My 'interesting reads' roundup (weekly)

• I challenged hackers to investigate me, and what they found out was chilling

  "What I learned is that virtually all of us are vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping and are easy hack targets. Most of us have adopted the credo "security by obscurity," but all it takes is a person or persons with enough patience and know-how to pierce anyone's privacy - and, if they choose, to wreak havoc on your finances and destroy your reputation."

  tags: Privacy hacking

• Police blunder sees Oxford Mail and BBC identify wrong man as rapist | Press Gazette

  A fairly rare occurrence but when it goes wrong, it goes wrong "The BBC and a regional newspaper illustrated a court case of a man pleading to rape and firearms charges with a photograph of the wrong man after it was supplied to them by the local police force. "

  tags: police identity

• Who is Veronika? – Metro

  For six years,Veronika Larsson used social media to get into political discussions, books, respected newspapers and casual chitchat. Except she doesn't exist. This is a great read, not just about how guarded media should be when dealing with online personas, but also of how a journalist painstakingly unearthed the real people behind the fakery.

  tags: comments identity online+persona

• Reporters of the future: Only quick thinkers need apply | David Higgerson

  I wish I'd been quick thinking enough to write this post - it's spot-on. You can teach law, and how to shoot video on a mobile, and even how to behave on social media - but someone who knows how to think on their feet? That is journalism gold. "There’s another skill emerging which was maybe always essential, but is now as important as accuracy: Quick thinking. Anyone can be a journalist now – or, to save an argument, share news online like a journalist – but the successful ones will be the ones who think quickly. Maybe that was always the case, especially in newsrooms with multiple editions in days gone by. But now a journalist doesn’t need to just write quickly, they need to source quickly, sift quickly, verify quickly and, most importantly, capture the evidence quickly."

  tags: future journalism

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.