The expectation of complete online anonymity will become increasingly unsustainable as regulation, and steps to combat cyber-crime, intensify.
The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is [...]

To put an end to “secrets” between partners and to prevent affairs, should couples have a shared email account? Personally the idea makes my stomach churn… openness is one thing but if someone chooses to stray a shared email account isn’t going to stop them.
The e-mail addresses – “tim-shawna” and “christyandbrian” – broadcast the couples’ [...]

In the same way a lot of data thought to be deleted from a computer hard drive can be restored, so to can paper documents that have been shredded, so long as they have been shredded in a certain way:
In a typical reconstruction process, technicians feed all the available shreds into a scanner. An automated [...]

New technology using key-based encryption will soon give people the option of allowing email messages and other forms of electronic data to “self delete”, or vanish, after a certain period of time.
The pieces of the key, small numbers, tend to “erode” over time as they gradually fall out of use. To make keys erode, or [...]

Night Jack, a blog written by an anonymous British detective which I linked to in April after it won the Orwell special prize for blogs, has been taken off-line after the British High Court allowed the previously secret identity of its author to be published.
In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an [...]

What is it with social networks that compel us to publish all manner of information that we would consider private in another context? Is the desire for 15 minutes of fame heightened when we can’t actually see – or don’t have direct contact with – our “public” (that is friends) or something?
Perhaps I’ve been [...]

Data from apparently disparate social network profiles, including Flickr accounts, even when created with a nom de plume or pseudonym, can still be linked together (albeit rather laboriously), potentially uncovering personal information that was believed to be private.
To use the algorithm, a person must start by revealing the “shape” of the different networks of interest, [...]

Meeting an accomplice or partner-in-crime in a park, or shopping mall, as per many a stereotypical movie scene, to discuss a heist probably remains a sound strategy, provided you’ve switched off your mobile phone, travelled on public transport (having paid cash) to the meeting point, and worn a disguise.
Being visible, or “on the grid”, in [...]

Before patios – private decks at the rear of a house became popular – people used to meet, and mix with, their neighbours by way of their house’s front porch.
The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate [...]

I think to achieve “work/life balance” you have to (somehow) remove work from the equation…
I work for a company that will disrupt the traditional retail market and my boyfriend is someone that has disrupted everything I know about relationships. Nothing is stable now. That’s the thing about work/life balance. It’s more of a see-saw, kind [...]