After being stranded for weeks, a monster botnet responsible for an estimated 40 percent of the world’s spam was able to briefly reconnect to its mothership in a tense international duel playing out online that could have a dramatic effect on the amount of junkmail flowing into inboxes everywhere.…
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Srizbi spam botnet in failed resurrection
If you haven’t logged in to your linked in account in a while you’ll be greeted with a quick notice next time:
“We’ve updated! On November 14, 2008, LinkedIn published revised versions of our Privacy Policy and our User Agreement. Using LinkedIn means you consent to these policies, so please take a few minutes to read and understand them.”
However, if you log out and back, the notice will be gone– so if you weren’t looking too closely, you might not even realize you’ve just consented.
As the FTC has made clear in its enforcement and outreach efforts, a company must keep any promises that it makes with respect to how it will handle or protect consumer data, even if it decides to change its policies at a later date. Therefore, before a company can use data in a manner materially different from promises the company made when it collected the data, it should obtain affirmative express consent from affected consumers.
This would imply that if LinkedIn is updating its privacy policy with such a minimal notice, it may not have changed in any way “materially different” from before. But if it is different, they might face a bit of trouble.
Microsoft is the world’s fifth worst spam service ISP, according to a new list compiled by Spamhaus.org.…
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Microsoft ranks 5th on inglorious spam-friendly ISP list
Facebook has taken the unusual step of sending its users email asking them to click on a link so they can restore site configuration settings that were recently lost. Facebook isn’t kidding, and neither are we.…
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Facebook spams social networkers with phishy email
When an Arkansas couple visited a local McDonald’s in June, they got more than just their favorite burger. The couple apparently left their cell phone at the store, and even though it was returned, their personal information had already been compromised–and put online along with nude photos:
Staff promised to keep the phone safely until [the couple came to retrieve it].
However, after Philip Sherman retrieved the phone, his wife began receiving threatening calls and messages from strangers. This caused the Shermans’ to become suspicious about what had occurred with the phone.
Soon afterward the Shermans’ found the private photos that Tina Sherman had sent to her husband’s phone published on the Internet along with their names, address, and phone numbers. Pictures of Tina Sherman were altered to contain McDonald’s franchise logos, along with slogans such as, “I’m lovin’ it,” and “Hot as McDonald’s coffee.” The photos were located on several different sites online, but have since been removed.
The Shermans are suing for over 3 million dollars in damages, along with relocation costs.
Read the full article here.
Facebook has won a $873m judgment against a Canadian sued for spamming users of the social networking site with “sexually explicit” messages after hacking into the profiles of its members.…
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Facebook wins record $873m fine against smut spammer
One of the real danger of technology, the reason for so much IT-Insecurity, is that many people don’t understand it well.
Case in point is the jury trial of Julie Amero, a schoolteacher who was charged with felony for allegedly showing porn to her class–when in fact the porn sites were popups caused by malware on the classroom computers that popped up while she was teaching:
a series of incompetent computer experts and overzealous prosecutors tried to claim that the pornography that appeared on the school computer browser was deliberately viewed. In reality the computer was infected with a browser hijack or other form of malware nastiness that launched a flood of porn pop-ups. There was an outpouring of support and some technical folks like Alex Eckleberry, who led an effort to prove that Julie was innocent of the charges
After a long trial, Amero has finally been vindicated. But she has still lost those years of her life spent on the case, her teaching credential, and is being charged a $100 fine. While her trial might be over, her personal troubles aren’t.
Go here to read the rest:
Schoolteacher Julie Amero Released, Felony Charges Dropped
“Lockdown” must be the Department of Defense’s middle name. As a worm seems to be making its way through the military’s computers, the DOD has responded by banning flash drives, CDs, and just about everything else that can store data and be moved from one machine to another.
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| DOD Prohibits Removable Storage Devices To Stop Worm |
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Noah Schactman reports, “The problem, according to a second Army e-mail, was prompted by a ‘virus called Agent.btz.’ That’s a variation of the ‘SillyFDC’ worm, which spreads by copying itself to thumb drives and the like. When that drive or disk is plugged into a second computer, the worm replicates itself again - this time on the PC.”
The DOD’s response should effectively stop the worm’s spread, then, and give experts a chance to track down and clean up affected machines. It might even help with other military security issues, since it’ll be harder for important information to get lost or stolen when it’s not being shuttled around as much.
But since the length of the new ban hasn’t been determined (or at least announced), everyone from suits in the Pentagon to soldiers in the field may be faced with data-movement nuisances for quite some time.
This situation hasn’t, at least, led to any real problems so far.
The rest is here:
DOD Prohibits Removable Storage Devices To Stop Worm
Naturally with the economic turmoil and political transition, some changes are in the works for the way technology is governed on a Federal level:
For one thing, the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Internet, Courts and IP will be losing its control over IP Law, which will be handled at the full House level in the future:
According to a committee aide who spoke with Ars on background, the decision was driven by simple numbers: as interest in IP issues has grown in recent years, so has the SCIIP. Handling them at the full committee level allows all the members to get their fingers in the pie. The swap also recognizes the complexity of legislation affecting IP, and avoids the need to get half the Judiciary Committee caught up with the subcommittee’s discussions.
Instead the Subcommittee will reign over anti-trust issues–some fear that this will be a victory for content holders, while other experts argue the fears are unfounded.
What other changes are in the works, and who will play the largest role in determining the future of technology law? Well, if you have some ideas, you can nominate yourself or other people for Ars Technica’s “People to Watch” list.
Originally posted here:
Political Changes for IP Law and Technology
Several friends of mine used to debate at length “What is art?” — now that digital art, guerilla art, performance art, advertising collateral, and the blending of media have blurred the boundaries of what was once a clear-cut discipline. Art’s not just pure visual painting and sculpture any more that gets hung and revered on the walls of museums–more and more people are looking for art that’s interactive, conceptual, interested in the pop social experience, and blends a range of media. While traditionalists who hang paintings in museums might feel that these new art forms aren’t true art, new digital and interactive creations are still infused in our culture and experience, influencing our aesthetic tastes.
Jeff Clark of Neoformist is one such artist blurring the boundaries between programming, verbal, and visual art. Using a scripted algorithm he generates portraits of famous people and animals using an algorithm that creates words in the colors and patterns needed to create the portrait. Some examples feature a shot of Barack Obama created with the words “Yes We Can” and Albert Einstein with the word “Genius.” Very cool– go take a look.
Credit:
Digital Technology, Threatening Art and Culture One Form at A Time
