Social Net – Censored Net ?!?!?

The internet has indeed become one of the most sociable technological wonders the world over yet it has been also subject to controversy time and time again. in countries where the government seeks to control the influx and outflow on information, it is censored and filtered, maybe using keywords or user name databases to block and deny access to them. The upcoming anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Events is sure to get some attention from the Chinese authorities and in the past, Iran has done some filtering of their own when elections and other events of international significance tends to be cut-off from the rest of the internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever Faster Speeds

The internet, unbeknownst to most evolves and changes day by day with respect to hardware upgrades and software revisions that makes it faster and better for all of us. Hard to imagine back during the times when dial-up and speeds of 1bps were the norm and BBS services ruled the developing net. In a span of a few years, we have Yahoo, Google and now Bing that Microsoft is betting to be the next big thing is search engine technology. The internet being comprised of several interconnected networks can in fact make new connections in cyber-space should one of the links fail allowing us to see a bit of a slowdown but allows life to continue in a few minutes, or hours or even days for major ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Social Sites – Fast Becoming Favorites

Of hackers as they try to find ways of spreading their wares, stealing the identities of unsuspecting people and cashing in on other people’s hard earned cash. The many budding social sites that are popping out all over the place, deemed as revolutionary startups are falling one by one to hackers who are after their sites, or their members who are running into the millions ripe fruits for the picking of their wrongdoing. Read the rest of this entry »

Phishing – subtle but more damaging

It may not be as obvious as viruses, trojans, worms, or even spyware, but phishing is much more damaging than it seems.

You see, phishing – which refers to the illegal procurement of personal information like credit card numbers and passwords – has a direct impact on you life. While all the woes before mainly just affect your computer system, victims who feel the full force of phishers end up losing a lot more. Just imagine someone being able to break into your credit account and makes the credit limit buying things WITH YOUR MONEY.

The key here is to be wary of registering and filling out forms on the net. Many untrustworthy phishing sites masquerade as legitimate sites like online banks – to the extent of duplicating the look – to steal info from people. So always be on your guard, the internet isn’t what it used to be.

The Continuing Conficker Menace

Security centers around the world have found that the famed conficker worm has again sprung back to life at the expected time and date April 1, April Fools Day. This was marked by updates sent to the sleeping code that told it to revise it’s strategy allowing it to circumvent many of the measures put in place to battle the long running malware that is estimated to have infected 9 million computers according to the latest estimates.
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2009 will be a better year for internet security?

Will next year a better year for internet security? If the report from McAfee below is right, it may seem so:

The investigation, conducted by McAfee(R) SiteAdvisor(TM), studied the five major U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and found that the overall chance of clicking through to a risky site declined by 12.0%. Still, McAfee estimates that consumers click through to risky sites more than 268 million times each month.

“It’s good to see that clicking on search engine results has gotten modestly safer,” said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. “But when almost one of 12 sponsored links still clicks through to a risky site, there remains significant room for continued improvement.”

Whether 2009 becomes the year of internet security or not, internet users must stay alert for any possible attack through websites surfed.

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MS08-067 worms

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Microsoft released an emergency patch for its operating systems. Then it publicly released a reliable exploit code. Now it is reported that there are two new worms that are capable of using the MS08-067 vulnerability. This was discovered by the virus hunters. These worms were discovered on Windows, Chinese version. The worms are used to be able to install a trojan downloader, a denial of service bot and one rootkit to be able to keep its presence undetected on the computers that are infected already. This newest threat is using the proof of concept code, which is widely available. The worms are capable of Distributed Denial of Service attacks or DDOS. Good thing Windows users that updated are not affected with these worms.

Google: Tax Included

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In the chaotic system of online retailers included in the line up of Google Product Search or what was known to be Froogle, a new system is being adopted. This will ensure that what you thought to be a good buy in the net will come out to really be a good buy. So Google has encouraged retailers with their newest program to INCLUDE their Shipping and Tax information so that their buyers will have the general idea of how much the goods cost including its shipping costs and other miscellaneous payables. In this way, they would not feel fooled by the retail site and the vendor. The system lets the retailers include a note of their tax charge if any. In most other sites this is a common practice already but Google is taking it further by taking the initiative to set the example and to save customers from being surprised with exorbitant tax and shipping costs.

What if, Tim?

The World Wide Web or the web as we know it, is a medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. It is often used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is only a service that operates on the Internet just like e-mail does. If Tim Berners-Lee had decided to patent his idea in 1989, the Internet would be so much different now. The Internet has many creators namely,Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn. They came up with a system to let different computer networks interconnect and communicate. Ray Tomlinson, is the creator of e-mail and the “@” symbol while Ted Nelson, coined the term hypertext and many others. But only one person conceptualized the World Wide Web. In fact, Berners-Lee first called it a “mesh”, before changing it to a “web”. Because he and Robert Cailliau, insisted on a license-free technology, today a Gateway computer operating on a Linux and a browser made by Netscape can see the same Web page as any other personal computers would. If his employer CERN sought royalties, the world would have 16 different “Webs” on the Internet today.

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Touch your Browser. Take A Closer Look.

Image source:www.gsm4u.cz

Exhausted of Pocket Internet Explorer? Forget about the stylus, the tiny scrollbars and the keyhole view of the internet. TouchBrowser gives you the effortless webbrowsing knowledge of the iPh0ne, right on your Pocket PC.

You can use you finger to move the webpage around the screen. Toggle between mobile view and desktop view. A large finger-keyboard lets you enter URLs with ease, or enter Google searches directly from the keyboard.

The software works on all Pocket PCs, with all versions of Windows Mobile. Get iPhone-style internet browsing on your Pocket PC. TouchBrowser lets you control everything using only your fingers. You can type using the large keyboard, slide along through web content and scroll through pages with a flick, with full page view.