Big Brother 2.0: 160,000 Facebook pages are hacked a day

WikiLeaks, the National Security Agency, data mining we all know Big Brother is watching. But few of us realize to what extent.

Some things you might not know: Your smart TV is probably watching you watch it. Your office photocopier is recording everything you duplicate. Your smartphone can identify you by the way you walk, the way you hold it, and may also be recording you. The app you downloaded has now siphoned your name, e-mail address and place of residence and reported back to its parent company.

The insecurity of the individual, however, has nothing on the insecurity of nations, diseases, global finance, air and space travel, traffic and power grids, police and fire departments, medical data, news organizations. There are no firewalls that cant be breached.

In his new book, Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It (Doubleday), global-security expert Marc Goodman explores our existing and impending vulnerabilities, all while exhorting us to be aware to the point of paranoia.

Four new Apache helicopters were destroyed in 2007 by insurgents after US servicemen posted photos to Facebook unaware that the pictures had been automatically geotagged.

Goodman has far too many examples to back up that assertion. Among them: 160,000 Facebook accounts are compromised per day, and the company loosens up your privacy settings every time they update the terms of service not that theyll tell you.

Google reads your Gmail and sells your personal information to advertisers. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn also sell whatever data on you theyve got.

Nordstrom and Home Depot track your movements through their stores using Wi-Fi and your cellphone.

Disneyland tracks visitors via sensor-enabled bracelets that they supply; the company records everything the wearer does, says and buys, and then if that wearer is 13 or over sells that data to others.

Disneyland tracks visitors via sensor-enabled bracelets that they supplyPhoto: Reuters

Read the original:
Big Brother 2.0: 160,000 Facebook pages are hacked a day