Identity Theft Scam

I recently received a phone message on my home phone claiming to be from the Taxation Department and talking about some error in my taxation records. There is also a threat about legal action against me.

I knew that there is no way the Tax Office would be contacting me by phone and smelled a rat. I checked the Australian Government's Scam Watch page and there it was in their ScamWatch Radar link. The phone number is different but the methodology is the same.

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/reportascam/

Please also notice that the Australian Government sites all end in ".gov.au".

Play the above video to hear the phone message in it's entirety.

A word on Identity Theft: You will be surprised how little information is needed from you to steal your identity. Your tax file number and bank account number and address or date of birth may be all that's necessary to reset your banking passwords and allow thieves to take out loans in your name or access your bank accounts.

Also if you are an avid Facebook fan please limit the amount of personal information you list in your profile. Someone will be looking for it.

Be careful and check with ScamWatch if you suspect a scam.

How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

Hacking is the ability to learn the limitations in various companies security systems and exploit them. The systems are not necessarily electronic but can be verbal communication as well. A simple phone call telling them you have lost your password and changed your email address may be all it takes. The following story by Gizmodo illustrates the deficiencies in their security. The companies involved are GoDaddy and Paypal.

Most of us have a PayPal account and think it's all secure. I suggest we all learn from this and look at securing our own online presence.

How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

Regards
Nick

Upload Photos to YouTube for a Simple and Easy to Share Slideshow

Original Article: Here

We're all well aware that YouTube is great for sharing videos, but tech blog Digital Inspiration points out that it can also be used to create easily shareable slideshows in a matter of seconds.

The process is incredibly easy. Just login to your YouTube account, and head over to the upload area. Navigate over to "Photo slideshow," and click create. Now you just need to drag your photos into the upload area. When you're done, head to the next screen to change time duration, transition effects, and add some background music. You can always set your slideshow to private or unlisted if you're just trying to share vacation pictures with you grandma and not the entire world.

Not Just Videos, Upload your Photos to YouTube | Digital Inspiration

The death of Google Reader - Sob :-(

This really saddens me... really...



So what now?

I'm trying out Akregator for Linux. The rest of you are on your own... :-(

Internet founder claims governments can't be trusted with data

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 29/01/2013

Reporter: John Stewart

One of the founders of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, has attacked a proposal to store all Australian's internet data use warning it could be misused and government's can't be trusted to keep the information secret

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: One of the founders of the internet, British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has attacked a proposal to store all Australian's internet data use for two years. The proposal is being considered by a joint parliamentary committee and would require internet service providers to keep a log of individual internet data. Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the information could be leaked or misused and governments cannot be trusted to keep it secret. John Stewart reports.

JOHN STEWART, REPORTER: The first internet was developed by the US military during the Cold War to protect their communication systems from a nuclear strike.

20 years later, Sir Tim Berners-Lee took the next step, helping to develop the worldwide web. The British computer scientist wants governments around the world to resist the temptation to spy on people and says that a proposal being considered by the Australian Government to log individual internet data use for up to two years will have little impact on criminals.

TIM BERNERS-LEE, COMPUTER SCIENTIST: If you do snoop on people, if you record, for example, the websites that somebody visits then you're not gonna get the criminals because they are gonna go through - they're gonna use Tor or they're gonna go through some intermediate nodes. They're gonna go to some trouble in order to just obscure it.

JOHN STEWART: Sir Tim Berners-Lee argues that if internet users believe the Government is recording their web history, they'll stop using it and limit the flow of valuable information.

TIM BERNERS-LEE: You will produce a world in which a teenager who really needs to go to an online forum to compare - to get some professional advice or really needs to know whether or not they're suffering from a given disease or wants to understand something about sexuality, medicine, growing up and realises that if they click they will be branded for the next two years as having gone to that site.

JOHN STEWART: He also says storing individual data logs is tricky and governments cannot guarantee that systems won't be hacked.

TIM BERNERS-LEE: That information is so dangerous. You have to think about it as dynamite. You have to think about if it gets away, what you've done is you've prepared a dossier on every person in the country which will allow them, if that dossier's stolen, to be blackmailed. Maybe you have every member of the Australian military will have this little dossier which will allow a foreign power to exert a huge amount of pressure on them.

JOHN STEWART: A spokesperson for the Attorney-General's Department says the Government has not made any decision about whether or not Australia should have a data retention regime and "The parliamentary committee has been asked to consider the concept of data retention in relation to non-content telecommunications information, which plays critical roles in police investigations. ... Metadata does not include the content of communications, only features such as dates and I.P. addresses assigned to a user that can be helpful for police and national security investigations."

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was speaking at the launch of the CSIRO's $40 million strategy to make better use of the National Broadband Network and increase online services in health, education and business.

STEPHEN CONROY, COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER: With services making up more than 70 per cent of our GDP, this flagship will be pivotal in addressing productivity.

JOHN STEWART: Sir Tim Berners-Lee welcomed the new CSIRO funding and called for governments around the world to make more information public and improve internet access for all.

John Stewart, Lateline. 

Tommy Edison is blind and uses Instagram

This story will warm the cockles of your heart... Tommy Edison has been blind since birth. Yet he uses Instagram. His tags are funny and his pictures are great. Just remember he can't focus his pictures.

Click here to visit his site: http://instagram.com/blindfilmcritic

Would You Use Facebook if It Looked This Insanely Different?

Facebook is what church and bathing used to be: a daily, comforting, familiar ritual. And so it's not without cause that people go nuts whenever it's redesigned. But if you thought Timeline was radical, check out this (unofficial) prototype.

The mockup, by Australian art director & designer Fred Nerby, drops the vertical look we've been using for over half a decade, takes a sledgehammer to it, and then rearranges it in a series of tiles and panels, swimming and flipping around each other like a cross between Windows Metro and—dare I say it—New MySpace. But in a good way.

A few lovely things stand out immediately: it's gorgeous, taking the big graphics of Timeline and making them bigger. Bigger images are almost always a good thing. The experimental design also splits your news feed into an enormous panel with your close friends, and a slimmer set of dispatches from the rest of the social riff raff—a sorting process Real Facebook still doesn't make very easy. It's also a widescreen beauty—using this on a tablet would be a joy.

On the other hand, a redesign this sweeping would probably result in the collapse of severa world economies from the sheer amount of whining from Facebook's ultra-conservative users whining in unison. All one billion of them. But it's still fun to pretend. [Fred Nerby via Abdel Ibrahim]

Original article: http://gizmodo.com/5972953/would-you-use-facebook-if-it-looked-this-insanely-different