Skip to main content

Home/ Internetni praktikum/ Group items tagged security

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Jernej Prodnik

Amazon 'used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control' in Germany - Eu... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ontrol-in-germany-8495843.html

amazon political economy of communication political economy of the internet labour conditions labour work

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Amazon 'used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control' in Germany Internet giant investigates abuse claims by foreign workers in its German warehouses Tony Paterson Berlin
  • Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers. Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres.The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said.The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were  allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls.
  • Another worker called Maria said she was thrown out of the cramped chalet she shared with five others  because she had dried her wet clothes on a wall heater. She said she was confronted by a muscular, tattooed security man and told to leave. The guards then shone car headlights at her in her chalet while she packed in an apparent attempt to intimidate her.Several guards were shown wearing Thor Steinar clothing – a Berlin-based designer brand synonymous with the far-right in Germany. The Bundesliga football association and the federal parliament have both banned the label because of its neo-Nazi associations. Ironically, Amazon stopped selling the clothing for the same reasons in 2009.ARD suggested that the name “HESS Security” was an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. It alleged that its director was a man, named only as Uwe L, who associated with football hooligans and convicted neo-Nazis who were known to police. The programme-makers, who booked in at one of the budget hotels where Amazon staff were housed, said they were arrested by HESS Security guards after being caught using cameras. They were ordered to hand over their film and, when they refused, were held for nearly an hour before police arrived and freed them. The film showed HESS guards scuffling with the camera crew and trying to cover their lenses.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • ARD said Amazon’s temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company’s logistics centres in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometres per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon.  “They don’t see any way of complaining,” said Heiner Reimann, a spokesman for the United Services Union (Ver.di). “They are all too frightened of being sent home without a job.”Silvina, a Spanish mother of three in her 50s, who lost her job as an art teacher, was featured in the film. She applied for three months’ work with Amazon to earn some badly needed cash. “It’s like being in a machine and we are just a small part in this machine,” she told the programme.HESS Security did not respond to the allegations made by ARD.Amazon employs 7,700 full-time staff at seven distrubution centres in Germany. The accusations led to the company’s Facebook site being inundated with angry complaints.The company said: “Although the security firm was not contracted by Amazon we are, of course, currently examining the allegations concerning the behaviour of security guards and will take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination or intimidation.”
Patricija Čelik

International cooperation is needed to make the internet safe for the world - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ternet-safe-for-the-world.html

internet safety

shared by Patricija Čelik on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • However, a severe downside is the challenge to data security and personal privacy. The internet is now overrun with cyber attacks and hackers. Internet security has become a very serious and common concern for the entire world.
  • Recently the American company Mandiant published a report on cyber security. This report accuses China of being the origin of most cyber attacks and portrays China as an arch-hacker.
  • Cyber attacks by nature are transnational, anonymous and deceptive. It is extremely difficult to ascertain the source of any attack. Cyber attacks launched from stolen or faked IP addresses take place around the world on daily basis.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • China is a serious victim of cyber attacks.
  • The Chinese government is committed to international cooperation against cyber crime.
  • In September 2011 China and Russia jointly submitted to the United Nations a draft International Code of Conduct for Information Security. China is deeply sincere in seeking cooperation to tackle cyber crime. This common threat needs the participation of the whole international community.
Jan Keček

Cyber-security: To the barricades | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...heir-cyber-defences-barricades

ipraktikum internet cyber- attacks

shared by Jan Keček on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • European Commission and the White House have set out a series of new rules designed to stem the rising tide of cyber-attacks against public and private victims.
  • Alongside his state-of-the-union message on February 11th, Barack Obama released an executive order intended to plug the gap left by the failure of Congress to pass cyber-security legislation that matches the growing threat.
  • By contrast, the European Commission’s cyber-security strategy is at an earlier stage. It wants member countries to introduce laws compelling important firms in industries such as transport, telecoms, finance and online infrastructure to disclose details of any attack they suffer to a national authority, known as a CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). Each CERT will be responsible for defending vital infrastructure-providers against online attacks and sharing information with its counterparts, law-enforcement agencies and data-protection bodies.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What neither the European nor American measures deal with directly is the shortage of cyber-security specialists. A gloomy review of the British government’s strategy by the National Audit Office, a spending watchdog, said the skills gap could take 20 years to bridge.
Anja Pirc

Google aims to replace passwords with ID ring - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ce-passwords-with-ID-ring.html

shared by Anja Pirc on 02 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • a ring that can confirm your identity online
  • passwords are both inherently insecure and increasingly impractical.
  • YubiKey, a tiny USB stick that implements highly secure “one time pad” cryptography to log in to Google services
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • , as a replacement for passwords
  • Bill Gates predicted the death of passwords at a security conference in 2004.
Miha Naprudnik

ACTA error: Democracy not found - RT News - 1 views

rt.com/...rotests-internet-copyright-419

acta error democracy news

shared by Miha Naprudnik on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • As European parliaments reject the Anti-Counterfeiting trade Agreement on human rights grounds, some are asking why it was signed in the first place.
  • The question is – why was the agreement signed in the first place, if its chances of being ratified are dropping by the day?
  • The pretext was the protection of intellectual property, and to control Internet resources that could be used by terrorists or to incite riots and other criminal activity.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There's an argument to be made that freedom and security are usually in opposition; the most secured people are in prison, where they hardly have any freedom. Usually, security comes at the price of freedom – and that’s exactly the cost of ACTA.
nikasvajncer

Fiber Optic Breakthrough to Improve Internet Security Cheaply - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...internet-security-cheaply.html

shared by nikasvajncer on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists at Toshiba and Cambridge University have perfected a technique that offers a less expensive way to ensure the security of the high-speed fiber optic cables that are the backbone of the modern Internet.
  • But they will also be valuable for protecting financial data and ultimately all information transmitted over the Internet.
  • The approach is based on quantum physics, which offers the ability to exchange information in a way that the act of eavesdropping on the communication would be immediately apparent.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Modern optical data networking systems increase capacity by transmitting multiple data streams simultaneously in different colors of light. The Toshiba-Cambridge system sends the quantum information over the same fiber, but isolates it in its own frequency.
  • “By measuring the error rate in the secret key, we can determine whether there has been any eavesdropping in the fiber and in that way directly test the secrecy of each key.”
pina bitenc

BBC - Lancashire - Features - Protect yourself on the internet - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...ty_bill_westhead_feature.shtml

internet security protection on the

shared by pina bitenc on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Bill Westhead - explains online dangers and gives valuable tips on Internet safety and improving your Internet security.
  • always ensure that the website connection you are using is secured
  • always be cautious about offers which seem to be too good.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Often the information on your computer can be more valuable to a criminal than the computer itself
  • Antivirus
  • Firewall
  • Anti-spyware
  • always be cautious; don't do anything you wouldn't do face-to-face; and be careful what information you give out about yourself.
Jernej Prodnik

Amazon unpacked - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html

amazon political economy of the internet political economy of communication labour conditions

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • February 8, 2013 12:30 pm Amazon unpacked By Sarah O’Connor The online giant is creating thousands of UK jobs, so why are some employees less than happy?
  • Between a sooty power station and a brown canal on the edge of a small English town, there is a building that seems as if it should be somewhere else. An enormous long blue box, it looks like a smear of summer sky on the damp industrial landscape. Inside, hundreds of people in orange vests are pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle – the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time. They might each walk between seven and 15 miles today. It is almost Christmas and the people working in this building, together with those in seven others like it across the country, are dispatching a truck filled with parcels every three minutes or so. Before they can go home at the end of their eight-hour shift, or go to the canteen for their 30-minute break, they must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything. They also walk past a life-sized cardboard image of a cheery blonde woman in an orange vest. “This is the best job I have ever had!” says a speech bubble near her head.
  • If you could slice the world in half right here, you could read the history of this town called Rugeley in the layers. Below the ground are the shafts and tunnels of the coal mine that fed the power station and was once the local economy’s beating heart. Above the ground are the trolleys and computers of Amazon, the global online retailer that has taken its place. As online shopping explodes in Britain, helping to push traditional retailers such as HMV out of business, more and more jobs are moving from high-street shops into warehouses like this one. Under pressure from politicians and the public over its tax arrangements, Amazon has tried to stress how many jobs it is creating across the country at a time of economic malaise. The undisputed behemoth of the online retail world has invested more than £1bn in its UK operations and announced last year that it would open another three warehouses over the next two years and create 2,000 more permanent jobs. Amazon even had a quote from David Cameron, the prime minister, in its September press release. “This is great news, not only for those individuals who will find work, but for the UK economy,” he said.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Workers in Amazon’s warehouses – or “associates in Amazon’s fulfilment centres” as the company would put it – are divided into four main groups. There are the people on the “receive lines” and the “pack lines”: they either unpack, check and scan every product arriving from around the world, or they pack up customers’ orders at the other end of the process. Another group stows away suppliers’ products somewhere in the warehouse. They put things wherever there’s a free space – in Rugeley, there are inflatable palm trees next to milk frothers and protein powder next to kettles. Only Amazon’s vast computer brain knows where everything is, because the workers use their handheld computers to scan both the item they are stowing away and a barcode on the spot on the shelf where they put it. The last group, the “pickers”, push trolleys around and pick out customers’ orders from the aisles. Amazon’s software calculates the most efficient walking route to collect all the items to fill a trolley, and then simply directs the worker from one shelf space to the next via instructions on the screen of the handheld satnav device. Even with these efficient routes, there’s a lot of walking. One of the new Rugeley “pickers” lost almost half a stone in his first three shifts. “You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.” Amazon recently bought a robot company, but says it still expects to keep plenty of humans around because they are so much better at coping with the vast array of differently shaped products the company sells.
  • The unassuming efficiency of these warehouses is what enables Amazon to put parcels on customers’ doorsteps so quickly, even when it is receiving 35 orders a second. Every warehouse has its own “continuous improvement manager” who uses “kaizen” techniques pioneered by Japanese car company Toyota to improve prod­uctivity. Marc Onetto, the senior vice-president of worldwide operations, told a business school class at the University of Virginia a few years ago: “We use a bunch of Japanese guys, they are not consultants, they are insultants, they are really not nice … They’re samurais, the real last samurais, the guys from the Toyota plants.” In Rugeley, the person with the kaizen job is a friendly, bald man called Matt Pedersen, who has a “black belt” in “Six Sigma”, the Motorola-developed method of operational improvement, most famously embraced by Jack Welch at General Electric. Every day, the managers in Rugeley take a “genba walk”, which roughly means “go to the place” in Japanese, Pedersen says as he accompanies the FT on a tour of the warehouse. “We go to the associates and find out what’s stopping them from performing today, how we can make their day better.” Some people also patrol the warehouse pushing tall little desks on wheels with laptops on them – they are “mobile problem solvers” looking for any hitches that could be slowing down the operation.
  • . . . What did the people of Rugeley make of all this? For many, it has been a culture shock. “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot. One of the first complaints to spread through the town was that employees were getting blisters from the safety boots some were given to wear, which workers said were either too cheap or the wrong sizes. One former shop-floor manager, who did not want to be named, said he always told new workers to smear their bare feet with Vaseline. “Then put your socks on and your boots on, because I know for a fact these boots are going to rub and cause blisters and sores.” ©Ben RobertsAmazon workers in Rugeley process ordersOthers found the pressure intense. Several former workers said the handheld computers, which look like clunky scientific calculators with handles and big screens, gave them a real-time indication of whether they were running behind or ahead of their target and by how much. Managers could also send text messages to these devices to tell workers to speed up, they said. “People were constantly warned about talking to one another by the management, who were keen to eliminate any form of time-wasting,” one former worker added.
  • Watson said Amazon was supposed to send the council employment data every six months, but it had not done so. “We had no idea Amazon were going to be as indifferent to these issues as they have been, it’s come as a shock to us how intransigent they are,” he said. Inside the warehouse, Amazon employees wear blue badges and the workers supplied by the agencies wear green badges. In the most basic roles they perform the same tasks as each other for the same pay of £6.20 an hour or so (the minimum adult wage is £6.19), but the Amazon workers also receive a pension and shares. A former agency worker said the prospect of winning a blue badge, “like a carrot, was dangled constantly in front of us by management in return for meeting shift targets”. Amazon’s Darwinian culture comes from the top. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, told Forbes magazine last year (when it named him “number one CEO in America”): “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we’ll settle for intense.”
  • Ransdtad said it supplied a number of clients with “onsite-flexible workforce solutions”. It added: “The number of workers required by these clients fluctuates in response to supply and demand. When demand for clients’ products or services is high (for example during the Christmas period) the Randstad partnership allows local people to benefit from short-term work on a temporary contract, to help supplement our clients’ permanent workforce and deliver against order requirements.” Certainly, not everyone in Rugeley is upset about Amazon. A group of workers having a pint on a picnic table outside The Colliers pub near the warehouse gates said they liked their jobs, albeit as their managers hovered nervously in the background. One young agency worker said he was earning about £220 a week, compared with the £54 he had been receiving in jobless benefits. He had bought a car and moved out of his mum’s house and into a rented flat with his girlfriend, who he had met at work. “I’m doing pretty well for myself,” he said with a shy grin. “There’s always opportunities to improve yourself there.” Across the table, an older man, wagging two fingers with a cigarette pinched between them, said slowly: “It gives you your pride back, that’s what it gives you. Your pride back.” Many in the town, however, have mixed feelings. They are grateful for the jobs Amazon has created but they are also sad and angry about the quality of them. Timothy Jones, a barrister and parish councillor, summed up the mood. “I very much want them to stay, but equally I would like some of the worst employment practices to end.”
  • For Watson, the big question is whether these new jobs can support sustainable economic growth. In Rugeley, it is hard not to look back to the coal mine for an example of how one big employer could transform a place. . . . The Lea Hall Colliery opened officially on a soggy Tuesday in July 1960. Miners and their families huddled under marquees to eat their packed lunches and when the first coal was wound to the surface, three bands played an overture specially written for the occasion. It was the first mine planned and sunk by the Coal Board, the body set up after the second world war to run Britain’s newly nationalised coal industry, and the Central Electricity Generating Board was building a coal-fired power station right next door. It was a defiant demonstration of confidence in coal at a time of increasing competition from oil. “King Coal is not yet dead, as many would have it, but is going to be with us for many years to come,” the regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers told the crowd.
  • Soon, miners from all over the country were swarming to the modern new mine. The Coal Board and the local council built housing estates and schools to cope with the exploding population. “Peartree estate was built for the Geordies, the Springfield estate was built for the Scots and the Welsh,” remembered Brian Garner, who helped to build the mine when he was 16. “It was unbelievable, it was buzzing in the town, there was that much money about then. I could leave my job at 10 o’clock in the morning and start at five past 10 on another.” On Friday and Saturday nights, the queue outside the Lea Hall Miners’ Welfare Centre and Social Club would wrap right around the building. Rugeley’s mine was soon the most productive in the country. It was a “young man’s pit” with all the latest machines and techniques, says Ken Edwards, who started there at 25 as an electrician. The work was still dirty and dangerous, though. In 1972, a local reporter took a tour. “All is silent except for the movement of conveyor belts which carry the coal and the murmur of the air pumps. The blackness is relieved only by narrow shafts of light coming from each person’s headlamp,” she wrote. It took her two days to remove the black dust from her nails, ears, nose and hair.
  • The good times didn’t last. By the time the pit closed, four days before Christmas in 1990, a spokesman for British Coal told Reuters it was losing £300,000 a week. More than 800 people lost jobs that paid the equivalent of between £380 and £900 a week in today’s money. The town council’s chairman tried desperately to say something reassuring. “It has come as such a shock,” he told the local paper. “[But] we have got to do what many have done and look for new areas, particularly information technology and high technology. We have a lot of expertise and a wonderful geographical spot. There’s no reason why it should be the end for Rugeley.” From behind her desk in Vision estate agents, all purple paint and fairy lights, Dawn Goodwin sucks the air in through her teeth at the mention of Amazon. “We all thought it was going to be the making of the town,” she says. She expected an influx of people, including well-to-do managers, looking to buy or rent houses. But she hasn’t had any extra business at all. People are cautious because they don’t know how long their agency jobs with Amazon will last, she says. One of her tenants, a single young woman, got a job there but lost it again after she became ill halfway through a shift. She struggled to pay her rent for three months while she waited for her jobseeker’s benefits to be reinstated. “It’s leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths,” Goodwin says with a frown. Even the little “Unit 9” café next to the Amazon warehouse hasn’t had a boost in trade. The women who run it reckon the employees don’t have enough time in their 30-minute break to get through security, come and eat something, and then go back in again.
  • In a cramped upstairs office at the Citizens Advice Bureau, Gillian Astbury and Angela Jones have turned to statistics to try to identify Amazon’s effect on the area. They haven’t had an increase in the number of people asking about employment problems or unfair dismissal, but nor has there been any improvement in the community’s problems with debt and homelessness. Their best guess is that people haven’t had enough sustained work to make much of a difference. Astbury says employment agencies are a “necessary evil”, but stresses it is hardly ideal for people to be bouncing in and out of temporary work, particularly when a job ends abruptly and they are left with no income at all until their benefits are reinstated. Workers leaving Amazon have had a particular problem with this, prompting the parish council to submit a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions to find out exactly how long local people are being made to wait for their social security payments to come through.
  • Far from the CAB’s little office in Rugeley, Britain’s economists are also puzzling over why the economy remains moribund even though more and more people are in work. There are still about half a million fewer people working as full-time employees than there were before the 2008 crash, but the number of people in some sort of employment has surpassed the previous peak. Economists think the rise in insecure temporary, self-employed and part-time work, while a testament to the British labour market’s flexibility, helps to explain why economic growth remains elusive. Angi Cooney, who runs C Residential, the biggest estate agent in Rugeley, thinks the nature of employment is changing permanently and people should stop pining for the past. It’s “bloody great” that a company like Amazon chose to come to “this little old place”, she says fiercely, looking as if she’d like to take the town by the shoulders and give it a shake. “People expect a job for life, but the world isn’t like that any more, is it?” Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent
Urška Cerar

BBC News - Evernote says security has been breached by hackers - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21644317

hackers Twitter email

shared by Urška Cerar on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • hackers
  • hackers
  • website
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • network
  • Twitter
  • It said user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were accessed.
  • online personal organiser, with users able to save data such as video clips, images, web pages, notes and itineraries in an external storage system commonly known as the cloud.
  • The firm apologised "for the annoyance" caused by the breach, which it said is becoming "far more common" at other "large services".
  • Apple revealed a "small number" of its computers had been hacked
  • micro-blogging website Twitter announced it had been the victim of a security breach which compromised the accounts of 250,000 users.
Nuša Gregoršanec

BBC News - Child safety measures to protect against internet threats - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-16305561

safety internet threats children parental supervision

shared by Nuša Gregoršanec on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Child safety measures to protect against internet threats
  • In a poll of over 19,000 parents and children conducted by security firm Norton, 7% of UK parents said they had absolutely no idea what their kids were up to on their computers and phones.
  • Even more worryingly, 30% (39% worldwide) said they had suffered a "serious" negative experience. This included, among other things, invitations to meet online "friends" in real life and exposure to indecent pictures of someone they did not know.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The ever-growing adoption of social networks, instant messages and mobile communication leaves the door open to more subtle attacks - both of a technological and psychological nature.
  • "Parents must realise that technology alone can't keep children safe online," Deborah Preston, the company's internet security advocate.
  • "To be truly safe it requires not only technology, but also a combination of open and ongoing dialogue and education between parents and children."
  • On social networks, account hijacking - where a child's account is accessed for a practical joke or more sinister purposes - can cause considerable distress.
  • A poll by Virgin Media suggests that 38% of parents whose children have suffered from cyberbullying feel unable to protect them due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of how the online world works.
  • This, Mr Abdul argued, could only be solved through greater education and a more honest understanding from parents about how real and damaging the effects of online bullying could be.
  • Mr Abdul added, the correct software, education and parental supervision means children can also be protected both at home and away.
anonymous

Small Business Cloud Apps That Make Work Easier | Inc.com - 0 views

www.inc.com/...ces-that-make-work-easier.html

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Protect yourself against data loss, security blunders, and--that real productivity killer--inefficiency.
  • For small businesses, cloud storage is affordable and frees you up from maintaining expensive physical servers that need upkeep. And it also makes accessing, updating, and sharing files—usually from any device—simple and fast.
  • And unlike Dropbox or SugarSync that back up only the files you tell them to, Code 42's CrashPlan software automatically backs up everything on your hard drive—as much as once a minute—and encrypts it all before it leaves your computer. It also lets you back up to other computers and attached external hard drives as well as access, update, and share your files from mobile devices.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Another useful feature is that CrashPlan keeps copies of all versions of your files and even those you have deleted.  This means, for example, that you can go back and retrieve a version of a PowerPoint presentation you were using last year if you decide you liked it better than a more recent one.  And if you've ever accidentally deleted or lost a file you know how aggravating and time-consuming it is to recreate it. That's not a worry with CrashPlan.
  • Many cloud storage services claim to offer online collaboration features but Mindjet Connect is different because helping people get work done together regardless of their locations is its forte, not some add-on function.
  • Huddle Sync, Huddle's enterprise file synchronization platform, is different from consumer sync tools because it was built to meet enterprise security and compliance requirements and uses learning algorithms and predictive technology to fully sync only certain files. Not only that but it keeps track of where company data is stored and who has synced what files, as well as provides full audit trails for every single file.
  • Huddle Sync is currently in private beta but you can register at the site if you want to try it out.
Neža Zidanič

Ignore the scary tales about internet fraud. It's quite safe, honest | Technology | The... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...money.business

fraud tales internet

shared by Neža Zidanič on 08 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • A recent television news report focused on the security of online banks following recent attempts to defraud Egg. For the average viewer it must have been scary stuff as the report appeared to demonstrate how relatively easy it might be for a hacker to infiltrate a computer and access passwords and other confidential information.
  • In many cases, the situation is not as serious as the media make out.
  • It is not that hackers are not an issue
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One important element of this is the security of the service itself. Although the consumer rarely suffers directly when online services are exposed, scary media stories do mean that everyone in the dot.com world has to work that bit harder to build the necessary trust.
Katja Jerman

Letters: Big data and big problems for personal information | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-problems-personal-information

data personal information problems privacy identification security

shared by Katja Jerman on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • describes a new product to collect and mine user data online
  • PII is a predetermined list of attributes that could identify an individual
  • personally identifiable information?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Identifiably personal information (IPI, if you must) is any set of data which by inspection could lead to the identification of an individual from a group, with a given level of confidence in a given time
  • is based on solid academic work on differential privacy and security threat modelling.
  • could turn data science into data surveillance.
  • Data mining by many businesses seeks to predict trends in purchasing behaviour, monitor customer response to service delivery and assess their marketing strategy against those of their rivals.
  • The real power of social media mining is establishing a "pattern of life" from which anomalies might stand out
Gabrijela Vrbnjak

BBC News - Web code weakness allows data dump on PCs - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21628622

clevercode html5 browser bug

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The loophole exploits a feature of HTML 5 which defines how websites are made and what they can do.
  • Developer Feross Aboukhadijeh found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats. In one demo, Mr Aboukhadijeh managed to dump one gigabyte of data every 16 seconds onto a vulnerable Macbook. Clever code Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug, said Mr Aboukhadijeh. While most websites are currently built using version 4 of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), that code is gradually being superseded by the newer version 5. One big change brought in with HTML 5 lets websites store more data locally on visitors' PCs. Safeguards built into the "local storage" specification should limit how much data can be stored. Different browsers allow different limits but all allow at least 2.5 megabytes to be stored. However, Mr Aboukhadijeh found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited. He found that each one of these associated sites was allowed to store up to the limit of data because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs. Only Mozilla's Firefox capped storage at 5MB and was not vulnerable, he found. "Cleverly coded websites have effectively unlimited storage space on visitor's computers," wrote Mr Aboukhadijeh in a blogpost about the bug. Code to exploit the bug has been released by Mr Aboukhadijeh and he set up a website, called Filldisk that, on vulnerable PCs, dumps lots of images of cats on to the hard drive. So far, no malicious use of the exploits has been observed. In a bid to solve the problem, bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Firefox smartphone partners revealed 24 FEBRUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Flash Player exits Android store 15 AUGUST 2012, TECHNOLOGY HTML 5 target for cybercriminals 02 DECEMBER 2011, TECHNOLOGY $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Feross Aboukhadijeh The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this page1.4KShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Technology stories RSS Computer glitch hits Mars rover Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover is put into "safe mode" after a computer glitch caused by corrupted files. US plans small-ship drone launches Hackers breach Evernote security $render("advert","advert-mpu-high"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); Top Stories http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/6618
  • found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs.
  • found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited
  • Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug
  • was not vulnerable
  • Mozilla's Firefox
  • bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers.
Patricija Čelik

Internet pornography: safety plans do not go far enough - charities - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...t-go-far-enough-charities.html

internet safety

shared by Patricija Čelik on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The Government yesterday launched a consultation on a possible change in the law to give parents more control over the material their children are viewing online.
  • Internet service providers have been in talks with the Government about ways of enabling parents to block sites containing sexually or gambling as well as forums glorify suicide and self-harm.
  • a report by MPs who called for a full “opt-in” which would automatically block adult material unless the user chose to deactivate it. Google has argued that an automatic block as a “mistake”, while Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk and Sky have developed versions of the “active choice” system which makes users chose whether they want parental controls when they sign up, rather than imposing them automatically.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Claire Walker, head of policy, at the charity Family Lives, which this week published a hard hitting report on online dangers, said parents would be more secure with an automatic block.
Meta Arcon

Internet Marriages on Rise in Some Immigrant Communities - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ome-immigrant-communities.html

internet marriages immigrant nytimes

shared by Meta Arcon on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • With a red embroidered veil draped over her dark hair, Punam Chowdhury held her breath last month as her fiancé said the words that would make them husband and wife. After she echoed them, they were married.
  • Normally one of the most intimate moments two people can share, the marriage had taken place from opposite ends of the globe over the video chat program Skype
  • These are called proxy marriages, a legal arrangement that allows a couple to wed even in the absence of one or both spouses.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Such convenience has also raised concerns that it will facilitate marriage fraud — already a challenge for immigration authorities — as well as make it easier to ensnare vulnerable women in trafficking networks.
  • All people applying for American citizenship through marriage must first be interviewed by officials from the Homeland Security or State Department who are charged with rooting out fraud. Officials said that if the spouses were to explain they had been married thousands of miles apart over the Internet, it would quite likely raise a red flag.
inesmag

How to keep your privacy online | Ask Jack | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 2 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...t-privacy-web-browsers-cookies

website privacy google network

shared by inesmag on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • I would like my browsing and Google searches to be private. I don't want targeted advertising and I don't want to feel that anonymous companies are harvesting my clicks to learn all about me.
  • When the web was young, and a lot less shiny, web pages were fixed (static) and – barring browser quirks – everybody saw much the same thing. Today, much of the web is dynamic, which means that what you see has been adapted or possibly constructed on the fly just for you.
  • From your point of view, the advantage is that the websites you visit will be personalised to suit your needs and tastes. From the website's point of view, the advantage is that it can also personalise its prices and advertising to try to suit your needs and tastes, and increase your propensity to click and buy.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • On the web, the rule is: if you're not paying, then you are what's being sold.
  • Probably the simplest way to reduce personalisation is to use an anonymising service. Instead of accessing the web directly, you access it via a third-party proxy server, so your that requests are mixed in with thousands of others. These services usually allow you to control cookies, turn JavaScript on and off, withhold "referrer details" and so on.
  • Nonetheless, it's often useful to have access to an anonymous proxy service, and everybody should find one they like. Examples include The Cloak, Megaproxy, Proxify and ID Zap. There are also networked open source privacy systems such as Tor and I2P.
  • Google also tracks your progress across hundreds of thousands of websites via Google Analytics. To opt out of this, install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (Beta), which Google offers for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera. However, some sites use different analytics software or track visitors in other ways you will be unaware of. Ghostery may help reduce these.
  • Finally, Facebook Connect is a potential privacy problem because it "allows users to 'connect' their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site".
  • In general, the more you do online – social networking, cloud computing etc – the more your privacy and security are at risk. Reducing that risk involves effort and inconvenience, so it's up to you to find an acceptable compromise
Jan Keček

Smartphone operating systems: Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...s-bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed

smartphone ipraktikum internet networking

shared by Jan Keček on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • IF YOU have a new smartphone, it is almost certainly either an Apple iPhone or one of the many devices that runs on Google’s Android operating system. According to IDC, a research firm, more than 90% of the 228m smartphones shipped in the last quarter of 2012 belonged to one of the two dominant species. Android is the bigger bea
  • st. Its share has grown as the smartphone market has boomed, to about 70%.
  • Mozilla, a non-profit organisation best known for Firefox, a web browser, unveiled plans to bring a smartphone operating system to market. Called Firefox OS, it has the backing of 18 mobile operators based in countries from Asia to Latin America.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Most Windows smartphones are made by Finland’s Nokia, which dropped its own plans for a new system when it threw in its lot with the American software giant. BlackBerry, a Canadian company formerly called Research In Motion, hopes to recover lost glories with BlackBerry 10, which appeared in January after much delay.
  • One reason for the challengers’ optimism is that a lot of ground is unoccupied.
  • BlackBerry and Microsoft have the advantage of familiarity; 80m people use BlackBerrys. Companies’ information-technology departments trust them as secure. Microsoft hopes that Windows’ dominance of personal computers can be transferred to mobiles. With that in mind, all new Windows devices, on desks, on laps or in hands, have the same look, with “tiles” for touching, not clicking.
  • Whereas most applications on Apple and Android devices have been written for those systems, Firefox OS uses open standards. In principle, apps based on it can run on any device connected to the web.
sintija

BBC News - Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-19959306

google privacy

shared by sintija on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators
  • consolidate 60 separate privacy policies into a single agreement.
  • Google has been told it should give clearer information about what data is being collected and for what purpose. It has also been told to give users more control over how the information is combined.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Google
  • has been accused of providing "incomplete and approximate" details raising "deep concerns about data protection and the respect of the European law".
  • It said that EU data protection laws place limits on such activities and proposed the following changes:
  • Google must "reinforce users' consent". It suggests this could be done by allowing its members to choose under what circumstances data about them was combined by asking them to click on dedicated buttons. The firm should offer a centralised opt-out tool and allow users to decide which of Google's services provided data about them. Google should adapt its own tools so that it could limit data use to authorised purposes. For example, it should be able to use a person's collated data to improve security efforts but not to target advertising.
Anja Pirc

Online privacy: Difference Engine: Nobbling the internet | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...online-privacy

privacy networking internet social social networking

shared by Anja Pirc on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • TWO measures affecting the privacy internet users can expect in years ahead are currently under discussion on opposite sides of the globe. The first hails from a Senate committee’s determination to make America’s online privacy laws even more robust. The second concerns efforts by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, to rewrite its treaty for regulating telecommunications around the world, which dates from 1988, so as to bring the internet into its fief.
  • The congressional measure, approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 29th, would require criminal investigators to obtain a search warrant from a judge before being able to coerce internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over a person’s e-mail. The measure would also extend this protection to the rest of a person’s online content, including videos, photographs and documents stored in the "cloud"—ie, on servers operated by ISPs, social-network sites and other online provider
  • a warrant is needed only for unread e-mail less than six months old. If it has already been opened, or is more than six months old, all that law-enforcement officials need is a subpoena. In America, a subpoena does not need court approval and can be issued by a prosecutor. Similarly, a subpoena is sufficient to force ISPs to hand over their routing data, which can then be used to identify a sender’s various e-mails and to whom they were sent. That is how the FBI stumbled on a sex scandal involving David Petraeus, the now-ex director of the CIA, and his biographer.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • No-one imagined that ISPs would one day offer gigabytes of online storage free—as Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail and other e-mail providers do today. The assumption back then was that if someone had not bothered to download and delete online messages within six months, such messages could reasonably be considered to be abandoned—and therefore not in need of strict protection.
  • wholesale access to the internet, powerful mobile phones and ubiquitous social networking have dramatically increased the amount of private data kept online. In the process, traditional thinking about online security has been rendered obsolete. For instance, more and more people nowadays keep their e-mail messages on third-party servers elsewhere, rather than on their own hard-drives or mobile phones. Many put their personal details, contacts, photographs, locations, likes, dislikes and inner thoughts on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox and a host of other destinations. Bringing online privacy requirements into an age of cloud computing is only fit and proper, and long overdue.
  • the international telecoms treaty that emerged focused on how telephone traffic flows across borders, the rules governing the quality of service and the means operators could adopt to bill one another for facilitating international calls. As such, the regulations applied strictly to telecoms providers, the majority of which were state owned.
  • he goal of certain factions is to grant governments the authority to charge content providers like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter for allowing their data to flow over national borders. If enacted, such proposals would most certainly deter investment in network infrastructure, raise costs for consumers, and hinder online access for precisely those people the ITU claims it wants to help.
  • a proposal sponsored by the United States and Canada to restrict the debate in Dubai strictly t
  • o conventional telecoms has met with a modicum of success, despite stiff opposition from Russia plus some African and Middle-Eastern countries. Behind closed doors, the conference has agreed not to alter the ITU’s current definition of “telecommunications” and to leave the introductory text concerning the existing treaty’s scope intact.
  • The sticking point has been what kind of organisations the treaty should apply to. Here, one word can make a huge difference. In ITU jargon, the current treaty relates only to “recognised operating agencies”—in other words, conventional telecoms operators. The ITU wants to change that to simply “operating agencies”. Were that to happen, not only would Google, Facebook and other website operators fall under the ITU’s jurisdiction, but so too would all government and business networks. It seems the stakes really are as high as the ITU’s critics have long maintained
1 - 20 of 23 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page