UC Berkeley's Pamela Samuelson wins IP3 Award

UC Berkeley Law Professor and renowned scholar Pamela Samuelson is one of four winners of this year's IP3 Award from the Washington-based public interest group Public Knowledge.

As a director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, Samuelson is being acknowledged for her work in information policy, particularly in such areas as privacy, copyright, freedom of expression, intellectual property and consumer protection.

"Public Knowledge has been the most important voice for public-spirited intellectual property and Internet policy,” says Samuelson. “I’m pleased that this organization believes I have made contributions to these same policies worthy of being named to this award."

See more in the Berkeley Law News Archive.

Web add-ons compromise 'private browsing'

A study by Dan Boneh of Stanford University claims that many browser add-ons or website security measures stop the 'private browsing' mode from working correctly.

Boneh and team examined the private browsing functions on Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Apple's Safari and discovered all four were affected. Moreover, they discovered that all browsers retained the generated key pair even after private browsing ends which could leak the site's identity to an attacker.

"We found that private browsing was more popular at adult web sites than at gift shopping sites and news sites, which shared a roughly equal level of private browsing use," Boneh said in the report.

"This observation suggests that some browser vendors may be mischaracterising the primary use of the feature when they describe it as a tool for buying surprise gifts."

Boneh and his researchers say they believe they are the first to show that 'private browsing' can be compromised.

See full article at PC Advisor. Related articles appear at THIN!.co.uk and BBC NEWS.