You've heard of the FEMA "Waffle House Index"? I raise you one "Walmart Index"

The Walmart Emergency response center has a store closing page for Florence

https://corporate.walmart.com/florence

Which has links to the google crisis map See Map

 

It's 2018: Whats the dumbest idea (by far) in Cybersecurity and Privacy?

Here's where I wish we had a lot more readers.  Well, a more than 0 is, well, a lot more.

What do you think is the dumbest idea in Cybersecurity and Privacy? Not the dumbest idea in general - there are probably lots more of those - like anything that starts with "hold my beer" - Brexit, A certain administration, etc. 

I don't think there's any question - it's electronic voting. ( AKA Internet voting, smartphone voting, etc )

Why? Because:

1. Clean elections are the most important thing (only?) thing standing between the US being a democracy and something else (like Communism, Fascism, Populism, Russia?).
2. Electronic voting allows the people (elected officials) who most desire tampering with elections the ability to do it without detection.
3. Any more don't really matter, but there are a TON more reasons.

So EV = the end of US democracy.

Unfortunately...

There are two headlines lately that are really worrying me...

1. From Slashdot: Georgia Defends Electronic Voting Machines Despite 243-Percent Turnout In One Precinct - because Politicians!

2. From Ars Technica: Experts criticize West Virginia’s plan for smartphone voting - Now with Blockchain!  WV says "Don't worry - It's secure" and "It's limited to internationally deployed military only"

"Mobile voting is a horrific idea," said Joe Hall, an election security expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology in an interview with CNN.

SO Please, I beg of you,

Don't allow electronic voting in your location, not now, maybe ever!

As a matter of fact, our privacy is getting much worse in 2018

To start, after net neutrality, our real time location data is getting sold to anyone

 Brian Krebs: Why Is Your Location Data No Longer Private?

My favorite part - (so far - I haven't read the whole thing)

"This month, it emerged that the major mobile providers have been giving commercial third-parties the ability to instantly look up the precise location of any mobile subscriber in real time. KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that one of these third parties — LocationSmart — leaked this ability for years to anyone via a buggy component on its Web site.

... 

We also learned that another California company — Securus Technologies — was selling real-time location lookups to a number of state and local law enforcement agencies, and that accounts for dozens of those law enforcement officers were obtained by hackers.  Securus, it turned out, was ultimately getting its data from LocationSmart.

This week, researchers discovered that a bug in T-Mobile’s Web site let anyone access the personal account details of any customer with just their cell phone number, including full name, address, account number and some cases tax ID numbers.

Not to be outdone, Comcast was revealed to have exposed sensitive information on customers through a buggy component of its Web site that could be tricked into displaying the home address where the company’s wireless router is located, as well as the router’s Wi-Fi name and password."

 

How about Uber kicking off the new year?

Happy New Year Everybody

I have to kick off the new year with Uber for obvious reasons, and now, they're leading off the Ars Technica deadpool, and probly others.   Unfortunately Twitter is on there too, and HTC ( which has a geuninely kick-ass VR rig, I think :-( )

We'll see what happens

Until then, I'll be listening to Kara Swisher's podcast for her take on the Uber ( and other ) situations, and her other awesome guests.

Perry