McAfee launches software that monitors Facebook

McAfee Inc. is taking online identity, relationship and privacy protection to the next level by focusing on youth, according Ross Allen, Canadian general manager for McAfee.

Allen was on site at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in Toronto yesterday for the unveiling of McAfee's new Internet security software for families.

“Many threats now come through our children visiting legitimate Internet sites which cyercriminals have hacked into,” he said.

EU Lays Out Web Privacy Rules

European regulators have laid out operating guidelines for Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking Web sites to ensure they comply with the region's privacy laws, in a move to address concerns about the handling of users' personal information.

European regulators have laid out privacy guidelines for social-networking sites. Here are some:
* Sites should offer privacy-friendly default settings.
* Users should be advised that pictures should only be uploaded with the individual's consent.
* Sites must set maximum periods to retain data on inactive users. Abandoned accounts must be deleted.
* Users should be allowed to adopt a pseudonym.

Teen Girl Falls In Open Manhole While Texting

It was an accident waiting to happen -- an open sewer and a 15-year-old girl who was texting while she walked.

Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness.

She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer.

"It was just really gross and it was shocking and scary," she said. "Because of their careless mistake I got hurt."

Longueira has deep cuts and bruises and said she now has nightmares about falling, But she also did admit she was texting at the time.

Chips In Official IDs Raise Privacy Fears

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold.

Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.

Embedding identity documents -- passports, drivers licenses, and the like -- with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials. Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.

But Paget's February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.

Identity Crisis: Are You Being Cyberstalked?

For the new breed of teenage microcelebs, exposure to hackers and predators is the price to pay for online fame. But as one attacker learned, Amor Hilton is not gonna take it lying down.