Jonathan Roadblock
The State of Our Nation… IS IMPROVING!!!
Happy Thursday Friends!
As I started my daily news review this morning, I stumbled across an article that made me stop dead in my tracks. The 2011 (first half) crime statistics have been released by the FBI. Now this is just a preliminary report for the first 6 months, but take a look at these numbers:
Violent Crime: Down 6.4% from 2010
Property Crime: Down 3.7% from 2010
These statistics are great! To clarify, a violent crime is: Murder, Forcible Rape, Robbery, and Aggravated Assault, where Property Crime is: Burglary, Larceny (theft), Motor Vehicle Theft, and Arson.
source for information: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/preliminary-annual-ucr-jan-jun-2011/data-tables/table-1
Considering the landscape of our country, where unemployment percentages are very high, a down turn in crime is a great thing. What does this mean to us? It means our security is better than it was last year. I am talking about personal security when I say that. We must continue to stay vigilant in our actions to protect ourselves. When you read these posts, you are educating yourself to what is out there. That is only part of what needs to be done. The tips I provide are baseline level tips, tips that you can take with you to stay safer than where you are at today. If you take these tips, then add some professional training, you are adding more depth to your security education. I discuss taking security into your own hands, and this is an important item to remember: Police do not prevent crimes, they simply respond to them. Police is a reactive force, which means you must be the proactive force. I have written about how to protect yourself if someone tries to mug you… TRIES to mug you. Did you know that you can’t report a crime that doesn’t happen? If someone tries to mug you and you fight them off, you weren’t mugged. All I am saying here is that you can prevent becoming a victim by learning to protect yourself. Today’s post is a little bit shorter than normal, I just wanted to share the good news about the lower crime rate.
Please remember,
Protect your information, protect yourself; Coffee is brewing people, it is time to wake up!!!
FIRE, FIRE, Kindle Fire could burn your privacy!!!
Source: Amazon.com
Happy hump day!
Fire, as in Amazon’s Kindle Fire, is a huge hit with consumers. According to an Amazon press-release, they are selling almost a million of these tablets per week. So what is the Kindle Fire? It is a cheap ($200) Android based tablet. This is most comparable to a very cheap knock off of the Samsung Galaxy. There is a feature on the Kindle that is not present on any other tablet though… everything you do goes through Amazon’s servers… and I mean EVERYTHING!
So, you are a business traveler, away from your wife for a long period of time, and you decide to use your Kindle Fire to look at some adult movies or pictures, guess what? Everything you just looked at is now stored on Amazon’s servers. “Amazon Silk also temporarily logs web addresses — known as uniform resource locators (“URLs”) — for the web pages it serves. We do not associate these URLs with your identity, and we generally do not keep this information for longer than 30 days,” yet you will receive suggestions for books, movies, websites, that relate to your previous browsing… How is the information not associated with your identity? There are some workarounds; however, I am still leery about these. Supposedly, you can use the internet browser in “off-cloud” mode, which simply means you will use your own internet (think WIFI) connection, go directly to the websites you are looking for, and “generally” bypass the Amazon cloud. Again, I am leery about this, simply because of the “generally” statement in the terms & conditions for the web browser.
To be fair to the Kindle Fire, it is a great product, but it has flaws, like all great products when they first come out. This post is not a review of the Fire; it is an awareness post regarding the privacy flaws. Please read the terms & conditions of any device like these, as it will clearly tell you how they are going to invade your privacy in order to make your life better…
Protect your information, protect yourself; Coffee is brewing people, it is time to wake up!!!
The Kindle’s Silk Terms & Conditions:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200775270
