BT aim to crack down on cable thieves with invisible paint

The company says that theft of the cable has become a growing problem nationwide, as thieves target the copper within the cables to take advantage of rising scrap copper prices. There was a 9% rise in such incidents last year.

... Bernie Auguste, head of security for BT’s local network business Openreach, said: “Any criminal targeting the BT network in the North East now risks being invisibly ‘tagged’ with SmartWater, meaning that the police can trace them, and any stolen cable or equipment, back to the scene of the crime.

Click here for links to copper cable theft problems around the world.

Mark Zuckerberg gets paparazzi treatment

Funny piece in Gawker who decided Mark Zuckerberg was fair game for paparazzi treatment, because: "this is the executive who pushed the private information of Facebook's hundreds of millions of users progressively further into the public sphere".

Photographer Nick Stern followed Zuckerberg over a long weekend around Silicon Valley. Hmmm, he seems to spend a fair amount of time on his phone.

[via Gizmodo]

FBI backs record-keeping on prepaid cell phones

[via Cellular News]

Cell phones save lives in Rwandan villages

Nearly 500 volunteer community health care workers in the rural district of Musanze have been given free phones so they can keep track of all the pregnant women in their villages.

The cell phones are used to register and monitor expecting mothers. If there are any questions, complications or updates, health workers simply send a text to their local clinic and receive a response within minutes.

Rwanda is ranked among the world's worst for maternal mortality. The majority of Rwandan women have their babies at home with untrained midwives. Many die from bleeding or infection, both easily preventable with the right care.

The cell-phone program, or Rapid SMS scheme, was set up in conjunction with various U.N. organizations to bring the number of maternal deaths down.

Read full article.

Related: - Text Messages Save Pregnant Rwandan Women

Android, iPhone apps accessing sensitive data

The explosion of mobile apps on Apple iPhone and Google Android has generally been seen as a good thing but opening up our phones to these devices could lead to vulnerabilities and Lookout is trying to raise awareness of potential security threats. IntoMobile reports.

The company, which makes security and backup software for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, will launch the App Genome Project later this week and this app data set will identify threats and inform customers what type of data apps are accessing.