Our Blog, February, 2008

Irish Times mentions the blog

I have just read a piece by John Collins in The Irish Times on our little blog. Thanks for the mention John, feedback has been taken on board – I am signing all the blogs now and hopefully it will be ages before I run out of steam.

I will post the review piece when I get it scanned in.

Paul

Armani/ Samsung Phone Anti-Theft and Panic Apps

Armani have a few interesting applications on their new fashionista phone. Built by Samsung it has a panic feature which is activated when you press the volume button 4 times and the phone will sms 5 preprogrammed numbers. You can be located with the in built GPS system.

It also has an anti-theft feature where any new sim card put in your phone ( that is the first step for most thieves) will cause a text to go to an alternate number, so you know the number of the thief. Interesting that Armani have added these apps to their phones , I assume their clients reckon they are more likely to be kidnapped or have their very expensive phone stolen? These features will become mainstream pretty soon.

Paul

Photo Uploaded From Stolen Phone

This picture was taken on a stolen phone and the owner posted it on Boingboing. The person who stole it tried to upload the picture to Flickr through Shozu but as the account was blocked the owner got the picture instead.

If the picture had a geo-tag it would be great to see where this fine specimen resides.

Paul

28,000 Schoolchildren’s Data Stolen

This is becoming an almost daily occurence ! CBC News in Canada report 4 laptops were stolen from a school in Newfoundland. 28,000 school children’s data were on the laptops, details losts were name , address, medicare numbers, names of guardians. The laptops were not encrypted but were password protected. The CEO of the school district Darren Pike pushed the boat out and said “We are very concerned ” but parents relax because according to Darren the thiefs are ” only interested in the box” and not the data , whew!

Paul

Salma Hayek’s lost laptop

According to the folks at Pagesix.com Salma Hayek’s laptop was stolen whilst on holiday in Mexico. She has lots of private pictures on the laptop and her major concerns are images getting on the internet or the possibility of a threat to her family’s safety.

Paul

ID Theft is Big Business

This ID theft sector is getting very active. Having good credit is a must if you want to do anything , particularly the USA. Lifelock is a company famous for its CEO giving out his social security number and being confident his service will protect him.

It seems to be a strong emotional sell with a decent process to keep your name clean. I cant see many barriers to entry and expect oodles of competition in this space.

Paul

Tokyo Residents Return $23 million in 12 months

The New York Times have a great piece on the Japanese lost & found culture dating back thousands of years. They have a large network of lost and found depots that are used by thousands of people daily. In 2002 the residents of Tokyo returned a total of $23 million. It would fascinating to see the level of cash returns in other countries.

The item with the highest return rate, 75 percent is the cellphone. Owners typically call their own phones, or the centre tracks down the owners through their carrier account and sends a notification postcard.

Paul

Lloyds TSB are down with the kids

Lloyds TSB are adding a cool new feature on their value added account. It currently includes mobile insurance, travel insurance and AA breakdown cover, they are now adding a Save my Numbers facility where customers can store their mobile phone numbers. After lots of research this was the facility that their customers were crying out for as this is a major concern if their phone is lost , stolen or damaged.

Research found that a 1/3 of Added Value Accounts customers have either lost their mobile phone or had it stolen. Around 26% of respondents said they had over 100 numbers stored on their handset.

Nearly half of those questioned have no way of knowing the numbers of family, friends and business contacts without their phone, while 53% said gathering all of lost telephone numbers was “the biggest frustration” when their phone went missing.

Ian Larkin, managing director, consumer banking, Lloyds TSB, says: “The new Save My Numbers service is likely to prove a real life-saver for our customers and a valuable addition to their existing package of benefits.”

Larkin says mobile phones are increasingly used for receiving bank information and that Lloyds TSB sends more than 500,000 weekly balance updates to customers by text message.

In addition to the back-up service the bank is increasing mobile phone insurance up to £2000, in response to the rising cost of handsets like Blackberries and iPhones. The bank says it replaced or repaired 77,000 mobile phones on behalf of customers in 2007.

The new features are part of a relaunch of Lloyds TSB’s Added Value Accounts offering, which sees customers charged a monthly fee in return for a package of insurance-backed services.

Customers signed up to the silver, gold, platinum and premier accounts receive a range of features, including air miles, travel insurance and motor breakdown cover.

Account holders can also sign up for the bank’s pre-paid re-loadable Travel Money Card and Money Transfer Card.

Paul Prendergast

New Laptop security service

Sheffield based IT company have just launched a product Backstopp which locates laptops, takes a picture of the thief and destroys the data on the laptop.

At £10 per month it is very expensive but seems to be an interesting product. It uses GSM, RFID and internet to help activate the software when reported stolen. Best of luck with the launch , the more awareness of the need to protect laptops etc the better. It is a difficult to see how good it is as there is no demo download on the site but looking forward to checking it out in the future.

Paul

Stolen laptop had data of over 171,000 irish blood donors

The IBTS will have to contact 171,000 Irish blood donors this weeks and inform them that their details are on a laptop that has been stolen in New York.

The theft happened on Feb 7th when a staff member of the New York Blood Service was mugged. The laptop was encrypted – some details of what they use would give comfort to the blood donors!

The personal data lost include name, address, DOB, gender, blood group and contact number. The IBTS wiull be writing to each donor and also to relevant GPS and hospitals. A rough estimate would be that this will cost the taxpayer €250,000.

Questions for the IBTS

1. What type of encryption was being used?

2. What is the policy on data usage? Why was this staff member holding all this data on their laptop?

3. Do they have an audit trail on the software do they will know if the relevant files have been accessed?

As nearly half of all data breaches are caused by lost or stolen laptops / usb sticks a strong action plan needs to be put in place to protects donors information.

Hopefully this incident wont stop blood donation but it certainly wont help.

Paul