What do you do when the FBI raids your home and finds porn all over your PC? One man, who had his home computer seized by the bureau, has decided that his best course of action is to sue the companies that failed to keep that data private for him.

While Crooker did have an encryption mechanism installed to keep his porn, ballistics recipes, and data safe, the FBI’s Cryptologic and Electronic Analysis group were able to break through the Compaq DriveLock security layer with help from Hewlett-Packard. The agents found a wide array of files ranging from home sex videos to cached pornographic web pages, eventually embarrassing Crooker and leading to this lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, Crooker argues that Internet Explorer was set to delete his browsing history after five days, but the software failed to do so. “Any day beyond those parameters is supposed to be permanently deleted and is not supposed to be recoverable,” he said. While Crooker’s claim against Internet Explorer may be valid, the bigger problem seems to be that Circuit City assured him when he purchased the PC in 2004 that Windows XP, Internet Explorer, and a barrage of other security products would keep his information totally secure.

oday Microsoft extended an invitation for individuals to participate in a beta test of its new Windows Live Games online community, which will allow PC gamers to connect with Xbox users over the Live gaming network.
Microsoft’s window of opportunity for signup (forgive the pun) is limited. To be considered, users will have to fill out a very brief eight question survey. Those selected will be contacted in the coming weeks, and additionally will be entered in a prize drawing.

Thanks for eggokio from the forums for the info.

A week or more after it was brought to its attention, eBay has plugged a hole in its sign-on page that was being exploited by phishers.

The vulnerability was noteworthy because it led users to eBay’s official login page first, unlike most phishing attacks, which direct victims to a spoofed URL. Once a user entered a valid user name and password on the eBay site, however, the exploit redirected the person to a third-party site of an attacker’s choosing.
Click here to find out more!

We brought the vulnerability to the attention of an eBay spokesman eight days ago, and a blogger on jjncj.com said he had alerted eBay of the problem several days before that. What he got in response was a form letter from eBay security. “In the future, be very cautious of any email that asks you to submit information such as your credit card numbers or passwords,” it read in part.

It required persistence, but our correspondence was slightly more productive. We contacted eBay PR again late yesterday, and a spokeswoman emailed back to say “early indications have shown this isn’t a new vulnerability” and that teams were working to fix it. We asked how long, exactly, security people had known of the hole, but never did get an answer. Nonetheless, the security problem was fixed early Thursday evening.

An Ohio woman is demanding $20 million from Yahoo for allegedly using a photo of her without her permission for a welcome e-mail sent to new users.

According to a court complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Shannon Stovall, a resident of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, discovered upon signing up for Yahoo’s Web-based e-mail service last October that a picture taken of her appeared in a note sent to new users.

The message, according to a printout attached to the court complaint, leads off with the headline “Hooray! Your first e-mail” and a photograph containing two women, one of which is purported to be Stovall. It goes on to give Yahoo Mail users tips on how to transfer address book contacts and customize the look of their messages.

The complaint charges that the image has been sent to millions of users around the world without Stovall’s authorization, violating her right to privacy and right to publicity–that is, to control the commercial use of her identity.

A brazen bank robber with nothing but a baseball cap and dark sunglasses hiding his face is one of the latest members of the social-networking Web site MySpace, and he wants to meet “more bank tellers so that I can continue my crime spree!!!”

Even though MySpace is popular with teenagers, Fort Smith police Sgt. Jarrard Copeland created the profile Friday hoping someone will recognize the man estimated to be about 60 and suspected in four bank robberies across Arkansas.

“We figure that might be one way to get this photo outside of the market,” he said.

Amid a backdrop of $100 bills and a song “Citizens on Patrol” from the movie “Police Academy,” the profile displays several photos from a Feb. 22 robbery at a U.S. Bank branch in Alma in which the suspect wore a blue jacket with “FBI” lettering on the left front and a blue ball cap.

“The pictures are definitely clear enough and there’s enough of his face and facial features exposed that someone who knows him will definitely recognize him and hopefully they’ll call police,” Copeland said.

The photo gallery shows a series of bank security camera photographs, including comic captions like “Here I am robbing the Van Buren bank. See my little gun?” and “I’m robbing the bank in Fort Smith here…. I’m so cool!!!”