A Consuming Experience (full feed)

How to network Windows 7 and Vista computers to share files, folders & printers from the Windows 7 PC

2012-01-16T10:09:00.000Z

If you've had trouble networking Windows 7 and Vista computers, and even when you've turned password protection off it keeps asking for a username and password when trying to access files remotely from the Windows 7 PC but won't let you login and says "Network logon failure unknown user name or bad password" or similar, this post suggests some possible solutions. Note that I've only looked at sharing specific folders on a Windows 7 PC to a Vista PC (and not vice versa).

To fix this problem, this is what worked for me, after steps like these didn't work. This gave the clue! Short answer: make sure you've enabled the Guest account, or (better) create an account on the Windows 7 computer for network sharing purposes.

Step by step:

First, make sure you've done all these essential preliminary steps (though I'd leave out the firewall settings for now), ie: put both computers on the same workgroup (any name you want for the workgroup, as long as it's the same for both computers); set their network locations to Home; turned on network discovery, file and printer sharing, and public folder sharing.
Then:
1. EITHER:
  1. in the settings above, turn OFF "Password protected sharing"
  2. turn ON the guest account (it was off on my Windows 7 computer by default)
  3. then, to access shared stuff from the other computer, go to Network (in Computer or Windows Explorer), doubleclick the name of the Windows 7 computer, and when it asks for username and password, just type in 'guest' for the username (or if that doesn't work, try YourWindows7ComputerName\guest), but leave the password blank, tick the box below if you want to save having to re-enter details during the same session, then hit OK.
  4. BIG RED WARNING - note that this is not very secure as it adds a "guest" account onto the Windows 7 computer which anyone can use to access that computer without a password, including accessing attached external hard drives. So, either rename the guest account or (better yet) secure the guest account, which may be a bit involved, or just create a special account on the Windows 7 computer as per 2.2. below, which may be easier.
2. OR, alternatively, and this better for security:
  1. create another account on the Windows 7 computer with username/password, just for networked file and printer sharing
  2. on the other computer, again in Computer or Windows Explorer go to Network and doubleclick the name of the Windows 7 Computer; when the login prompt pops up, enter the username and password you created.
    1. note: the box to tick to remember your credentials shouldn't be there for Vista Home versions, because even if if you tick it, it won't remember your user/password (cached credentials) for network shares, beyond the session. Next time you reboot or restart the Vista computer, you'll just have to enter them all over again if you want to access stuff shared from your Windows 7 computer.
      Easiest workaround: create the special account on the Windows 7 computer with the same username/password as on the Vista computer.
    2. this (go to the "Concealing…" section) shows how to hide the special account from the logon screen on the Windows 7 computer if you wish, so that it's not visible on the Windows 7 PC when you turn it on
  3. Note that the username may need to be in the form "Windows 7 computer name\username" (without the quotes)
  4. In this case, of course, you should turn "Password protected file sharing" in step 1 back to ON.
    
    Now if, after doing that, on the other computer you can see the shared files and folders on the Windows 7 computer, but on trying to open them you can't, and get a message like "The Network Path Cannot be Found - Error code 0x80070035", just try this Netbios fix on the other computer (NOT the Windows 7 one). Step 2 of that worked for me, no reboot needed and no need to tinker with firewalls!

Important - before the other computer can see files etc on the Windows 7 computer, you still have to take some extra steps on the Windows 7 computer first:

Set the properties of the folders or files that you want to share, so that they're Shared.

And don't forget to "Limit the number of simultaneous users" to the maximum number of computers in your network - it defaults to 20!
Also, check your printers to make sure the ones you want to share are shared, and share them if necessary:
1. Go to Start, Devices and Printers
2. Rightclick on the name of the printer you want to share, and go to Printer properties. IMPORTANT: don't go to Properties, don't go to Printing preferences, go to Printer properties!
3. Pick your printer, if more than one, and go to the Sharing tab and tick "Share this printer" - give it an intelligible name, and OK.
4. On the Vista computer, under Network you should now see the printers - just doubleclick on a printer to install it (if necessary).

Outlook 2010 unread messages – how to set font size and colour

2012-01-12T08:16:00.000Z

I'd previously blogged about how to make Outlook 2010 more readable and accessible by increasing font size ie enlarging and emboldening fonts in the different panes, etc

The problem with making the row font bold is that you can't distinguish between read and unread messages easily (unless you kept in the Read column, which I haven't for space reasons). This is because Outlook makes bold the text in Read rows, so if even unread text is bold, you can't tell the difference.

The secret is to set the font of unread emails to a different colour and maybe type, style and size too. In my case I've made them red, but also bold and the same type, size and style as I've made the other text.

To do this, go to the menu View, and click View Settings:

You'll see this:

Now click the "Conditional Formatting" button and you'll see the box below. Left click once on "Unread messages" to select it, then click the Font button, below.

Now you can choose the font type, style, size and colour that you want, and hit OK, OK and OK again.

You can apply this to other folders and sub-folders in your mailbox via the Change View folder – see my previous post on how to set all Outlook folders and sub-folders' view settings to match the current folder's.

Windows Live Writer ribbon and menu disappearing?

2012-01-03T11:06:00.000Z

When I recently moved to Windows 7, even though WLW came pre-installed on my new computer, I found that the ribbon and menus were not there whenever I opened WLW – see the pic above!

How to solve this problem? What worked for me was just click the restore or full size icon at the top right of the window (between the – and the X icons), and then click it again to get back your previous window size, and voila - the ribbon returns!

The fix is straightforward, but this is an annoyance as I have to do it every time I launch Windows Live Writer after starting up my computer. Windows Live Writer is to me the best free blogging software there is – it works for Blogger/Blogspot as well as Wordpress.com and many other blogging platforms - so I hope there's a permanent solution soon.

(And no, it's WLW, not my computer or monitor - the 'ribbon vanishes' issue doesn't happen with any other application, for me.)

Can't find Microsoft Office programs inside Program Files?

2012-01-02T17:07:00.003Z

If you've installed Microsoft Office in Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, and you can't find Office's Winword.exe for Microsoft Word, or other EXE files in the Program Files folder for Excel etc, here's how to find them. They're not actually missing, so you can stop tearing your hair out.

The solution to the problem is this: you may have installed 32-bit Microsoft Office, but the 64 bit Windows system creates two Program Files folders in your C drive - "Program Files", and "Program Files (x86)".

The weird thing is that the "Program Files" folder still contains a "Microsoft Office" folder with "Office14" subfolder (if you have Office 2010, or "Office11" if you're on Office 2007). Which is what threw me at first.

However, those folders will be rather empty - you won't find many Office files within them!

If you want to find the real Office 2010 programs and other Microsoft office files, you will have to look in "Program Files (x86)". It's the "Microsoft Office" subfolder there that you want, probably Office14 (or Office11 for Office 2007).

Some may think this is obvious, but, being new to 64-bit Windows, I missed it at first, and it seems and others have too, so I hope this saves someone else from going mad trying to find the Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc applications inside "Program Files"!

Word 2010, Word 2007 – how to paste plain text without formatting

2011-12-28T10:55:00.002Z

This blog post shows how to change the default settings in Word 2010 or Word 2007 so that whenever you use Ctrl v to paste text into Word from a Webpage, PDF file or other source, it automatically pastes it without the original formatting as unformatted text, getting rid of all the font styles, bold etc formatting from the original source.

Paste Special is what I've always used when pasting text into a Word document. But in Word 2003, it took too many steps to go to menu, Edit, Paste Special, which has always been an annoyance for me.

In Word 2010 and Word 2007, there are two ways to paste text in unformatted form much more easily.

I'll cover both, but I'd recommend the quick way, which I cover first.

The quicker way

Here's how to get to the best way to paste unformatted text in Word 2010 and Word 2007. This way sets your defaults, so that whenever you use the Ctrl v keyboard shortcut to paste text into Word, it automatically pastes it as plain unformatted text.

Apart from the "Set Default Paste" button mentioned above, you can get to the correct settings window by going to the menu File, Options in Word 2010 (in Word 2010, it's the Word graphic at the top left, then Word Options button at the bottom). Now click "Advanced" in the list on the left.

Now go to the "Cut, copy and paste" section, and use the down arrows against the various itmes to set "Keep Text Only". I retain "Keep Source Formatting" when it's pasting within the same document (though I may change that to Keep Text Only as it can be a pain when moving text to footnotes from the main body).

Then OK, and that's it.

In future, Ctrl v will automatically paste without the original font style, size etc. You may still have to edit the spacing etc, but it's a lot less annoying, for me.

How to get rid of paste options popup too

While you're at the Advanced options, if like me you hate with a vengeance the "Paste Options" popup that appears as default in Word whenever you paste anything, and gets in the way by blocking what you're viewing.

You can also get rid of that and stop it popping up all the time.

The slower way

In Word, once you've copied text to clipboard, you can press Ctrl Alt V – then arrow up or down (or keep pressing u) to choose "Unformatted text" or "Unformatted unicode text".

Or in Word 2010, for mouse users, in the Home menu, click the down arrow under the Paste icon on the left of the ribbon.

This gets you to the same box as Ctrl Alt v above. However, there's a better solution here. Once you click the down arrow under Paste, you can click the "A" button show outlined in red below, to paste just the text.

Or, if you rightclick in the body of the document, you get the same Paste Options where you can click the A button.

But better still, click "Set Default Paste". This gets to a window that lets you set options permanently. I'll cover below another way to get to that window, and what to set in it.

For Word 2007, it's similar, but you only get a Paste Special option (which brings up the box where you choose Unformatted text), there's no A button.

How to do this - in the "Show Paste Options button when context is pasted" line also outlined in red above, just UNtick the box and OK.

The slower way

In Word, once you've copied text to clipboard, you can press Ctrl Alt V – then arrow up or down (or keep pressing u) to choose "Unformatted text" or "Unformatted unicode text".

Or in Word 2010, for mouse users, in the Home menu, click the down arrow under the Paste icon on the left of the ribbon.

Or, if you rightclick in the body of the document, you get the same Paste Options where you can click the A button.

But better still, click "Set Default Paste". This gets to a window that lets you set options permanently. I'll cover below another way to get to that window, and what to set in it.

For Word 2007, it's similar, but you only get a Paste Special option (which brings up the box where you choose Unformatted text), there's no A button.

Internet Explorer cookie contents - the new format analysed

2011-09-07T22:07:00.004+01:00

Microsoft changed the way that Internet Explorer cookie files work and randomised cookie filenames, for security reasons; the cookie text files now have random names which don't indicate the name of the website that saved the cookie, and you have to open up each cookie file individually to check what that is.

However, you can still view the contents of all your IE cookies, unmangled, by exporting your cookies to a single cookies.txt file. Then if you open up that cookies.txt file, you can see the cookie info, in a much more comprehensible, intelligible user-friendly format, eg:

Webtrends seems to be used by Microsoft for recording web visitor analytics & statistics info.

I compared the contents of a couple of the new cookies against the cookies.txt versions to try to figure out how they work. I found that if you copy and paste the text from the cookie file into something else (eg a new text document), the info is broken up into separate lines (ie there's hidden new lines to separate the different components of the info).

For example, the contents of a Twitter cookie file named J0R4GWEF.txt, which like the other contents of cookies appeared to run continuously on in the txt file, was split up like this:

guest_id
v1%3A131542058071389408
twitter.com/
214748475215010693123032155316242192030174605*

The cookies.txt equivalent of that was:

twitter.com TRUE / FALSE 1378897943 guest_id v1%3A131542058071389408

So that helps to figure out the new format of the cookie file. The elements seem to be in this order:

variable name (eg "guest_id")
variable value (eg "v1%3A131542058071389408") - the equivalent of the old "guest_id=v1%3A131542058071389408"
domain name (ie the website which set the cookie, eg "twitter.com/")
something I haven't figured out yet (in the example above, it's "214748475215010693123032155316242192030174605") - but it must convert to the expiration date for the variable (ie 1378897943 in the example above), which traditionally is the number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970, and shows up as the "proper" figure in the cookies.txt version. Maybe this long figure also contains other info about the cookie file
* symbol - which marks the end of this variable, and the start of the next variable set by the website, whose name etc follow in the same order.

I worked out the purpose of the * from looking at a single Google cookie file, for example these contents, of a single txt file:

PREF
ID=15025770280c4f56:U=8cbfd7d77ff8ecf4:FF=0:TM=1315398473:LM=1315408615:S=zAzaJeJ5lq1Y-EEk
google.com/
1536
521981312
30321428
744646208
30174577
*
NID
50=IVMzsW2RssDmmdt21XYqM-m6GMBe731GqCispetEG495dEdHdl_tlLqIv8h8tINpCg1kI2lgsAgLheW-TVQzbGoBoiHfBjSJuhOPJSEfWVNTw-H-_Nt16tyNCyIL2zCf
google.com/
9728
2103298560
30211390
722926208
30174577
*

- showed up in the cookies.txt file as this:

google.com TRUE / FALSE 1378844158 PREF ID=15025770280c4f56:U=8cbfd7d77ff8ecf4:FF=0:TM=1315398473:LM=1315408615:S=zAzaJeJ5lq1Y-EEk

google.com TRUE / FALSE 1331583355 NID 50=IVMzsW2RssDmmdt21XYqM-m6GMBe731GqCispetEG495dEdHdl_tlLqIv8h8tINpCg1kI2lgsAgLheW-TVQzbGoBoiHfBjSJuhOPJSEfWVNTw-H-_Nt16tyNCyIL2zCf

Final example, from a Facebook cookie:

eLlnTol8k9yayreWIGxF-h6m
facebook.com/
2147492864
3767864320
30321455
3978419216
30174604
*
translates to:

facebook.com TRUE / FALSE 1378856079 datr eLlnTol8k9yayreWIGxF-h6m
datr

I've not yet worked out how the name of the cookie text file relates to anything in its contents (which no doubt is part of the purpose of the security fix!), so you still can't tell which file was set by which site without opening up each file. The order of info in the cookies.txt document doesn't match the order of the dates that the cookies were created or modified, and they're not in alphabetical order of domain name either. But at least it's possible to check out all the contents of all cookie files at once.

Internet Explorer cookie names change

2011-09-07T11:10:00.006+01:00

Worried that your cookie filenames have changed to incomprehensible random strings of letters and numbers? No need. Microsoft has, for security reasons, changed the way IE cookies are named. This is to improve security and reduce "cookiejacking", addressing one way in which attackers might be able to access your cookies (which could include your login information etc).

Side effects: some apps depending on the old cookies names system broke, eg CCleaner and WinPatrol. Also, it's now harder for users to figure out which cookies were set by which websites, as you can't tell the website name from the cookie name anymore. You have to open up the cookie file to check.

However, other browsers like Firefox aren't affected by the change - it's Internet Explorer only.

Old cookie names structure

Internet Explorer cookies used to have filenames with the structure: yourcomputerloginname@partialdomainname.txt eg johnsmith@microsoft.txt (or johnsmith@msdn.microsoft[2].txt etc).

IE cookies are typically located in your AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies folder (to find the AppData folder, click Start, in the search box type "appdata" without the quotes and hit Enter. If that doesn't work try "%AppData%" again without the quotes which may go straight to the "Roaming" subfolder).

The security hole, and update

However, in August Microsoft released a Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (2559049) which (according to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-057) addresses a "Drag and Drop Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2011-2383" which existed because IE (all versions) didn't properly restrict access to store cookie files.

In more detail for the techies, before the update Internet Explorer did not "properly restrict cross-zone drag-and-drop actions, which allows user-assisted remote attackers to read cookie files via vectors involving an IFRAME element with a SRC attribute containing an http: URL that redirects to a file: URL, as demonstrated by a Facebook game, related to a "cookiejacking" issue".

This vulnerability meant that "An attacker who exploited the vulnerability when a user views a Web page and performs a drag-and-drop operation could gain access to cookie files stored in the local machine."

What the security fix changes

To fix the vulnerability, this update modified how Internet Explorer accesses locally stored cookies, and how it manages cookie files. These changes included changing how Internet Explorer sets file names for cookies, to help make cookie file names less predictable.

Reportedly this change has been seen in several Windows operating systems, ie XP, Vista and Windows 7, and several versions of Internet Explorer including IE8 and IE9 (which would make sense as Microsoft's info says the vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 9 and previous versions).

A Microsoft blog explained the change - see the "Cookie Filenames are Randomized" heading. It's now harder for attackers to guess the location of a particular cookie as IE cookie files are now named "using a randomly-generated alphanumeric string. Cookies are not instantly renamed on [the security] upgrade, but are instead renamed as soon as any update to the cookie’s data occurs."

Consequences of the cookie name change

Now, cookie names look like this:

As mentioned earlier, certain software depending on the old system doesn't work anymore, and will have to be tweaked.

From the viewpoint of those protective of their privacy, while you can't see the website's name from looking at the cookie filename, you can still see it if you open up the cookie in Notepad or other text editor.

For example, here's the contents of cookies saved by Microsoft when I visited and then re-visited their webpage about the cookie change. You can see "microsoft" in there:

And here's the contents of a cookie saved by Google when I searched for info on the cookie change using the search box in Internet Explorer. Again, you can see "google.com" in there, although the filename is now "25Z1H29G.txt", and no longer mylogin@google.txt:

For more details of how it seems to work behind the scenes, I've done a separate blog post on how to view the contents of your Internet Explorer cookies in a more user-friendly way.

How to batch crop JPEG photos, scans, images

2011-09-04T19:47:00.009+01:00

Here's how to crop a bunch of JPEGs with the free JPEGCrops (Windows), which I used where I needed to chop half an inch (of printer-ink-wasting-black) off the top edge of one set of scanned music score pages, and half an inch off the bottom edge of another set (where I'd turned the book upside down to scan those pages). I couldn't find a proper howto, so here's my step by step.

Cropping multiple files in a batch saves having to open, crop and save each JPEG individually. You just set the edges of the first image (where you want it to be cropped to), and the rest of the photos or pics can automatically be set to the same dimensions.

If all the unwanted bits are on the same part of every image, eg always the left margin or always the bottom margin, you can use the excellent free PDFill PDFTools. My problem was that for some images I needed to crop one edge, and for others another edge, so I couldn't do that - hence JPEGCrops.

I couldn't get JPEGCrops to work fully at first, so here's my step by step tutorial, including all the basic stuff most people skate over:

Download, install and open JPEGCrops. It's a bit blank looking, but that'll change.
See the folder name in the bottom right? That's the folder into which the software will automatically save the cropped images, in my case "C:\Users\myloginname\Cropped". You can change the location of that folder via the menu File > Select Output Dir to choose another folder, but obviously you need to do that before you crop the images in question.
Go to menu File > Preferences and choose your Default Aspect and OK. In my case, as I'm in the UK, it's A4 - your mileage may vary. Feel free to experiment and change it for each set of images and see how it looks.

(The Preferences box is weird on my system, many buttons aren't visible, probably something to do with my system.)
Now in JPEGCrops open up the pics that you need to crop. There are 2 possible ways -
1. use the menu File > Open Images (or click the "Open Images" button at the bottom left), then navigate to the folder containing your JPEGs, then select the files you want; you can select several files by holding down the Ctrl key as you click on the ones you want, and click Open, or
2. in Windows Explorer or Computer, navigate to the right folder, select the images you want (again Ctrl and clicking, or the Spacebar key for hotkey fans, does the trick), and drag the selected images into the JPEGCrops window.
Your selected images should now all be in JPEGCrops. Look at the first pic. You'll see parts of it are greyed out, and parts of it are more clearly visible with a white background. The cropping will get rid of the greyed out bits.
Depending on your situation, you may want to UNtick the "Flip aspect" button, as I did, to get a proper Portrait view:
There are white horizontal and vertical bars around the clearly visible bit. You'd drag these with your mouse to outline the area of the JPEG that you want to keep. But don't do that just yet!
This is the step I missed: first, go to the Edit menu, make sure "Synchronize Crops" is ticked (it isn't in the pic below), by selecting it if necessary.

This is to make sure that the crops etc you make to one image will automatically be done to all the others you opened in JPEGCrops. Otherwise you have to tediously do them one by one, which kinda defeats the purpose of using "batch" image editing software!
Now that sync is on, you can drag the white bars to outline the part of the image that you want to keep. There are right and left curly arrows at the bottom left which you can use if you also want to rotate all images at once.
Once you've done the edits, it's a good idea to scroll down through all the images in JPEGCrops to check that the correct parts are outlined in all the images. This is to avoid cutting important bits off the occasional image, especially if you haven't scanned them all in exactly the same way and sometimes had the book (or whatever) a few millimetres off.

You may find you have to tweak some of the edges one way or the other, so that you have the sections you need outlined in all the pages. Worse comes to worse, you could untick the synchronisation, then tweak it just for a particular problem image or two.
When all set, click the "Crop all images" button (NOT the "Crop" button):
It automatically crops them and saves the cropped images in a new folder, the folder mentioned in step 2. (You can open that folder quickly by clicking in the box, selecting the folder path info and copying it into clipboard, then pasting it into your Windows Explorer address bar.)
In my case, I then repeated this with a different set of JPGs where I needed to crop a different edge off. Then I stitched the cropped images together into a single PDF file for ease of printing, rather than having to print each cropped image one by one - PDFill Tools works great for that too (it's the "Convert Images to PDF" button, then drag and drop the image files, and reorder images in the list if necessary).

LinkedIn privacy - change your settings with fewer clicks

2011-08-14T20:14:00.008+01:00

If you're a member of business networking site LinkedIn and don't want your name or profile photo used for "social advertising" to endorse products or services on LinkedIn, you have to opt out. Here's a "howto".

How to opt out of social advertising on LinkedIn

The quickest way to opt out is:

click this link
login to LinkedIn with your username/password (if you aren't already logged in)
in the "Manage Social Advertising" box that pops up, UNtick the box against "LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising"
click "Save".

Below are some further privacy-preserving steps you can take on LinkedIn.

How to protect your privacy on LinkedIn - shortcuts to other options

Other steps you may wish to take, while you're signed in to LinkedIn, are as follows:

data sharing with third party applications - click this link to opt out; UNtick the box, then click "Save changes":
"enhanced advertising" - click this link to opt out, again UNtick the box, save changes
who can see your profile pic - click this link to control the options
what info is shown on your public profile - click this link to control display of info from your profile in search engine results
how your name is displayed - click this link to change this; under "Basic Information", "Name", there's a "Display Name" option - select the last one to hide your surname (just the initial is shown), remembering to save the changes:
can others find out that you've viewed their profile? - click this link to control this; the first option allows people (if they've also enabled this) to see that you have checked them out! Some might want to show just their organisation, or prefer to be "totally anonymous":
email preferences - click this link to check and change eg who can send you LinkedIn invites
correcting or deleting info about you - click this link to contact LinkedIn

I've just linked to some of the key settings which may be relevant to those concerned about their privacy, because while the direct links are given in LinkedIn's privacy policy they're difficult to track down amongst the thickets of LinkedIn's long and winding privacy policy.

There are more options that you may want to check out, eg invitations to participate in research - see below on LinkedIn settings.

LinkedIn settings - the longwinded way

It's via your Settings page that you can opt out of social advertising on LinkedIn, and also other settings which may intrude on your privacy,

To access Settings, the quickest way is to click this link, then login if necessary.

Alternatively:

Login to LinkedIn.
At the top right, hover over your name or the down arrow by it, and click "Settings":
Enter your password again if required.

The different types of Settings are listed at the bottom left, grouped into 4 sections:

Profile;
Email Preferences;
Groups, Companies and Applications; and
Account.

The "social advertising" opt-out is accessible by clicking the Account link, then "Manage Social Advertising" -

You might want to look at the other links too.

For example under the "Profile" section is "Select what others see when you've viewed their profile".

And the "Groups, Companies & Applications" section is where you can turn off data sharing with apps (although the link I gave above is the quickest way to get there).

Similarly, controlling the display of your name is under the Profile section (Edit your name etc):

More info

LinkedIn's changed privacy policy, which was announced in June 2011, says that (I added the bold):

"In order to deliver relevant and valuable ads to you and your network, LinkedIn may use your name and profile photo in connection with social advertising based on content shared on LinkedIn. This advertising may include the fact that you have recommended or endorsed a product or service on LinkedIn, followed a company, joined Groups or conversations, established or added content to your profile, etc., and will only be displayed to your LinkedIn network."

After criticism of its social advertising changes by security firm Sophos and others, LinkedIn said that they now won't initially show photos against ads, and will just show the number of people in your network who like that product etc.

Here's LinkedIn's "before outcry" and "after outcry" mockups, from their blog post:

However one important issue is still not very clear, as one commenter pointed out. When you click on the "X people in your network" link, what happens? Does it at that stage then show the names or photo of the exact people concerned? Who knows, so some people may well want to opt out anyway, just in case.

Freedom of information requests by Twitter!

2011-08-12T10:15:00.000+01:00

You can tweet a freedom of information request to public authorities, the Information Commissioner has said. Even referring to the authority's name in an @mention may be effective.

However, for a FOIA request to be valid, you have to:

give your real name, or at least link to it (eg in your Twitter profile) - a pseudonym isn't considered good enough, and
provide an "address for correspondence".

The Information Commissioner asked, but didn't directly answer, the question: does "address for correspondence" include Twitter names?

I'd argue that in the internet age it does, because people can reach you and correspond with you via your Twitter name. (Or indeed via email addresses.)

Furthermore, the Information Commissioner has said, "The authority could ask the requester for an email address in order to provide a full response. Alternatively, it could publish the requested information, or a refusal notice, on its website and tweet a link to that".

All this is good news for transparency, freedom of information and open government generally, and may perhaps be a lesson to those public authorities who are only willing to provide a postal address or a long online web form for accepting freedom of information requests. If they won't provide an email address for FOI requests, then tweet requests to them, some may say…!

If all public authorities were to make available on their websites an easy to find email address for accepting freedom of information requests from the public, it would be so much better for everyone concerned.

All this may perhaps be less good news for staff at public authorities who may now have to monitor tweets. Or maybe they'll just decide to terminate their Twitter accounts…

Note - this is only for England/Wales/Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own Scottish Information Commissioner, who may (or may not) share the Information Commissioner's view.

Via Computers & Law.