December 2007 Archives
We all know that Google rules the world. Kinda. Now this search engine Godzilla is getting set to make even more of our lives available to...everybody.
State governments maintain scads of personal information, and many make these public records available online. Until recently, however, the files haven't been indexed by Google (or by other searchmeisters, like Yahoo and Microsoft), mainly because they couldn't understand the government file formats.
But the times, they are a-changin'.
Google is now providing free consulting and software to help make this information easily searchable by these, and other, search engines. That means by friends, family and - here's the scary part - foes. Notably the ones that want nothing more than to use any tool available to steal your identity and rob you blind.
It's like handing out keys to your safe deposit box.
To date,
The point here is that increasing types and amounts of personal information stored online are being indexed by search engines. Anything seems fair game. So if you're using one of these online storage sites - free or not - you'll have to wonder if your private files have become fair game.
This is precisely what sets iForem apart. No document stored in an iForem digital archive will ever be accessible by searchbots. Period. No exceptions.
Don't give digital pirates a piece of your action. Give yourself perpetual peace of mind instead.
Remember that first USB thumb drive? How liberating it was to replace those bulky, heavy, musty old photo albums with a svelte electronic device the size of (duh) your thumb! True, those Norman Rockwellian moments - three generations sitting before a crackling fire, reminiscing over decades past, fading images laid out before them - would disappear along with those albums...but hey! It was just so darn cool.
Fast-forward to today. You probably have more of these little wonders than you now what to do with, and wistfully recall how easy it was to leaf through an album as you try to remember which thumb drive holds that one image you need right now.
If only that was the real problem.
These modern marvels - along with CDs, DVDs, and other portable storage devices - are referred to as discrete media. You may well use them to hold more than photos, storing digitized versions of personal, private and very important information. And, no matter how careful you are, they can go missing. As the usually-cautious
Yep. Despite being sent "as safely as possible," two disks containing sensitive benefit details of 25 million people have disappeared. Gone. Kaput. Along with the most personal, never-tell-anyone, identity-theft-in-a-bottle data that those folks possessed, the reputation of the UK's HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) officials, and the precious peace of mind that is now doomed to be nothing more than a fading memory. Like those photos.
So think very carefully about how and where you choose to safeguard your vital documents. Lost is lost, no matter how cool it once seemed.
Facebook - already in the spotlight as real-life repercussions of digital entries grow - made news in a major way recently. Netizens rebelled against Beacon - the feature intended, says Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, "to let people easily share non-Facebook information with their friends." It turns out that Beacon made big trouble for Facebook, and is a wake-up call of anyone using, or thinking of using, free or cheap online services to store, access or share personal information.
More to the point, Beacon tracks what Facebook members buy on the websites that participate in the program, and then sends this oh-so-private info to your Facebook pals. Problem was, Beacon shared information that Facebook users wanted private, but it was an opt-out system (Facebookers had to click on an option to turn Beacon off) that made this difficult. Even worse, they had to make this choice every time they made a purchase, and the opt-out pop-up often disappeared too quickly to even make the choice.
Facebook has apparently learned its lesson, and has done a web services two-step to set things right: it first converted the system to opt-in, and then added a way to turn Beacon off completely.
The lesson learned: free and near-free online services often bear hidden costs that may not be obvious. When you commit personal information on any free online site, the chances are great and growing that other folks will hear about it. So before you trust your digital life to Google, Yahoo, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, and so on, think twice about sharing your personal information with the world-at-large - without even knowing that you've done so.
Ah, Microsoft. Always late to the game. Maybe it's a part of their strategy: wait until Google (Picasa Web Albums) and Yahoo (Flickr) establish solid market positions, and then develop or buy an (usually inferior) product of their own and try to corner those remaining 10% of users.
This time, they've acquired WebFives (previously Vizrea), a photo/video/audio sharing site primarily aimed at mobiles, specifically Nokia devices. In typical Microsoft fashion, they're promptly shutting down the service (current users have 30 days to download their content) which will probably reemerge later as a Microsoft branded product.
Here's an excerpt from the letter that Mike Toutonghi had recently sent to all Webfives users:
"In November of 2007, we reached an agreement with Microsoft, wherein Microsoft has acquired all rights to WebFives technology, patents pending, trademarks, and software to incorporate into its products and services over time. In order to make our wind down process as easy as possible for our users, Microsoft has agreed to provide us with a license to continue operating WebFives until the end of the year, giving you time to copy any information you would like to keep to your own PCs or another service prior to the end of the year."
Just what the users wanted to hear, I guess.
