The controversy continues, over Facebook’s recently announced new features.

Those who can’t wait to participate in every new Zuckerbergian idea, will happily turn a blind eye and deaf ear to any criticisms, and will believe only what the company tells them are the new features’ advantages. (Update: Here’s one already.)

While those who value their privacy will point out that [more...]

A few days ago, Microsoft announced a new standard for booting Windows 8 computers in the future.

The UEFI standard would be built into the BIOS of new computers that run Windows 8, allowing them to boot very quickly, while protecting them from rootkits and other malware that attempts to corrupt the boot process.

In theory, that sounds like [more...]

There it goes again.

Facebook has announced a couple of new things.

One new feature and one new app.

Facebook sheeple will probably rave about how wonderful they are.

And they’ll happily [more...]

Would it bother you if, without a court order, someone could track your exact location at all times?

And they could treat you as if you were a criminal, just because you happened to stand near a criminal at some point?

What if, without a search warrant, they could record your private conversations [more...]

“They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.

But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.

Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency [more...]

I’ve said it many times before, but I think it’s worth saying again.

I think that “the cloud” is a really bad idea for most users.

One reason why I think that is because it can put a very small, very powerful, and very ethically dubious group of companies — companies who make tens of billions of dollars each year by exploiting their users’ data for profit — in complete control of [more...]

I would by willing to bet that nearly all of us use Google’s search engine on a regular basis.

Even those of us who use the alternative search engine Scroogle are ultimately submitting our searches to Google, but in a secure, anonymous way.

I know many people who use Google’s Gmail as their primary — or even their only — email provider. [more...]

Regular readers know that I’ve long been a staunch defender of everyone’s online and offline privacy.

In fact, that’s the main reason why I never participate in social networking sites.

So I never trust my personal or confidential data to any “free” online service providers whose [more...]