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Google publishes web safety advice

The Citizens Advice Bureau Logo.

Image via Wikipedia

Google has launched a campaign promoting online safety, in association with the UK’s Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

The campaign, which will include adverts in newspapers, on public transport and online, is being run with the hope of encouraging internet users to take more care over their online activities – including using more secure passwords, and remembering to log out of websites when they have finished using them.

Awareness campaigns about online safety like this are important, as it’s clear that most internet users are pretty clueless about how to best secure their computers and surf safely online.

This isn’t because the public is disinterested in protecting themselves, but due to the fact that many people simply don’t know where to turn, or how to translate complicated buzzwords, geek talk and terminology into simple easy-to-understand English.

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Shocking Study Reveals How Top Sites Use Your Personal Data

katiegeoff-31

Image by hlwimmer via Flickr

By Julia AngwinWall Street Journal

A study released Tuesday shows that 45% of the top 185 U.S. websites transmit identifying details about their visitors to at least four outside websites.

The data transmitted was primarily a “username” – which is the name a person uses to log into a website – or a user ID assigned by the website to a user. It was usually transmitted through referrers – which is information about the web page transmitted automatically.

In some cases, the data went much further: the study found for instance that the online dating website OKCupid sent the gender, age, zip code, relationship status and ‘drug use frequency’ to two companies that sell personal data in auctions, BlueKai and Lotame.

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How to avoid having naked photos stolen by hackers

CULVER CITY, CA - JUNE 04:  Presenter Justin T...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Mila Kunis, the star of movies such as “Black Swan” and “Friends with benefits“, is the latest celebrity to be making the headlines over allegations that hackers broke into her mobile phone and stole nude photos.

In the wake of the story about nude photos of Scarlett Johansson, several gossip websites have reported that they were contacted by people offering to sell them pictures stolen from Mila Kunis.

In Kunis’s case, the images are said to have been taken from her mobile phone, and apparently show her “Friends with benefits” co-star Justin Timberlake lying on a bed topless, wearing some pink underwear on his head, and an image of Mila Kunis in the bath.

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Nude Scarlett Johansson pictures – hacker blamed

Scarlett Johansson.

Image via Wikipedia

The FBI are once again investigating reports that nude photos of a famous celebrity have been leaked onto the web.

Twitter was ablaze earlier today with messages claiming to link to naked pictures of film actress Scarlett Johansson, which were allegedly stolen from her iPhone by a hacker earlier this year.

The photographs may or may not be of Scarlett Johansson, but I would suggest that every hot-blooded male exercises some restraint as it’s extremely possible that cybercriminals might exploit the interest to post dangerous links on the web designed to infect computers or steal information.

Of course, Scarlett Johansson isn’t the first celebrity to have fallen victim to a nude photo hacker.

Nude photos and videos of Vanessa Hudgens, the star of “High School Musical“, surfaced on the net earlier this year, after it was claimed the actress’s Gmail account was hacked.

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Stanford Hospital leaks 20,000 patient records

Sign with the inscription "Stanford Unive...

Image via Wikipedia

Over 20,000 records of patients who visited the emergency room at Stanford Hospital in 2009 were posted on the internet for over a year it was disclosed today.

The leaked information included names, diagnosis codes, account numbers, admission and discharge dates, and billing charges according to the New York Times.

The information was posted to the website Student of Fortune, a site where students can pay for tutorials on how to complete their homework.

A spreadsheet with the sensitive information was attached to a question posted to the site asking if someone could explain how to convert the information into a bar graph.

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