PrivacyScan, Privacy Protection for Your Mac, is now available on the Mac App Store. PrivacyScan protects online and offline privacy by shredding files that can be used to track your web browsing and computer usage. Going above and beyond United States DoD (Department of Defense) government standards, PrivacyScan’s shred feature...
Recognizing just how powerful a tool social-networking sites have become in orchestrating protests, rallies, and riots in the United States and beyond, the FBI is in the early stages of designing a complex system for monitoring tweets, Facebook status updates, Google+ posts, and the like in real time, all in the name of identifying and...
Apparently, “Anonymous” won’t be accepting your friend request.
Members of the shadowy collective known for its politically motivated Web hacks and attacks are targeting Facebook for what they claim to be the social-networking giant’s misuse of personal information.
“Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed,” the speaker said in a YouTube video, which was posted July 16 but started circulating widely this week.
Using a voice modulator to disguise his (or her) voice, the speaker, who purports to represent Anonymous, invites viewers to “join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy.”
“Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your privacy settings, and deleting your account is impossible,” the speaker says. “Even if you delete your account, all your information stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time.”
The video also makes the unsubstantiated claim that Facebook has been selling user information to government agencies and giving it to security firms so they can spy on people.
A Facebook spokesman declined comment Tuesday on the alleged Anonymous plot.
But the site has repeatedly said it doesn’t sell information and doesn’t share user information with any third parties that the user hasn’t approved.
“We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Post last year. “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information. We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.”
The announced date for the “operation,” November 5, is Guy Fawkes Day, a commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot in which Fawkes and others placed explosives under the British House of Lords in 1605.
Anonymous’s most common mode of operation is launching distributed denial-of-service attacks. In a DDoS, multiple people use scripts to repeatedly access a website, slowing it badly or shutting it down if its servers can’t handle the traffic.
But it’s apparent that everyone who’s part of Anonymous — which rose to prominence for supporting whistle-blower site WikiLeaks — isn’t up for attacking Facebook.
“FYI – #OpFacebook is being organised by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it,” read a Twitter post Tuesday morning from @GroupAnon, a feed that has consistently posted about the group’s activities.
By its nature, Anonymous is loosely organized, with no clear leadership structure.
It also remains an open question whether the group could muster enough help to take down, or slow, a site that boasts 750 million users and routinely hosts tens of millions of them every day.
In December, the group tried and failed to take down another Web giant: Amazon. The online retailer, which booted WikiLeaks from its web-hosting service, is known to have massive amounts of server space — as does Facebook.
In the past few years, Anonymous has taken credit for disrupting a number of prominent websites, including those of PayPal, Master Card, Visa and the Church of Scientology.
As recently as Monday, the group claimed credit for hacking the site of the Syrian Defense Ministry, replacing its content with an anti-government message and the Anonymous logo.
Protesters in Syria have been demanding reforms, including true democratic elections and an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Japan will punish people who create or willfully spread computer viruses with fines and prison terms of up to three years under a new law enacted by parliament. Under the law, police can seize e-mail communication logs of suspects from Internet service providers, among other information.
The action, which has met with opposition from privacy and free speech advocates, brings Japan a step closer to concluding the Convention on Cybercrime, a Europe-led effort.
The convention is the first international treaty to combat crimes committed via the Internet andother computer networks. Japan has signed the treaty but must pass relevant domestic laws to conclude it.
Under Japan’s new law, people who create or distribute a computer virus with no justifiable reason face prison terms up to three years or fines up to 500,000 yen ($6,200).
Those who deliberately store a computer virus face up to two years in prison or fines up to 300,000 yen.
Japanese police agencies had long pushed for such a law, but past bills failed amid strong criticism from privacy and freedom-of-speech advocates who have warned of excessive police powers.
The text of the law says that “in view of the realities of cybercrime associated with the advancement of information processing . . . it is necessary to develop the necessary regulations”.
Because of concerns the law could violate the privacy of communications guaranteed under the Japanese constitution, it includes a resolution that urges authorities to apply the law appropriately.
With the release of Google+, you possibly groaned, saying you didn’t need another social network. Google entered a very saturated market, and given its likeness to the very dominant Facebook, people have questioned its place on the Web–can it really fill any niche that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. haven’t covered?
Google thinks so. The company designed the site with other social networks in mind, looking at what these other companies did wrong, explains Google+ designer Andy Hertzfeld to Fast Company‘s John Pavlus. He gives the following four reasons why Google+ differentiates itself, besting any other social site out there.
A big issue Hertztfeld takes with other networks is that they’re difficult to set up. Finding friends or adding followers takes too much effort, which really puts a damper on the social part of things. So, instead of making the set-up part all boring and stuff, Google created a fun way to add your friends: circles. Sure, to some, dragging a face into a “circle” might seem tedious, but Hertzfeld argues it is a “delightful experience that rewards people — we wanted to make it feel addicting… Categorization can easily become tedious, and fun animations help add a twinkle in the eye, some whimsy to the process.”
He likens the experience to a video game, “a highly visual and physical process: you drag photos of people you know onto large, friendly-looking blue rings, which offer up springy, slot-machine-like animations when you let the mouse button go. (A tiny “+1″ even pops out of the Circle and hovers in midair above it like a 1-UP in Super Mario Bros.)”
No other site integrates video like Google+. Google sees videochatting less like a phone call and more like a group hang. The “Hangouts,” Google+’s videochat feature, makes virtually chilling with your friends more informal, explains Hertztfeld. “The starting point for [designing] Hangouts is basic human nature: People love contact but they’re shy about initiating it, especially with video.” Before you know it you will be playing charades with your pals over Google+ in no time.
Sometimes, when you take a really awesome photo of your crew at the pool, you want to share how much fun you’re having without all of your other friends as fast as possible. With Facebook, you need to take a moment and upload your memories; Google+ streamlines that process. Its mobile app has a feature called “Instant Upload,” which, true to its moniker, puts your photo on Google+ as soon as its taken. “Larry [Page, Google's co-founder and CEO] was a big proponent of streamlining that experience,” explains Hertztfeld.
The Library of Congress saves all of your Tweets. Facebook has murky privacy settings, which they constantly amend. Google+, Hertzfeld declares, has privacy controls galore. You can choose to whom you share what, using those super fun circles and you can also see what others choose to share with you. “We want to appeal to the mainstream user who has a low tolerance for complexity,” Hertzfeld says, “and at the same time we have to respect privacy as strongly as possible. So every feature has privacy implications that we thought out.”
As yet, the validity of this claim is unclear, but if true, this is incredibly significant. According to a document posted to Pastebin, hacking group LulzSec has claimed that it has been able to steal what could amount to millions of records from the UK 2011 Census, with a public release coming soon.
The group notes that it has “blissfully obtained records of every single citizen who gave their records to the security-illiterate UK government for the 2011 census”. In a shift away from its normal protocol, LulzSec has not yet mentioned the compromise on its Twitter account, as it would normally.
However, the group did post a tweet, which could relate to its the attack in question:
Our next step is to categorize and format leaked items we acquire and release them in #AntiSec “payloads” on our website and The Pirate Bay.
The Pastebin statement teases readers, suggesting that the group will keep them “under lock and key”, suggesting UK citizens will not have to “worry about [their] privacy” at least until it finishes “re-formatting them for release” – suggesting it will only be a matter of time until records are released publicly.
This release is confirmed when the group says it will embark “upon a trip to ThePirateBay with our beautiful records for your viewing pleasure”, meaning records will be downloadable by anyone with the correct link and a working Bittorrent client.
The information captured is likely to include income levels, employment information, statements on religion as well as names and addresses.
We have contacted the Office of National Statistics who “weren’t aware of the issue” but are now investigating the claims after we alerted them to the issue.
The nature of Pastebin means that this could be a faked document uploaded by anyone, but given LulzSec’s recent activity, there is definitely cause for concern.
We will keep you updated on this story and update as soon as we receive a response.
The release in full:
Greetings Internets,
We have blissfully obtained records of every single citizen who gave their records to the security-illiterate UK government for the 2011 census
We’re keeping them under lock and key though… so don’t worry about your privacy (…until we finish re-formatting them for release)
Myself and the rest of my Lulz shipmates will then embark upon a trip to ThePirateBay with our beautiful records for your viewing pleasure!
Ahoy! Bwahahaha… >:]
Cap’n Pierre “Lulz” Dubois
Update: The Office of National Statistics confirms it is investigating the claims but says there is no evidence of a security breach as yet.
We are aware of the suggestion that census data has been accessed. We are working with our security advisers and contractors to establish whether there is any substance to this. The 2011 Census places the highest priority on maintaining the security of personal data. At this stage we have noevidence to suggest that any such compromise has occurred.
Update 2: LulzSec has put an end to rumours that it compromised servers containing the UK 2011 Census by posting an update to its Twitter account, noting the following:
Not sure we claimed to hack the UK census or where that rumour started, but we assume it’s because people are stupider than you and I.
FACEBOOK wants to know what you look like, and it wants you to like it.
The social networking website has been rolling out a facial recognition feature called Tag Suggestions since late last year.
Now the feature has become available for Australian users, and by default, it’s turned on.
Tag Suggestions is designed to make it easier for you to tag photos of friends. When you upload a photo, the site will make suggestions based on who it thinks appears in the picture.
Professor Brian Lovell of the University of Queensland said Tag Suggestions posed serious privacy risks for some users.
“The software might actually be labelling people who don’t want to have their faces known,” Dr Lovell told news.com.au.
“You put these things up in innocent way and they can be used against you.”
Dr Lovell, who heads the university’s Advanced Surveillance team, said users with assumed or suppressed identities were particularly at risk.
“If your photo was taken before you enter witness protection, it’s very hard to remove those photos,” he said.
Many Facebook users have complained on the site that the feature was turned on without their consent.
“Change settings and ask questions later, hey! Nice one,” said one user.
“Once again, the user has to react, after the fact. Once again, not opt-in, as should be, but opt-out,” said another.
Tag Suggestions can be turned off by customising your privacy settings under the “Things others share” heading.
However Dr Lovell said there may be another, more novel way to get around the feature — by taking bad photos.
“It’s not a matter of does it work, or does it fail, it’s about just how well it works,” he said.
Given that many Facebook users uploaded photos taken on their mobile phone, Dr Lovell said the software may not work as well as it was meant to.
“The best recognition photos come from 10 megapixel photos,” he said.
“iPhones have a 5 megapixel camera.”
And if you wanted to make Tag Suggestions work even harder, you could upload photos taken at night or in low light.
“Most people socialise at night, they go to clubs and restaurants and take photos of their friends and you find the quality of the photos is quite poor,” Dr Lovell said.
“You start to get problems in low light performance… it becomes very noisy.”
European Union data-protection regulators will probe Facebook after it started a global rollout of its new face-recognition photo-tagging system.
The new feature “recognizes” faces in photos, shortening the often tedious tagging process, which enables users to connect a face in a photo with an actual friend on Facebook. The process is now semi-automated: Facebook provides suggestions for individuals in photos, and the user chooses to accept or reject them.
The feature is enabled by default, but it can be disabled by customizing your privacy settings.
However, European Union regulators think that this feature is a potential privacy risk. “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” said Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party.
In the past, EU regulators have scrutinized companies such as Microsoft (for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows) as well as Google and Yahoo for storing data search queries for too long. Facebook, too, wascriticized for not doing enough to protect the privacy of its users.
What do you think? Is this feature a privacy risk? Should it be enabled by default?
[via Bloomberg Businessweek]
Well, dang.
A new survey conducted by Reppler, an online service that helps “keep your social reputation safe,” unveiled new data that shows 47% of Facebook users have profanity on their walls. Scanning 30,000 user profiles, the study found that 80% of users have at least one post or comment from a friend containing swear words.
In terms of the most used phrases, the “F”-bomb and its derivatives lead the charge, with s*** coming in second, and the “B”-word coming in a distant third.
Naturally, none of this should come as a surprise, but it raises interesting questions about online identity.
The massive success of LinkedIn’s initial public offering would indicate that, yes, there is a need for a space where users can maintain a squeaky-clean professional persona. In fact, one of LinkedIn’s primary lures is that it provides an outlet for its users to put their best feet forward while inviting the evaluations of prospective employers.
On the other hand, Facebook’s long been a proponent of openness on the web, with recent initiatives indicating that it’s looking to scale back its role as cyber police, at least in terms of free speech. But potential and current employers have long used social media to monitor and track employees, with a 2009 study indicating that 45% use Facebook and Twitter to screen job candidates, and that number’s likely similar today, if not higher.
And before everyone get’s all huffy about online privacy and the business ethics of having their bosses scan their profiles, stop and ask yourself this question first: Wouldn’t you do the exact same thing?
For Facebook users it’s obviously best to exercise caution so as not to get yourself in trouble (go to Account -> Privacy Settings, and change everything to “Friends Only” at least).
With different social media outlets popping up, every day presents different ways to manage and maintain one’s online identity. Who you are, say, on Tumblr, might be very different from the way you present yourself on MeetUp. Or Twitter.
Even though stories of teachers getting fired for using the “B”-word on their private profiles occasionally bubble to the surface, I think employers are starting to realize that their workers, like themselves, are more multi-faceted than they put forth. There’s a certain degree of behavior that–when kept to a relative degree of obscurity–should be understandable. But tolerance is quiet and hardly ever makes for a story.
Still, ethics and surveillance on the web still swirl around in a murky sphere; in the meantime it’s probably best to keep it all on the safe side if you care about things like, well, having a job.
(via Mashable)
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