Microsoft REALLY cares about your security

... when you are told on one hand that you need to be careful online and that M$ is doing their best to protect you with controls in their software and browsers it is rather alarming when this sort of thin surface here.

As another interesting story that is bubbling up, the data Google collected while taking Street View photographs included the GPS coordinates of the location the photograph was taken as well as the MAC Address of all devices sensed/identified in the immediate vicinity. Similarly, Google is investing (in conjunction with the CIA) in a research company called 'Recorded Future' a temporal analytics company... video here.

In its simplest form, this essentially means that a company can analyse what people are writing, linking too, discussing (or obversely NOT discussing) and predict what is likely to happen. With the MAC address they can pin down where the information from with certainty to about 10m or so. BUT... as in the case of innocent people being incorrectly charged with illegal downloading because someone has spoofed their IP Address,, a simple search will show that it is also simple to spoof the MAC Address. If you are not taking any security precautions to protect your own computer then you should seriously look into this...