Online privacy start-ups & digital carjackers

The first discusses tools that prevent trackers from accessing your web and phone activity, while the second focuses on digital carjacking.

In Track Me If You Can, Kashmir Hill reports on how the NSA spying scandal has been fueling consumer and investor obsession with online cloaking tools. It turns out many web surfers do not wish to be tracked by ad networks, data miners and brokers. Much money and attention is being placed on a host of companies that specialize in online privacy. They include SF start-up Disconnect, a shareware browser plug-in that shows users the number of requests for personal data on websites as they visit and blocks the requests, speeding up surfing significantly. Others include photo-deleting app Snapshot; data locker service Personal.com; identity-obfuscating Ipredator; and Silent Circle, which encrypts calls, texts and e-mails, and comes installed on $10 Vertu smartphones.

Digital Carjackers offers a warning to the auto industry and consumers – further testing supports the argument your car’s sophisticated electronic system could be susceptible to hackers. Reporter Andy Greenberg follows a pair of Pentagon-funded hackers as they prove it’s possible to take control of someone’s car with a few keystrokes.