Anonymity and Privacy Aren’t the Same

It’s simply inconceivable that Egerstad is the first person to do this sort of eavesdropping; Len Sassaman published a paper on this attack earlier this year. The price you pay for anonymity is exposing your traffic to shady people.

We don’t really know whether the Tor users were the accounts’ legitimate owners, or if they were hackers who had broken into the accounts by other means and were now using Tor to avoid being caught. But certainly most of these users didn’t realize that anonymity doesn’t mean privacy. The fact that most of the accounts listed by Egerstad were from small nations is no surprise; that’s where you’d expect weaker security practices.

More at Wired.com

25 Web Sites to Watch: PC World

Think that all of the great Web sites have already been invented?
Think again.

The Internet is evolving in new and inventive ways thanks to
mashups that pull data from all over the Web and to AJAX-based
interfaces that give sites the same degree of interactivity and
responsiveness that desktop apps possess.

Click here for PC World’s top 25 innovative Web sites and services
that are well worth watching.

Who’s the Winner in the Tug-of-War between ‘Walled Garden’ and ‘Open Plain’ Strategies?

In August, less than three months after the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, a New Jersey teen announced that he had “hacked” into the mobile-communications device. The hacker was clearly expressing the frustration that many consumers feel towards Apple for adopting a “walled garden” — as opposed to an “open architecture” or “open plain” — corporate strategy. While the walled garden approach often restricts consumers’ ability to modify devices or marry them with other firms’ products and services, the open architecture approach has its drawbacks as well. Wharton faculty and others look at the advantages and disadvantages — for both consumers and companies — of these two strategies.

More at Knowledge@Wharton