Paul McNamara

Verizon exposes the wrong 1,200 e-mail addresses

Paul McNamara — 2008-10-09T00:00:00Z

A Net Buzz reader on Verizon: "In a period of three hours I received 14 e-mails promoting Verizon's 'Secure the Information. Secure the Infrastructure' webinar series, and three e-mails promoting their '2008 Data Breach Investigations Report Road Show.' Considering their content [about data-breach seminars], I thought it very humorous that the TO: field of the e-mails contained over 1,200 e-mail addresses: 17 e-mails times 1,200 addresses equals more than 20,000 chances for leaks."

Airport 'X-ray art' courts TSA trouble

Paul McNamara — 2008-10-02T00:00:00Z

Techno-artist/open-source developer Evan Roth has a message for the Transportation Safety Administration -- several messages, actually -- about what he considers excessive airport security "theater." He also has chosen an intentionally provocative method of delivering those messages: the TSA's own X-ray screening machines.

Google has gone and redefined 'beta'

Paul McNamara — 2008-09-29T00:00:00Z

The question of why so many Google products are classified "beta" -- and classified thusly for so long -- has knocked around the tech press for some time. However, no one really seemed to know the answer, at least no one outside of Google.

Verizon robo-caller torments my household

Paul McNamara — 2008-09-18T00:00:00Z

Nine robo-calls in 24 hours, all from Verizon: Nothing could make them stop; not my wife's increasingly urgent pleas (I was away); not the hapless customer service reps who promised relief; not the "in-charge supervisor" who wasn't in charge; and, not even the ever-so-helpful individual who said the barrage was "a national problem" before adding, "We're suggesting that people just unplug their phones."

Rifling through my DEMO notebook

Paul McNamara — 2008-09-15T00:00:00Z

Seen and heard last week at Network World's DEMOfall 08 in San Diego: When RealNetworks took the wraps off new DVD-to-PC copying software, one major selling point was that users now can sleep soundly knowing for the first time that their homemade copies of commercial movies are perfectly legal.

Was MythBuster's RFID tale only a myth?

Paul McNamara — 2008-09-04T00:00:00Z

It all started when Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame told a convention audience that legal bullies from the credit card industry had cowed Discovery Channel into scotching an episode of the show that was to have taken on RFID.

Fooling Google News is as easy as s-p-o-o-f

Paul McNamara — 2008-08-14T00:00:00Z

Google News cannot tell the difference between real news stories and spoofs, especially when both the real news and the spoof are ostensibly about the same topic. Google News cannot tell the difference because it employs no human editors to pick stories for its front page and because the software it relies upon instead has no sense of humor.

Circuit City, Mad magazine and Streisand

Paul McNamara — 2008-08-07T00:00:00Z

About 10 days ago, someone at Circuit City spots a Mad magazine parody of his beleaguered company and dashes off an e-mail demanding that all copies of the periodical be purged from the electronics chain's shelves. I already know that you're thinking two things: Mad magazine still publishes? And it's sold at Circuit City?

About that Verizon/pit-bull blog post

Paul McNamara — 2008-07-31T00:00:00Z

I need to apologize to Buzzblog readers for writing recently that Verizon deserved praise for standing up to animal rights activists who found offensive the company's new commercial for its LG Dare cell phone. That spot featured a pair of chained, snarling junkyard dogs, pit bulls to be exact.

Aiming to make data-breach research easier

Paul McNamara — 2008-07-23T00:00:00Z

The monstrous data breaches involving millions of records make all the headlines — TJX, AOL, the Veterans Administration. However, it's those whoppers combined with the rat-a-tat-tat of seemingly daily divulgences involving lesser-known entities and fewer victims that add up to a costly and so-far-uncontrolled societal headache.