Governments make 43 user account data requests per million Facebook Users

Facebook recently released its first half  yearly Global Government Requests Report, which transparently details government requests for user data by country, no of requests, no of user/accounts specified and the percentage of requests complied with.

I have tabulated the released data along with the number of Facebook users in each of the countries which made100 or more user/account data requests.

These 22 countries made on average 43 user account data requests per million Facebook users within their country.

Definitions: What does Cyber Safety mean to an Internet User?

Cyber Safety is the measures an Internet user takes to prevent against accidental harm and to avoid known risks through the use of the Internet. Cyber safety deals with predictable cyber risks such a ransom ware, cyber bullying, email scams, defamation, sexting, loss of privacy and loss of personal information.

 

Internet users will at minimum need to be familiar with cyber risks and the best practices to combat them. Best practices outline precautions from risks that seek the active and knowing participation of the victim such as phishing, get rich scams, cheap pharmaceutical products, responding to trolls and cyber bullying.

Safety and Privacy: Baby Monitor lets neighbors spy into your house

There are several ways to let someone spy into your home. The easiest is using a non internet baby monitor which allows neighbors to tune into, much like a radio.

A man in the US found out that he was being watched  when his neighbor informed him that video and audio from his son’s nursery was showing up on his monitor whenever it was set to the same channel. The microphone on the monitor was so sensitive it even picked up conversations occurring in rooms outside the nursery. Both used the same product and believed the product to be secure when they bought it.

While purchasing wireless products it is important to evaluate the authentication and encryption mechanism in place to ensure that no third party can snoop onto the audio and video feed. The mechanism should provide a level of difficulty to break into. Monitors with long range may appear attractive but the feeds can also be captured by your neighbors or by people in a car outside. It may pose a health hazard for your infant.

In countries like India, where residents live in tightly boxed apartments, buyers of baby monitors should closely check product specifications and security mechanisms. After all, as the latest Indian crime report shows; neighbors are more often than not responsible for cyber crimes against you

Public cloud marketshare may be redistributed due to Snowden Revelations

The revelations of Edward Snowden have had a direct impact on American public cloud service providers. According to a recently released survey by the cloud security alliance, 56% of the non US firms are rethinking their decision on the use of US based public clouds. According to Gartner, the public cloud business is a 131 billion dollar market, with a growth rate of 18.5%. American firms are in the lead, with the most market share.

Rivals in other countries are in the process of catching up and lobbying with their governments to create national standards and force companies to use in country clouds. These efforts have now received a direct boost. Data sovereignty concerns have always been a significant issue. Non US firms may shift to in country clouds and hosting providers, reducing the revenue to American firms and paring their lead. While the global public cloud market revenue may not be affected the confidence of businesses in public clouds has been jolted yet again.

About 90% of public cloud services are used to advertise, offload business processes, and purchase software as a service. Most companies unwittingly pass on sensitive data through cloud email, use of collaboration platforms for conferencing and file transfer services. While companies may continue to use some of these services to gain from their cost benefits, strict policies around the type of information that can be shared will need to be put in place.  Companies would shift their investments into private clouds, and exercise greater caution on the type of applications they source from cloud providers or host onto public infrastructure.

For years, we have all lived with the knowledge that our telephone conversations can be snooped upon by governments to provide an unfair advantage to local companies. A few countries are openly suspected of doing so. This has not stopped us from making calls, but most firms have put in place mechanisms to reduce the risk.  The same example is true for our use of email. Public cloud service should follow the same pattern.

Cyber citizens’ who use cloud services for social networking, email and other types of collaboration platforms have limited choices. These are to

1.    Lobby governments for more transparency. This option is suited for those individuals who use cloud services in their country of nationality.

2.    Believe that the government has better things to do than to snoop on them. This may be true for a vast majority of cyber citizens, but untrue for some of the sources they rely upon such as journalists and whistle blowers

3.    Restrict sensitive information communicated or stored online.