and investment banks may have nothing to
do with firewalls, intrusion detection, and security engineers. It may
lie with the loose use of e-mail and instant messaging by employees, who
write things they would never dare to say out loud...
April 07, 2002 -
Social Security Numbers and DD Form 214 Issues - By: Jerry
Melvin, Gulf1.com, An uproar arose several weeks ago when some
military retirees realized that information they had recorded with the
County Clerk's office became public records and could be accessed by
anyone anywhere through the Internet. Most were concerned that when they
recorded their DD Form 214, "Report of Separation from Active Duty" to
safeguard the document, they were not notified by the Clerk's office
that the information became a public document. Many stated they were
advised by the Department of Defense to record the document at the time
of separation from service...
April 29, 2002 -
How Microsoft Conquered Washington - By spending lots of
money--of course--but also by doing lots of creative lobbying you don't
know about. FORTUNE, By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, For a couple of
embarrassing years in the mid-'90s, Microsoft's primary lobbying
presence in D.C. was "Jack and his Jeep." As the software giant's sole
in-house lobbyist, Jack Krumholtz, then 33, had to battle endless
traffic jams to get from Microsoft's suburban sales office to Capitol
Hill. "Early on I spent most of the day in my Jeep Grand Cherokee on my
cellphone," Krumholtz says. "I hit an all-time low on the day I was
parked on a Capitol Hill side street reading through my mail with the
laptop on the steering wheel..."
April 25, 2002 -
Creeps,
crime and online dating - By Lisa Napoli, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR,
Web no more risky than the real world when looking for love. A recent
news report out of Japan finds that crime linked to online dating sites
is on the rise. Headline news analysis: Creeps and weirdoes may log on,
yes, but hey, they don’t dwell only on the Internet. Don’t blame the
pixels...
April 08, 2002 -
Time Warner: Bandwidth hogs, pay up!
- By Michael Martin, Network World, Cable company decides heavy
bandwidth users will pay an additional monthly fee. The all-you-can-eat
bandwidth buffet that cable modem users enjoy may soon come to an end.
Later this year, Time Warner Cable will begin charging users a fee for
downloading more than a monthly limit. The company has yet to release
specific pricing changes...
April 22, 2002 -
A Bad Year for Privacy -
By Declan McCullagh, Wired.com, SAN
FRANCISCO -- Long before planes slammed into the World Trade Center and anthraxed mail snarled Capitol Hill, privacy mavens had worried that a
terrorist attack would spur Congress to approve invasive new laws. Then
came Sept. 11's deadly attacks, followed by President Bush signing the
USA PATRIOT Act the following month...
April 22, 2002 -
Europeans Eye E-Vote Eventuality - By Dermot McGrath,
PARIS -- In the first flush of Internet fever, electronic voting was
hailed as the miracle cure-all for democracy's ills. E-vangelists
argued it would engage young people in the political process,
invigorate democracy and bring voting methods up to speed with current
technology. These days, online voting invariably comes with a health
warning attached: Use only in carefully controlled circumstances. All
experts are now more or less of the opinion that it is too soon to
contemplate remote Internet voting -- in which people vote from home
or other unofficial locations -- on a large scale...
April 04, 2002 -
Watch out for snooping spam - By Stefanie Olsen, Special to
ZDNet News, Watch out--the spam choking your e-mail in-box may be
loaded with software that lets marketers track your moves online, and
you may not even be aware that you've been bugged. Web sites have long
planted bits of code called "cookies" on consumers' hard drives to
tailor Internet pages for returning visitors and better target ads.
Now, enhanced messages that share the look and feel of Web pages are
being used to deliver the same bits of code through e-mail, in many
cases without regard for safeguards that have been developed to
protect consumer privacy on the Web...
