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Add-On Gives Power and Nuance to ‘Do Not Track’

Just a year ago, the discussion about whether websites could be prevented from tracking visitors was an arcane topic limited to hard-core privacy activists — and dismissed by many as fundamentally impossible: The equivalent of the Do Not Call list, the naysayers argued, would technically lead to more tracking.

But now Do Not Track has evolved into something simpler — a signal sent by your browser to a website. The technology is included in Monday’s release of the most widely used browser in the world – Internet Explorer — and will be in next week’s expected release of Firefox 4.

Microsoft went even further, including a tool that lets you import lists of tracking sites you want to block entirely so that you don’t have to rely, as Do Not Track does, on the goodwill of a website to comply with your wishes. More...

03-16-2011 17:11

Cyber attacks could create "perfect storm" - OECD

(Reuters) - Attacks on computer systems now have the potential to cause global catastrophe, but only in combination with another disaster, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a report on Monday.

The study, part of a wider OECD project examining possible "Future Global Shocks" such as a failure of the world's financial system or a large-scale pandemic, said there were very few single "cyber events" that could cause a global shock.

Examples were a successful attack on one of the technical protocols on which the Internet depends, or a large solar flare that wiped out key communications components such as satellites.

But it said a combination of events such as coordinated cyber attacks, or a cyber incident occurring during another form of disaster, should be a serious concern for policy makers.

"In that eventuality, 'perfect storm' conditions could exist," said the report, written by Professor Peter Sommer of the London School of Economics and Dr Ian Brown of Britain's Oxford University. More...

01-17-2011 19:48

Pentagon says "aware" of China Internet rerouting

(Reuters) - The Defense Department is aware that Internet traffic was rerouted briefly through China earlier this year, a Pentagon spokesman said on Friday, referring to what a congressionally appointed panel has described as a hijack.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission charged in its annual report on Wednesday that state-owned China Telecom advertised erroneous network routes that instructed "massive volumes" of U.S. and other foreign Internet traffic to go through Chinese servers during an 18-minute stretch on April 8.

Marine Colonel David Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters, "We're aware that on the 8th of April ... Internet traffic was rerouted through China." More...

11-20-2010 07:30

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