Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…
[via various intermediaries... PGN] WIRES CROSS AS LOVERS DIAL M FOR MOTHER LONDON, July 2 (Reuter) - A terrified British mother put police on red alert after mistaking the sound of lovemaking for a cry for help from her daughter. *The Independent* newspaper said on [July 2] that two accidental phone calls woke the woman in Devizes, southern England, in the small hours of the morning. Hearing moaning, groaning and shouting, she dismissed the first as an obscene call, but in the second she recognised her daughter crying: "Oh my God," and heard a man's voice. Convinced her daughter was being attacked in her bedroom 100 miles (160 km) away, she dialed the emergency number 999 and a police squad sped to the daughter's home to investigate. "Officers rushed round and found she wasn't being attacked — in fact she was quite willing," a police spokesman said. "They explained that during the moments of passion one of the couple accidentally pushed the last-number redial button on the bedside telephone with a toe. Unfortunately on both occasions it was the girl's mother's phone number," he said. "This is a warning for other people — if you're going to indulge in this sort of thing, move the phone." The mother and daughter have apologized to police for the confusion. [Reach out and toe someone? This gives new meaning to "having your buttons pushed". And the mother was left to her own Devizes. PGN]
On Saturday night, during Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals on ESPN, a commercial for the Prodigy on-line computer service came on. They were talking about how great the hockey game was, but it didn't compare to the excitement available on Prodigy. They cut to the computer screen showing Prodigy, and all of the sudden a big window came up on the screen, saying "COMMUNICATION ERROR". Users of Prodigy say that when that happened, the system locked up for almost a minute, then their screen went completely blank. ESPN quickly cut away to another commercial. The curse of the live demo! On another ranch, AOL managed to get its main server building flooded, knocking out the whole network for hours and denying email service for hours more after that. No word yet on lost data... [You'd think after the mess in Chicago a few years back they'd've learned something.] --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard, Media Lab Advanced Human Interface Group wex@media.mit.edu 617-258-9168
This time of year, taxes are far from mind. That is until I received a letter from the IRS stating that I had incorrectly figured the credit for child care expenses on my 1993 return. This is the first year my tax preparer, an enrolled agent (EA), used the 1040PC format: only the necessary lines are printed without descriptive text. My EA checked and reports that the software, Simply Tax by Computer Associates (CA) of MD, carried the incorrect figure to line 4 of form 2441. To my surprise, he said there were a number of such bugs resulting in incorrect line transfers on other forms, but he corrected them manually. What's the point of software that's automatically wrong? Interestingly, the software can print either the 1040PC version or a graphic facsimile of the IRS forms. When the graphic facsimile was printed, Simply Tax calculated a second _different_ set of incorrect numbers. I would have assumed the program implemented a single algorithm, with different output options. It now appears that the software implements independent (and different) calculations, depending on which output format is selected! This complicates the debugging task. The RISK? Aside from reliance on software that is revised every year (never debugged?), the 1040PC version threatens to further obfuscate our tax system and create a new elite of tax preparers. Since I have my taxes prepared professionally, the IRS no longer sends the forms and instructions. How comfortable will I be signing next years 1040PC, which I can not decipher, in the face of suspected bugs? The IRS is moving away from graphic facsimiles, so that may no longer be an option. In future, expect to file taxes by hand, 1040PC, or electronically. Graphic facsimiles will be allowed only if identical to the IRS form including the color of the ink (you'll need a full color printer). My EA believes that the programmer was not a tax expert. Unlike straight line programming, tax forms have backwards references (to whit, my incorrect transfer from line 25 to line 4 on the same form). He suggests tax software be tested by former IRS agents with experience preparing taxes for the public (there are many such qualified individuals). The IRS, with uncharacteristic understanding, is requiring only the tax and interest, waiving the penalty for an "honest" error. Have they recognized a software bug? My EA insisted on paying the interest (a paltry 0.5% per month). Apparently there is a preparer's code covering this. CA, on the other hand, is under no such obligation. In most industries, a defective product is exchanged, refunded or repaired by the seller. With the short use life of tax software, CA assumes no such liability. According to one theory, profits are maximized when the cost of quality assurance equals the cost of defective returns. When there is no cost to the seller for defects, quality will be minimized :-( Craig A. Smith, Solid State Electronics Center, Honeywell Inc., 12001 State Hwy 55 Plymouth, MN 55441-4799 (612)954-2895 smithc@ccsvax.ssec.honeywell.com [By the way, the IRS endorses none of the tax preparation programs, and is not responsible for any errors they may cause. PGN]
>From the Wall Street Journal, 6 Jul 94 (pg A1, col 5): IRS officials are considering removing Social Security numbers from the mailing labels taxpayers stick on their returns. The reason: "Some concerns about privacy," an IRS spokesman says. -[mpg] gerlek@cse.ogi.edu [Good news! I raised that topic along with some related problems raised by RISKS readers (such as the amount of the check peeking through the envelope window) at my IRS Commissioner's Advisory Group meeting in DC three weeks ago. I'm delighted to see a speedy reaction! PGN]
>[Comment from Michel E. Kabay:] >[...] perhaps these frauds will eventually lead to requirements for >effective identification and authentication of users. Ultimately, it would be >helpful to see non-repudiation as a feature of all electronic communications. >For the time being, caveat lector.] I find it distressing though not necessarily surprising that Dr. Kabay would "solve" this "problem" by requiring more stringent I&A. My own reaction was that the "unscrupulous" investors got exactly what they deserved. Do we really need to require users to show their identification papers before they can participate on the Internet? Jeff Barber jeffb@sware.com
[Ben Wright, an attorney teaching the online seminar on The Law of Electronic Commerce in the NCSAFORUM of CompuServe, has granted permission to post the following article on signatures. I recommend that it be posted in RISKS because it addresses assumptions about the need for non-repudiation of contracts--an area which has been fuzzy for many of us. I hope it will be as useful for others as it has been for me. --MK] <
Re: Scary (Horning, RISKS-16.19)
Peter J. Denning <pjd@cne.gmu.edu> Wed, 6 Jul 94 15:34:19 EDTPolitical prevarication is part of the scene, unfortunately, and part of the reason that politicians are finding themselves faced with term-limit referenda around the country. (I support those movements.) At the same time, I am not "scared" by the prospect that Perot (or any other) might tell me "promises" that are tailored for me and antithetical to the "promises" that he makes to you. Why? The same technology that enables him to do that enables him to be revealed. Many of the people who get such tailored notes are going to compare notes on public bulletin boards. Prevarications, if they exist, will be instantly revealed and the candidate discredited. This will help prevent them from getting elected. Let them reveal their stripes early, I say. Let the prevaricators be detected before election, not after. Peter
Just the Facts, Ma'am (was Re: AI to screen bad from good cops)
David Honig <honig@buckaroo.ICS.UCI.EDU> Wed, 06 Jul 1994 13:08:00 -0700In Volume 16 : Issue 20 : pjt1@scigen.co.uk (Piers Thompson) worries about the legal implications of screening cops for attributes shared with bad cops, when attributes include race and gender. In machine learning work I once came across, techniques that automaticly build decision processes were applied to known data to estimate students' expected performance in college. These techniques find the most information-theoreticly useful attributes and use these to sort new instances. It turned out that race was found to be a very useful attribute in making predictions in this domain, but for political reasons the decision process had to be doctored to exclude this. I think similar things have been found in financial areas, eg., predicting loan defaults. (NB: Since present politics allows age and geographical discrimination, auto insurance companies can and do use these properties in their assessments.)
Re: Video cameras in City Centres (RISKS-16.20)
Robert Allen <Robert.Allen@eng.sun.com> 6 Jul 1994 20:24:40 GMTAn interesting report. Even more interesting to me because I first read about the efforts to instrument society w/ video cameras in a comic book about 5 years ago, and the comic had been written at least 10 years ago. For those interested in seeking it out, the comic was a limited series (perhaps 10 issues) called V for Vendetta. It was written by an English author (I believe it was Alan Moore) who had a 1 page editorial in one of the issues wherein he decried the slide of English society into what he saw as facism. In his preface he wrote that he hoped to get himself and his family out of England as soon as possible because of what he saw happening to society. I believe he specifically mentioned TV cameras on street corners, and these were definitely central to the story. They also had audio pickup capability, and vandalizing them was a capital crime. The story dealt with how the English gov't became facist after a 3rd world war. "V" is a lone hero (?) who bucks the system, assassinating various gov't figures, with an ending I won't spoil for you. Life imitates art. The complete series is available at any decent comic book store (check your yellow pages) or even a large book store, in bound, graphic novel format. Robert Allen, rja@sun.com
Digitized CC Signatures
Eric Richards <ericr@SSD.intel.com> Wed, 6 Jul 94 13:29:03 PDTWhile buying a bag of cat food at a local PetCo, I was asked to sign my credit card receipt upon the machine that printed the receipt out. After the receipt was torn from the machine, I noticed that I had written my signature on a rubber pad of some sort. I asked the young lady what exactly this was. She then went into a cheerful explanation of this machine, showing me how it keeps a low resolution digitized "picture" of the customer's signature. She put it into test mode and had it print her signature back out. Her final comment raised my eyebrows: the full system will simply digitize the customer's signature and keep it as proof of purchase. No second copy at all — the customer keeps what the customer signs. There are, however, a few bugs to fix first, she admitted. I haven't seen discussion of this machine before and casual examination of the machine didn't reveal the name of the company that makes it. I'm not especially thrilled of the notion that someone can have a digitized version of my signature. Does anyone else have information about the machine and/or comments on risks of this CC machine's use?
Re: Shopping Risks... (Banks, RISKs-16.18)
Jane Anna LANGLEY <squirrel@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Fri, 1 Jul 1994 11:47:13 +1000In Australia there is a code of practice for supermarkets that use scanners. Here if the item scans at a price higher than the price shown on the shelf you are entitled to receive that item free. If you are purchasing several of the same item and this happens, you get one free and the rest at the lower price. Of course supermarkets do not go out of their way to draw your attention to this, although some state it on a tiny sticker at each checkout. A few months ago an elderly couple who had some difficulty with English were ahead of me in the checkout queue when one of their items scanned at a higher price they complained, and the checkout operator's did not know about the code of practice. I pointed out the store's stated policy to both the customers and the operator, who then referred it to the supervisor. If you want to avoid being ripped off at the checkout, find out if there is such a code of practice in your area, and make sure your supermarket sticks to it. If they don't, make a complaint or go someplace else. JanePlease report problems with the web pages to the maintainer
xTop