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Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Here at Reputation.com, The Onion has a special place in our hearts.  They have an amazing ability to capture current events in perfect satire. The Google Opt-Out Village may be a thing of fiction, but your online privacy shouldn’t be! MyPrivacy, MyReputation and MyEdge are there to protect you!

An International computer security firm has discovered that popular social news site Digg is being exploited by cybercriminals.

According to PandaLabs, crooks are posing as Digg users and focusing on the site’s celebrity news forums. By all outward appearances, the fake accounts appear legitimate and this is what causes people to click the links that are posted using the fake accounts. Under the auspices of viewing celebrity sex tapes and the like, unwitting users click the link and then are prompted to download and install software in order to view the tawdry video clips. Of course, instead of getting any software to view video the user instead gets a fake diagnostic program.

The fake diagnostic program in turn pretends to scan the user’s hard drive for supposed malware (oh, the irony), finds the “infected” files and offers up a digital solution for a price (it would be something if the program actually uninstalled itself after payment was affected, but this seems unlikely).

Scamming people with a fake Norton-type security scan is one thing, but the real insidiousness of this malware lies in the fact that it hinders the computer’s normal functioning to make the diagnostic more convincing. No word yet on how many people thought they were going to see Paris Hilton’s latest hijinks only to find their CPU underperforming and a “helpful” little program offering to fix the problem.

 Digg has already begun identifying and shutting down the fake profiles. “We are fully aware of the issue at hand and have already taken action,” Jen Burton, Digg’s community manager, said. “Malware accounts reported to us by the community are terminated immediately and all content is removed.” According to Burton, Digg has erased more than 300 suspected malware-spreading accounts.

In what may be the first instance of Sherlock Holmes meets Social Networking, New Zealand police are reporting that they have taken a man into custody after placing video footage of him breaking into a Queenstown business on the popular site Facebook.

A security camera located in the back of a bar caught the man’s face when he removed his balaclava, ostensibly because it was very hot in the small room where the safe he was attempting to crack was located.

The bar’s assistant manager, Mel Kelly, had this to say: “The room is really small and it gets really hot in there at the best of times.”

Queenstown police posted the video from the security cameras onto Facebook, and in a very short time the members of the site identified him. This is the first instance local police in Queenstown have used Facebook to solve a crime and affect an arrest.

“He was identified from members of the public viewing him on Facebook, and also seeing him on TV after the Facebook images were displayed on the news,” Constable Sean Drader said. Drader added that it was unusual to obtain footage of a burglar in action. “He can’t be too experienced because he’s pretty young.”

Some strong subject matter and language, but this piece is pretty funny and highlights the pitfalls of an improperly managed online reputation in the digital age.