What I learned at Internet Identity Workshop XVI (So Far)

This week is Internet Identity Workshop XVI in Mountain View, California, and just in time!  It is my first time but it definitely will not be my last.  The amount of raw talent in the room is amazing and even though the event name seems rather focused on one topic, the scope of disciplines represented is extremely broad.  Everyone’s day job seems to be in a related field and most people I’ve met are involved on an informal basis with at least one related project other than the day job.  A number of people have plausible solutions to things I had begun to believe nobody was even looking at.  I’ll actually sleep a bit easier at night thanks to some of the conversations I’ve had here.  It’s that good.  Most of the sessions will have some notes recorded on the Wiki so this post will relate a few things I’ve learned that are not likely to make the wiki.

Tresor-not

Over at the Personal Clouds list, the topic of Tresorit came up.  The service provides “completely secure cloud storage” and offers USD$10k to anyone who can hack the client-side encryption.  The word Tresor is either an encryption method designed to avoid use of RAM and implemented in the Linux kernel, the German word for vault or safe, or it’s a women’s fragrance.  After reviewing the web site, I’m not sure to which of these meanings the site name actually refers.  I suspect one of the first two was intended but the last is closer to what is described and implemented on the site.

The best Tesla Roadster money can’t buy

Saturday I wrote a new installment in the Nosey Store Clerks Saga.  Today I received an email from Klout telling me I qualified for a new Perk.

The post was named Culinary Alchemy – Part 2 of the Nosy Store Clerks saga and the title referred to a story I made up for the sole purpose of torturing a clerk at the local warehouse store.  The story was about how if you have bird seed, you don’t need cat food.  The seed attracts birds, cats eat birds, converting, in a sense, bird food into cat food.  Hence the “culinary alchemy” reference in the title.  The post also discussed at length kitty litter, grass seed and fertilizer.  Culinary Alchemy received several likes and a few tweets.  (Thanks, by the way!)

Today I received an email from Klout telling me that since I’m now an authority on cooking and food, I’m eligible for a new Perk consisting of a free sample of what looks like a perfectly wonderful spice.  I’m considering putting it in the kitty litter to see if it gives the room a savory ambiance so that guests walking in the door immediately say “Smells great!  I hope I’m not late for dinner.”

The post you are now reading has nothing to do whatsoever with Tesla Roadster cars, except that perhaps Klout will think I’m now an authority on them and offer me one as a perk.  So please, like the crap out of this post and I’ll come by and give you a ride as soon as I take delivery.

(As an aside, at tonight’s #PDNYC meeting I heard that half of all personal data collected for marketing is inaccurate.  Hmmm…wonder what that spice company paid to target influential foodies?  They may have overpaid by 100%.  On the other hand, it is unlikely Klout will email me saying “We see you are an authority on security.  Here’s a wad of cash.”  But hey, I’ll take what I can get.)

Culinary Alchemy – Part 2 of the Nosy Store Clerks saga

Ah, it’s Spring time.  That wondrous time of the year when the birds come back to the feeder, squirrels battle over their nuts, and I dump a hundred or so pounds of grass seed on the lawn in hopes that whatever of it that manages to sprout doesn’t die of loneliness before the hot months come, at which point everyone else’s lawn is just as brown as mine and it doesn’t matter anymore.  Apparently, Spring time is also when I feel most like abusing the associates who check your cart as you leave the warehouse club because it was about this time last year that I first wrote about Nosy Store Clerks.  The store thinks of them as loss prevention.  I think of them as a captive audience provided by the store for my amusement.  Of course, I only abuse the ones whose friendly banter crosses the line into mind-yer-own-bizness-bub territory.  This, then, is Part 2 in the continuing saga of  Nosy Store Clerks.

VRM as root of sovereignty

A VRM-y system would presumably alert you if you didn’t meet the age requirements for some web site you wished to join or subscribe to.  Considering that under the CFAA doing so would be a felony in the US, you’d hope VRM would alert you to these things, right?  Is it relevant?  You betcha.  Check it out:

Spam origin experiment

One of the first things I did when I registered t-rob.net was to set up my new email address.  The second thing I did was to delete the spam email that arrived a moment later.

Spam is the scourge of the Internet.  The odd thing is, span is completely unnecessary.  If we all signed our emails using a certificate, two things would happen:

1. We could set a rule to ignore any un-signed email.
2. Spammers sending signed email could be identified by the cryptographic signature and blacklisted.

I signed emails while at IBM  but the experiment failed.  Many of my clients were behind corporate domains where anti-malware filters examine all email.  If the email is signed, they reject it for some reason.  In other cases, list servers and corporate filters added text to the email which broke the crypto signature.

Of course, none of my family or friends sign their emails nor do they know what to do if they get a signed email from me.  In short, until we reach a tipping point of people using crypto, spam will continue.  As long as we’re stuck with it, I decided to take measures to mitigate it.  Here’s what I did and some of the findings.

Soverign by design

Over at moxytongue.com, Devon writes:

I am challenged by questions concerning the structure of #VRM tools that are built for “Me” in a personal data context, versus the structure of #VRM tools that are built for “Us” in a market context.

There are several questions which I’ll respond to in context below.