Where’s George? Interesting idea, not sure if it will work, but I tried it. You go to this site, enter the serial number of one or more bills of any denomination in your pocket, and write the URL of the site on the bill. If anyone who subsequently receives the bill notices the URL, logs on and enters their location, you’re notified by email and can track the meanderings of the currency. They report that they’re tracking over $2,000,000 in currency entered by over 175,000 registrants.

Doubleclick’s retreat from plans to tie personal data to now-anonymous web cookies is A Turning Point for E-Privacy, says Wired.

Get rid of that babyfat by age two or else:

“Children as young as ages 2 to 5 can experience elevated blood

pressure due to obesity, study results suggest. The elevated pressure may be a harbinger of obesity-related

health problems later in life, such as heart disease…”

Adult victims of domestic violence may suffer from a version of “shaken baby syndrome”, according to the discussion in a case report from British emergency medicine physicians. Rapid recognition is key in this potentially deadly and recurrent manifestation of abuse.

Friends of the late blues singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins are searching for the 57 children he’s pretty sure he fathered but couldn’t keep track of.

England ugly and grey, say tourist guides. I’m going, nontheless.

ebpd – The ebay password daemon by Richard Fromm: “This script sniffs traffic on the network watching for ebay userids and passwords. This is only possible because (as of this writing), ebay does not encrypt passwords — they are sent in the clear. It is hoped that the writing and dissemination of this program causes this situation to change. (Repeated attempts at resolution of the situation through other means, prior to the posting of this script, failed.). This isn’t rocket science. I don’t pretend to have discovered anything fundamental or new here. It’s a simple little script that countless

other people could have written. The pitfalls of sending passwords in the clear have been recognized for many years. The only surprising

thing is that too many people still don’t take security seriously and continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.”

[via Phil Agre]

Report on the Privacy Policies and Practices of Health Web Sites from the Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University: “Although health Web sites now provide a wide range of clinical and diagnostic information; opportunities to purchase products and services; interactions among consumers, patients, and health care professionals; and the capability to build a personalized health record, they have not matured enough to guarantee the quality of the information, protect consumers from product fraud or inappropriate prescribing, or guarantee the privacy of individuals’ information. This last point is the subject of this report. Health care Web sites have access to an unprecedented amount of personal information about consumers. What are their policies about the privacy of that information? How easily can consumers find and understand them? Do they afford sufficient protection? And do the actual practices of the health sites reflect their stated policies?” [via Phil Agre]

Where’s George? Interesting idea, not sure if it will work, but I tried it. You go to this site, enter the serial number of one or more bills of any denomination in your pocket, and write the URL of the site on the bill. If anyone who subsequently receives the bill notices the URL, logs on and enters their location, you’re notified by email and can track the meanderings of the currency. They report that they’re tracking over $2,000,000 in currency entered by over 175,000 registrants.

Doubleclick’s retreat from plans to tie personal data to now-anonymous web cookies is A Turning Point for E-Privacy, says Wired.

Get rid of that babyfat by age two or else:

“Children as young as ages 2 to 5 can experience elevated blood

pressure due to obesity, study results suggest. The elevated pressure may be a harbinger of obesity-related

health problems later in life, such as heart disease…”

Adult victims of domestic violence may suffer from a version of “shaken baby syndrome”, according to the discussion in a case report from British emergency medicine physicians. Rapid recognition is key in this potentially deadly and recurrent manifestation of abuse.

Friends of the late blues singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins are searching for the 57 children he’s pretty sure he fathered but couldn’t keep track of.

England ugly and grey, say tourist guides. I’m going, nontheless.

ebpd – The ebay password daemon by Richard Fromm: “This script sniffs traffic on the network watching for ebay userids and passwords. This is only possible because (as of this writing), ebay does not encrypt passwords — they are sent in the clear. It is hoped that the writing and dissemination of this program causes this situation to change. (Repeated attempts at resolution of the situation through other means, prior to the posting of this script, failed.). This isn’t rocket science. I don’t pretend to have discovered anything fundamental or new here. It’s a simple little script that countless

other people could have written. The pitfalls of sending passwords in the clear have been recognized for many years. The only surprising

thing is that too many people still don’t take security seriously and continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.”

[via Phil Agre]

Report on the Privacy Policies and Practices of Health Web Sites from the Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University: “Although health Web sites now provide a wide range of clinical and diagnostic information; opportunities to purchase products and services; interactions among consumers, patients, and health care professionals; and the capability to build a personalized health record, they have not matured enough to guarantee the quality of the information, protect consumers from product fraud or inappropriate prescribing, or guarantee the privacy of individuals’ information. This last point is the subject of this report. Health care Web sites have access to an unprecedented amount of personal information about consumers. What are their policies about the privacy of that information? How easily can consumers find and understand them? Do they afford sufficient protection? And do the actual practices of the health sites reflect their stated policies?” [via Phil Agre]

ZDNet: News: Intuit scrambles to plug Quicken leaks

“A design quirk in some e-commerce Web sites allows

sensitive information that consumers provide about their

personal habits, tastes or finances to be attached to Web

page location codes used by third parties such as

ad-placement companies. In the case of Intuit (Nasdaq:

INTU), both a mortgage calculator and a

credit-assessment feature on its Quicken site collect

information from customers regarding income, assets and

debt, and then send the data to DoubleClick Inc.

(Nasdaq: DCLK), a company that sells and places

advertising on Web sites. DoubleClick says it doesn’t

keep any of the data it receives.”

From BBC News: Satellite snaps a mighty sandstorm The satellite photo shows a giant sandstorm the size of Spain, off the west African coast. “Such storms, combined with rising warm air,

can lift dust 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) above

the desert and then out over the Atlantic. The

dust can reach right across the ocean to the

Caribbean where local weather forecasters

sometimes have to issue air pollution alerts.”

From Wired: A Ralph Nader Plan That ‘Sucks’