A cookie is a text file composed of alphanumeric characters that are stored on a user’s computer when a website is accessed. Cookies are also called by other names like browser cookies, HTTP cookies, and web cookies. The browser uses a cookie to navigate the website more easily. A cookie can be used for logins, language settings, shopping cart contents, themes and more features that use text data.

There are cookies that are automatically deleted once the browser is terminated. These are cookies without expiration dates. There are also those that are stored in the computer and are deleted only after a specified date. These are cookies with expiration dates. Although a cookie itself does not hold information, it can help a website do its job more efficiently.

Cookie files contain the name of the server, its duration, and the cookie value, and are stored in the browser’s cookie file. The cookie value is a randomly generated number that makes one cookie different from the rest. This value enables the server that created the cookie to remember the user when he or she comes back to the site, or to navigate from page to page.

Health studies should now engage lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations. A committee at the Institute of Medicine presented this general idea in its written report. The report said that there should be proactive data collection on these populations. This means that even before they are needed, these data should be already available. This will help improve the quality of service of medical professionals and allied personnel. What is important is that they are identified so that specific health conditions that affect them could be easily understood.

The existing amount of data on LGBT population health status and needs is very limited. While they are given medical care, the problem lies in the way they are being recognized. These groups need to be treated not as a “single homogeneous group”. Due to the lack of comprehensive data, the report suggested that health researchers should focus on how to address this concern. Specifically, these should give emphasis on the stages of life that LGBT populations undergo. There should also be a clear plan for research and data collection. This will result to the fuller understanding of why these populations are different from the rest.

There should be a move from taking up general data towards collecting more specific information. The usual scope of study of researches revolves around race and ethnic minorities. This should be the right time to focus research efforts not only on routine data gathering. Greater importance should be placed on the understanding of different health conditions that are common among various groups, or those that affect them in a different way.

Would you rather forget privacy and share photos without restrictions not just with friends but even with strangers? Bill Nguyen’s newly developed photo-sharing network that is aptly called Color can do just like that. Though relatively new, this new application promises to capture a fairly good share of the market. To recall, Nguyen sold his music-streaming company Lala to Apple in 2009 for around $80 million. This new application that he created could be another sure hit.

Color has been designed for iPhone and Android devices. It lets you share your pictures with anyone within 150 feet. Color as a photo-sharing application is very much similar to other mobile apps like Instagram or PicPiz. The great advantage is its proximity-based sharing functionality. This is the reason why users find this friendlier.

Any two users using the application near each other have so much to enjoy. Color notes it automatically and records these events. The people you hang out with most appears higher up on your contact list. The person’s ranking goes down as the frequency of being together decreases. Color does not give significance to whether you know these persons you get close to most often. As long as they are within the 150-meter radius, Color will count them as friends.

Have you ever tried to read the “Privacy Policy” of some of the most popular tech companies or networking sites like Facebook? Granting that you were able to read the small fonts and the thousands of words, were you able to clearly understand? This is the truth: Privacy policies are too difficult to understand. Facebook admitted this truth and proposed for a different way of disclosing its privacy policy to its consumers. This is aimed at making its privacy policy easier to understand.

For quite a number of years, Facebook and Google have been competing to present “better” versions of privacy policies. Up to this time, the battle is still to be won. Specifically, these two companies want to make privacy policies more user-friendly. This means “easy to understand, more visual and interactive, and more relevant to users’ concerns”.

So what does Facebook mean by “presenting something different”? Facebook has presented the results for user comments. It has replaced the term “Privacy Policy” with “Data Use Policy”. This change might have been the result of the complaints by privacy advocates. They said that the term “Privacy Policy” is “misleading because these generally describe how and when data is shared”.

Yasir Afifi was disappointed when he found out that government has been following him for quite a long time. Believing that he is law abiding, he filed charges against some FBI agents. Afifi discovered a GPS device on his car when he brought it to a mechanic. The 20-year old American-born student of Egyptian descent was surprised why he was put under surveillance.

The mechanic was fixing the car when he discovered the GPS device. With the aid of magnets, it was securely positioned between the right rear wheel and exhaust. Both of them could not name what it was so they posted its picture online. But things turned out very differently. While he was driving two days later, agents who were wearing bullet-proof vests pulled him over. They insisted that he return the piece of mechanism.

He was backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in filing the case. He stated that there was infringement on his civil rights because the FBI agents did it without warrant. His lawyers deduced that his Middle East roots and repeated travels there might have caused such action. He has two brothers in Egypt who are under his support. His father was a famous Islamic-American community head who died last year.

An FBI representative decided to keep the details of the court case and how the agency kept track of Afifi. According to him, the FBI works under fixed Department of Justice and FBI rule. It should execute the most suitable investigative steps or techniques as provided by law. It goes without saying that rules have been set to guard civil and constitutional rights.

Afifi is pursuing a career in business marketing at Mission College while working as computer salesman at the same time. He declared at a news conference that agents did not give clear answers as to the grounds why he is being closely observed. He did not contradict allegations that he makes frequent phone calls overseas. This could be the cause for such FBI action, but he insisted that he has been law abiding since then.

Privacy violation issues revolve around how the surveillance was conducted. Washington appeals court resolved that the gathering of GPS data from individuals is deemed a “search” so that it requires a warrant. The Obama administration in justification to FBI’s action said the court’s judgment was “vague and unworkable”. Further it insisted that government could no longer use GPS as an important tool in surveillance if the court would not overturn its decision.

In Washington, Federal treasury officials found an odd connection between missing children cases and tax returns. They examined more than 1,700 of these cases and this is what they found out. More than 1/3 of them had been declared on tax returns by relatives that are suspects for their abduction. Many domestic cases of child abduction are still left unsolved and the children never found.

Working together, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and missing children’s advocate Patty Wetterling knocked at law enforcement agencies. They suggested that tax returns of suspected abductors contain data that might lead to the suspects. According to them, law enforcement agencies should be authorized to gain access at the tax return data of these “suspects”. They believe that these would help in locating missing children across the U.S.

Klobuchar argued that the state should not be very strict with keeping private those tax return records. Because they contain data that could potentially lead to the solution of these cases they should be made available. Klobuchar is a former Hennepin County attorney who describes overprotecting tax information data as making “no sense”. If the state would protect privacy, then it should also exhaust all possible means in trying to find out where the kids are.

Supporters of civil liberties on the other hand see that divulging tax information to law enforcers would create more problems. Privacy laws around taxes are one of the strongest in the U.S. Allowing tax information to become “public” would also invite other compelling interests. Examples could be those of health care information and other government services.

Wetterling has lost a son named Jacob. He was abducted neat their St. Joseph home in 1989 at age 11. He is still missing. The missing child advocate said that they don’t “care about jurisdictional boundaries”. All they care about as parents is “getting their child back”. Wetterling said this in a testimony during the congressional panel hearing in support to Klobuchar’s bill.

The senator noted that some situations such as overdue student loans would allow the IRS to disclose tax information data. This is contained as a list of exceptions in the tax code with regard to privacy. She further added that “there’s no reason why missing children shouldn’t be added to the list”. From the foregoing, it is clear that there is a need to strike a balance between protecting privacy rights and finding missing children.

I know, it’s an odd title for a post: “Cell Phone Creepiness”.  But when you read this article in BusinessWeek, I guarantee that you will be creep-ed out too.

We all know that cell phones can be tracked geographically.  There are even applications for that.  A reasonable use might be to track where your child is by their cell phone, although your child might not think it’s reasonable.  But consider this, the cell phone company knows who you are.  Couple that with the positioning, and they can determine where you are.  Maybe not so bad yet???

Now consider this.  According to the article, a group of researchers have been able to determine your approximate income, your likes and dislikes and even if you just got fired, all from the locations that you frequent.  They do this by using aggregate data on millions of users to determine patterns.  Depending upon your pattern, or if you break your pattern, they can deduce a lot about you.  Now that’s just creepy.  Add that to the fact that the cell phone provider knows who you are and your privacy is gone.  You might as well walk around naked with sign showing your net worth.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Read the article for yourself on BusinessWeek.

Nearly everyone is on some social networking site these days. While this is good in the sense that everyone can stay connected, there are some detrimental effects as well. People need to be better about delineating what is good information to post, and what is bad information to post. Teachers and their scandalous web pages consorting with students are all over headlines these days, and not in a good way. The problem may be the people for the most part and their indiscretion, but the companies may be at fault as well.

Recently, Canadians have had a bone to pick with social networking giant FaceBook. Although the website lays out all sorts of privacy guidelines and other protections to be granted towards the consumer, the Canadian Privacy Agency accuses them of being all talk. Canadians represent about twelve million of their two-hundred and fifty million users.

Instead of showing your drivers license anymore, you can simply have it scanned by someone with a scan machine. The technology originally used on many devices, and most notably the EZPass (a driver’s mechanism that automatically pays when you go through tolls so you don’t have to stop) has been transferred to Identification cards, and is raising some eyebrows even though it is supposed to be there for convenience.

This technology actually collects data automatically from anyone in a bar setting, who is consuming alcohol. This scanner saves data such as phone numbers, drivers license numbers, names, photos, gender, and even the amount of alcohol consumed! Many bar users and privacy advocates alike have revolted against this technology; while it has good intentions, it presents a large hazard to the ones being scanned as they will then have so much sensitive and personal information floating around.

While this technology is being used in Vancouver and is disliked by the people, the privacy commissioner proposes to allow bars to use the technology, just with a couple of modifications. The commissioner asserts that the ID tag and information collection helps to find drunk drivers, and keeps tabs (no pun intended) on the frequent bar users of Vancouver. Also, without this ID tag, kids are much less likely to be able to try and get an illegal drink at a local bar, since they will not have been issued an ID yet. Forget about faking the ID either as is popular in youth culture; these futuristic super identification cards have a specialized bar code strip hidden on the back and many other safe guards to show that the card is real, and keep imposters from leaking through.

Some have the false premonition that celebrities and other “big players” are larger than life, and protected as such. Some would think that hackers and criminals would only prey on the average civilian, but this is not true. Celebrities represent credibility, and wealth. If a hacker were to gain access to a famous person’s credit card, you can be sure they would go to town with it, knowing the celebrity is rich. If a hacker simply wanted to get a message out, posing as a good speaker would be a good idea. These are often obviously fake though, and discredited quickly. If a hacker were to gain access to a celebrities e-mail account however, they would have access to the fan list millions long.

This has just recently happened. A Green Party representative Peter Ellis, recently had his e-mail hacked. The criminal got his password, and went on posing as Peter Ellis himself. He then sent out an e-mail requesting money from any of his supporters, saying that he was on a trip to help out his sick daughter, who needed money for an immediate medical procedure. Anyone who knew Ellis knew his daughter was only eight years old and in perfect health.

The e-mail was sent out to many of the people on Ellis’ contact list. It requested a loan of $1500 dollars be sent to a Belleville address. After Peter figured this out, he quickly called HotMail and had them deactivate his account. One of Peter’s friends tried to catch the crook by feigning interest, but no one knows if it led to an arrest.