Throughout history, there have been a number of reasons why individuals have taken to writing or producing art under a pseudonym. In the 18th century, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay took on the pseudonym Publius to publish The Federalist Papers. In 19th century England, pseudonyms allowed women—like the Brontë sisters, who initially published under Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell—to be taken seriously as writers. Today, pseudonyms continue to serve a range of individuals, and for a variety of reasons. At EFF, we view anonymity as both a matter of free speech and privacy, but in light of International Privacy Day, January 28, this piece will focus mainly on the latter, looking at the ways in which the right to anonymity—or pseudonymity—is truly a matter of privacy.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) unveiled draft legislation Monday requiring mobile-phone carriers to reveal if they are employing tracking software such as Carrier IQ. “Consumers have the right to know and to say ‘no’ to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said in The Hill.

A New York airport screener who removed two pipes from a traveler’s bag and set them aside Monday morning prompted a security scare six hours later when the next shift saw the pipes and feared they might be pipe bombs, local and federal officials said. The incident at New York’s LaGuardia Airport began at 11:30 a.m. when a screener discovered unidentifiable items inside a passenger’s carry-on bag. The officer screened the item for explosives, determined them not to be a threat and cleared the passenger through the checkpoint, a Transportation Security Administration official said.

The mastermind of a carding gang in Georgia devised a novel way for weeding out undercover Feds from his operation — he forced members to have group sex, according to a local police detective who helped bust the ring. Vikas Yadav, an Indian national who was deported in 2010, recruited other carders and mules through sadomasochism web sites, forcing would-be accomplices to have group sex with other men and women while Yadav videotaped them, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

The widespread use, especially in US credit cards, of RFID chips which can be read through clothing or wallets for contactless payments can lead to cards being read without the owners knowledge or permission. At the Shmoocon security conference held in Washington D.C., US business magazine Forbes reports that Kristin Paget impressively demonstrated the ability to read data on RFID chipped credit cards and make a payment that hadn’t been authorised by the card owner. However, credit card manufacturers don’t think that there is an increased risk.

A Wikileaks-style war of attrition between two competing rogue Internet pharmacy gangs has exposed some of the biggest spammers on the planet. The latest casualties? Several individuals likely responsible for running Grum, currently the world’s most active spam botnet. Grum is the top spam botnet, according to M86Security In the summer of 2010, hackers stole and leaked the database for SpamIt and Glavmed, sister programs that paid people to promote fly-by-night online pharmacies. According to that data, the second-most successful affiliate in SpamIt was a member nicknamed “GeRa.” Over a 3-year period, GeRa’s advertisements and those of his referrals resulted in at least 80,000 sales of knockoff pharmaceuticals, brought SpamIt revenues of in excess of $6 million, and earned him and his pals more than $2.7 million.

Google announced Tuesday that it will revamp its privacy policy and terms of service, boiling more than 60 privacy policies down to one comprehensive document that will extend across most of their products. Under the new policy all information entered by users via Google will be indexed together. Google is claiming the shift will help its users search and offer spelling and contextual suggestions. Users should also expect to see a bevy of new, specifically targeted ads catered to their recent searches. Google Books, Wallet and Chrome will be excluded from the policy makeover for legal reasons.

It’s now been a few months since the launch of Google , and it’s now fairly clear that it’s not a mortal threat to Facebook, or even Orkut. I think it’s worth thinking a bit about why Google isn’t doing better, despite its many advantages. Obviously, Google wants to link Google profiles to things in the physical world that matter to its paying customers: advertisers. To me, the most interesting part is how the real name issue acted as a lens, focusing attention on Google’s plans for the service, the horse-trade Google is asking people to make, and Google’s weighting of a communications platform versus having an online Disneyland where nothing offensive is allowed.

Nearly four months after first announcing it would support pseudonyms, Google rolled out changes to the account creation process for Google yesterday. The changes will allow users the option of choosing a nickname/alternate name to display in his or her Google profile, or choosing a pseudonym which is not linked a real name. Nicknames address the needs of users who want to display the alternate name they may be known by, or a maiden name, as well as foreign-language users who want to use an alternate name. Users who select a nickname should note, however, that Google plans to roll out nicknames to other services, so that funny college nickname you use on Google might appear on your professional Picasa account one day.

HP TippingPoint, the long-time sponsor of the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest, has dramatically revamped the challenge and will be awarding a first prize of $60,000 this year, four times 2011’s top reward. Google will also significantly increase the money it potentially will pay to people able to hack its Chrome browser at the contest. Pwn2Own will take place over a three-day stretch in early March at the Vancouver, British Columbia-based CanSecWest security conference.

In a surprise filing made late Monday, Microsoft said a former technical expert at a Russian antivirus firm was the person responsible for operating the Kelihos botnet, a global spam machine that Microsoft dismantled in a coordinated takedown last year. Andrey Sabelnikov In a post to the Official Microsoft Blog, the company identified 31-year-old Andrey N. Sabelnikov of St. Petersburg, Russia as responsible for the operations of the botnet. Microsoft’s amended complaint (PDF) filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia states that Sabelnikov worked as a software engineer and project manager at a company that provided firewall, antivirus and security software.

Shoe retailer Zappos.com and its parent company, Amazon.com, are being sued for exposing customer data in a breach affecting some 24 million customers. According to an Associated Press report on the lawsuit against Zappos, a Texas woman has taken the lead in the Kentucky lawsuit, alleging that she and millions of other customers were harmed by the release of personal account information.

In a decision that was closeley watched by civil liberties group and the technology industry, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that GPS tracking devices constitute a “search” and that authorities must obtain a warrant before placing one on a suspect’s vehicle. In a rare 9-0 vote, the Court ruled in United States vs. Jones that federal authorities who placed a GPS tracking device on an automobile belonging to an alleged drug dealer without a valid warrant violated the Constitution’s 4th Amendment right to protection from unlawful search and seizure.

Attackers were able to compromise a database at DreamHost, a large hosting provider, late last week and the company is forcing all of its customers to change their passwords for their FTP and shell accounts as a precautionary measure. DreamHost did not provide many details about what happened in the incident, only saying that they “detected some unauthorized activity within one of our databases.” The company, which is based in Brea, Calif., said that it doesn’t have any evidence that the customer password database itself was accessed and the passwords were compromised, it is pushing through a process to change all of the passwords. The password change process was completed over the weekend.

Mozilla’s BrowserID project, which aims to provide a simpler, more portable decentralised login and identity management platform, has moved forward with its first deployment within the non-profit organisation. Launched in July 2011, BrowserID is Mozilla’s alternative to the somewhat stalled OpenID initiative. Over the new year, Mozilla rolled out a non-localised, English-only, version of BrowserID to a number of development sites: Mozilla Apps Developer Preview, Firefox Affiliates, Mozillians, Add-on Builder and Mozilla Developer Network. The sites were selected because they were predominantly English-speaking or only available in English.