Firms back data protection pledge

Many firms and government bodies have admitted to losing personal data

Firms are being encouraged to back a pledge to safeguard the data they hold about citizens and customers.

Drafted by the Information Commissioner, the Personal Information Promise tries to improve respect for the data companies have gathered.

Firms and organisations who use data that people surrender do not always take enough care with it, said Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner.

"Protecting people's personal details should not be left to chance," he said.

"Organisations are waking up to the fact that privacy is now so significant that lapses risk reputations and bottom lines."

Safe store

2008 saw a series of data breaches and losses that left the personal details of millions of people at risk from ID thieves.

By signing up to the promise firms say they will go beyond the strictures laid down by law which govern what they can do with the personal data they hold on their customers or clients.

Data protection laws say organisations should hold the minimum possible amount of data about people and ensure that what they do hold is accurate and up to date.

"They have to make sure that safeguarding the personal information of the customers and staff is embedded in their organisational culture," said Mr Thomas in a statement.

Those backing the promise will be exhorted to consider privacy risks when they start work on new information systems that draw on databases of personal data.

They must also put in place safeguards to ensure data is securely stored and does not fall into the hands of ID thieves.

"It would be really good to see signatories agree to having spot checks made by the ICO," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group. "That's what happens other European countries, where their data protection watchdogs have real teeth.

"Given recent government data leaks, it would give us all a lot more confidence if the ICO could walk in and check that our personal information is being kept safely," he said.

On the day the promise was launched 20 organisations pledged to back it. Those signing up included BT, Vodafone, Royal Mail, British Gas, Experian, Equifax, AstraZeneca and T-Mobile.
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From BBC news

What's with Google's new mini icon?

What's the most recognised logo in the world? It would probably be Google's if only they could stick to one. Yet as the world's most popular search engine tries out a new favicon, Craig Smith says the old branding rulebook is being rewritten.

It's not the size that matters, it's how often you use it. So the thinking goes at Google, which has just revealed the design of its latest favicon - the tiny logo that shows any web user, on any web browser, anywhere in the world, precisely whose internet "real estate" they are currently residing upon.

An example of a favicon can be seen at the top of this page (so long as you are using an up-to-date enough web browser). Just in front of the URL http://news.bbc.co.uk/... there is a small BBC logo. That 16x16 pixel square is the size of the favicon in question, if not the scope.

Google's changing masthead 1998 (top) and now

Now consider that, at the website owner's discretion, the logo appears on every single one of its pages that the world's web population loads. For Google that amounts to upward of 1, 200 million individual searches. Every day.

Add to that its Google News, Google Images, mobile search and multitude of other online services. Suddenly the favicon takes on an importance that belies its fingernail-sized dimensions, and the motivation for Google to roll out its third design in less than a year, as it attempts to get its favicon right, becomes clear.

Google's journey to this latest multi-coloured graphic identity charts a course through some of the unique challenges of favicon design, and through those of logo design in general. The world's leading search engine, whose very name has been adopted as the generic term for finding pages on the web, has achieved web domination without ever having had an actual logo.

Magic Eye style

Think of Google visually and you will probably picture the letters that make up the word Google, picked out in bright primary colours. In the designer's lexicon, rather than being a logo, Google has a logotype - albeit a very successful one around which it is famed for creating ever-changing topical "doodle" themes.

DESIGN A FAVICON What makes a good favicon? Here, BBC designer Mick Ruddy suggests four key points 1. Keep it simple ­- use basic shapes 2. Use a limited colour palette 3. Avoid fine detail or lots of gradients 4. Keep it sharp ­- keep an eye on blurring Design a favicon for us

What Google has so far lacked is the sort of universally recognised icon that identifies a Mercedes-Benz car at distance or, in technology terms, the Apple computer or Yahoo web page - all logos that these brands use as their own favicon, not least because they fit the diminutive dimensions. The word Google, by contrast, would not reduce and still be legible.

Cue the new Google favicon - a rainbow of differently shaped blocks. A bit like one of those "hidden" Magic Eye pictures popular in the 1990s, not everyone will immediately see that the Google favicon blocks interlock to form a "g" shape.

That hardly matters. The design makes best use of favicon limitations and is a marked evolution of Google's previous iterations - a small blue "g" on a white background since June of last year, and a capital "G" before that.

While the old branding rulebook would discourage such regular, radical overhauls, reeking as it does of indecisiveness and inconsistency, in the digital world such rules are temporary, at best.

Steve Plimsoll, of brand consultancy FutureBrand, says the traditional rules on corporate identity are starting to look a little tired.

Mighty morphin logos

"Logos are set to become fluid, ever-changing, customisable, even personalised entities and Google is the first global brand that understands this," says Mr Plimsoll, who is head of digital.

"We are going to have to get used to the idea of our brands changing frequently, and when we do, every three months will seem like the dark ages."

Remind you of anything?

If you don't like the new look, then, you can wait or, more proactively, send the company your own design. When Google unveiled the small 'g' last year, the company's head of search products & user experience, Marissa Mayer, hinted at a transitory solution, saying "by no means is the one you're seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more unified set of icons" and inviting users to contribute ideas.

The new favicon is based on a design sent in by André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil.

It may sound indecisive, even amateurish, but the fast-changing nature of Google's digital world dictates it. While the billions of pages of Google's branded "real estate" is the headline figure, its real focus is to keep pace with users' mobile phones, computer task bars and web bookmarks in such a way as to keep directing them effortlessly back to Google - using the favicon as their guide.

For the world's biggest search engine, the world's smallest signpost is one of its most valuable assets.

Craig Smith is a marketing author and editorial director at publishing agency Velo

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You've read about Google's new favicon - now design one yourself - either a personal favicon or one to represent the Magazine, and send it to us.

It's easy to do. You can either use one of the many online favicon generators such as favicon.cc, DynamicDrive, Favicon Generator and Galleryor Antifavicon, or just shrink an image down to 16x16 pixels.

Don't forget to think about what makes a good icon at such a small size - see Mick Ruddy's tips in the factbox near the top of this story

Once you've got your favicon - e-mail it to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk with the subject line "favicon"

Include some personal details - your name, where you are from etc. And a brief sentence about your favicon. We'll publish some of them on this page later.

Some of your Magazine favicon designs, so far:

Tried to incorporate the BBC reddish news colour. It's supposed to show a "magazine" with the covers forming the letters N (for news!) and M (for...oh you can figure it out!). The background is transparent, so would show white on a browser bar.
Michael Fordyce, Sheffield

Keeping in line with the existing BBC favicon design this version will keep users content that they are looking at the same site. It also uses a simple design for easy recognition.
James Battersby, West Moslesey, Surrey

You said "keep it simple" so here's the standard BBC favicon with 'MAG' written underneath on the Magazine's masthead colour.
Karl Johnson, Thetford, Norfolk

I've opted for a colourful reworking of the BBC initials against a black background - vaguely inspired by the BBC test card.
Tom Kennedy

Tried to incorporate your masthead colours and used the same font as the BBC logo. I think it's rather fetching!
Carl Dersley, Ipswich

Grabbed the banner colours and replicated their structure from the page. Added an 'M'.
Steve, Woking

This uses the design of the site and the site's main colours (black, dark red, teal, white).
Leo, Milton Keynes

Although it chops off some of the BBC logo, it is much clearer I think, and has your corporate news colours. It also makes better use of the footprint. I use it to replace the BBC one in my Firefox browser.
Stephen Daniels, Edinburgh

Just a few minutes "doodling" after reading the article - does it fit the bill?
Gill Jennings, London

Quite simple but effective, I guess...
Guilherme Silva, Porto, Portugal

Wow, there's not much room to work with. I tried to incorporate a folded corner (to represent a magazine leaf), but it didn't work.
Steve, Birmingham

I used the page graphics and layout to design this simple icon, and added the BBC favicon to the black space.
Diane Bay, Wheaton, IL

Here is my take on a favicon for the Magazine section. It seemed pretty obvious to me as to what elements you have in your brand - white text on blue, rotated M in another blue - so used these to make something very simple but hopefully encapsulating all your branding.
Mark, Exeter

I wanted to show someone using their hands to open the BBC and see inside.
Steven, Coventry

Clock ticking on worm attack code

The worm can also spread via USB flash drives.

Experts are warning that hackers have yet to activate the payload of the Conficker virus.

The worm is spreading through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without current security updates.

The malicious program - also known as Downadup or Kido - was first discovered in October 2008.

Although the spread of the worm appears to be levelling off, there are fears someone could easily take control of any and all of the 9.5m infected PCs.

Speaking to the BBC, F-Secure's chief research officer, Mikko Hypponen, said there was still a real risk to users.

"Total infections appear to be peaking. That said, a full count is hard, because we also don't know how many machines are being cleaned. But we estimate there are still more than 9m infected PCs world wide.

"It is scary thinking about how much control they [a hacker] could have over all these computers. They would have access to millions of machines with full administrator rights.

"But they haven't done that yet, maybe they're scared. That's good news. But there is also the scenario that someone else figures out how to activate this worm. That is a worrying prospect."

Experts say users should have up-to-date anti-virus software and install Microsoft's MS08-067 patch. The patch is known as KB958644.

Even having the Windows patch won't keep you safe Graham Cluley Sophos

Speaking to the BBC, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with anti-virus firm Sophos, said the outbreak was of a scale they had not seen for some time.

"Microsoft did a good job of updating people's home computers, but the virus continues to infect business who have ignored the patch update.

"A shortage of IT staff during the holiday break didn't help and rolling out a patch over a large number of computers isn't easy.

"What's more, if your users are using weak passwords - 12345, QWERTY, etc - then the virus can crack them in short order," he added.

"But as the virus can be spread with USB memory sticks, even having the Windows patch won't keep you safe. You need anti-virus software for that."

Method

According to Microsoft, the worm works by searching for a Windows executable file called "services.exe" and then becomes part of that code.

It then copies itself into the Windows system folder as a random file of a type known as a "dll". It gives itself a 5-8 character name, such as piftoc.dll, and then modifies the Registry, which lists key Windows settings, to run the infected dll file as a service.

Once the worm is up and running, it creates an HTTP server, resets a machine's System Restore point (making it far harder to recover the infected system) and then downloads files from the hacker's web site.

Most malware uses one of a handful of sites to download files from, making them fairly easy to locate, target, and shut down.

But Conficker does things differently.

Right now, we're seeing hundreds of thousands of [infected] unique IP addresses Toni Koivunen, F-Secure

Anti-virus firm F-Secure says that the worm uses a complicated algorithm to generate hundreds of different domain names every day, such as mphtfrxs.net, imctaef.cc, and hcweu.org. Only one of these will actually be the site used to download the hackers' files. On the face of it, tracing this one site is almost impossible.

Variant

Speaking to the BBC, Kaspersky Lab's security analyst Eddy Willems said that a new strain of the worm was complicating matters.

"There was a new variant released less than two weeks ago and that's the one causing most of the problems," said Mr Willems

"The replication methods are quite good. It's using multiple mechanisms, including USB sticks, so if someone got an infection from one company and then takes his USB stick to another firm, it could infect that network too. It also downloads lots of content and creating new variants though this mechanism.

"Of course, the real problem is that people haven't patched their software," he added.

Microsoft says that the malware has infected computers in many different parts of the world, with machines in China, Brazil, Russia, and India having the highest number of victims.