Hawk Wings » privacy

New Google Beta App?

Tim Gaden — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:26:15 +0000

Long-time Hawk Wings readers will know that Google and data privacy are an old hobby horse of mine. (Many interesting things about Google, privacy and data ownership are summarised in a earlier Hawk Wings post, “Turning your back on Gmail”.)

Gene at Fred’s house worries about it too.

He looks around his Desktop and sees Google This and Google That and Google The Other Thing. He’s becoming dependent on Google apps to get through the day. And each new, undeniably clever and good, constantly improving Google app adds to the amount of data that Google knows about him.

He has an idea:

I think I need a new Google product to drop into beta. That would be, let’s see, Google Data Privacy. GDP would allow me to review all of the information that Google retains on me across all services, from all devices, and from all sources. GDP would allow me to determine the maximum data retention period for each of my services. GDP would allow me to selectively opt out of cross-service data mining & correlation, even if it reduced the quality of the services I receive. GDP would allow me to correct any inaccurate data in my profile. And GDP would log and alert me when my data was queried by other services.

I want my Google Data Privacy.

Google, gmail, privacy, data ownership, data protection, new beta, internet, Web 2.0Similar Posts:

Security vulnerability in GPGMail

Tim Gaden — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:15:23 +0000

GPGMail plugin users take note. According to a Hawk Wings reader, emails signed with the GPGMail plugin may not be as safe as you think.

He writes,

I thought you might like to know that there is a serious security flaw in the gpgmail plugin. I discovered the vulnerability a few weeks ago, though I’m not the first to do so.

The problem is that if gpgmail detects a valid signature for part of a message, it displays a notice to say that the message is signed, even if parts of it are not. As a result, it is possible for an attacker to add arbitrary data (extra text, attachments, etc) to a signed message and it will appear to the user that the whole message is signed.

There is more detailed discussion in the mailing list archives:

http://www.sente.ch/Lists/gpgmail-users/List.html

The username and password required to view the archives are “sente” and “sente”.

[Thanks, Nicholas]privacy, digital signatures, security, mail.app, apple mail, plugins, GPGMailSimilar Posts:

NetShred X 3.17: Thunderbird, Camino support

Tim Gaden — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:54:54 +0000

NetShred is a stand-alone app that protects your privacy on the Internet by shredding the browsing histories, caches and deleted items of your browsers and email clients.

Of course, it supports Mail.app, Safari and Firefox. It even supports Eudora and Mailsmith.

A new version released today adds Camino (excellent! ), Shiira and Opera to that list. Thunderbird is now also supported.

It can erase and/or overwrite (not just delete) the following: browser caches, Internet histories, email trash, download caches, your quicktime cache, favicons and cookies.

NetShred X is a universal binary. It’s shareware (USD 19.95) and a demo is available from the developer’s web site . privacy, email, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, camino, securitySimilar Posts:

The story of PGP and GPG

Tim Gaden — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:20:37 +0000

Webmonkey has published the introductory chapter to PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid by Michael W. Lucas.

It covers Phil Zimmermann’s first steps with PGP, the lawsuits with the US Government, the launch of OpenPGP, GnuPG, legal aspects of encryption and more.

A brief quotation:

The ideas behind PGP had been known and understood by computer scientists and mathematicians for years, so the underlying concepts weren’t truly innovative. Zimmermann’s real innovation was in making these tools usable by anyone with a home computer. Even early versions of PGP gave people with standard DOS-based home computers access to military-grade encryption.

UPDATE: Mirko posts a link in the comments to an audio interview with Jon Callas , CTO at PGP Corporation, who also explains the history of PGP. Thanks.pgp, gpg, encryption, privacy, Zimmermann, OpenPGP, GnuPG, history

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AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and an email’s journey

Tim Gaden — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 13:09:35 +0000

Four interesting things from the world of email in general:

ClickZ provides a brief overview of an email’s journey from the time you click Send to the message’s arrival at its destination.

According to CNet News , a judge has ordered that a defendant needs to hand over all his email to the plaintiff. What’s interesting about this is that the defendant’s email is housed with Gmail. Gmail, you will remember, says in its privacy policy that deleted emails “may remain in our offline backup systems” indefinitely. “Delete it and it’s gone” doesn’t seem to apply with Gmail. That’s bad luck for the defendant.

In The New York Times, David Pogue posts a funny email from Hotmail about how to deal with unwanted email from the provider. It runs, “Free Hotmail users: If you do not wish to receive Hotmail member letters, you may close your Hotmail account.”

The New York Times also has an op-ed piece on Goodmail (registration required, but worth it) , the company that has been hired by AOL to provide “safe” delivery of wanted emails to its customers. There was a fair bit of coverage about this new “email tax” a few weeks ago.

email, gmail, hotmail, goodmail, AOL, privacySimilar Posts:

Nine reasons not to worry about Gmail

Tim Gaden — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:28:54 +0000

Some people worry about Gmail, data ownership and privacy. But not Nitin Jagga.

He provides nine reasons why concerns about Gmail are “bogus”.

Three of the reasons are actually Gmail features that have “entranced” him, but it is still a useful collection of the kinds of arguments that people will put in Gmail’s defence.

Is the argument convincing? Hmmm…..

UPDATE: As Christian points out in the comments, Nitin’s post is a word-for-word rip-off of an article by Tim O’Reilly published in 2004.gmail, Google, privacy, data ownership, Don’t worry be happy, email
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NSA interception: How it works, who’s helping

Tim Gaden — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 13:43:05 +0000

Some details are starting to emerge on how the domestic spying program authorised by US President Bush actually works and on who is co-operating with the US Government to make it happen.

According to a report on C|Net News, 94% of world-wide Internet traffic was routed through US switches and peering-points in 2005.

This makes the NSA’s job easier. The C|Net article describes in detail the various technical options open to the NSA for tapping land-based or underwater fibre-optic cables and copper lines.

A C|Net News survey published a few days ago identified 15 large US telecommunications companies and back-bone service providers who said that they were not co-operating.

A further 12 refused to confirm or deny participation, in some cases citing “national security concerns” as the reason for their coyness.

AT&T, one of the non-commital companies, is now being sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for alleged illegal surveillance of users’ data in co-operation with the NSA.

More:

NSA Spying Myths (The Nation)

On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress (New York Review of Books)

The whole thing is a wicked beat-up by well-known liberal pinko organizations like ABC, CBS and NBC (NewsBusters)

NSA, spying, homeland security, Internet traffic, email, privacy, telecommunications industry, not apple mailSimilar Posts:

NetShred X: Email and Browsing Privacy

Tim Gaden — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:13:36 +0000

NetShred is a stand-alone app that protects your privacy on the Internet by shredding the browsing histories and caches of your browsers and email clients.

It supports all the main browsers and the following email clients – Mail.app 1 and 2, Eudora 5, Eudora 6, Mailsmith 2.x, Mozilla 1.x and Netscape 7.x.

After launching the app (a process that can be automated so that occurs at start-up) , its main screen presents you will an overview of its abilities:

Installed browsers are highlighted in green, active ones in red.

Caches and histories can only be securely shredded when the app is closed. You can either do this manually, or set NetShred X to perform the shredding automatically when you exit the app.

The Preference Pane provides further options:

Here you can set the degree of automation that you want, what you would like the app to shred, what degree of shredding you require and how many write-overs you would like.

A further tab allows you to specify which browsers and email clients NetShred should monitor and shred.

In this day and age people have more reason than ever to think about their online privacy. NetShred X takes care of that for you and is a good complement to ShredIt, a general purpose shredder from the same developer.

NetShred is shareware (USD 19.95). A fully featured demo is available from the developer’s web site.Similar Posts:

Google, Gmail and privacy

Tim Gaden — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:52:13 +0000

In a move that may surprise many doom-sayers (like me) who fret about Google, Gmail and privacy, the search engine company has refused a request from the US Department of Justice for information about the search habits of Google users.

It’s important to recognise that the DoJ only asked for “de-identified” data, aggregated statistics that cannot be linked to individual users. Yahoo!, MSN and AOL all happily complied with the request.

But Google refused, partly because it fears turning the information over will create the public perception that Google doesn’t protect the privacy of its users.

Leslie Walker at the Washington Post has written a very interesting article in response on what exactly Google does know about individual users. Or you could browse the 934 hits on the story at Google News.

In further Google-realated privacy news, Gmail has introduced a more visible delete button. This gives users the impression that they can delete emails from the Gmail system.

Certainly the button removes the messages from the web interface, but whether it really means that they have gone, or whether they lurk around in Google’s massive data collection system is another matter. Gmail’s privacy statement is not clear about that.

Whoops, there I go again….
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Turning your back on Gmail

Tim Gaden — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 13:22:05 +0000

Gmail’s feature-rich web interface and the Web 2.0 hype are prompting more and more people to abandon desktop email clients.

Stowe Boyd at Corante dropped Mail.app for Gmail’s web-based interface and was glad to leave the “big fat app” behind in favour of Gmail’s leanness.

Jeremy Zawodny is using web-based email exclusively now. Despite some frustrations, he is “reasonable happy with Gmail”.

Jim at Jounreyman James found that leaving Apple Mail for Gmail simplified his life.

(UPDATE: You can add Cheesetoe to the list. And C.K. Sample III.)

Against this background, Jean-Francois Arseneault’s post about canning his Gmail account stood out. He is very happy about a return to Thunderbird, which he in turn says has simplified his email life.

Google has gone off the boil for him. His concerns, which he lists in his blog entry, are part technical and part privacy-related. “Knowing Google can see my communications is down right freaky”, Jean-Francois says.

Concerns about Gmail and privacy are nothing new. Gmail’s policy of never deleting anything raises interesting questions about privacy and data-ownership. Its revised privacy policy, released in October last year, was not reassuring.

Mike Bell recently posted his concerns about Google Analytics in the Mint Support Forum. He’s dropped the Google service as he believes that it violates his site’s privacy policy. “I’m not impressed, however, with the fact that Google has access to all of my user stats and they can cross reference those and correlate them and then target my users,” he writes.

Another new Gmail feature also raises privacy concerns. Suyog is worried about Gmail’s new “map feature”, which offers to map any address found in one of your emails. “For God’s sake”, he says, “I hope Google stops any more feature creeps like these!”apple mail, email, email clients, gmail, google, google analytics, mail.app, map feature, mint, privacy, thunderbirdSimilar Posts: