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T-Mobile UK experienced earlier this week a massive breach into its data base: a yet undisclosed number of customers records have been stolen and, most likely, sold to an unidentified third party.

“The number of records involved runs into the millions and it appears that substantial amounts of money changed hands”, said in a document Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) acknowledging the breach. The data included customers’ personal information and contract expiration dates. The UK’s Data Protection Act prohibits the selling of data without prior permission from the owner. The ICO said in its report that it believes T-Mobile competitors used the information to call customers prior to the expiration of their contracts and offer them deals with a new operator.

Well. guess what: the thief was a T-Mobile UK insider, not some random hacker looking for easy money. This fact highlights the problem of the threat posed by insiders, especially during an uncertain global economy, which has resulted in layoffs and mergers.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s storage system was designed, one of the questions was: who can access the data our uses will upload? The answer we came up with was no one except its legitimate owner. Our service provides a digital safety box only the user can access. There is no way an insider could ever enter a Forever account and share its content with a third party. It is just impossible.

That is because there are three separate keys to decrypt the information and each one is in a different Swiss DNA Bank’s trustee hands. Because your privacy is always our priority.

The issue with Government holding citizen’s DNA profiles is hot topic in the UK right now. Britain has in fact one of the largest DNA databases in the world, with profiles of over 5 million people, or 8 percent of the population.

Police currently have the power to take DNA or fingerprints from anyone at the point of arrest and keep the information indefinitely — much longer than in many other countries.

Last year the European Court ruled against this praxis labeling it as violation of human rights in accordance to the Human Rights Convention, which Britain has signed. Yesterday came the British response: it plans to get rid of DNA profiles of most innocent people after six years. Human rights organizations are roaring against this decision, since there appears to be no differentiation between those arrested for petty crimes and those with more serious charges. Most other European countries only retain the DNA of individuals suspected of crimes like terrorism, rape and pedophilia.

DNA is a very sensitive subject, especially when it comes to one’s privacy. This is why we selected the most innovative technologies to protect the data you store at Swiss DNA Bank and rely on our country’s privacy policy.

Privacy and security are two core issues at Swiss DNA Bank. This is why we organized the strongest data protection system available.

But such a unique data collection and its Forever storage guarantee made us think very seriously about the possibility of making this data available to the world. Every time you create an event on your timeline you can choose if you want to keep it private, disclosed to selected people or make it accessible to the public.

The amount of human experience that accumulates in our servers is amazing. So we felt it was important to share the reasons for your choices in life, the consequences of your decisions and the unique knowledge you accumulated throughout your life.

Organizing all this data in a functioning and easy-to-access  search engine is what our technical team is currently working on.

To make our job as fast and efficient as possible, we decided to follow our passion for human knowledge and experience and we have been looking up to the work done by the field’s word leaders.

Our favorite is Wolfram Alpha’s Mathematica project. This amazing software developed by Wolfram research, one of the world’s most respected software companies—as well as a powerhouse of scientific and technical innovation.

Mathematica is, to put it simply, a problem-solving tool, a computation system containing a mind blowing number of data that can provide solutions to such fields as engineering, biotechnology, medicine, finance, statistics, science and many others.

Imagine a software you can install on your computer, containing what we like to call the Human Experience Encyclopedia, which is able to answer your questions based on what others before us have seen, done and learned.

Work in progress. We’ll keep you posted.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

The beginning of this week left many Americans stranded without any sidekick support. More specifically, I’m talking about T-Mobile’s phone data backup failure.

“Sidekick” is a celebrity’s-pick telephone and e-mail device distributed by T-Mobile, brought to fame by a very-out-there advertising campaign which featured Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and other big celeb names.

The data stored in these phones was actually remotely hosted by Microsoft’s servers, which means that users’ phonebooks, SMS, e-mails, etc.,  were not stored inside the phones themselves but rather, on cloud servers. Very convenient at first glance: you could have hundreds of names, numbers, addresses and messages handy without actually over-challenging your device. All you needed to retrieve data was an Internet connection.

But apparently, the servers crashed. And for some reason, still undisclosed, the backup servers crashed as well. Or at least someone forgot to press the “Save” button.

So, thousands of users woke up to a blank phone.

T-Mobile stated there is apparently nothing they can do to retrieve the lost data, and it is refunding a paltry $20 to those struck by the Web lightening.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that there is no such thing as a too-expensive or over-protected data backup system. Knowledge, information and contacts are some of our most precious assets and must be regarded as such.

This is why we here at Swiss DNA Bank never get tired of stressing the fundamental importance of safe and guaranteed backup.

The idea of the revolutionary storage of data forever came from my personal need to feel secure about information storage. I wanted to know that my memories and my biological mark were in a safe place that my heirs could access one day.

There are many other backup services out there. But where are their servers physically located? Who is managing them? What happens in case a disaster hits the storage location?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves when we put our data in someone else’s hands.

Can they provide you with straight answers and Swiss-quality assurances?

Well, we certainly can.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

As paperwork quickly disappears from our drawers and digital data storing becomes increasingly crucial in everyday personal and business life, not everyone realizes how important could be to know where your back-up servers are physically located.

Think about all those letters you have on your web-mail provider account.

What happens if the service disappears for one reason or the other. Where or who can you turn to to recover them?

This might not be an issue one thinks about every day, but many Aussies might have had the taught last wednesday.

On Sept. 2nd, Australia disappeared from the www for a whole hour, between 7.50 and 8.50 am local time reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Telsta, by far the country’s number one ISP, suffered from a major crash which affected home, business and mobile  internet customers.

Telstra customers could not access any international sites or Australian sites containing international links. Since Telstra’s customers also include most down under ISPs, most of the country was affected.

The problem apparently was caused by Telstra’s international gateway, which lost the ability to find the domain names of international websites.

The technical difficulty was most likely solved with the classic home-style turn-off-turn-on-the-switch procedure.

No damage done, but we should all stop and think that even though our stuff feels like it’s on our computer, it’s actually not. Thousands of miles usually separate us from our mails, documents or pictures.

A safe data storage provider should be able to indicate precisely the server’s location and be transparent on panic data recovery procedure.

If we talk about “sandboxing”, happy memories of childhood games in the garden will come to mind.

But when talking about computers and applications, this term refers to a very powerful security feature that separates running programs. This is very important for service/application providers. Anyone that offers a web-based service is potentially under risk of being attacked by hackers or third parties interested in gaining the information that’s been transferred from the user to the server during uploading and vice versa during downloading.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s developing team was crating the application, the number one priority was always to give users the maximum level of security possible due to the company’s concern with the customers’ privacy issues.

The only way to provide 100% guarantees that the data would not be intercepted by malicious third parties was to rely on two separate servers: one on which the application is running and another one on which the data is stored. The two servers are completely independent and physically located in two different venues. The only connection occurs during data uploading and downloading, a phase in which everything is protected by the highest encryption standards.

In addition, the keys to decryption and the encrypted data are saved in physically separated machines, so that even if a system engineer gains access to one of the servers it is impossible for him to enter the Forever database.

Another plus of this security solution is that in case of an application crash occurs due to a very high number of access, there is no risk of data loss or damaging because everything is saved on the separate and highly secure Forever server.

The risk with the average available cloud computing (services which, like Swiss DNA Bank, provide a software that users access form a browser instead of downloading it on their computer), is that you do not know for sure wether the application and the data are on the same server and where the server is physically located. Since data can sometimes be backed-up on one’s computer but is usually hosted on the cloud, in case of a system crash there are no security guarantees concerning a safe back-up procedure.

Unlike most services, thanks to the multiple server solution and localized Forever data storage, Swiss DNA Bank is able to provide a 100% secure service for a risk-free storage.

September 1st 2009 is a very important day in Swiss DNA Bank’s history. It’s the day the staff finally pulled the strings on a very intensive two-years project development. Everything came together and the “put-the-web-application-on-line-button” was pushed.

The dream of creating the first data and DNA forever banking service came to life.

The idea was always to create a bank, a Swiss bank, which followed each and every security and privacy policy of our country. But what was going to be sheltered in this bank was not money or bonds. Was something much more precious and unique: it was people’s memories and DNA.

As Swiss DNA Bank’s website often states, one’s life experience, knowledge and memories are the most important asset we have. It takes a lifetime to build them.

On the other hand, our DNA trace is something that belongs only to ourselves. The health information contained are crucial not only for the carrier, but also for it’s family. Knowing your biological ancestry can help you prevent or cure many disease. But at the end of one’s life these assets are most likely going to be lost. Our children, our grandchildren and the ones that will come after them are deprived of the chance of getting to know who we where, what we’ve done and what we’ve learned.

This is where the idea of the Perpetual Financial Engine comes from.

The Perpetual Financial Engine feature is the reason why Swiss DNA Bank’s service is Forever. As of today, there is no technological support that you are sure it will be readable in even just 10 or 15 years time. Think about a floppy disc or an audio cassette.

So we figured that the solution to perpetual data storage is not technological, but financial.

The Perpetual Financial Engine, together with a long-lasting and safe structure of a Swiss bank, is the key to being able of founding tomorrow’s technological support renewal.

The user’s subscription fee is partially invested in safe assets, such as Swiss government bonds, in order to guarantee a small revenue, year after year, which allows to keep our storing facilities up to date.

When this whole picture came together, it was time to think of a safe way to store it all. The solution fort the physical storage of the servers which contain the data came from the heart of the Swiss Alps, from a former military nuclear shelter which was converted into server hosting facility.

Once Swiss DNA Bank’s servers were safe behind closed steel doors, the attention turned to on-line security.

The web-development team figured that username and password were not enough to protect such sensible data. So each Swiss DNA Bank user is provided with a Swiss DNA Card, a credit card sized one-time access code generator. The one-time access code is the third field one has to fill to enter the Swiss DNA Bank web application, an amazing tool to organize memories, pictures, documents, and any other file you can think of.

Take a look at your desk. Open some drawers randomly. Check your computer’s desktop. And what about the office’s shelves? Unless you are one of those people naturally gifted with full organizational skills, at least one of those places is a real mess.

And if you are organized, this will be your ultimate tool!

Now you can store it all, safely and Forever.

http://www.swissdnabank.com/

Internet surfers and social network addicts: take a moment to thank Canada for fighting and winning a privacy battle for us all.

Ever took a closer look at that little box you tick before starting the “Which Famous Rock Star are You” or the “How Karmic are You” test on Facebook?

Don’t if you don’t want to feel exposed, naked and cheated on. Data exposed, naked and cheated on, that is.

Because what happens is that in exchange for vital information such as who your superhero twin is you allow “third parties”, typically the application’s (test’s) developer, to access your personal information, letting you wonder what they are going to do with it.

I’m thinking targeting the ads upon your profile, but maybe I’m just being malicious.

Being most of us users reckless and carefree about our info, Canada decided to do something about it. One year ago an Internet policy group at the University of Ottawa filed a complaint about Facebook’s privacy policies, which now resulted in Facebook having 12 months time to do something major about it.

The well-know social network will have to make significant changes to the software code it shares with third-party developers, in order to warn users about which bits of information are being disclosed and to whom exactly.

Dave Morin, senior platform manager at Facebook, sympathizes with the developers who are now facing software-changing issues.

“These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected,” Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, said in a statement.

Another important thing is that the mystery over deactivating and deleting one’s account will be unveiled. If you decide not to use the Facebook application anymore you will most likely bounce into the “deactivate account” option. This only blocks your account temporarily, leaving all your information in their Palo Alto servers. If you want to delete it, it gets more complicated. To find the right option I had to access the Help Center, type “delete” and scroll down the FAQ quite a bit. The link to delete was, in my opinion, kind of hidden. Maybe there’s another easier way but I guess I was not Internet-savvy enough to figure it out

Today personal information is like cash, only (or shall we say, plus?) without inflation: it is precious, it is hard to get, it is desirable. If you must give yours up and spill the beans about your age, lifestyle and interests, at least make it worth your while!

Unless you really need to know who your celebrity boyfriend is.

Just when you taught things were getting a little shaky for world-renowned Swiss privacy, Bern’s government reminds everyone that it’s not that easy to lay hands on the country’s most valuable asset.

After recent settlements between the US, Switzerland and UBS to disclose Irs cheaters, Bern backfires on Google. Well, it’s not really backfire, it’s more about reminding who is in charge for Swiss privacy on Swiss soil, i.e. the Swiss government.

Switzerland has recently signed an agreement with the US government to disclose about 4.500 names of American citizens UBS account holders because of tax evasion charges.

It is important to understand that this is an agreement, meaning that when the most powerful and pushy government in the world attacked the Swiss banking system, Switzerland was nevertheless able to answer back to America.

So some names will be disclosed but strictly after Bern analyzes the paperwork that proves these US citizens with Swiss bank accounts guilty as charged.

But there was no settlement when Google’s Swiss mapping service failed to obscure faces and plates properly yesterday. After the Swiss Street View was released on-line, Hanspeter Thur, from the federal bureau of data protection, required the Mountain View-based giant to stop the service immediately as Swiss privacy laws have not been respected.

The reason was that Google failed to warn citizens about the Google Car transit dates and time and, worst of all, failed to obscure people’s faces and car’s plates.

This has nothing to do with the service’s ban, it is all about respecting local privacy laws and regulations.

One of the biggest scandals was that the face of a Swiss Government’s member was actually photographed while walking around town with his assistant.

Google acted surprised by Switzerland’s reaction, even though it had to admit that the obscuration software is still failing to do its job once in a wile.

While engineers work on getting that one fixed, Switzerland decided it is better to shield its citizens and visitors from Big brother’s indiscrete eye.

Visiting Swiss Fort Knox, Swiss DNA Bank’s storage partner

First comes a nice walk in Gstaad, one of the best-known and more exclusive skiing resorts in Switzerland.

Than comes a short and charming car ride.

Than comes a tiny iron door on the wall of the mountain next to Gstaad’s airport.

And then it’s like being in a James Bond movie. It’s a petty comparison, ok, but it gives the idea.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s officials where looking for a strong data storage partner the key world was: high standard Swiss security.

What can be more Swiss and more secure than a nuclear shelter embedded in the Swiss Alps?

Yes, Swiss Fort Knox data storage center happens to be located inside a former military nuclear shelter. Mr. Christoff Oschwald, one of the two parters which own the company, blended his IT and military background and created this unique server hosting facility.

Prior to the visit, which is privilege for customers and selected press, one must fill a request form. Than getting in is an experience in between boarding an airplane and waiting in line for an adventure Disneyland ride. Only this is for real.

A security guard, which accompanies the visitors throughout the tour, is in charge for ID checking, metal-detector inspection and weighting you. A strange but important procedure: it is the safest and fastest way to check wether you are heavier on your way out - that is, are taking something away from the facility.

Than the James Bond-like part starts: long corridors dug in the bare mountain’s rock lead the way to some times small, some times huge chambers. The servers are located at the heart of the facility and the number of half-a-meter- thick iron doors is impressive.

Swiss DNA Bank’s servers are located in the main server storage area. The environment is constantly cooled down by the water that flows from the glacier on top of the mountain, keeping the the inside temperature ideal for the machine’s well-functioning.

Swiss Fort Knox is a veteran in secure data storage providing, so together with such an infrastructure was Swiss DNA Bank’s obvious partnership choice.

If you are lucky enough to enter the facility, you’ll most likely receive the ultimate treat after the tour: a drink at the sky bar: Gstaad’s airport former control tower, which sticks out of the mountain’s side. Even the finale was really James Bond. I wanted to ask for a Martini, “shaken, not stirred”.

For further information on Swiss Fort Knox’s facility: www.swissfortknox.ch