retailers
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
Evil Rogue Automated Teller Machines!!!
Happy Thursday Folks,
Today we embark on a new adventure that will hopefully drive home the need to think before you shop. On Monday and Tuesday, I described some of the situations you could be faced with while shopping at bricks and mortar retailers. What I didn’t touch on was the outbreak of credit/debit card ATM skimmers. So, let’s begin!
Here is the set up:
I am a thief. I want to collect as many credit card numbers as possible so that I can rob people of as much money as possible. How do I do this without getting caught? I know, I will set up a standalone ATM in the middle of a crowded mall. Ok, so I will rent a “vendor spot” near the food court, and bring in my big ATM after hours. My machine is large, and I will advertise a $1 use fee. I will set up my laptop to collect all data from the card swipe and PIN pad. The next day, customers who need cash will come to my ATM, swipe their card, type in their PIN, but then the software I installed will say “We’re sorry, this ATM is currently out of funds, please check back at a later time.” At the end of the day, I will go to my ATM, download the day’s take to my thumb drive, go home, and upload all the information to my “Hacker ELITE Underground Black Market” website, and start selling my new found credit/debit card details and PIN codes.
Ok, now that is a very much romanticized version of what happens with this type of scam; however, 34 of these “ATMs” were found in the United States and Europe last year alone. “34, that isn’t very many, what is the real risk?” The authorities believe that as FEW as 400,000 people’s cards were stolen. AS FEW AS! They know this from the video surveillance of the area. So, my point behind the fictitious scenario is that these “ATMs” do exist in the wild, and they will rob you blind if you give them the chance. If you need to get cash, use your bank. Don’t trust the signage on a standalone ATM in a mall. Go to the actual bank and use their ATM. Besides the fact that they are safer than the standalone, they also don’t charge a fee.
Protect your information, protect yourself; Coffee is brewing people, it is time to wake up!!!
