On the small matter of Privacy, Security and Data.
Posted by: 0 in technology, security, privacy, data, apple on Apr 27, 2011
The last couple of weeks have been rough for the internet. Three very high profile events have brought the issues of privacy and security into sharp relief, and left a lot of people questioning the ability of the internet to protect their valuable data and information.
First, Apple users discovered that any device running iOS 4 had been logging their every movement, right down to the second, and taking a record of it. The big issue? Anyone could access that. Users were confused, spooked and distrustful of the data logging.
Then the Amazon cloud went down, taking hundreds of web services with it for an entire day – Hootsuite, Foursquare and Reddit being the most well known (and loudly complained about.) People were concerned about the ability of the internet to recover from interruptions.
The night before the Amazon cloud explosion, the Playstation Network (or PSN) went down. At first the lack of free online gaming seemed like a minor inconvenience, but the outage dragged on and on. It slowly came out that a hacker had taken down the network and stolen ALL of the personal information of the users on it. Names, addresses, birth dates – possibly even credit card information. The PSN is still down, and the ramifications of the data breach aren’t even fully known yet.
So, what does this mean?
Well, it means your internet enabled devices are logging everything you do and could send that data ‘home’ and you’d never know. Your data may be open to hackers and other bad guys too. Even if your data is secure, you might not be able to access it when you most need it. So, should we give up on the internet?
No, it means the internet needs to try harder.
We at CMAEON take the issues of privacy and security very seriously. Our privacy policy clearly states what we use your personal information for, and why we must collect it. We are transitioning our services to the Microsoft Azure Cloud to provide even better security and uptime. Finally, all our services use SSL encryption - just like your online banking does. Companies that handle your data and your privacy have to earn the trust of their users. We’re not just out to earn your trust, we want to keep it too.
- The CMAEON TEAM
