In a story that shows the widespread use of social networks around the globe, the Thailand Prime Minister’s Office has requested that the government ministry of Information, Communications and Technology monitor the use of the Hi5 social networking site by Buddhist monks.

The request came after allegations that a monk used the internet to lure a young girl to his temple and raped her.

Thai government officials are considering blocking access to the site to resolve future problems, but current law requires permission from a judge to block the site.

A Thai minister has requested that Hi5 site operators monitor the Web site for use by monks and kick them off.

The Hi5 social network claims to be the third largest social network in the world, with 70 million registered users around the globe, including over 800,000 in Thailand.

The Hi5’s online safety section warns users to beware of personal postings that could embarrass them or be viewed by friends, family or employers.

Source: Information Week

Daniel Solove is a George Washington University Law Professor, who specializes in information privacy law, and the author of “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor & Privacy on the Internet”.

In this interesting 30 minute interview with C-SPAN, Daniel Solove discusses a range of legal issues relating to the conflicts between freedom and privacy in the “wild, wild west” world of web 2.0, blogs, social networks and wired mass communication.

Throughout the interview Solove relates a number of fascinating anecdotes that highlight the problems with current internet and privacy laws, involving social networks, blogs, online access to public records, personal information providers, cyber cops, wired mobs, electronic lynchings, personal privacy.

Solove deals with these topics in an interesting, informed manner and without the alarmism that typically goes with discussions on freedom and privacy issues.

If you are interested in internet law, web 2.0 topics, privacy issues or public records access, this is one of the best YouTube videos you can view. Take 30 minutes out of your wired schedule to watch it below.

Wired.com’s Threat Level blog has posted news on a white hat phone hacker that goes by Lucky225, who got into Paris Hilton’s voice mail and then called to inform her of his intrusion as well as give her helpful advice for securing her voice mail and cellphone account.

Although we are not interested in giving Paris Hilton another 15 minutes of fame, the audio and transcript of the conversation between Lucky225 and Paris is instructive about the security holes in major cellphone service providers.

You can listen to the audio of the phone call as well as read a transcript of the conversation @ Threat Level Blog.

China is close to completing a $6 billion project that involves the issuing of identity cards to its adult population by 2008.

The identity cards come with RFID chips for identifying and tracking people.

By the end of 2008 China will have issued between 900 million and a billion of these tracking cards to its citizens.

Source: vnunet.com

The Wired Blog Network publishes a great blog called “Threat Level”. Threat Level is an interesting blog that mixes the topics of privacy, security, political and crime news.

The blog publishes timely news on security breaches, censorship, cover-ups, crime, crypto news, cyber security, forensics, computer hacks, telecommunications news, politics, privacy issues, court news etc.

You can visit the Threat Level blog @ Wired Blogs

On May 5th, Yahoo announced that it has increased the functionality of Yahoo Maps by adding a lot of new local information.

Some of the improvements to the Yahoo Map search engine include:

• Specific local information added to 12,000 new neighborhoods in over 300 cities.

• Increased worldwide city information, especially in the Eastern European region.

• An increase in city label and tag information to help users find local services and locations more easily.

Source: Yahoo.com

Now you can get live help with your people searches on PeopleFinderChat.com.

People Finder Chat has launched a live free people search and help service online.

Users can chat online with a live person, who will provide tips, advice and search options to help them find a person from their past, like: friends, family, coworkers, classmates, military buddies etc.

The People Finder Chat is free for anyone to use, as long as the service is online and not busy helping other individuals.

Users can discuss who they are looking for as well as get strategies and search suggestions for finding that person.

The service is available during scheduled time slots as well as unscheduled times. As the site becomes more popular, available times are likely to be extended to help more people.

Whereas most other free people search sites offer a list of directory-style links, People Finder Chat aims to be different by providing live person-to-person search help.

If you are trying to find a person, give it a try.

“Google hacking” is a term used to describe the use of specialized Google search queries along with advanced Google operators to find network security holes on websites and computer networks as well as personal information on people that the Google search engine has indexed. The webmasters and IT professionals that overlook these security vulnerabilities and exposed personal information, like names and passwords, allowing Google to index the information and make it available in search engine results are typically referred to as “Googledorks”

Johnny Long, author of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers volumes 1 and 2, is one of the foremost experts on hacking the Google search engine to find information on people and computer networks. He runs an online database of Google hack examples that can be used by both White Hat Hackers ( good hackers ); Black Hat Hackers ( malicious hackers ) as well as computer forensics professionals to find sensitive information through various Google searches.

Google searches can reveal a goldmine of sensitive personal and network information, including: network security vulnerabilities; error messages that reveal too much personal and network information; files that contain sensitive information about people; username and password files; login pages; sensitive directories; personal online shopping and ecommerce information; networked devices, like printers and video cameras; vulnerable files and web servers.

If you want to find out just how much information Google has indexed about you or your computer network, start practicing some of the the Google searches and advanced operators, using search terms that apply to you, family, friends or your own computer network.

You can access the Google hacks database @ ihackstuff.com

Have you ever heard of caller-ID spoofing? Caller-ID spoofing ( also called phone number spoofing ) involves making a phone call to a person or business through a system designed to trick their caller-ID equipment into displaying another residential or business phone number.

Believe it or not, phone number spoofing is currently legal in the US. Although, the US House and Senate are working on legislation [ HR251 & S.704 ] that would make phone number spoofing a federal crime.

A Google search for caller-ID spoofing returns nearly 80,000 results, including a number of websites that offer online phone number spoofing services.

Network World has recently published an interview with a telecommunications worker who used phone number spoofing on a former employer, who owed him thousands of dollars in unpaid commissions. After the HR department stopped returning his phone calls, he used a chain of spoofing numbers to finally reach the CEO of the company to complain about the unpaid commissions owed to him.

He even confesses to using caller-ID spoofing to spoof a White House phone number.

His take on the use of phone number spoofing — “Juvenile? Yes,” Bell acknowledges. “Effective at getting past call screeners? Absolutely. Subject to horrible abuse? Totally.”

For an interesting read, check out Network World’s interview with “Bell” @ Confessions of a Caller-ID Spoofer.

Wired.com has published an interesting article on the secret lives of some professional secret shoppers, who work for Consumer Reports. It just so happens that the job of a secret shopper is a lot like the jobs of undercover police officers and private investigators.

There are nine full-time and 85 freelance secret shoppers that are part of an undercover shopping network employed by Consumer Reports. Their jobs often require them to make some peculiar purchases under suspicious circumstances that require good acting and explanations with little white lies as well as some tall tales.

There is the time when a secret shopper named “Jon” had to buy 9 pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with the requirements that all the pints needed to be from the same production line, on the same date.

Jon walks into a supermarket with a Styrofoam cooler filled with dry ice (to keep the ice cream cool), a pair of gloves (to keep his hands warm), and a flashlight (to help him see the indentations on the bottom of the containers that show where and when the ice cream was made). This whole incident required some creative excuse making, when an unhappy stocker approached him as to why he was stacking pints of ice cream all over the store floor.

Consumer Reports tests thousands of products a year and spends millions of dollars purchasing these products. According to the magazine’s strict ethics code, all of these purchases need to be made by secret shoppers. Making large and sometimes strange purchases like these without giving explanations can be a difficult business.

According to the article, Jon once told a salesman that he needed an older model because his mother had Alzheimer’s disease and he couldn’t teach her how to use a newer model. Another time he recalls all the strange looks he received from people when he filled up a shopping cart with condoms. He once excused the purchase of five different washing machines by saying that his landlord dad had given his renters their choice of brands.

And how did he get out of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream debacle with the angry supermarket stocker? According to Jon — “I go into my Rain Man routine,” he says. “Count the vanilla, count the vanilla, gotta count the vanilla.’ Eventually, the stocker just gives up and walks away. And I get my ice cream.”

Source: Consumer Reports’ Secret Shoppers Have Lots of Explaining to Do.