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The Telecom Digest for October 14, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 238 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
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we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:32:31 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Worldwide mobile subscriptions climb to six billion, adoption surges in developing countries
Message-ID: <p06240818cc9e9f3d0890@[10.0.1.3]>
Worldwide mobile subscriptions climb to six billion, adoption surges
in developing countries
By Chris Welch
October 12, 2012
The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/12/3494364/worldwide-mobile-subscriptions-six-billion
***** Moderator's Note *****
The article includes bad news for consumers: the author mentions that
"the US ranks a disappointing 15th in overall broadband development",
but also says that the US leads everyone else in one critical area:
"US carriers win when it comes to sucking your wallet dry".
Speaking as a consumer, I'll add that the mantra of the Eighties is
coming true: at least in terms of profit, US Cellular companies are
doing more with less. If the chart in the article is any guide, "4G"
really stands for "Gouge 'em, Gang up on 'em, and Get lost before they
Get wise".
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:27:28 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: TD Bank data breach affects 267,000 customers
Message-ID: <p06240809cc9e81e62800@[10.0.1.3]>
TD Bank data breach affects 267,000 customers -
http://www.boston.com/businessupdates/2012/10/12/bank-data-breach-affects-maine/1aVgFQdpoRkXmqxT6Q25AM/story.html
-or-
http://goo.gl/0KSHw
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 16:11:10 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates
Message-ID: <p0624082ecc9f79391fe3@[10.0.1.3]>
WHAT THEY KNOW
New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates
By JULIA ANGWIN and JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
October 13, 2012
For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif.,
photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe's Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They
have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library,
parked at his friend's house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one
case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out
of a car in his driveway.
Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn't charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local
police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted
on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle-license plate, time
and location.
"Why are they keeping all this data?" says Mr. Katz-Lacabe, who
obtained the photos of his car through a public-records request.
"I've done nothing wrong."
Until recently it was far too expensive for police to track the
locations of innocent people such as Mr. Katz-Lacabe. But as
surveillance technologies decline in cost and grow in sophistication,
police are rapidly adopting them. Private companies are joining, too.
At least two start-up companies, both founded by "repo
men"-specialists in repossessing cars or property from deadbeats-are
currently deploying camera-equipped cars nationwide to photograph
people's license plates, hoping to profit from the data they collect.
The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and
studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane,
has become the default rather than the exception. Cellphone-location
data, online searches, credit-card purchases, social-network comments
and more are gathered, mixed-and-matched, and stored in vast
databases.
...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578004723603576296.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
Privacy, like a digital car key, is very easy to lose and very
expensive to get back. My son and his friends, all twenty-somethings,
have grown up in a digital online world: they have participated in
what they thought were free online games and harmless online bulletin
boards and cute online chat groups. They are starting to realize that
they entrusted commercial profiteers with their privacy, and that it
will not be returned to them.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:35:19 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Apple Has Quietly Started Tracking iPhone Users Again
Message-ID: <p06240832cc9f8e170410@[10.0.1.3]>
Apple Has Quietly Started Tracking iPhone Users Again, And It's
Tricky To Opt Out
Jim Edwards
Oct. 11, 2012
Apple's launch of the iPhone 5 in September came with a bunch of new
commercials to promote the device.
But Apple didn't shout quite so loud about an enhancement to its new
mobile operating system, iOS 6, which also occurred in September: The
company has started tracking users so that advertisers can target
them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.
Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by
advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple
mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable
serial number that previously identified every Apple device.
For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual
environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to track
and target them in any meaningful way.
In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it's more
effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar
with IFA tell us. (Note that Apple doesn't mention IFA in its iOS 6
launch page).
...
http://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-apples-iphone-tracking-in-ios-6-2012-10
***** Moderator's Note *****
I've been asked perhaps a half-dozen times why cellular companies
would "track" their users. I have given up trying to explain that it
is impossible for them not to track their users; i.e., that the
whole point of a cellular network is to keep track of each user's
location, so that they can carry on conversations while moving from
one cell zone to another.
Apple has decided to cut out the middleman, i.e., to eliminate the
need to pay the cellular companies for user location data. With GPS
software and a globally-unique-identifier in its mobile phones, it can
offer advertisers both a click list and a current location, which
makes it much easier to sell things to those who use Apple's
phones. This assumes, of course, that those users are "online", but
I'd bet that only a small percentage of Apple's users employ those
products only as phones.
Some users will seek ways around the monitoring. It remains to be seen
if they will succeed.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 16:11:10 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook
Message-ID: <p0624082dcc9f7859eb5a@[10.0.1.3]>
WHAT THEY KNOW
When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
October 12, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas-Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know
she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.
One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir
group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's
sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father,
by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms.
Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she
renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever
family ties.
The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like
someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.
Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had
been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.
The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University
of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the
choir's Facebook group. The president didn't know the software would
automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members
of the chorus.
The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on
Facebook-the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend
without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their
secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted
to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities
from their parents.
...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444165804578008740578200224.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
The Wall Street Journal site requires users to open an account
before they are allowed to read the full text of its articles.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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