This morning on The Today Show, I saw a hilarious story: A new website, AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, has become a repository for strange, uncomfortable and outright funny family photos. Users submit the photos (often under the guise of “anonymous”), and viewers get a chuckle. The Today Show staff even saw fit to Photoshop a fake photo of [...]

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By now, you’ve probably heard about those whole-body scanners that are being testing in some airports across the country. The scanners take a front-and-back image of travelers and penetrate through clothing to look for suspicious items, such as weapons and other contraband. The scanners are quick (15-30 seconds), they appear to be accurate, and they [...]

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We at Privacy Council are tireless advocates of personal privacy and security. We counsel the public to be wary of scams, avoid clicking questionable links, and generally have a healthy skepticism for anything that sounds “too good to be true” or “completely trustworthy.” In short, we try to help people avoid being the victims of [...]

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Happy Spring! The weather is getting warmer, the flowers are blooming, and “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” as Tennyson said. Weddings are in the air this week, with celebrities such as Danica McKellar and David Letterman settling down, and “regular” people planning their own knot-tying events. It’s a time to celebrate, [...]

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I was reading an article the other day on the Sierra Club website.  It was talking bout showing your “Green Pride”  Needless to say it caught my eye.  Beside the title of the article was a multi-shade of green colored flag.  Similar to the rainbow flag that stands for gay pride.
In the article the Sierra [...]

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I met Josh Gray from Perfspot about 2 years ago. Since then, the social networking site he runs has more than tripled in size, mostly, according to Josh, because “we just listen to our users”.
There couldn’t be a better example of what the Internet is quickly becoming: a democratic, self-organized environment, where only the strong [...]

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I was grocery shopping in the Navy Commissary recently (a store for military folks), when I noticed a big sign with a picture of a Compact Fluorescent Light bulb (CFL) that said “Change your light bulb, save the world”.  The sign is part of a promotion to raise environmental awareness among military personnel, and I [...]

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The genesis of the Privacy Council project was inspired by a number of mind-boggling statistics: AMERICANS RECEIVE 77 BILLION PIECES OF JUNK MAIL ANNUALLY and THE AVERAGE AMERICAN WILL SPEND EIGHT MONTHS OF HIS/HER LIFE HANDLING JUNK MAIL. Statistics like these have taken hold of me both visually and physically. I have witnessed the stacks [...]

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After all of the articles I’ve written about privacy, security and avoiding the perils of the web, I have at last experienced some of the headache firsthand. My laptop caught a virus, and while it turned out to be nothing major (at least so far), my experience reiterates the need for good protection against what [...]

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Text messages on our cell phones make everything more convenient. Banking is no exception, and many banks now offer text message alerts and updates, such as notifications when our balances are low. Mobile banking makes many people’s lives easier. But of course, with this convenient technology comes another means of stealing your identity, and you must [...]

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