Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean THEY are not Watching You

Let me start this post at it's end: DON'T use your workplace's network for private usage, if you don't want it documented.

A few weeks back, a friend of mine has been happily IMing on Live Messenger from his office. During our discussion, he typed "WTF?" (Where's the fire? ) when suddenly the following message popped up on his screen (the name of his company has been removed):
So, not only does "Big Brother" now read his conversations (no doubt saving them for later analysis) but it even decides what's "potentially malicious". Next stop: enforcing political agenda?

My friend has since told me this message has popped up on strange occasions, with absolutely nothing in the conversation's content to invite it. So either the filtering algorithm is screwed up, or, even more disturbingly, those messages are shot out by smart asses in his IT department manually.

Ok, so I've learned my lesson: I either avoid IMing on my corporate network altogether, or I use Pidgin, which connects to all major IM networks (Live/MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, AOL) AND allows encrypting the messages' content (get it here) - which, of course, means convincing the other side to switch to Pidgin as well.

But today, I saw the following ad in PC Magazine, for Spector 360 - "Company Wide Employee Monitoring software" (does this come straight out of KGB Software Inc.?). And here are the major selling points of said software:
To me, this is spyware all over again. Only this time, you actually pay for it (rather than getting it off an unidentified email attachment).

Use the list above as a warning sign. Don't do any of the above in your office.
I especially like #5: "your employees have realized they are working for someone who spies on them, and are trying to leave. Get the jump on them and fire them before they manage to find a new job".

Couple this office spying with the fact that more and more employers follow your out-of-office online life as well (see item 1 in this digest) and you start getting the feeling nobody is safe.
But then, I'm sure all records end up on a big NSA disk somewhere anyhow.

3 years ago, Sun's CEO, Scott McNeally was quoted saying "What privacy? Privacy is dead".
Guess the man knew what he was talking about .

Finally, let me recommend this excellent Slate article titled "Secret Surfing: How to keep prying eyes away from your Web browser, e-mail, and IM".

Israeli Thoughts

As my vacation/work trip to Israel draws (sadly) to a close, here are some random thoughts, travel tips and tidbits from the last 3 weeks:

1. When staying at a hotel in Israel, you get different levels of service, based on the language you speak. My recommendation: stick to English (even if you're fluent in Hebrew).
   Still, an unblocked view of the Mediterranean at sunrise/sunset is well worth it.
   
   
2. The fact that you have a "Do not Disturb" sign on your door, does not automatically promise you won't be awakened by a housekeeper at 8:00am sharp.
   
   
3. High speed internet isn't. And not just in hotels.
   
   
4. If you intend to use a Blackberry in Israel, make sure you manually connect to the cellular provider Orange. For some reason, the other provider (Cellcom) has problems with data services (email, internet).
   Cellcom, however, has the better sound quality for your phone and is therefore selected by default, if you're Blackberry is on Automatic discovery mode.
   
   
5. When driving in Israel, be aware:
   a) Signaling (apparently) is not mandatory in Israel. If a driver wants to change lanes - he does.
   b) If a car next to you looks like it's about to cut you unexpectedly - it would.
   c) If a pedestrian looks like he's about to jump into the road - he would.
   d) In general, it looks like every Israeli's life goal is to die on the road.
   
   
6. Office atmosphere and conversation is much warmer and opener than anywhere else.
   This is something I'm definitely going to miss. The ability to ask anyone anything, and disregard political correctness. I hope this trend can be exported .

I completely forgot how much I used to love just doing research: no customers to answer to, just diving into a new technology, writing sample code, finding the boundaries (on which no resources exist on the internet yet, due to the technology still being in beta) and overcoming them.

This last week reminded me why I like working with technology and computers so much. I hope I'll be able to do this more often in the future.

Technological Digest VII

Happy New Year everyone!
Still on my vacation in the holy land, so this will be yet another digest. Without further ado:

1. This NY Times article warns about your employer following your online activity past the work hours. You see, things people say, or do online (like blogging ) is held against them and may lead to them being fired. This is not necessarily legal, but is a food for thought.
   I do not hide my identity and I carry a disclaimer, but I can now understand why so many people crave anonymity online.
   
   
2. As if travel in the US hasn't been limited enough, the TSA now add limitations on lithium batteries:
   

   As of January 1, no spare lithium batteries are allowed in checked luggage. Batteries carried in the cabin are subject to limitations on per-battery and total lithium content, and spare batteries must have the terminals covered.

   Read more here and make sure you know the lithium content of your batteries.
   I shudder to ask "what's next" .
   
   
3. 2 months ago I wrote about the return of Netscape Navigator. Apparently, I spoke too soon: AOL, the owner of the Netscape browser technology, decided to retire it. It now recommends everyone use Firefox instead. Read more here. And switch to Firefox, if you haven't already.
   
   
4. An Adobe user manged to prove that his Adobe software spies on him. Once in a while, it sends an encrypted packet to the following IP address: 192.168.112.2O7.net
   Wait a second!!! Since when does an IP address has a ".net" extension? And is that an O instead of a 0 in 2O7?
   Apparently the address belongs to Omniture, a "behavioral analytics company".
   
   So, maybe Adobe just wants to improve their next generation of software by learning users' behavioral patterns, but the fact still remains they are secretly spying on users. Why aren't they notifying you of these packets and allow you to opt out, like every Microsoft software does? For shame.
   
   
5. And finally, a useless (read: no immediate application exists, but we'll think of something later) science fact: researchers from the Technion in Israel managed to inscribe the entire bible (some 300,000 words) on a silicon surface "less than half the size of a grain of sugar."
   It took them about an hour and they've used particles called "gallium ions" to etch the words on the surface. This may have some functions in the future, but in the meantime, you can store your entire library in your sugar box .