BBC: Adobe issues emergency Flash Player fix

24 June 2015  BBC

Flash is a commonly used browser plug-in

Adobe has released an emergency software patch for Flash after it found a serious vulnerability being exploited by hackers.
The company said it had evidence of "limited, targeted attacks" and urged people to update their software immediately.

Flash is widely used across the web as a way of providing multimedia content.

This vulnerability - which enables hackers to take control of a computer - affects Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

Users can check if their installation of Flash is up to date by visiting the Adobe website - the current latest version is 18.0.0.194.

People who browse the internet with the latest versions of Google's Chrome browser and Microsoft's Internet Explorer should find that Flash is upgraded automatically.

Holes
Adobe's Flash software has a long history of needing security fixes and is regarded by some security researchers as a weak point in many websites.

Along with Java, Flash is routinely targeted by hackers making use of zero-day exploits - the term given to previously unknown security holes.

This was partly because of its ubiquity, said Mark James, a security specialist from ESET.

"Since Flash is such a widely used plug-in, it stands to reason that it will be one of the most targeted apps for vulnerability," he said.

"If you want to affect as many people as possible, then you need an application that a lot of users use, and Flash is one of them."

Security blogger Brian Krebs recently disabled Flash on his machine entirely, as an experiment.

On his blog, he wrote: "It might be worth considering whether you really need to keep Flash Player installed at all."

Gmail enables “unsend” option for all users

Had existed as "Labs" option for six years; no other major webmail service offers it.


by Sam Machkovech - Jun 23, 2015 2:10pm PDT Ars Technica


Whew, that was close.
Sam Machkovech
More than any other Google offering, Gmail has been bolstered for years with a range of weird options tucked away in a "Labs" tab in the settings screen. On Tuesday, one of the webmail provider's most interesting Labs options, "undo send," graduated to official status.

With the option, Gmailers get the chance to click an "undo send" link at the top of the screen after clicking "send" on any e-mail message. As with the original Labs version, the option, which now lives in the service's "general" settings tab, lets users pick a safety timespan between 5-30 seconds. Messages won't actually send until that time runs out, unless a user clicks the "view message" tab next to "undo," at which point a message will immediately whisk through the Internet's many tubes and reach its recipient.

The six-year-old option, which won't be turned on for the general public by default, had previously lived in Gmail's Labs tab, so if users wanted to enable it, they had to bypass a stark warning about "experimental" features that could "change, break, or disappear at any time." Major competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail have yet to offer a similar option.

"Undo send" wasn't actually Labs' most stark "whoops, didn't mean to send that" option; that honor belongs to 2008's Mail Goggles, which made users solve math problems before they could click send on late-night e-mails. Sadly, that drunk-send-prevention option was discontinued in 2012 with little fanfare.

CETF 2015 Annual Survey of California Digital Divide

www.cetfund.org



The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) is pleased to share with you the results of the
2015 Annual Survey on broadband adoption in California that was released yesterday. The Annual Survey is sponsored by CETF and conducted by the Field Research Corporation in 6 languages with a sample size in excess of 1,600 randomly-selected households (50% by cell phone and a margin of error + 2.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level). The results show that progress is being made in closing the Digital Divide with 79% of all California households now having high-speed connections at home to the Internet (8% by smart phone only), but there is still much work to be done because unacceptable percentages of disadvantaged populations remain offline—35% of low-income households (below $20,000 annual income); 30% of Latino families (37% Spanish-speaking); and 41% of people with disabilities. It is important to keep in mind that the Digital Divide is just another manifestation of the Opportunity Divide and Economic Divide, and that those who are stuck on the wrong side of the Digital Divide—urban low-income neighborhoods and remote rural communities—are faced with a multitude of challenges in daily life that CETF calls the “wall of poverty” that must be tackled with strategic interventions to improve education coupled with workforce preparation and economic development.

The Annual Survey information is very timely as the Federal Communications Commission takes up tomorrow the issue of a Broadband Lifeline Program, State policymakers continue to explore how best to tackle poverty, and local governments continue to struggle to balance budgets and generate jobs. The data underscores the need to incorporate Digital Inclusion into all major initiatives to promote economic prosperity and quality of life in California.

Please feel free to distribute the results of the 2015 Annual Survey, post it on your own website and/or link to the CETF website http://www.cetfund.org/progress/annualsurvey, and reference the data as you find useful. We look forward to continuing to work together to close the Digital Divide in California. Thank you for your commitment and leadership.

Sunne Wright McPeak
President and CEO
California Emerging Technology Fund

San Francisco votes to expand computer science education across all grades

Donations from Salesforce charity will fund the new program from pre-school onward.

Ars Technica by Cyrus Farivar - Jun 10, 2015 4:25pm PDT

This is the view from George Washington High School, in San Francisco.

Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose

FURTHER READING

WASHINGTON LAWMAKERS WANT COMPUTER SCIENCE TO COUNT AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE

If bill passes, two years of comp sci would count toward university admission.

Within a few years, every single student in the San Francisco Unified School District will be studying computer science, at all grade levels.

The city’s Board of Education unanimously approved the measure during its weekly meeting on Tuesday evening.

"Information technology is now the fastest growing job sector in San Francisco, but too few students currently have access to learn the Computer Science skills that are crucial for such careers," Board President Emily Murase said in a statementon Wednesday. "We are proud to be at the forefront of creating a curriculum that will build on the knowledge and skills students will need starting as early as preschool."

According to the district, computer science classes are relatively rare across the United States.

"Currently, no national, state, or local standards exist for Computer Science and the academic research in Computer Science education is quite limited," the board wrote. "As such, a cohesive progression of Computer Science knowledge and skills does not yet exist."

The effort is going to be largely funded by the Salesforce Foundation, a charitable wing of the company.

At present, only a "few hundred" San Francisco public school students took the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam in Spring 2014. Of those, just 22 percent were women, and three percent were African American, Latino or Native American.

How exactly will San Francisco’s preschool set get in on the action? SFUSD says they "will most likely be using blocks to build robots, to introduce the concepts of procedural thinking, cause and effect, decomposition of complex tasks, pattern recognition as well as the ability to notice similarities or common differences, abstraction and algorithm design and the ability to develop a step-by-step strategy for solving a problem."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "employment of computer and information research scientists is projected to grow 15 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations."

The median salary nationwide in the industry is just over $102,000—likely higher in the competitive and increasingly-expensive San Francisco Bay Area.

BBC: 'Moose' malicious worm targets home routers

28 May 2015 BBC

Medical equipment may also be vulnerable to attacks by the Moose worm, warn security experts
A malicious worm that targets poorly protected home routers has been uncovered by security researchers.
The "moose" malware tries to take over home routers by trying thousands of weak passwords.

Once it has taken over a device, the worm grabs login details when people visit Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other social sites.

These credentials are then used to artificially inflate followers and viewer numbers.

"This threat is all about social network fraud," said researchers Olivier Bilodeau and Thomas Dupuy from security firm Eset in a report detailing their findings.
Aggressive attack

The malicious program got its name because the file containing its attack code is called elan - French for moose.

The malicious worm travels the internet "aggressively" seeking out vulnerable devices. So far, said the pair, some of the routers made by Actiontec, Hik Vision, Netgear, Synology, TP-Link, ZyXEL, and Zhone have been found to be vulnerable to moose.

In their analysis, the two researchers saw the worm being used to set up bogus accounts on social network sites and then use stolen credentials to add fake "likes" and "follows" to those accounts.

Fake likes and follows for Twitter, Vine and Instagram accounts were added via moose
Instagram, Twitter and Vine were the three sites most widely abused by this bogus liking system, said the researchers.

The pair said it was hard to gauge the exact numbers of routers that had been compromised because of the steps moose's creators took to prevent detection. In addition, they said, the company hosting the command-and-control system for moose were very uncooperative.

Despite these problems, the researchers estimate that tens of thousands of routers are potentially vulnerable to moose and many of those devices might already be infected. Moose was first spotted in mid-2014 and has been active ever since, said Mr Bilodeau and Mr Dupuy.

They added that the weak passwords that moose exploited were used on many different devices not just home routers. They warned that medical equipment and smart home systems might also be susceptible to infection by moose.

In their analysis, the researchers gave advice about how to spot moose and said people should update default login systems to avoid its attentions.

US House passes Bill to end domestic NSA bulk data collection

Summary:American residents could soon be exempt from the NSA's dragnet, unless surveillance is approved by the secretive FISA court, with the USA Freedom Act passing the US House of Representatives and heading to the Senate.

By Chris Duckett | May 14, 2015 -- 07:04 GMT (00:04 PDT)
ZDNet

The US House of Representatives has voted 338 for and 88 against ending the NSA's dragnet collection of telephone, email, and other online data from millions of Americans, a controversial program that was revealed in 2013 by former security contractor Edward Snowden.

The USA Freedom Act is seen as a big win for privacy and civil rights advocates. The White House backs the reforms, saying the Bill protects privacy while preserving essential national security authorities.

After passing the House, the measure is now heading for a vote in the Senate, where the clash between reformists and supporters of the intelligence community, coming within the context of warnings on the increasing digital reach of the Islamic State terror group, transcends party lines.

Both liberals and staunch conservatives, often at odds on most major legislation, have united in opposition against domestic spying by the National Security Agency.

The Bill, which focuses on people in the US and not overseas, would amend controversial sections of the USA Patriot Act, which was passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks and will expire on June 1.

The reforms scrap the bulk collection detailed in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, replacing it with a targeted program that allows intelligence agencies to collect data from specific individuals or groups, but only with prior approval of the secret national security FISA court.


Under Section 215, the government stored the acquired data, but the new reforms would compel telcos and other data companies to keep the information to be accessible to intelligence agencies only through court order.The data dragnet was operating in complete secrecy after 2001, and has been under the supervision of the FISA court since 2006. It was consistently renewed by the administrations of George W Bush and Barack Obama.

"Today's vote was a major win for surveillance reform and a major rebuke for those who want to reauthorise the Patriot Act without change," said Center for Democracy & Technology president Nuala O'Connor.

Passage through the House was welcomed by Mozilla, whose head of public policy Chris Riley called for the Senate to swiftly pass the legislation.

"This legislation significantly curtails bulk collection under the Patriot Act and other authorities, and puts us on a path to a more private and secure internet," Riley said.

"We are staunchly opposed to any short- or long-term reauthorisation of these sections of the Patriot Act absent meaningful reforms. Now is not the time to delay on these much-needed reforms."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said US business is being hurt by the NSA's actions, and it hopes the Senate will add amendments to strengthen the Bill.

"The legislation is a good start to shutting backdoors," the EFF said. "The time to fix the backdoor problem is now."

The vote came just a week after a US appeals court ruled that the bulk data collection goes far beyond what congress authorised.

"The text of [section 215] cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program," wrote judge Gerard E Lynch last week.

Earlier this month, the French lower house approved legislation allowing authorities to spy on suspected terrorists without prior authorisation from a judge.

The new law, to go before the French Senate later this month, allows authorities to spy on the digital and mobile communications of anyone linked to a "terrorist" inquiry without judicial authorisation, and forces internet service providers and phone companies to give up data upon request.

Intelligence services will have the right to place cameras and recording devices in private dwellings and install keylogging devices.

As the US restricts some of its data surveillance schemes, Australia is in the midst of setting up its own data-retention scheme.

In this week's Australian Budget, AU$131 million was allocated by the government for the creation and maintenance of systems to store all Australians' telecommunications data for two years for warrantless access by law enforcement.

However, the money from the government is expected to cover only between one third and half of the cost to implement the scheme.

The Internet Society of Australia CEO Laurie Patton said the government should guarantee to top up the funding if it is inadequate for all ISPs.

"The government's original cost estimate was not based on widespread industry consultation, and the Internet Society is concerned that the costs have been significantly underestimated, especially in respect of small to medium-sized ISPs that don't have the resources to undertake the work in-house, and therefore will be required to pay for external assistance," he said in a statement.

BBC: Staff-tracking app faces legal scrutiny in US

BBC

The woman is alleging that an app which tracks movements 24/7 invaded her privacy
A US sales executive is suing her employer for invasion of privacy, alleging that she was fired after deleting an app which tracked her movements.
The action alleges that Intermex, a firm which arranges money transfers, tracked employees even when off-duty.

Myrna Arias alleges that she was "scolded" for removing the app and fired a few weeks later.

The company has not responded to the allegations.

According to court documents published by website Ars Technica, employees were instructed to download the app, called Xora, to their phones in April 2014.

Xora is described on its website as a workplace management app which allows companies to "remotely manage" their workers by keeping track of their hours and other aspects of their job.

Xora's website says that the app uses GPS to allow bosses "to see the location of every mobile worker on a Google Map".

According to the lawsuit, Ms Arias's manager "admitted that employees would be monitored while off-duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she had installed the app on her phone".

"He confirmed that she was required to keep her phone's power on 24/7 to answer phone calls from clients," reads the court document.

It goes on to detail that Ms Arias had "no objection" to being monitored at work but felt that monitoring her location during non-work hours was an invasion of her privacy.

She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet.

Tracking employees
Her boss "scolded the plaintiff when she de-installed the app in late April in order to protect her privacy", reads the court document.

She was fired on 5 May.

Ms Arias is seeking damages for lost earnings in excess of $500,000.

Mark Weston, a partner at law firm Matthew Arnold & Baldwin, tod the BBC that an employer "would not be allowed to track an employee without the consent of that employee".

Clauses that allow for tracking apps would have to be built into contracts, he said.

As for the legality of firing an employee for refusing to use such an app, Mr Weston said: "In the US, things may be looser because many employees there are employees 'at will'. Accordingly, employers have far greater flexibility than in Europe to dismiss an employee who is not playing ball."

Mountain of Electrical Waste Reaches New Peak

APR 19, 2015 09:55 AM ET // BY AFP  Discovery


Less than one-sixth of all e-waste is properly recycled.
A record amount of electrical and electronic waste hit the rubbish tips in 2014, with the biggest per-capita tallies in countries that pride themselves on environmental consciousness, a report said Sunday.

Last year, 41.8 million tons of so-called e-waste -- mostly fridges, washing machines and other domestic appliances at the end of their life -- was dumped, it said.

Stop Making Trash: How To Go Garbage Free

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Where Does Our Garbage Go?

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have figured out how to track trash. They are doing this to get a better sense of people's disposal habits, which they hope will improve recycling efforts.

That's the equivalent of 1.15 million heavy trucks, forming a line 23,000 kilometers (14,300 miles) long, according to the report, compiled by the United Nations University, the UN's educational and research branch.

Less than one-sixth of all e-waste was properly recycled, it said.

In 2013, the e-waste total was 39.8 million tons -- and on present trends, the 50-million-ton mark could be reached in 2018.

Topping the list for per-capita waste last year was Norway, with 28.4 kilograms (62.5 pounds) per inhabitant.

It was followed by Switzerland (26.3 kg per capita), Iceland (26.1 kilos), Denmark (24.0 kilos), Britain (23.5 kilos), the Netherlands (23.4 kilos), Sweden (22.3 kilos), France (22.2 kilos) and the United States and Austria (22.1 kilos per person each).

The region with the lowest amount of e-waste per inhabitant was Africa, with 1.7 kilos per person. It generated a total of 1.9 million tons of waste.

In volume terms, the most waste was generated in the United States and China, which together accounted for 32 percent of the world's total, followed by Japan, Germany and India.

Waste that could have been recovered and recycled was worth $52 billion (48.5 billion euros), including 300 tons of gold -- equal to 11 percent of the world's gold production in 2013.

But it also included 2.2 million tons of harmful lead compounds, as well as mercury, cadmium and chromium, and 4,400 tons of ozone-gobbling chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases.

"Worldwide, e-waste constitutes a valuable 'urban mine' -- a large potential reservoir of recyclable materials," UN Under Secretary-General David Malone said.

"At the same time, the hazardous content of e-waste constitutes a 'toxic mine' that must be managed with extreme care."

Almost 60 percent of e-waste by weight came from large and small kitchen, bathroom and laundry appliances.

Seven percent was generated by thrown-out mobile phones, calculators, personal computers and printers.

BBC: Enraged US man shoots his malfunctioning computer

21 April 2015 BBC

Some academics argue that "computer rage" is becoming increasingly common
A man in the US city of Colorado Springs faces police action after becoming so frustrated with his computer that he took it outside and shot it eight times, police say.
"He was having technology problems, so he took it to the back alley and destroyed it," a police spokesman said.

Lucas Hinch was briefly detained for discharging a firearm within the city.

He did not realise he was breaking the law when he went "Wild West" on his machine, local media reported.

A judge is due to decide what penalty he will receive.

"He got tired of fighting with his computer for the last several months," police spokesman Jeff Strossner told the Colorado Springs Gazette.

The paper said that Mr Hinch "shot the darn thing" when ctrl+alt+delete - the traditional method used to re-boot computers - "consistently did not work" on Monday evening.

"He was able to wreak the kind of revenge most of us only dream about," the paper said. "The computer is not expected to recover."

Now you can download your entire search history from Google

ZDNet

Summary:Earlier this year, Google quietly rolled out a new feature that lets users download their search history.


By Liam Tung | April 21, 2015 -- 09:02 GMT (02:02 PDT)

With just a few clicks, anyone can now download their entire Google search history - that's every query ever made while the user was signed in.

To download the archive, Google Search users need to sign in and go to their Google Account History page, then click on the gear icon and select Download.

As the file is potentially sensitive, Google urges users to read its warnings, which are "not the usual yada yada". Google advises that the archive shouldn't be downloaded on a public computer and, if it is to be exported to another cloud storage service, that the user reads their export policy in the event they want to take their files elsewhere in future.

Google will send an email to notify a user when the download is complete, with a link to the data, which will be transferred to a Takeout folder in Google Drive. The user will find a .ZIP archive folder containing a series of .JSON files containing searches over quarterly periods.

Takeout is the feature that lets Google users download archives of multiple products, such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, +1s, Hangouts, Calendars, and more. The featurelaunched in 2011 under its Data Liberation Front initiative, but it historically didn't include Search and still doesn't include Google Wallet.

The new capability was first spotted by the Google System blog, which noted that Google started testing the archive download feature for Search last year.

Google's product forums show that people have been using the feature, with mixed success, to download their history since at least February. Google toldVenture Beat that it released the feature in January.

Other companies that allow users to download and store an archive of their activities include Facebook and Twitter.

Two things worth noting are that downloading search history only gives the user a copy of their archive held by Google and doesn't delete the history from the users Web & App Activity page. Google provides instructions how to do that here.



About Liam Tung

Liam Tung is an Australian business technology journalist living a few too many Swedish miles north of Stockholm for his liking. He gained a bachelors degree in economics and arts (cultural studies) at Sydney's Macquarie University, but hacked (without Norse or malicious code for that matter) his way into a career as an enterprise tech, s... Full Bio

The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’

APRIL 20, 2015

BY JOHN B. HORRIGAN Pew Research Center

Since the dawn of the internet, there’s been much talk about the digital divide – the gap between those with access to the internet and those without. But what about the “homework gap”?

In recent years, policymakers and advocates have pushed to make it easier for low-income households with school-age children to have broadband, arguing that low-income students are at a disadvantage without online access in order to do school work these days. Later this year, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to begin a rule-making process to overhaul the Lifeline Program, an initiative that subsidizes telephone subscriptions for low-income households, so that it would also cover broadband.

In 2013, the Lifeline program provided $1.8 billion worth of telephone subsidies for qualified low-income people. The FCC has not yet provided estimates of how much it would cost to add broadband subsidies to the program, but the debate will undoubtedly focus on overall program costs and how many households would be covered.



How big is the homework gap? A new Pew Research Center analysis finds most American homes with school-age children do have broadband access – about 82.5% (about 9 percentage points higher than average for all households). With approximately 29 million households in America having children between the ages of 6 and 17, according to Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data, this means that some 5 million households with school-age children do not have high-speed internet service at home. Low-income households – and especially black and Hispanic ones – make up a disproportionate share of that 5 million.

Pew Research analysis of the Census data finds that the lowest-income households have the lowest home broadband subscription rates. Roughly one-third (31.4%) of households whose incomes fall below $50,000 and with children ages 6 to 17 do not have a high-speed internet connection at home. This low-income group makes up about 40% of all families with school-age children in the United States, according to the bureau’s American Community Survey. (The survey asked questions on home internet use for the first time in 2013.)

By comparison, only 8.4% of households with annual incomes over $50,000 lack a broadband internet connection at home. In other words, low-income homes with children are four times more likely to be without broadband than their middle or upper-income counterparts.

The other notable difference in home broadband adoption pertains to the race and ethnicity of the householder. Lower-income black and Hispanic households with children trail comparable white households with children by about 10 percentage points.

Asian Americans, by contrast, outperform the other groups in broadband adoption for households with children, regardless of income level. A likely explanation is that Asian Americans have the highest educational levels of any racial group in the United States, which is a characteristic strongly associated with having broadband at home.

Note: The author is currently a senior researcher at Pew Research Center. Prior to joining the center, he served on the Federal Communications Commission team that developed the National Broadband Plan.

“LinkedIn is the world’s largest audience of affluent, influential professionals.”

- Wall Street Journal

Get LinkedIn

Did you know?

While students may be well established on Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram, Snapchat and Vine, LinkedIn can help them make valuable professional connections as they seek to find their way in the world of work.LinkedIn gives college students an opportunity to build a strong, professional, online identity, develop and grow their professional network, and show off their accomplishments to potential employers. Experts claim that up to 85% of hiring managers are checking out job applicant’s LinkedIn profiles, making LinkedIn an essential career tool for your students. It can help them connect to specific careers and Professional Associations, too.

Try this…

• Ask them about their LinkedIn experience…

How long have you been a member?
How do you use the site?
How have you benefitted from your LinkedIn membership?

• View video.
• Distribute the Student Activity, (now in fillable pdf form) review the directions and complete.
• Show students how to use the LinkedIn “Groups Directory” tab to connect with professionals in careers that interest them.
• Identify and discuss LinkedIn groups relevant to your discipline.

Add an Experience!

This PREPARE LESSON at CaCareerCafe.com will help students build a solid LinkedIn profile. And, LinkedIn’s own Student site has additional tips to help them build connections.

CA Career Cafe

Websites Prep for Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon’

4:34 pm ET. Apr 20, 2015

By ROLFE WINKLER, Wall Street Journal

Associated Press
Google GOOGL -0.11% is changing its search algorithm Tuesday to favor sites that look good on smartphones, a move some are calling “mobilegeddon” because of its impact on website operators.

The new formula will give a boost in Google’s “organic” search results to sites that are designed to look good on smartphones, while penalizing those that don’t.

Google changes its algorithm frequently, but in this case it took the unprecedented step of warning sites in February that it was coming, and giving them tips on how to prepare.

“Google wants people going mobile friendly,” said Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land. He said the April 21 deadline had created a “panic and frenzy” among Web developers to make the changes.

There’s potential benefit for Google in the move, too. Users are conducting more searches on mobile devices. A Google executive said at a conference last year that smartphone searches could soon outnumber searches from personal computers.

However, advertisers typically pay less for clicks from phones, because they less often lead to sales. Encouraging developers to tailor sites to look good on smartphones should lead to more sales and consequently higher prices for Google’s mobile ads, said Matt Ackley, chief marketing officer of Marin Software, an advertising technology firm.

Google wants developers to make their sites look better on smartphones by tailoring them for small screens, using bigger text and links that are farther apart and easier to tap.

“As people increasingly search on their mobile devices, we want to make sure they can find content that’s not only relevant and timely, but also easy to read and interact with on smaller mobile screens,” a Google spokeswoman said.

Some website operators create special sites just for mobile devices, while others are building a single “responsive” site that adapts to the size of the user’s screen.

Joe Megibow, chief digital officer of American Eagle Outfitters, says his company is preparing to launch a new “responsive” site which will mean it no longer has to maintain two different sites, one for mobile and one for personal computers.

BBC: High price of '.sucks' to be investigated

13 April 2015 BBC

Vox Populi says its prices for ".sucks" website names are "well within the rules"

The authority that decides which letters a web address is allowed to finish with says it is concerned at the high charges for the new ".sucks" name.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (Icann) has asked the US and Canadian trade authorities to investigate Vox Populi, which secured the rights to sell the name.

The company denies any wrongdoing.

Many companies and celebrities have bought their name with controversial suffixes such as ".porn" or ".xxx".

Predatory selling

The last part of a web address that follows the final dot, such as ".com", ".org", and ".net", is referred to as a generic top level domain (gTLD).

Icann relaxed the rules governing gTLDs in 2012, and the latest to go up for sale is ".sucks".

Many companies and celebrities buy their brand or name with various gTLDs, to avoid any confusion with their official website addresses or to stop others buying them and posting negative content.

Taylorswift.xxx has been reserved but not used, to prevent others from buying it

For example, singer Taylor Swift bought up taylorswift.xxx to prevent anyone else from using it.

Specialist online website Domain Incite reports that actor "Kevin Spacey, Microsoft, Google and Apple have already bought up '.sucks' sites in a bid to protect their reputations".

This practice is known as "defensive registering".

Icann granted Vox Populi permission to sell the ".sucks" names but is now concerned at the price levels the Canadian company has set.

Kevin Murphy, from Domain Incite, told the BBC two key elements of the way Vox Populi was handling the sale were causing concern.

"They are charging a $2,000 'sunrise' premium to those wishing to register '.sucks' addresses early, before the addresses go on sale to the general public [next month]," he said.

"Also they are using a list of words or names that have been defensively registered in the past, for which they are charging the top amount."

Mr Murphy said the company was working from a list of keywords that had been part of web addresses bought up early on in similar new domain web address sales and using that to decide which ".sucks" addresses to charge more for.

The base fee for any ".sucks" web address is $199 a year

New gTLDs such as ".rocks" or ".forsale" typically sell for between $5 (£3.42) and $20 a year.

Beyond jurisdiction

But Murphy said: "They [Vox Populi] are charging a much bigger amount that you'd expect.

"They were considering a fee of $25,000 at one point when we spoke to them.

"I think they are charging as much as they can get away with.

"It [Vox Populi] justified the $2,000 premium price tag [for certain '.sucks' addresses] as being 'a reasonable part of a company's PR budget'.

"It appears they are basing prices on what firms can afford not on the product services they are providing."

In a strongly worded letter to Icann, the authority's own advisory body, the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC), demanded a "halt" to Vox Populi's "illicit", "predatory" and "coercive" selling scheme.

But even though Icann approved the ".sucks" domain name sale and issued the licence to sell the related website addresses, it appears not to have jurisdiction over how they are sold.

There is no evidence that Vox Populi has done anything wrong, and the company told Domain Incite its pricing and policies were "well within the rules".

Icann has referred Vox Populi to the two bodies it believes may have the regulatory authority to investigate the company's practices: the Federal Trade Commission in the United States and the Canadian Office of Consumer Affairs, as the company is registered in Canada.

But unless the company has broken the law, it is not clear what powers Icann has over Vox Populi's handing of the sale of ".sucks".

BBC: Phishing catches victims 'in minutes'

14 April 2015 BBC

In less than two minutes a phishing campaign will ensnare its first victim, found the report
It takes 82 seconds for cyber-thieves to ensnare the first victim of a phishing campaign, a report suggests.
Compiled by Verizon, the report looks at analyses of almost 80,000 security incidents that hit thousands of companies in 2014.

It found that, in many companies, about 25% of those who received a phishing email were likely to open it.

"Training your employees is a critical element of combating this threat," said Bob Rudis, lead author on the report.

Threat spotting
Tricking people into opening a booby-trapped message let attackers grab login credentials that could be used to trespass on a network and steal data, the report said.

"They do not have to use complex software exploits, because often they can get hold of legitimate credentials," Mr Rudis said.

Analysis of data breaches found that, in many cases, it had taken less than two minutes for freshly sent phishing emails to catch their first victim. And, said Mr Rudis, half of the victims had clicked on the message within the first hour of it being sent.

Although attackers racked up victims quickly, it took companies far longer to notice they had been compromised, Mr Rudis said.

The report also found companies could take straight-forward steps to defend themselves against well-crafted phishing emails designed to make people open them and their attachments.

Teaching staff to spot bogus messages could reduce the proportion of victims to sent emails from one in four to one in 20, he said.

Showing workers the tell-tale signs of a phishing email could also turn them into another line of defence that could catch messages missed by automatic detection systems.

"They should be treating employees as tools in the fight rather than as lambs to the slaughter," Mr Rudis said.

After phishing, some cyber-thieves relied on companies running un-patched software that was vulnerable to old and well-known exploits, he said.

More than 99% of the vulnerabilities exploited in data breaches had been known about for more than a year, Mr Rudis said. And some had been around for a decade.

"There are some vulnerabilities that just linger out there," he said.

A good patching regime would help companies protect themselves against most of the vulnerabilities cyber-thieves abuse, Mr Rudis added.

Find out how to avoid scam emails

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BBC: Illegal downloading: Australia internet firms must supply data

7 April 2015
BBC

Thousands of Australians have illegally downloaded The Dallas Buyers' Club, starring Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto

An Australian court has ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over details of customers accused of illegally downloading a US movie.

In a landmark move, the Federal Court told six firms to divulge names and addresses of those who downloaded The Dallas Buyers Club.

The case was lodged by the US company that owns the rights to the 2013 movie.

The court said the data could only be used to secure "compensation for the infringements" of copyright.

In the case, which was heard in February, the applicants said they had identified 4,726 unique IP addresses from which their film was shared online using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. They said this had been done without their permission.

Once they received the names of account holders, the company would then have to prove copyright infringement had taken place.

The judgment comes amidst a crackdown by the Australian government on internet piracy.

Australians are among the world's most regular illegal downloaders of digital content. The delay in release dates for new films and TV shows, and higher prices in Australia for digital content, have prompted many Australians to find surreptitious ways to watch new shows.

Australians are some of the world's most enthusiastic illegal downloaders

Deterrent

The ISPs involved in the case, including Australia's second-largest provider iiNet, said releasing customer information would be a breach of privacy and lead to what is known in the US as "speculative invoicing".

This is where account holders are threatened with court cases that could result in large damages unless smaller settlement fees are paid.

The ISPs argued also that the monetary claims which the US company, Dallas Buyers Club LLC, had against each infringer were so small "that it was plain that no such case could or would be maintained by the applicants".

But Justice Nye Perram ruled that the customer information could be released on condition it was only used to recover compensation for copyright infringement.

"I will also impose a condition on the applicants that they are to submit to me a draft of any letter they propose to send to account holders associated with the IP addresses which have been identified," he ruled.

Justice Perram said the ruling was also important for deterring illegal downloading.

"It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that damages of a sufficient size might be awarded under this provision in an appropriately serious case in a bid to deter people from the file-sharing of films," he said.

The case came to court after Dallas Buyers Club LLC contacted iiNet and other ISPs, asking them to divulge customer details without a court order. The ISPs refused.

The ISPs have yet to say if they will appeal against the court ruling.

Professor of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney, Michael Fraser said it was an important judgement for ISPs and customers.

"If this [judgement] is upheld then the days of anonymous pirating may be over," Prof Fraser told ABC TV.

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U.S. Internet users pay more and have fewer choices than Europeans

Areas of service rarely overlap between Internet providers

By Allan Holmesemail Chris Zubak-Skeesemail
5:00 am, April 1, 2015 Updated: 5:00 am, April 1, 2015

Center for Public Integrity

More than a quarter of Americans cannot go online at home to check their children’s grades at school, apply for jobs, pay bills or research health issues. They don’t have what has become a crucial service for participation in modern society: Internet service at home.

The proportion of households with Internet service had been rising steadily for decades, according to the Pew Research Center, until the past few years when the adoption rate slowed.

One reason? The high cost of broadband and the lack of competition that leads to those high prices.

A Center for Public Integrity analysis of Internet prices in five U.S. cities and five comparable French cities found that prices in the U.S. were as much as 3 1/2 times higher than those in France for similar service. The analysis shows that consumers in France have a choice between a far greater number of providers — seven on average — than those in the U.S., where most residents can get service from no more than two companies. The Center’s analysis echoes the findings of several studies on Internet pricing disparities worldwide.

By mapping the service areas of U.S. providers, The Center for Public Integrity also found that telecommunications companies appear to carve up territory to avoid competing with more than one other provider.

Higher broadband prices don’t just mean fewer dollars in Americans’ wallets at the end of every month. They make it difficult for low- to middle-income families to afford fast Internet service, which has become a necessity for job training, education, health care.

According to data in a report by the U.S. National Technology and Information Administration, more than 8 percent of U.S. households say they cannot afford broadband. President Barack Obama this year called for faster, more affordable Internet service for everyone.

“Just like we today expect clean running water, sewage and electricity as essential, so is broadband necessary to partake in society, to interact with government, to learn, to inform and be informed, to be a fully functioning member of society,” said Rudolf van der Berg, a telecommunications and broadband policy analyst who studies policy at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Many studies have been conducted looking at price and competition. The Center’s research isn’t as comprehensive. Rather, it’s a snapshot meant to show the state of broadband for some American cities. The high prices and lack of competition and in towns like these — and there are many — add to a growing divide between the connected and unconnected. And for the unconnected, the increasing gap will be measured in fewer economic opportunities, less access to healthcare and other inequities.

5 Domestic Smart Devices That Are Spying On You Right Now

Dan Price

On 30th March, 2015

MakeUseOf

A couple of weeks ago we experienced a media-wide furore over Samsung’s smart TVs potentially recording all your privately spoken words, with the company’s privacy policy advising owners not to disclose “personal or other sensitive information [because] that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition”.

Although Samsung quickly moved to quell fears by telling users that they could deactivate voice recognition or disconnect their TVs from their Wi-Fi network, the very fact that a such clause was inserted into the privacy policy in the first place should be disconcerting, if not downright frightening.

Smart TVs are far from being the only offenders, however. With Facebook recording our every click, Google tracking us around the web, and smartphones saving our locations on a worryingly frequent basis, we are increasingly living in an Orwellian dystopia. The advent of the smart home and the Internet of Things (IoT) is only exacerbating the problem, and there are now so many devices spying on us that they’re becoming ubiquitous.

Here we look at some of those devices, along with what exactly they’re recording, and who’s benefitting:

Sense

What is it?

Manufactured by Hello, the Sense device claims to be “the first system for understanding your sleep and bedroom”. It comes in two parts – a bedside device which monitors external factors such as noise, light, temperature, humidity and particles in the air, and a “Sleep Pill” which attaches to your pillow and monitors your movements and the quality of your sleep by using an accelerometer and gyroscope. It was one of the most-backed Kickstarter projects of last year.

Why should you be concerned?

The bedside device contains an “always-on” microphone, with all audio sent back to Sense’s cloud for easy playback by its owners. While eight hours of snoring might not be very interesting, there are an untold number of reasons why this is a privacy nightmare, with anything from personal details to the sound of two consenting adults being put into a space that the owner has no control over.

Most worrying? A glance at Hello’s privacy policy shows that the company takes no responsibility when it comes to deleting your information, saying:

“You agree that Hello has no responsibility or liability for the deletion of or failure to store any data or other content maintained or uploaded by the service.”

It means that if you accidentally discuss your finances, reveal your personal data, or discuss other sensitive topics, that audio could be stored in the cloud for a long, long time.

LG Smart Thinq Fridge

What is it?

It’s that thing in the corner of your kitchen that you keep food (or beer) in…!

On a serious note, the fridge aims to take over everything to do with cooking and preparing meals. It’ll tell you what’s inside it, help to create shopping lists, inform you when expiration dates are approaching, suggests recipes, sync with your smartphone, and even tell you the weather.

Why should you be concerned?

In order to function effectively, smart fridges need to connect to your Wi-Fi network, and that means that they can be commandeered by hackers and criminals. In fact, Dawn Meyerriecks, the Deputy Director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology recently told the Aspen Security Centre Forum in Colorado that “Smart refrigerators have been used in distributed denial of service attacks”, and claimed that “At least one smart fridge played a role in a massive spam attack last year, involving more than 100,000 Internet-connected devices and more than 750,000 spam emails”.

This raises wider concerns about security within the Internet of Things. The nature of the sector means access points are going to grow exponentially over the coming years, and while a typical home user might currently have less than ten access points that need to be secured, the IoT could expand that number into the hundreds. Without adequate security, everything from your fridge to your in-car entertainment system could become a potentially exploitable route into your personal data and information.

MyLink

What is it?

MyLink is a product by American car manufacturer Chevrolet that aims to turn a normal vehicle into a smart vehicle. It provides drivers with hands-free control of the hi-fi, an ability to access phone contacts, and access to SiriusXM. That’s all great. What’s less great from a privacy perspective is its built-in data grabber, enticingly called “Valet Mode with Performance Data Recorder.”

Why should you be concerned?

“Valet Mode” allows you to monitor you own car remotely, while the “Performance Data Recorder” and tracks data such as GPS location, speed, RPM, gears, and distance driven. The concerning part is that its privacy policy entitles Chevrolet to profile driving activity and sell it in an “anonymous and aggregated form” to third parties – meaning other companies will have access to how and where you drive. Could this information eventually find its way into the hands of the police? Possibly. For example, is it that hard to imagine cloud-based speeding tickets in the not-to-distant future?

iSmart Alarm

What is it?

The iSmart Alarm is a cloud-based, real-time, “intelligent”, home security system. It was founded out of Silicon Valley back in 2012 and has gone on to win multiple awards from publications such as CNet and PC Mag. It offers on-demand video streaming from around your home, control of all your electrical outlets, instant notifications of intruders, control over your lighting, and remote control management of the system.

Why should you be concerned?

The idea of streaming video of your empty house to the Internet should instantly ring alarm bells. Where is the data stored? Who has access to it? Could criminals determine your movements to establish a pattern of whether or not you’re at home? Would the alarm manufacturer also be notified if you got a notification about an intrusion?

Concerns of this nature extend to all “smart systems” in the home. For example, would the manufacturer of a Wi-Fi based entertainment system be able to get information about your choice of audio? Would energy companies ultimately get access to data provided by your smart thermostat, allowing them to hike their rates if they know you’re using the air conditioning?

Xbox Kinect

What is it?

Xbox Kinect is an add-on for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console. It uses a camera to monitor and record a player’s movements, enabling them to both interact with Windows, games and issue spoken commands. It was originally Microsoft’s response to the popularity of the Nintendo Wii, but has since become an integral part of Microsoft’s entertainment product suite.

Why should you be concerned?

Originally, it was Microsoft’s intention to make it an “always-on” device, but users were not happy. It’s no surprise, and it’s all because of the power of the device’s camera. As the company itself boasts:

“Microsoft’s Xbox One system has a high-definition camera that can monitor players at thirty frames per second. Using a technology called Time of Flight, it can track the movement of individual photons, picking up minute alterations in a viewer’s skin colour to measure blood flow, then calculate changes in heart rate. The software can monitor six people simultaneously, in visible or infra-red light, charting their gaze and their basic emotional states”.

Are you comfortable with Microsoft knowing your emotional state at any given moment? Probably not…

Who is Benefiting?

As with almost everything privacy related, two main groups of people stand to benefit: advertisers and criminals.

While it is true that all the gadgets naturally aim to bring benefits to the user – be those entertainment benefits, practical benefits, or health benefits – all the gadgets we listed also offer clear benefits to manufacturers and advertisers. The manufacturer can collect user data and sell it to third parties, who can then use it to build up a consumer profile of your likes and dislikes – serving you differing adverts depending on your preferences, your mood, or what time of day it is. Ultimately, it means both parties are making a lot of money off your usage of their products.

A further consequence of all this connectivity is that criminals can also benefit. Home networks and company infrastructure can be hacked and exploited, identities can be stolen, and malware and computer viruses can be spread. Why do they do this? The same reason as the companies themselves. Money. Your data is hugely valuable in both the corporate world and criminal underworld. Legal and illegal groups are both willing to go to extreme lengths to get their hands on it.

What do you think?

Is it worth knowing how much milk you’ve got left or how frequently you woke up during the night in order to expose yourself to these risks?

Are some of these smart gadgets really designed with the user in mind, or are they strategies developed by corporate entities to exploit us in every way possible? Do we actually need a car that tells us the average RPM during our last journey?

We’d love to hear your thoughts, you can leave your feedback in the comments below.

Image Credits: Woman tasting smell her meal Via Shutterstock