Privacy loss: hidden or accepted costs?

From Wired News blog Threat Level:

Bringing what he sees in the world to ToorCon, infamous security expert Beetle says that the web community — and hackers — are missing the point and mis-estimating the dangers of the web.

The danger lies not in government monitoring, that’s been thoroughly recognized and railed against, Beetle says. It’s what we’re willing to let people do to our stuff so we can get it for free. Google’s autoscrubbing our searches for words to sell us stuff in the future is more dangerous to our privacy and future than pointless government monitoring, he says.

Do people understand the dangers and accept them? Or do they underestimate the dangers, and so never have a chance to work out the costs and benefits?

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2 Comments »

  1. Comment by pj — 21 January 2008 @ 8:29 pm

    hey Ian,

    do you have any insight into the SilentBanker threat that’s hitting banks around the world?

    thanks,
    p.

  2. Comment by Ian Saxon — 24 January 2008 @ 6:53 pm

    It looks like SilentBanker is a Trojan horse, which can apparently install itself on your computer if you browse the wrong websites.

    Sounds nasty, although Symantec seems to think that the Trojan has so far infected less than 50 computers and can be contracted from two or fewer websites.

    Best defense: update your antivirus and adware removal programs, and change your passwords if you think you’ve been infected (after removing the infection, of course).

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