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'There is NO SUCH THING as a safe site anymore' – security bod

Plus: Heard the one about Tim Cook's liver? It'll make you shiver. Brrr

QuoTW This week we broke our PCs, debated the merits of a $17,000 watch, and scored a free logic board from the Beeb.

Here are the best quotes we picked up along the way …

AVG CEO Gary Kovacs had some good advice for vendors on simplifying their privacy guidelines to keep users better informed on consent:

Get your privacy policy down to one page in a language that everybody understands. We are going to show our new mobile privacy policy on one mobile page. Lawyers vetted it, so we can do it. We operate in almost every country around the world. There is no excuse, as an industry we are just lazy.

The good people at toy manufacturer Mattel would be advised to consider that idea.

The company's talking Barbie doll has now become the subject of legal complaints. Among those concerned was Georgetown University law professor Angela Campbell, who offered the following thought, if she had a young sprog of her own:

I would be very concerned that my child's intimate conversations with her doll were being recorded and analysed.

Elsewhere, we learned that Tim Cook probably got the top spot at Apple by turning the sucking-up-to-the-boss skill up to 11. When the iThing maker's co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs was gravely ill, Cook apparently offered Jobs a piece of his own liver. Saint Steve forcefully turned down Cook's noble gesture:

Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them.

Sticking to the, er, kitchen theme, celeb chef Jamie Oliver was this week accused of slinging more than hash. The mockney cook's site was found to be serving up hearty portions of steaming malware. Over to Malwarebytes researcher Jérôme Segura for this chilling turkey twizzler:

There is no such thing as a 'safe' site anymore. We have documented time and time again on this blog malicious advertisements as well as site hacks that affect well-known brands just the same as smaller sites.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been trying to shed light on Uncle Sam's spying activity. The org has sued in an effort to reveal the location of data-gathering fake cell towers. The rights' bod argued:

In order to protect both privacy and First Amendment rights, the law needs to keep up with technology. The government must be open about the use of these powerful tools, and put in place rules on their usage to protect people’s Fourth Amendment rights and to prevent abuse.

If hacking phones wasn't worrisome enough, now there's the prospect of having your $17,000 fanboi armslab pwned as well. Tripwire security researcher Ken Westin floated the possibility of the Apple Watch becoming a target for hackers:

Given the fact that it is a high profile device which will have wide adoption, you can bet security researchers and hackers alike will be poking and prodding the watch to find new vulnerabilities as well as take advantage of existing attack vectors leveraging weaknesses in both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Holy organ donation!

Finally, we wrap up the week with this gem from one Bill Gates, celebrating the 20th anniversary of what might have been the software giant's worst product EVER: Microsoft Bob.

We intentionality chose to use non-human figures in this first generation because we didn't want people to think that we had been able to build the intelligence of another person into that character.

Don't worry, Bill. Nobody ever associated Microsoft Bob with intelligence. ®

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