Wires Crossed #4 – August 27th

Moggie Madness

Moggie Madness
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know about Bank of Scotland employee Mary Bale who was shown dumping tabby cat Lola into a wheelie bin in a suburb of Coventry. It didn’t take long to track down the culprit and now there are several websites calling for her head on a platter. What Bale probably forgot, or more likely didn’t know, is that there are thought to be approximately 4 million CCTV cameras in Great Britain, so the chances of getting away with anything these days is pretty remote.

Facebook Hit List Comes True
Something to send a shudder down any parent’s spine is a report on CNN about a Columbia-based hit list being put up on Facebook targeting teens in the town of Puerto Asis. The country is no stranger to violence being the cocaine-producing capital of the world, but even here, it is claimed to have sent shockwaves throughout the community. Of the 100 names that appear on the list, three have already been killed, prompting worried parents to send their kids out of town. Police say they have no way of tracing who set up the Facebook account.

Creepy Website
A website titled I Can Stalk You shows how easy the information age can go from being a useful tool in both business and pleasure, to something that has more insidious overtones. The site shows examples of how people who geotag photos on their smartphones or similar device can be traced to their location. The owners of the site say they have set it up to show how to avoid such things happening, but aren’t they also showing people how to do it? And, so as not to be seen as a hypocrite – no, I’m not going to post the URL or hyperlink it!

Flash Collects Cookies Illegally
A company that specialises in tracking online advertising in California is being sued for allegedly recreating cookies that have been deleted by users. It appears that Adobe Flash can keep copies of cookie history even after a user thinks he or she has deleted them. The suit accuses the company, Specificmedia, of allegedly reinstalling – or respawning – the cookies once they have been ‘removed’ from the computer by the user, so they can then trace a person’s web browsing history.

Employers Banned From Facebook
There’s been so many stories over the past couple of years where employees have been sacked or reprimanded by their bosses for their behaviour on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Now Germany’s Federal Parliament has drafted a new law that will make it illegal for companies to check out Facebook profiles of job applicants. Maybe somebody needs to tell politicians that Facebook has changed its privacy settings so only people who you want to see your profile can access the information. Maybe then parliamentarians can get on with some real work.