The depressed cat ;-)

I have a depressed cat. He is normally so lively and happy. Although he is not really our cat, he just stays here sometimes… quite a lot right now…

He has some implant under the skin to protect him from the ticks and we have been informed that the side affect is depression. He sleeps so much -he normally wakes up at 5am to be let out and is not doing that now- and has taken to comfort eating! He even looks depressed!

I’ve never seen a depressed cat before… we shouldn’t laugh because it is so sad…. however….it is funny to have a depressed cat… I wonder what next?

250,000 customer names of Astroglide go public!

Opps, I hope you are not one of the unlucky 250,000 who bought a popular sexual lubricant between 2003-7 called Astroglide? Seems that a Californian company exposed these names and addresses and Google ‘in good form’ indexed them all!

Results are that a search on an individual’s name now reveals that person’s home address and the product they requested or ordered….. nice 😉

There is much more information on this ‘slip’ on privacy on the Wired Blog Network!

The Nigerian Spammer turned Butterfly Guy!

Take a look at this for some fun reading. Seems there’s a community that actually responds to those funny emails we receive asking for a business venture in transferring money from Nigeria or somewhere else. When the recipient of the spam responded, seems that she took these spammers for a ride too 🙂

Seems a bit far-fetched that a spammer is actually so stupid as to fall for this scam as a result of his scam, but according to this epilogue, seems that several have!

‘Anti-grooming’ bill proposed in Sweden at last!

Really good news, at last a law is being proposed (Ny lag ska hindra pedofiler pÃ¥ nätet) to making ‘grooming’ of a child on-line a crime in Sweden; thus following in the footsteps of the US, UK and Australia. (Sorry that the link is in Swedish, I could find nothing in English.)

If there are more countries that have enacted this law please post here because I am VERY interested to keep abreast of this area of developments, and I am sure all readers of my blog are too!

Identity Linkage and Privacy

I’ve published an article in ISSA (April 2007). If you are not a member of ISSA and want an electronic copy -of just my article- leave a comment on this posting.

In the article I’ve discussed the problem of privacy as regards to each of us as individuals. Particularly as today we are posting publicly personal information on ourselves our friends, family, etc. I’ve tried to formalize this problem by introducing a model that depicts how information residue that we leave out on the Internet can at some time have an impact on our reputation in the physical world. I’ve called this problem the ‘identity linkage continuum’.

It’s just a start, maybe there is some research being done in this area. Would be interesting to know…..