By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A NASA employee is off the job because of what he posted on his blog.

Federal Computer Week reports the man — a worker at Johnson Space Center in Houston — made posts soliciting donations and campaigning for political candidates on company time. He’s also accused of sending non-work-related emails while on the clock.

NASA has suspended him without pay for 180 days, according to FCW. They say his actions violated the Hatch Act, a policy that governs political activity of government-funded employees.

This serves as a reminder for us all: The things you type on a work computer are not private. Just last week, a study by research agency ProofPoint found 41 percent of all large American companies have staff members in place to monitor outgoing messages. Half of those staffers have no other responsibilities outside of watching what you do. And it’s not just the big corporations playing big brother, either; about 30 percent of all companies, small or large, admit to the same.

Some other interesting numbers from the report:

• Eleven percent of all U.S. companies say they’ve taken disciplinary action specifically related to blogging or message board posting.
• Thirteen percent have punished workers for spending time on social networks.
• More than a quarter of the companies doing monitoring have fired someone because of what they found. Adult-oriented content is the most common violation.

Yikes. Guess I’ll have to switch over to oggling co-workers instead of internet babes. That’s still allowed, right?

By Mark O’Neill

One of the things I really appreciate in life is seeing the cocky arrogant people being taken down a peg or two. I can’t begin to describe how satisfying that is and I hope this guy gets to eat his humble pie very soon.

Todd Davis owns a fraud-prevention company called LifeLock and this company sells “comprehensive fraud protection”. What this basically boils down to is that he charges people $10 a month to set fraud alerts with credit bureaus so that if someone suddenly goes on a credit spending spree, the credit bureaus are alerted and the person in question is also alerted. Helpful if you’re not the one who has been doing the spending, so you can then shut down the credit line and stop the person who has stolen your identity.

By the way, Davis is actually charging people for something that can be done for free – and he knows it.

The reason why Davis is making me laugh is because he tried to prove how effective his service was by widely advertising his Social Security number in all his advertisements. In fact he dared people to steal it. He wanted people to try and steal his identity so his fraud alerts would get set off and he could boast about how super his service was.

So all the villains decided to take him up on his offer and his fraud alerts failed him big time.

There have been at least 87 attempts to steal his identity, including 20 driving license applications. One guy successfully got a $500 loan and now Davis is stuck with repaying it. Unhappy Lifelock customers are now suing him because the fraud alerts didn’t work for them either, a lawyer is trying to get a class-action suit going, and to top it all, the Experian credit bureau is suing Davis in California for “deception” and “abuse”.

Oh and by the way, Todd Davis’s Social Security number is still on Lifelock’s website. Does this guy never learn?

Via Wired