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The man with perhaps the worst job in America right now has spoken up on the issue of data portability. Chris Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, says that Facebook is in favour of data portability, a buzz word for what amounts to letting users of social networks export their data to other sites and applications. He adds that Facebook however is worried about the security ramifications of implementing it.

We’ve made it clear that we don’t have a philosophical problem with data portability. The problem comes in because there are all sorts of privacy and security worries [related to it], and there are a whole bunch of people out there who would gladly attempt to exploit somebody else’s personal information if they could get one point of entry into a network, for instance, and try to export as much data as possible.

Click here to read his complete comments over at InfoWorld.

There’s a humorous story over at dailypress.com today regarding the privacy of voters participating in the U.S. presidential primary season.

First of all, the table I approached had a sign that read Democrat and a sign that read Republican. Voters were forming two lines according to their selection of candidates.

After I gave my name, I was checked off in the book and then it was announced out loud that I –– giving my full name followed by my street address –– was ready to vote.

Think of all the time they could save if they just made everyone stand in a corner of the gymnasium under their preferred candidates name. It’s a paperless solution too. Click here for the full account.

Hormel Spiced Ham was a canned, precooked, luncheon meat that was steadily losing market share in the late 1930s. Hormel Foods Corporation determined that a product name change would make the product more recognizable and appealing. Through a naming contest, the product name was changed to SPAM, the name by which it is still sold today.

During WWII, SPAM was one of the few meat products excluded from British food rationing, and the British quickly grew tired of it. Monty Python made light of the fact during its 1970 sketch ‘Spam’ set in café where nearly every item on the menu included SPAM. During the course of the sketch, all conversations in the café were drowned out by a group of Vikings loudly singing “Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam”. The sketch and its portrayal of “spamming conversations” is generally credited with the current use of the term ‘spam’ to describe bulk, unwanted, electronic communication, especially email.

Click here to view a likely illegal copy of the sketch on YouTube.

“The practice of quality assurance is to develop, design, produce and service a quality product, which is most economical, most useful and always satisfactory to the consumer.” - K. Ishikawa

Ever since the dawn of ‘choice’ as a customer option, it is the virtue of product quality that has spelled the success and survival of every business enterprise. Business objectives are not defined by just bottom-lines as many would have us believe; rather they are based on creating and retaining satisfied customers.

Continue reading A Perspective of The Importance of Quality in Today’s IT Environment

We’ve been growing very quickly lately to keep up with the explosion of support we’ve received for our email encryption technology. If you’re a programmer drop by our new careers section to learn more about our listed opportunity. We’re looking for qualified experts in a variety of fields and over the next several months we’ll be fleshing out our career section further.

It doesn’t hurt to send us a resume to keep on file if you’re interested in an opportunity with TrustMe - or share this information with a friend! Click here to visit our career section for more details.

According to the Herald Sun Chris O’Brien, BULLDOGS media boss, resigned last night after it was revealed that he sent libelous email under a false name about board member Ray Dib.

O’Brien sent the emails from his home computer under the name “Ronnie Younis” to the Daily Telegraph and other media organizations… The email falsely linked Mr Dib to an ICAC inquiry, inferring he was involved in a hearing into bribes being paid to secure building licenses. Mr Dib is now taking legal action against O’Brien and says the email jeopardizes his chances of retaining his position at Sunday’s election.

Complete article available here.

A bill being considered in a New Hampshire House committee would go beyond the privacy protections outlined in the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The Citizen has a great summary. Click here to read the entire article.

If I had a news category for “are you serious?” this story would be headline news in it. The Register reports that one of its readers reported that Equifax, perhaps the world’s largest credit reporting company requested that:

“Equifax (whom I’ve asked for my credit report) want me to email them copies of the front and back of my debit card. Email! They don’t even provide a fax number as an alternative.”

The company said that a mistake had been made in this case but defended the practice of using unencrypted email to communicate with customers about their credit.

The complete jaw dropping article available here.

The loss of roughly half the population of the UK’s personal information on a CD sent through the mail prompted EnterpriseITPlanet.com writer Drew Robb to compile his list of the top 10 security trends. Not surprisingly he touches on some of the big holes that TrustMe’s engineers are tackling. Some of the highlights:

1. Data Breaches Are on the Rise

“High-profile data breaches underscored the importance of data loss prevention technologies and strategies,” says Oliver Friedrichs, director of security response at Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, CA. “Most breaches are due to physical loss of equipment. Theft or loss of computer or other data storage medium made up 46 percent of all data breaches.”

Continue reading Enterprise IT Planet.com’s Top 10 Security Trends

Conde Nast Portfolio has a great summary of the Eli Lilly time line. For those who haven’t been following this as closely as I have here it is in brief.

Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company you may recognize, was in confidential negotiations with the FDA over alleged marketing improprieties. A slip up with address book names at Eli Lilly’s law firm sent the email message to a similarly named contact at The New York Times. The result was that a reporter there received an unsecured email containing very confidential information regarding the negotiations and it ended up in the nationally distributed newspaper.

It’s a great article. Read it by clicking here.