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AT&T Inc. says there appears to have been an “organized attempt” to break into mobile customers’ online accounts, but no accounts were breached.
The Dallas company says hackers used automated programs to try to link mobile numbers and account log-in credentials, which they then hoped to use to access customer accounts on AT&T’s website.
via AT&T discloses “organized” hacking attempt – BusinessWeek.
Facebook Inc. may be tracking users’ Internet activity even after they cancel their accounts with the social-networking site, a German privacy watchdog said.
An in-depth probe of the way cookies are installed after a user opens and then closes their Facebook account has made the Hamburg Data Protection agency “suspicious” the company is unlawfully tracking users, the watchdog said on its website today. While rejecting Facebook’s justifications for the use of cookies, the agency welcomed the company’s offer to explain the technical processes.
“Arguments that all users have to remain recognizable after they leave Facebook to guarantee the service’s security can’t stand up,” Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection representative, said on his agency’s website. “The probe raises the suspicion that Facebook is creating user tracking profiles,” which would be unlawful if users aren’t alerted.
The German regulator’s action adds to probes of Facebook by the Irish data-protection agency and Norway’s privacy watchdog. A group of EU regulators has said they will look for possible privacy violations in Facebook’s facial-recognition feature.
The social network “does not track users across the Web,” and instead uses cookies to personalize content or for safety and security reasons, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said in an e-mailed statement. The company said it deletes account-specific cookies when a user leaves Facebook and doesn’t receive personally identifiable data when logged-out users browse the Web.
Remaining cookies are used in “identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked,” and blocking underage users from re-registering with a different birth date, Facebook said.
The German privacy regulator said that, while Facebook gave detailed explanations of how it uses cookies — small data files that track browsing habits — the company’s arguments don’t justify its practices.
via Technology | Facebook may track users who leave service, data agency says | The Detroit News.
Google is nuking its Twitter clone in a couple of weeks in favor of loving its new social website big-time.
Zoom
Friday Google said in a blog that it plans to kill Google Buzz and the Buzz API in a couple of weeks. The news isn’t surprising given that the Twitter clone really never caught on, and that Google’s new social site is “all the buzz” for the immediate future.
“In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+,” the company said. “While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.”
The news arrives after Google recently said that it plans to shut down additional services like Notebook, Aardvark, Google Desktop, Google Pack and more. Friday Google added that Google Labs, Code Search and the Code Search API will be discontinued in January 2012 as well as Jaiku, a product Google acquired back in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, and the social features in iGoogle.
Think about all the things you can do with EMC’s Documentum, and then think about doing them mobile. According to EMC’s website, Documentum userscan do that now by taking their repositories out of the enterprise using the iPad.
That is to say, users of Documentum can access their repositories from the iPad, and although there is no mention of Android access, EMC has already said previously that it will be enabling access from all mobile platforms
Earlier on in the year during EMC World the company had slotted a release date of “sometime in the third quarter,” and sure enough, it can now be downloaded for iPad, and probably a lot more besides quite soon.
With it, all content in Documentum is visible, including rich media such as videos and images. In addition, EMC says users can carry out common repository tasks such as search and preview, download content for offline access, collaborate with other users and participate in business processes.
In recent months, long-time hackers have become just a little miffed with some of the new kids on the block and their automated DDoS attacks – script kiddies, they mutter, darkly.
And one UK hacker, Solar, has become annoyed enough to launch a new website aimed at separating the men from the boys.
RankMyHack does just what it says. Hackers – and around 700 have joined up so far – must submit evidence that they’ve actually carried out the attack they claim by planting a code somewhere on the compromised website.
“Up until now, when you met another hacker on an IRC or forum, there was no way to indicate if that hacker had any skills whatsoever, RankMyHack.com was built to give a clear indication of a hacker’s general abilities,” explains Solar.
“It also serves the purpose of tracking a hackers hacking achievements under their current alias, allowing for other hackers to quickly establish the calibre of hacker they are talking to.”
Points are scored for the difficulty of the hack, as well as the size of the website. There are bounties for racist sites, as well as for those belonging to universities, the military and governments.
Right now, Mudkip is top of the leaderboard with a claimed hack of the Huffington Post, followed by Blackfan for an attack on Google.
It was August 6, 1991, at a CERN facility in the Swiss Alps, when 36-year-old physicist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website. It was, not surprisingly, a pretty basic one — according to CERN:
Info.cern.ch was the address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which centred on information regarding the WWW project. Visitors could learn more about hypertext, technical details for creating their own webpage, and even an explanation on how to search the Web for information. There are no screenshots of this original page and, in any case, changes were made daily to the information available on the page as the WWW project developed. You may find a later copy (1992) on the World Wide Web Consortium website.
Of course, the only people who actually had web browser software were Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN, so the world at large remained almost entirely ignorant of the momentous event that had just taken place. Gradually installations of web servers and the use of web browsers spread, but it really wasn’t until 1993, when the Mosaic browser was released, that the technology really achieved serious momentum.
via 20 Years Ago Today: The First Website Is Published | GeekDad | Wired.com.
The original story caused a lot of chatter and sniggering: Users of the Internet Explorer browser, supposedly, had lower IQs than those who used rival browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Camino. That was — again, supposedly — according to a study conducted by a Canadian firm called AptiQuant.
That story was carried by media outlets including the BBC, CBS, CNN and many tech blogs.
Turns out, the study was a hoax, apparently perpetrated by a computer programmer/entrepreneur frustrated by IE.
The BBC reported Wednesday that AptiQuant’s website was only recently set up and that staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris. It was unclear who was behind the stunt.
The BBC reported:
Questions about the authenticity of the story were raised by readers of the BBC website who established that the company which put out the research — ApTiquant [sic] — appeared to have only set up its website in the past month
Thumbnail images of the firm’s staff on the website also matched those on the site of French research company Central Test, although many of the names had been changed. The BBC contacted Central Test who confirmed that they had been made aware of the copy but had no knowledge of ApTiquant or its activities.
Chinese officials have found five fake Apple stores in the southwestern city of Kunming, and ordered two of them to suspend business while they’re investigated, a local government website said Monday.
Officials couldn’t do anything about the other three stores—which prominently displayed Apple signs and logos—because they did not find any fake Apple products for sale, according to a report by a local newspaper posted on the Kunming city government’s website.
The investigation follows a blog post last week by an American woman who lives in Kunming in Yunnan province, who stumbled across three shops masquerading as bona fide Apple stores in the city. She took photos and posted them on her BirdAbroad blog.
She said they were modeled on the company’s iconic stores right down to the winding staircase and the staff wearing the customary blue T-shirts.
via China officials find 5 fake Apple stores in 1 city – San Jose Mercury News.
Microsoft has won U.S. antitrust approval to buy the Internet phone service Skype, the Federal Trade Commission said in a website posting on Friday.
Microsoft announced in May it was buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest-ever acquisition, placing a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try and best rivals such as Google Inc.
The approval was announced in a listing of deal approvals that comes out several times a week.
via Microsoft gets antitrust approval to buy Skype | Reuters.
China’s avid Internet users are taking a leaf from India’s anti-corruption drama by opening websites so citizens can confess, sometimes in pitiless detail, to buying off officials.
Chinese people can be disdainful of poorer India, but some have sought inspiration from the anti-corruption anger that has swept the South Asian nation, fanned by the Internet.
Several Chinese confess-a-bribe websites, including “I Made a Bribe” (http://www.ibribery.com), have been inspired by an Indian website “I paid a bribe” (http://ipaidabribe.com), Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper reported on Monday.
“Stop seeking improper gains and promote equal competition, and return to us the dream of a fair China,” says the Chinese-language front-page of the “I Made a Bribe” website.
“Please reveal your experiences of paying bribes so embezzlement and corruption have nowhere to hide.”
India ranked worse than China in Transparency International’s 2010 survey of perceived corruption, with China 78th out 178 nations and regions counted, and India 87th.
via Chinese confess-a-kickback websites inspired by India – The China Post.
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