Our Blog, May, 2008

35% of companies in Europe have no mobile security plan

An interesting post on Silicon Republic – Uwe Romppel, senior director of business development in charge of mobility at Fujitsu Siemens- Security issues are seen by all as the biggest challenge of notebooks, with data loss the top concern. Fujitsu Siemens are developing some very interesting solutions in this space -

“We’re working on a unique technology that will be available in the next quarter where a telecoms operator can shut down a mobile device like a laptop over a UMTS 3G network and that can be reopened once a customer pays a bill.”

Truants hate GPS

Dallas School system is keeping an eye on chronic truants by making them carry a gps unit.

Not like the 80’s when truants ( not that I would ever have done such a thing) just kept an eye out for a teachers car wandering around.

Lifelock being sued

Lifelock is famous for its advertising which has the CEO, Todd Davis, giving out his social security number – he has been daring the bad guys to compromise his identity for the past few years.
A number of customers of Lifelock , who pay $10 per month, are suing as they state that his identity has been used to get an online loan and he knew that. His promise of ID security was unfounded and they claim the service has not worked for them.

Head of Symantec’s take on information theft on mobile phones

An interesting comment from Enrique Salem,COO of Symantec on Reuters.com.

The big change is threats from kids showing off to criminals looking to make money from your identity. There is a pretty sophisticated underground market for personal data.

With this in mind it will be interesting to see where Symantec takes their product development over the next 12 – 19 months.

Ex-con seeks to launch devices fighting ID theft

This is a bit of a tear jerker – Good religious boy goes off the tracks and becomes a drug dealer, in jail for 15 years where he picks the brains of 900 inmates on all the scams that are out there relating to ID theft. Ray Beasley is living the American dream – he has raised $85,000 and is looking to raise a lot more for his software that will protect against ID theft on pcs and laptops.

My favourite comment is from a guy who invested $5,000 –
“I gave Enron a chance,” says Ray Allen, a retiree who, along with his wife, Martha, invested $5,000 in B System. “Why not him?”"

Nokia Back Up Service

This is an interesting post how to back up all your data on your mobile using the Nokia Pc Suite.

The major issue I see is you have to plug your phone into your computer and have the right cable handy.

An alternative is Zyb which offers a free online back up service which is quickly morphing into a mobile social networking service.

80% in USA are worried about ID theft

According to a poll from Bankrate.com 80% of people in the USA are worried about Identity theft.
34% know a victim of identity theft and unsuprisingly they are much more concerned about it.

This concern is slowing the level of ecommerce, of those with Internet, 36 percent say they try to protect themselves from fraud by not shopping on the Internet. Nearly half, 48 percent, avoid online banking.

Dead suffer Identity Theft

A genealogy site was used to steal the identity of over 100 dead people in the USA for 3 yeas undetected. Wired report that Tracy June Kirkland, 42, used Rootsweb.com to find names, Social Security numbers and the date of births of deceased people. She then “would randomly call various credit card companies to determine if the deceased individual had an … account,” according to the 15-count indictment (.pdf) filed in federal court in Los Angeles Tuesday.