Have you had an embarrassing or worrying moment with communication technologies? Are you concerned about online privacy? If you answered yes, then you may be happy to know that you are not alone, the number of people concerned about online privacy is increasing. Of course, this is not the exclusive Read more…
Press gag orders in the UK have a deservedly bad reputation, they are some of the worst examples of repression of freedom of speech through draconian legal measures. While one could argue that they may be justified in some cases with regards to human rights and privacy, they are currently Read more…
The British press has been involved in a sickening exercise of collective leering and sneering prompted by the conviction of 26-year-old teacher Helen Goddard for having an affair with a 15 year-old female student; if you have a strong stomach, take a trip down Daily-Mail-land, the same paragon of women’s Read more…
Who could have guessed? Social networking sites have proved to be a serious privacy threat. The new MI6 chief (who looks nothing like Dame Judi Dench), has been involved in a bit of a scandal because his wife had posted all sorts of personal information, pictures and other family details Read more…
Anyone who studies technology knows about the tiered nature of its adoption. Whenever a new technology or application is invented, you get the early adopters, the trend-setters, the cool-hunters; these are people who are usually clued into new applications and have a knack of joining winning technologies at the very Read more…
While covering the latest developments in the Phorm story, I could not help but feel a little bit sorry for them. Here was a company that felt it had a killer web advertising service that would be adopted by every ISP, and premium advertisers would flock to the service. Phorm Read more…
Phorm (also known as Webwise) has declared that it is finally set to launch its service in the UK with BT’s ISP service. Phorm is a service that allocates web users a unique number, it then monitors websites that the user has visited and looks for recurring keywords related to Read more…
The unveiling of Google StreetView UK is being met with that uniquely British mixture of outrage, amusement and derision that I can never quite get right (much like the intricacies of the English language I suspect, but I digress). On Wednesday the village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire blocked the StreetView Read more…
Yesterday was World Day Against Cyber-censorship [insert snarky comment about the abundance of “Days against X” here]. To celebrate (is “celebrate” the right word?), Reporters Without Borders has released a report on the state of internet control and surveillance. The report labels 12 countries as “enemies of the internet”, claiming Read more…
It is a bit tired to say that Google’s stranglehold on the search engine market seems unshakeable. To offer a couple of ironic factoids, I found the accompanying image using Google Image Search, and this blog is published in Blogger, a Google-owned service. Many people have been warning us about Read more…