Security worries about Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers

It has emerged that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari users are all exposed to a serious security threat affecting all browsers.

Webmasters are repotedly able to extract highly sensitive information regarding a user upon visiting their site. This data includes full names, addresses, user preferences, location, stored passwords and even financial details.

Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of White Hat Security alleged that Apple had not responded to his many attempts to make them aware of the security problem.

More information can be seen here.

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German man arrested after spying on schoolgirls

A man has been arrested in Germany after evidence was found indicating he had spied on approximately 150 young schoolgirls through webcams.

Some of the young girls affected began to notice their computer behaving erratically after a trojan was planted by the German man. It is believed that the malware was intentionally placed on the victims machines after he had communicated with the schoolgirls.

Several live feeds were found running when Police raided his home. This case is not unique and there have been many instances of such criminal activity recorded across Europe.

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First eBay user prosecuted for artificially inflating prices

Paul Barratt, 39, was given 250 hours of community service and a £5,000 fine after he was found to be bidding on his own items.

Digital evidence investigators were able to confirm that he owned two different accounts, each containing the same contact details and IP address. He bidded on his own vehicles, mobile phones and cameras in order to instigate another bid and make higher profit.

This technique, also known as 'shill bidding', is deeply opposed by eBay. They welcomed the sentence and announced that £6 million was being spent every year to stop such activity.

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ANPR review and regulations

Theresa May has expressed her concern for the lack of regulation concerning ANPR and its related databases.

The ANPR database holds approximately 7.6 billion records and is used for tracking uninsured or otherwise non-complying drivers. It has also been used to track vehicles in high order crime cases.

The following aspects will be taken into consideration:

• Establishing the lawful right to collect and retain ANPR data for policing

• Defining exactly how this information can be used for policing purposes

• Limiting by whom and for how long ANPR data can be stored

• Establishing who can have access to ANPR data and for what purposes

• Enabling the bulk transfer of data between agencies and between the private sector and the police for agreed purposes

• Making ANPR cameras transparent to the public, except when they're being used for covert surveillance

• Establishing a means of redress around the use of ANPR data

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Facebook prohibits unauthorised crawling

Facebook has made changes to its social networking site in order to stop crawling activity by unauthorised users.

The changes, introduced by modifying the Facebook robot.txt file including crawling data settings, specify that only certain search engines (such as Google and Microsoft's Bing) have authorised access to perform such activities.

Facebook attempted to sue Pete Warden, associate of www.fanpageanalytics.com after he used data crawling on Facebook to gather user information for the website. Following the legal case, Facebook decided to modify their current crawling settings in order to improve privacy and user safety.

They have insisted that they will grant crawling permission to any legitamite search outfits or sources provided that their reasons are appropriate. Written permission will be granted to all successful applications.

A blog post from Facebook CTO Bret Taylor can be found here regarding the subject.

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