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Google has enabled encrypted searching using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) which it says will prevent "employers and internet service providers" from reading what is sent. The possibility that employers and ISPs might be watching peoples' search traffic clearly concerns Google, and it has often concerned employees.

Essentially what Google is trying to do is to offer people a way of securely navigating their website, using SSL, so that people don't have to worry about being monitored. People can see if they are using the secure version of the google search engine if the web adress cointains "https" rather than just "http". SSL works as follows: 1- The web browser being used checks the websites' certificate to make sure that the client is connecting to the real site and not someone intercepting 2- The encryption types that the browser and the web site server can both use to understand each other are determined 3- Browser and Server each send each other unique codes to use when encrypting the data that will be sent 4- The browser and server start communicating using encryption, leaving the web pages secured. For more information on how SSL works ckeck the following website: http://www.ourshop.com/resources/ssl.html

The following article shows how the asymmetric encryption inherent to SSL (Secure sockets layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) have been rendered useless by a tool called BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS). It attacks the "AES encryption algorithm" used in the cryptographic protocols. "BEAST is able to grab and decrypt HTTPS cookies once installed on an end user's browser." "While other attacks focus on the authenticity property of SSL, BEAST attacks the confidentiality of the protocol. As far as we know, BEAST implements the first attack that actually decrypts HTTPS requests". "Transaction confidentiality based on the SSL TLS V1.0 protocol (the most used still today) is dead." "The only true defense from fraudulent transactions is to sign the (...) transaction data so that the attacker cannot inject bogus material. This means effectively using a token with a pin pad." "Fixing the vulnerability that BEAST exploits may require a major change to the protocol itself." http://www.itpro.co.uk/636304/ssl-under-threat-as-flaw-exploited

This article has made clear that the AdWords advertising system is flawed, it is unacceptable for a large company like Google to lead users to believe that a website can be trusted using the 'sponsored links' and continues to make profit. This goes against the 6th point in Google's philosophy "You can make money without doing evil" although they are not doing it consciously. From the article I understood that the system is run using an automated filter to identify websites which break Google's policy and a manual assessment also takes place by a human. Instead of using just one human, a group of humans can assess the adverts to ensure nothing is missed. Furthermore, an update of Google's databases should regularly take place in order to catch illegal websites quicker.

Google's corrupt sponsored links affects nearly every digital citizen, as Google is by far the most popular and used search engine. There is alternatives to Google, but nevertheless Google is the most popular search engine(we're talking 70+% http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/ ) I agree with Jorge's main ideas above. However, I do not think that increasing the number of people checking would make any large difference. It is their filters which needs an update - something I'm sure they're already doing. It does raise some reliability concerns, being the most popular search engine, you'd expect them not to endorse(even unknowingly) corrupt links.

The social and ethical issues related to this news story are reliability, privacy and anonimity to an extent. Privacy as the information from the buyers credit card is given to what seems to be an unknown person or company. The multiple stakeholders seen would be the buyer, Google and the advertiser. Although it is via Google that the advertiser gets sell his product, it is important to understand that there are most likely thousands of advertisements added daily to the Google search engine and, referring back to Jorge's point, it would be very likely that humans would fail to see such mistakes as well after repeatedly going through hundreds of adds everyday. The trust and reliance that people have on Google can be misleading and it is evident that to solve such an issue people must be awared of the several scams that they are exposed to every single day in order to prevent this sort of problems.

Year 13 please suggest tags

Apple is my first choice for Mp3 players, laptops etc therefore it is good to see that they are concerned with the environment and has put in a lot of effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions especially now that Global warming is a major issue in society. However, it would also be nice to see Apple produce their products in a way which did not affect workers rights. I found a story which claims various Chinese workers are exploited, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/30/apple-chinese-factory-workers-suicides-humiliation

Interesting link Jorge.

The main stakeholder here is the google, youtube, gmail, etc. user. The change in privacy policy settings in the system affects the stakeholder in these ways, as outlined in the article: In "suggesting search queries, or tailoring search results, based on the interests expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube" (mining data to provide "ever more targeted adverts"), the results become limited: "something I am interested in this week, I might not be interested in next week. I use Google's facilities as both a private individual and in my professional life. Which bit are they going to give back to me?" There is no opt-out alternative to the changes in the system. "Google has become a way of life for some people. They can't do without it even if they don't like the direction it is going in". The simplification of policies could lead to graver problems. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/27/tech/web/google-privacy-clarified/index.html

25 January 2012 Last updated at 12:23 ET O2 has apologised for a technical problem which caused users' phone numbers to be disclosed when using its mobile data. The company said it normally only passed numbers to "trusted partners". A problem during routine maintenance meant that from 10 January numbers could have been seen by other websites.

As mentioned above the the issue concerned about in this article is privacy as peoples information (mobile phone numbers) are displayed on websites without their consent. Obviously the fact of having others know personal information may leave people concerned, however they must be aware that their personal information is spread all over the internet. From pictures on facebook to a gmail/youtube accounts peoples names, adresses and surnames are most likely known by some companies. Google and Facebook holds personal information that belongs to each one of us. What companies like such do to profit from this is sell a list of names, adresses and emails to third party which will then have means of communication with us to advertise their products and this is responsible for some of the spam we receive. The solution for this specific scenario of mobile phones isn't very clear, although it has been fixed no way of how it could of been prevented was suggested. Perhaps a the server could be shut down while it was under maintenance and another one should've been running in the meanwhile. Clearly the issue here had nothing to do with the mobile phone users and there was nothing they could have done as they were unnaware of the situation. I personally believe that privacy does not exist on the internet. It someone wishes to have privacy then the safest way to go do so is to not use/be connected to the internet. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/30/when-it-comes-to-cell-phone-privacy-youre-an-open-book/ Shows how mobile phones can cause privacy issues and how police officers now have gadgets that allows then to see everything that a person has done in their mobile phone, this clearly violates peoples privacy.

I would just like to mention that I posted this, not fiche galinha -.- diigo is trolling me.

Rather than blocking access to Facebook and Twitter, a growing of employers are monitoring what proportion of the working day individuals spend on them.

State and Describe the main Social and Ethical issues that relates to this article: The main social and ethical issue that relates to this article is surveillance. In this article, it is suggested that workers in an office space would have the time they spend on a social network being monitored and controlled. This survaillence of how the workers spend their time on the computer seems somewhat appropriate in my opinion. What this is doing is it's reaching a compromise for the workers, by still letting them access these social networks, while limiting how long they can access it for daily so as to ensure that they focus as much on their work. Although it could be question whether it's ethical to monitor people's computer, what this is doing is avoiding measures such as a boss visually monitoring everyone's computer behind their backs,which raises a much bigger surveillance issue. The second suggestion of an internal and local social network that would only include people in the workplace is also a good option that attempts to keep the workers focused on the workplace and to ecourage communication between workers, rather than getting distracted with life outside the workplace. This is also, in my opinion an excellent suggestion as it offers an alternative to simply blocking social networks, which raises an issue in terms of how ethical it is to simply restrict someone from visiting a website, which could be seen as censorship.

An account to the dangers of not monitoring employer's activity online, and statistics regarding companies in the UK.

Interesting difference with UK and "rest of world". wonder why this is the case?

The advantages of implementing Management Information systems (MIS) and other business solutions in an applied case.