Scrambl on the Move

Michael Sprague blogs about our new scrambls iPhone Twitter app on Wave's Security Matters. The app let's you use Twitter as a private messaging platform whenever you want. You can download scrambls social for free in the Apple's iTunes App Store here.

YouTube Wants Your Real Name

If you've visited YouTube.com lately, you'll have noticed something new. YouTube is trying very hard to persuade you to switch from using your old, probably anonymous account name, to start using your real name instead. If you create a new YouTube account it works like this. The signup process forces you to create a Gmail account. Once you have Gmail you are pushed to use Google+. Now that you have Gmail, YouTube, and Google+, Google wants you to tie them all together, creating "one Google-wide identity." If you agree, your full name and picture will be appearing alongside any home videos you share on YouTube and the comments you post on other people's videos.

When YouTube launched in 2005 usernames could be entirely anonymous. When Twitter launched the following year it took the same approach and has maintained it ever since. Other sites, most notably Facebook, have focused on forcing members to use their real identity. With the launch of Google+ last year, Google made a clear choice in favor of following the Facebook model. Google has offered an odd rationale for pushing you to use your real identity on YouTube: "Maybe you’ve outgrown that username cutepuppies99, which seemed like such a good idea at the time. Or perhaps your friends are missing out on your mad origami skills, because they don’t know you are the genius behind origamiboy1981." The real reason is that this makes commercial sense for Google and its partners.

YouTube is a very different site to Facebook. It is a wide open community designed with the simple purpose of finding and sharing great short form video content. Do you really want complete strangers to watch your home videos, know your name and see your photograph? Mashable has suggested that using real names on YouTube could stop people leaving negative and hurtful comments. It's important to realize that now hurtful comments will be aimed at your real identity, not just a goofy cutepuppies99 pseudonym. We think that is likely to make cyber bullying on YouTube much more dangerous.

scrambls used for secure email

Check out this post from Beau Key Secure email for free!

We love these mash-up projects. Scrambls is intentionally designed to work well as a feature of the web, not just a stand-alone service. We have a public SDK for those who want to get their hands in the code, but even with simple scripting we expect there are all sorts of applications and integrations we haven't yet imagined.

War by Social Media

Reuters reports today that in Afghanistan media advocacy group Nai is launching a new campaign to encourage the use of social media. With the Afghan government considering imposing restrictive new legislation on the media, Nai hopes social platforms can help safeguard political and social freedoms."Social media is a free tool to use to transfer information without the influences of the government, warlords, or Talibs," said Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar, executive director of Nai.

Social platforms are playing a vital role in the battles to establish free speech around the globe. By strengthening privacy controls on social media, scrambls can make it significantly safer for citizens, rights groups and aid organizations to communicate and express their opinions online.

Twitter, Privacy, and Proprietary Interest

We were pleased to hear Twitter announce yesterday that it will appeal the recent ruling by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. that it must hand over a user's tweets. Twitter had previously argued for both First Amendment and Fourth Amendment protections for its users.

Judge Sciarrino disagreed in both instances, noting in his decision that "If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world." We found this decision troubling.

It is interesting to consider the difference between a tweet and a scrambled tweet. Scrambls users have an expectation of privacy, even when they are disseminating communications via social platforms, including Twitter's own public information network. Users posting with scrambls are deliberately retaining control over their tweets. Twitter believes that its users have a proprietary interest in the content they post. According to Twitter's Terms of Service, "You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)." We agree with Twitter's position that sharing content via social media should not mean the forfeiture of all interest in that same content.

Posting with scrambls is the polar opposite of screaming a tweet out of the window. It enables users both to embrace modern communications platforms like Twitter, and to assert ownership and control of their own content.

Twitter Ban for Florida State Seminoles

FSU has banned it's football team from using Twitter after defensive back Tyler Hunter tweeted about killing police officers following an altercation earlier this month. His Twitter account has since been deleted.

"[Players] have to be very smart, they have to learn," FSU coach Jimbo Fisher explained to Warchant.com. "They just don't understand the ramifications of things. They don't realize how global those things are."

Twitter is a valuable communication platform and banning students from using it does not seem like the right answer. A simple alternative would be for the team to use scrambls. This would ensure that the players knew who would be able to read their tweets and allow them to revoke access to any tweets made in the heat of the moment.

Creating a Secure Enterprise Social Network

Yammer is an incredibly useful tool for business. The scrambls team has been using Yammer to accelerate the development of the scrambls service, and Yammer has helped us to collaborate with team members spread across different time zones. As a cloud-based service, Yammer gives CIOs serious pause for thought. Valuable corporate data is being placed outside the corporate firewall. Yammer's Master Services Agreement states that "Yammer is not responsible for any public display or misuse of Customer’s Data, except in the case of gross negligence or intentional misconduct by Yammer or Yammer’s employees." Further, Yammer's MSA gives an explicit warning that "Yammer cannot guarantee that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat those measures or use Customer’s Data for improper purposes. Customer acknowledges that all Customer’s Data is provided at Customer’s and your Authorized Users’ own risk."

We use scrambls to add a second layer of protection for all of the proprietary data we post to Yammer. Other Yammer customers can do this too, simply by signing up for a scrambls account, installing the scrambls browser plugin, and then signing into Yammer as usual. We put together a quick video to show just how simple it is to use scrambls and Yammer together.

Is Privacy Bad for Business?

MIT's Technology Report recently suggested that European privacy laws are having a negative impact on the economy. The article cited MIT professor Catherine Tucker's research study which found that the effectiveness of online ads dropped 65% in countries that adopted the 2002 e-Privacy Directive. Josh Lerner at Harvard Business School has estimated that venture capital investment in European companies dropped about 73 percent following the implementation of the 2002 directive. Despite these negative economic indicators, Tucker predicts that the U.S. will follow Europe's privacy-weighted system in the long run "because we think it's something consumers want."

We have spent the past year discussing data privacy with government agencies, schools, businesses, media organizations, and entertainment companies. We have developed a privacy service that we believe will have a very positive economic impact. Respecting consumers by providing them with proper privacy solutions creates a real competitive advantage. Implementing a privacy solution like scrambls builds trust with your users, meaning that your company, application, or social network, will be more attractive for consumers to do business with. An overwhelming majority of consumers believe that businesses have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their data and communications. Our team can help your company address these concerns. The scrambls service was specifically designed to be integrated with other apps, web services and policy providers. If you would like to learn more please send an email to [email protected].

Employees Fired for Inappropriate Posts on Facebook

Robert Sumien worked for CareFlite as an emergency medical technician. Sumien and his ambulance partner, Jan Roberts, were dismissed by CareFlite for comments posted on Robert's Facebook wall. Sumien sued CareFlite for unlawful termination, intrusion upon seclusion, and public disclosure of private facts. A trial court dismissed all of Sumien's claims, but he appealed the judgement against his intrusion upon seclusion claim, arguing that his comment was protected against disclosure, that an employer cannot terminate employees for engaging in workplace-related discussions on Facebook, and that he did not realize his comments were visible to Roberts's Facebook friends.

Intrusion upon seclusion is defined as "One who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person." Applying this standard, a district court of appeals found that Sumian did not produce "more than a scintilla of evidence" that CareFlite had intentionally intruded upon his seclusion. In other words, ignorance of Facebook's privacy settings is not a strong defense.

Scrambls puts simple privacy controls in the hands of the user. Unless you decide to add someone to a group and share with them, they can't read your posts, even if the site allows them access to a page that you thought was private. If you want a simple privacy solution for Facebook install scrambls today.

Gizmodo: Facebook Now Shows Everyone Every Stupid Comment You Edited

Facebook users continue to struggle with how their own content is being made available on the social network. As Gizmodo's Sam Biddle points out, "isn't the entire point of an edit feature to clean your tracks, whitewash the past, and leave behind a better statement than the one you cranked out to begin with? Not anymore. Whenever a friend (or foe) edits any Facebook comment, an Edited button will be tacked on—click that, and you've got a big gaping window that shows the entire history of the comment. Every. Single. Change. Did you screw up a fact? Say something insulting? Hurt someone's feelings? Lie? It'll be there."

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Internet Explorer... Another World

When scrambls launched we supported all browser platforms but Internet Explorer. As veterans of the industry we knew that IE would pose a unique set of complications and so temporarily put it aside. We've been tackling the IE implementation in earnest for a while, and now with growing confidence I can say it really is coming soon. We believe we've now conquered all the major hurdles; but it's been a major effort, and that's just for IE9. IE8 imposes yet another set of unique and difficult incompatibilities.

The experience sheds light on an industry problem that few outside the web development community appreciate. Microsoft's battle for dominance over the web that began in the late nineties continues to this day. While our code ports seamlessly across all other major browsers, to support Internet Explorer requires a near complete rewrite. This is not a problem unique to us. It's been a burden to all web projects. The global drain on productivity due to this divergence in web standards must be staggering. Everything for the web that's a bit complex must be built twice: once for Microsoft, once for everybody else. It's not defensible.

Leo Laporte Interviews Nolan Bushnell

If you missed the live broadcast, you can watch Nolan Bushnell's interview with Leo Laporte on YouTube. Nolan discusses Atari, Steve Jobs, scrambls, and much more.

The EV-X11 Will Go Even Faster

Earlier this month the Scrambls KleenSpeed EV-X11 set an impressive new lap record for an electric vehicle at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. KleenSpeed founder Tim Collins says that the EV-X11 can be driven even faster.

Nolan Bushnell TWiT Interview 3PM PST Tomorrow

Inventor and serial entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell is considered the father of the electronic gaming business. As a Wave board member, Nolan has been advising the scrambls team on all aspects of our development. Tomorrow Nolan will talk with Leo Laporte and Tom Merritt on TWiT's Triangulation show. You can watch the live broadcast starting at 3PM PST.

Encryption on Facebook

"Mark Zuckerberg no longer knows exactly what his users are doing," reports Süddeutsche Zeitung. "An add-on makes entries on Facebook only readable by authorized users. However, can members of social networks be convinced to encrypt their status updates."

Scrambls is the "little add-on" being discussed. We don't expect consumers to protect everything that they post online. We think that scrambls offers a fundamental privacy layer that is missing from the Internet. As with applications like Instant Messaging, scrambls becomes more useful as our install base grows.

Interview: Scrambls KleenSpeed EV-X11 Driver Kevin Mitz

Official ReFuel 2012 SportElectric TT Results

Here are the full results from ReFuel 2012. Scrambls is proud to be the primary sponsor of the KleenSpeed EV-X11 and we would like to congratulate the entire KleenSpeed team on a resounding success. KleenSpeed set a new lap record, beating the fastest Tesla (a production Model S) by almost twenty seconds. We look forward to the Scrambls KleenSpeed EV-X11 setting more records in the coming months.

EV-X11 Sets New Record at Mazda Raceway

The Scrambls / KleenSpeed EV-X11 won the EV prototype class by a convincing margin at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca yesterday. A Tesla Model S prototype placed third with 1:59:479, Yokohama finished second with 1:48:936, and KleenSpeed took first place with a new record time of 1:32:046.
This is KleenSpeed's fourth consecutive victory at ReFuel, the annual clean power motorsports event. The new EV-X11 shattered the track record of 1:38:9 that KleenSpeed set at last year's event.