The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies
February 14, 2011
PCWorld's Vamosi offers a solid analysis of just how deeply technology can be used to gather personal information about us without our awareness, a scenario more alarming than we can imagine. His thoroughly researched look at the products being used in many unintended ways, and unintentionally, by their owners is exhaustively detailed: how auto antitheft technology can be used to help car thieves; how mobile phone conversations can be intercepted without our knowledge; how "black box" data recording technology in automobiles as well as "in our digital cameras, our photocopiers, and even those convenient toll-booth bypass gadgets on the freeway" can be used by companies to surreptitiously gather personal information. Vamosi's goal is to shock, but he also argues that, in certain cases, such as data-mining health information, "electronic data can sometimes be better at telling us what is happening in the world around us than our own senses." But overall, he convincingly shows how and why we need to "scrutinize the gadgets we now take for granted, and view with suspicion new gadgets that come our way."
March 15, 2011
Security has become a more prevalent theme in our lives as the quantity of technology in our world continues to increase. You'd think the tech folks would be able to secure the data held in various devices we use daily, but Vamosi, IT security analyst and contributing editor to PCWORLD, strongly and meticulously suggests otherwise. He exposes a technology-development landscape chock-full of inadequately guarded data and programming. New, unforeseen privacy incursions are the norm, not the exception, with many new technology deployments. The security promised by marketing and PR campaigns is nothing more than spin, argues Vamosi. The book reviews ATMs, GPS, smart electricity meters, RFID-tagged systems, electronic road tolling, embedded computer systems in cars, contactless payment systems, mobile banking, online photo sharing, retail reward programs, parking meters, smart transit card systems, and various biometric identification technologies to support arguments that security issues continue to plague our society long after one would expect. VERDICT Read this, and you'll never again ignore the default security settings on accounts or your devices again. Gadget geeks and lay readers would benefit from Vamosi's information.--James A. Buczynski, Seneca Coll. of Applied Arts & Technology, Toronto
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