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The Telecom Digest for May 27, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 114 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Bequeathing the Keys to Your Digital Afterlife (Monty Solomon)
Study shows how easy it is to determine someone's identity with cell phone data (Monty Solomon)
If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can't I Read It? (Monty Solomon)
Leaving Behind the Digital Keys to Financial Lives (Monty Solomon)

====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 01:39:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Bequeathing the Keys to Your Digital Afterlife Message-ID: <p06240825cdc74f82d7f7@[10.0.1.4]> Bequeathing the Keys to Your Digital Afterlife By ANNE EISENBERG May 25, 2013 It's tough enough to write an ordinary will, deciding how to pass along worldly goods like your savings, your real estate and that treasured rocking chair from Aunt Martha in the living room. But you may want to provide for your virtual goods, too. Who gets the photographs and the e-mail stored online, the contents of a Facebook account, or that digital sword won in an online game? These things can be important to the people you leave behind. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/technology/estate-planning-is-important-for-your-online-assets-too.html
Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 00:50:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Study shows how easy it is to determine someone's identity with cell phone data Message-ID: <p06240818cdc744ce558a@[10.0.1.4]> Study shows how easy it is to determine someone's identity with cell phone data Mar 25, 2013 by Lisa Zyga (Phys.org) -While most people know that using a cell phone means that the phone's location is being recorded, a new study has revealed just how little information is required to determine an individual's personal identity. By analyzing 15 months of cell phone mobility data from 1.5 million people, researchers have found that only four spatio-temporal points (an individual's approximate whereabouts at the approximate time when they're using their cell phone) are all that's needed to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals. The study has implications for modifying privacy law in order to keep pace with technological advances. The researchers, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and his coauthors, have published their paper in Nature's Scientific Reports on how cell phone data places fundamental constraints on the privacy of an individual's mobility traces. ... http://phys.org/news/2013-03-easy-identity-cell.html
Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 01:39:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can't I Read It? Message-ID: <p06240827cdc7506c0ec3@[10.0.1.4]> If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can't I Read It? By NATASHA SINGER May 25, 2013 OUR mobile carriers know our locations: where our phones travel during working hours and leisure time, where they reside overnight when we sleep. Verizon Wireless even sells demographic profiles of customer groups - including ZIP codes for where they "live, work, shop and more" - to marketers. But when I called my wireless providers, Verizon and T-Mobile, last week in search of data on my comings and goings, call-center agents told me that their companies didn't share customers' own location logs with them without a subpoena. Consolidated Edison monitors my household's energy consumption and provides a chart of monthly utility use. But when I sought more granular information, so I could learn which of my recharging devices gobbles up the most electricity, I found that Con Ed doesn't automatically provide customers with data about hourly or even daily use. Robert McGee, a spokesman for Con Ed, suggested that I might go down to the basement once an hour and check the meter myself. Then there is my health club, which keeps track of my visits through swipes of my membership card. Yet when I recently asked for an online log of those visits, I was offered a one-time printout for the year - if I were willing to wait a half-hour. Never mind all the hoopla about the presumed benefits of an "open data" society. In our day-to-day lives, many of us are being kept in the data dark. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/technology/for-consumers-an-open-data-society-is-a-misnomer.html
Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 01:39:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Leaving Behind the Digital Keys to Financial Lives Message-ID: <p06240826cdc74ff2f209@[10.0.1.4]> Leaving Behind the Digital Keys to Financial Lives By PAUL SULLIVAN May 24, 2013 BOB GINSBERG, a retired production manager for an educational publisher, is worried that he does not know any of the logins and passwords for online accounts belonging to his partner or brother and they do not know his. At 72, he said his concern was not about Facebook or e-mail. It was for their financial lives, which have migrated online, making paper account statements anachronistic. Now, when people die without disclosing their financial affairs to anyone, there is often no paper trail for heirs to follow. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/your-money/forgotten-in-estate-planning-online-passwords.html
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