New snooping device can snarf phone numbers, data, call logs and text messages off Motorola and Samsung phones Think twice before leaving your Motorola or Samsung cell phone on the table in a public place, or in the pocket of your coat. Or leaving your cell phone anywhere, for that matter. CNet News reported yesterday [...]

Just ask Johnny Depp.

Finjan, a data security services firm, reported today that more than 500 megabytes of stolen medical and business data and Social Security Numbers (SSNs) have been found on “crimeservers” in Malaysia and Argentina. The data were stolen from systems for a major airline and a health care provider using widely available hacker toolkits, trojans, and [...]

A number of news sources and commentators are reporting this week on a University of Washington white paper criticizing the recent development of using automated processes (‘bots’ or monitoring agents) against BitTorrent and other heavy bandwidth users to generate automated DMCA takedown demands.  Many takedown demands are based solely on observed patterns of Internet use. [...]

It was inevitable, and now it’s “official”: the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment is the new Nigerian scam. A few of my clients this week reported receiving one or more phishing emails about the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment from the US government. Then I received one myself this morning. (“Gee, how could the IRS possibly know [...]

Here’s a followup to “Trade Secret Claims No Longer Protecting Source Code from Discovery — So How’s Your Code?”: An Arizona judge just threw out 49 breath tests performed using the Intoxilyzer 9000 by CMI, based on the company’s refusal to make the software source code available under subpoena for inspection by defendants facing prosecution [...]

It will typically cost an identity thief around $2.99. An article in today’s New York Times announced that researchers discovered that anyone can unlock data encryption on a PC hard drive merely by opening the case and blasting the chips with a can of compressed air, causing the data to remain in memory, allowing easy [...]

Most of my clients, business associates and friends spend at least six days a week growing their companies. Meanwhile, mounds of stuff in office closets, home space, and garages are also growing — old monitors, old CPU’s, external hard drives, old envelopes and stationery, film cameras, the set of folding office chairs and table that [...]

UPDATE 12-5-07: The 6% services tax enacted by the Michigan legislature went briefly into — and then out of — effect, on December 1, 2007. The repeal legislation retroactively exempted all potentially covered transactions from tax liability. Otto Von Bismarck famously said that “to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them [...]

UPDATE 12-5-07: The 6% services tax enacted by the Michigan legislature went briefly into — and then out of — effect, on December 1, 2007. The repeal legislation retroactively exempted all potentially covered transactions from tax liability. Sadly — I have been spending the last few days analyzing the latest information from Treasury, to be [...]