Sleepless in Midland

More creepy AI uses -- voice analysis

Just what we need -- people on the other end of phone learning about our emotional state and other things from an AI program. Cogito software is sold to companies that use call centers, and the purpose is supposed to be to help train employees to stay alert to the customers' needs.

But wouldn't it be just a easy to use the program on the customer to determine the most likely way to close a sale?

Anyway, it's just one more way AI is creeping into our lives. But at least computers aren't reading lips like a Hal 9000, at least not yet.

Related:
What AI Can Tell From Listening to You (Alternate link;
Call Center Agents Get a Human Touch;
Emotion AI Will Personalize Interactions and
This Call May Be Monitored for Tone and Emotion.

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3:02 PM 4/3/2019

Waze relies on volunteers for updates

They're working for free and providing a valuable service to others on the road. They are Waze volunteers who help keep the information available on Waze current.

My first exposure to Waze was as a passenger in a vehicle with a built in GPS which was connected to the driver's voice controlled Waze app. And it made quite an impression.

So this recent article really got my attention: ‘It Takes Over Your Life’: Waze Volunteers Work for the Love of Maps (Alternate link here):

But for much of its information, the company relies on Mr. Richey and about 30,000 other volunteers who devote nights, weekends and the occasional odd hours to fine-tuning its maps by adding streets and businesses, updating road closures and responding to user requests for map updates and fixes. In an era of the gig economy, Waze has found a better business model—unpaid labor.

Unpaid? Well, there's this:

The volunteers—whom the company calls “editors”—accrue points for each map update, rising through the ranks and earning new avatars as they gain the ability to edit wider areas and more important roads. There are six levels of editors and people can also earn additional titles, showing they oversee a specific region.

So they've got that going for them.

Meanwhile, system certainly seems like a significant upgrade from the type of built-in GPS my old car has -- which would cost a couple of hundred dollar just for a map update.

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4:02 PM 3/29/2019

Do you trust your browser?

Mark Stockley at Naked Security asked readers to participate in a poll in Vote now! Which web browser do you trust the most?.

The results can be seen at polldaddy.com Which web browser do you trust? Here are the results as of 10/1/2018 2:08pm CDT:

Interesting results. As you can see, Firefox has a solid lead with Google Chrome coming in second. Of course, that is just an opinion poll and doesn't really measure how trustworthy they really are.

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2:08 PM 10/1/2018

Mozilla Thunderbird and Avast Antivirus don't get along

Thunderbird is a popular email software program offered free by Mozilla. And Avast is a popular free antivirus program. But the two aren't exactly compatible without some tinkering.

In my case, after an update, Mozilla Thunderbird stopped connecting to the email server. And after much trial and error, not to mention anguish, I hit on the work-around.

Here's what the user needs to do:

1. Open the Avast program.
2. Click "Settings" at bottom left.
3. On the Settings page, click "Components."
4. On the Components page, locate the "Mail Shield" line and click on the green switch on the right to turn it off for the time duration you select.

Works for me. I hope this helps someone else.

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2:25 PM 4/3/2018

Some websites record your key strokes -- including passwords -- during your entire web session

If you supply personal information on a website, you should expect that the owners of the website would get that information. But according to recent reports, some websites can record your key strokes during your entire browsing session. Here's one report about the issue: No, you’re not being paranoid. Sites really are watching your every move:

Session replay scripts are provided by third-party analytics services that are designed to help site operators better understand how visitors interact with their Web properties and identify specific pages that are confusing or broken. As their name implies, the scripts allow the operators to re-enact individual browsing sessions. Each click, input, and scroll can be recorded and later played back.

A study published last week reported that 482 of the 50,000 most trafficked websites employ such scripts, usually with no clear disclosure. It's not always easy to detect sites that employ such scripts. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, particularly among sites outside the top 50,000 that were studied.

"Collection of page content by third-party replay scripts may cause sensitive information, such as medical conditions, credit card details, and other personal information displayed on a page, to leak to the third-party as part of the recording," Steven Englehardt, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, wrote. "This may expose users to identity theft, online scams, and other unwanted behavior. The same is true for the collection of user inputs during checkout and registration processes."

Here's another one: No boundaries: Exfiltration of personal data by session-replay scripts.

There doesn't appear to be a way the site visitor can prevent it from happening. But as precaution a site visitor could open the browser only for that page in which he/she expects to supply a password or other personal info, then close it once the business is concluded.

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2:06 PM 12/13/2017

It's time for Net Neutrality to go

Net Neutrality was an example of government picking winners and losers among businesses. Stopping it will allow businesses in the industry large and small to innovate and provide customers with the products they want. Net neutrality would have protected the big guys from competition.

Basically, Net Neutrality would require ISPs to treat small data packets the same as large video streams. For a fairly simple to understand article about this, see Harry Khachatrian's article Everything You Need To Know About Why Net Neutrality Is A Terrible Idea. (Same article here, re-titled Everything You Need to Know About the Net Neutrality Debate.)

There, Mr. Khachatrian explains the difference between IXPs and Tiers 1, 2, and 3 ISPs. Further, he goes on to explain, companies like Google, Netflix, and Facebook connect directly with the IXPs and then to the ISPs as peers. That means that Google is not a customer of an ISP. Google simply connects to these internet exchange points where it peers with service providers. Here are Mr. Khachatrian's words:

This way, Google has far more control over how its content is delivered to users. If Google wants to treat YouTube video packets differently than the packets transferred for uploading Google Docs files, it can.

Net Neutrality laws will not affect Google because Google does not pay transit providers to deliver content to users. It peers with them.

Google likes Net Neutrality because it would stifle competition. And we should celebrate its end.

But here's a mystery. Why would anyone demonstrate against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai over this? Do they really know what they are protesting or are they simply following marching orders?

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11:17 AM 11/28/2017

Back up your hard drive ahead of the next ransomware offensive

The massive ransomware strike last week is a wake up call. And I'm certainly not going to hit the snooze button.

See An NSA-derived ransomware worm is shutting down computers worldwide. Quote:

The malware, known as Wanna, Wannacry, or Wcry, has infected at least 75,000 computers, according to antivirus provider Avast. AV provider Kaspersky Lab said organizations in at least 74 countries have been affected, with Russia being disproportionately affected, followed by Ukraine, India, and Taiwan. Infections are also spreading through the United States. The malware is notable for its multi-lingual ransom demands, which support more than two-dozen languages.

Bold added so you'll be sure to notice that sentence. It's spreading.

Most of us keep our antivirus software up to date and run them regularly. But that's no guarantee. It's a good idea to make regular back-ups to a portable drive so that if some malware did slip through and some unseen creep demanded money to let you back into your computer, you can say SOD OFF!

There are several programs out there that make backing up easy -- I'm fond of RichCopy myself. I've used it on Windows 7, 8, and 10 but don't know about the earlier versions.

John Podesta provided us with an opportunity to learn how to avoid getting hacked

Boy, did he pay a price! But it's a learning opportunity for us.

Apparently John Podesta had his email hacked, and as a result some emails that proved very embarrassing to Hillary Clinton and her campaign became public knowledge. The best I can determine is that he opened a phishing email, then opened an attachment containing malware. Big mistake.

Peter Mackenzie at Sophos.com provided a helpful lesson on how to avoid that outcome at Why you should be cautious of emails from friends or colleagues. He used a real life example with a bogus email that purportedly came from his solicitor.

It worked this way. A hacker hijacked his lawyer's email address and sent phishing emails to Mr. Mackenzie and maybe other clients. The email contained what looked like a legitimate attachment, e.g., a contract for the client's approval. He rolled his cursor over the attachment link and found something suggesting it wasn't what it seemed. The pdf had an additional suffix: pdf.htm. Clicking on that led him to a link for a fake Gmail login page, but it didn't really go to a website, it was code included in the HTM file. If he had entered his login information it would have been forwarded to the hacker which would have given the hacker access to his email account.

The important take-away from this is to be especially wary of any pdf with an additional suffix, e.g., pdf.htm.

Read the whole thing and you'll be more knowledgeable than Hillary Clinton's most trusted adviser.

A software developer in a high tech company tries to explain why his co-workers are such progressives

A writer called Ulysses768 penned an article posted at Ricochet.com titled Why Are New Tech Companies So Liberal? (The word "liberal" should probably be replaced with "progressive," as the word "liberal" doesn't mean what it used to mean.)

So why are they? He sums up three theories, to wit:

The people are the same but the companies are more authoritarian. Motivated by a very competitive job market and empowered by financial success, these companies seek to engage with their employees at a new level. They encourage their employees to basically live at work, breaking down the professional and personal divide. This fosters an environment not unlike a university. Everyone must be careful not to offend and the needs of all must be accommodated at the expense of the few. The cultures of victimhood and blind acceptance find fertile soil, and people who disagree learn to keep quiet.

Newer tech companies are more software- and web-based than their predecessors. Therefore aesthetically pleasing design is more important to the success of their products. Therefore more creatives are required and creatives trend left of center.

College indoctrination has become so successful that it has bled into the hard sciences and engineering spaces. My fellow employees seem more liberal because they actually are more liberal.

Makes sense, although to this right leaning fly-over country blogger, the college indoctrination theory makes the most sense. As Thomas Sowell observed:

Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left.

That certainly seems consistent with what we hear about college life these days.

IRS phone scam -- if you're not content to just hang up, here's where to report them

We've all gotten those calls. It's a robot telling you the IRS is about to sue for non payment of a past due tax debt. Most us simply think, "F U," and hang up.

IRS publication IR-16-014 addresses those calls and alerts us to websites available for online reporting if hanging up doesn't quite satisfy the urge to get at them.

We don't know whether the IRS will actually do anything. Nonetheless, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting website which takes information about the attempted fraud. And it get a little bit of your own personal information, too.

Don't you just love giving personal information to the IRS? It's probably safe. But things like the following headline don't inspire confidence: IRS computer problems shut down tax return e-file system. Oh, brother. Maybe it's just a glitch. Then again, maybe it's a hack. Aside from the actual people involved with the system security or the hack itself, who really knows these days?

Scoundrels attack email providers with DDOS, demand ransom

Some of the smaller email providers seem to be vulnerable to DDoS attacks, and in at least one case the culprits got a modest payday. I say modest, and although $6,000 isn't hay, it pales in comparison to the millions hackers pilfered from banks in the past. Source: Naked Security.

The email service I've been using lately, Hushmail.com, was one of the victims. They were down for days, and their webpage said they weren't going to pay. DDoS attacks are still probably a threat, but at least they got the service back up and running.

Another case involved Protonmail which has in common with Hushmail a stated policy of attempting to protect clients from prying eyes. According to Protonmail's statement, they eventually paid the ransom due to the pressure they were getting from other companies that were tangentially affected due to use of the same ISP.

Email providers like Yahoo are probablly so big that they're basically immune to DDoS attacks. But the smaller outfits can't easily afford the cost of protecting themselves.

According to the aforementioned statement, the expense of protecting themselves runs about $100,000 annually. It's a racket on both ends.

How long before those wireless thermostats get hacked?

I was in a house the other day that had a newly installed wireless thermostat controlling the indoor temperature. It was a hot day, but it was very cool inside the home. And the wireless feature allowed the thermostat to be installed at a location that didn't already have wires running up and down the wall.

What could go wrong? Well, that one was a standard wireless unit without a wi-fi connection. So it probably could not be easily manipulated by an unauthorized operator. But some of the new wireless thermostats do have true wireless capabilities with a wi-fi feature. Now there's trouble waiting to happen.

Hardly a week goes by without a headline about some connected thing getting hacked. The other day it was about some hackers manipulating a jeep. More recently we learned that Mideastern hackers have learned how to take control of servers at retail gasoline station networks.

Contemplating the problems that could accompany the internet of things brings to mind the old Twilight Zone episode about a homeowner facing a violent rebellion by all of the electronic gadgets in the house.

So it's somewhat satisfying to see this item at Naked Security: The NSA is funding a 'safer' Internet of Things. Here's an excerpt:

The architecture, which UAH will begin to work on in a few days, is called Dielectric.

Dr. David Coe, the principal investigator and an electrical and computer engineering researcher, said that the aim is to incorporate cybersecurity into the product design phase:

While finding flaws and repairing them will continue to be an important focus in cybersecurity research, this proposal focuses on an architectural approach to building security into the system at the outset.

The research will tie together multiple disciplines at the university: faculty members will be coming from the electrical and computing department and the computer science department, bringing expertise in cybersecurity, embedded systems, hardware-software co-design, secure processing, and automotive systems.

Lisa Vaas, the Naked Security author, is a little bit skeptical that NSA would behave. But given that doubt, she agrees that it's good that someone is looking to do something about this potential for mayhem.

Meanwhile, back to those thermostats. If there's a war with one of the international bad boys, our enemies will probably have our own missiles redirected toward out own cities, so in the whole scheme of things a malfunctioning thermostat doesn't seem fatal.

Air Force General boasts to media about how they used social media to locate an ISIS stronghold

Apparently, Air Force personnel found a post some ISIS hot shot put in social media, and they figured out the location. Then they delivered some bombs. Yeah!

See US Air Force Targets and Destroys ISIS HQ Building Using Social Media and American airstrike obliterates ISIS stronghold after 'moron' reveals its location in a SELFIE

That's all well and good. But should our people be bragging about this to the media?

Now the terrorists know not to do what they did, and this isn't likely to happen again soon. But maybe what ISIS did was so bone headed that the Air Force assumes they wouldn't do it again anyway.

In any event, after the OPM and who knows what other U.S. agencies got hacked by some nation's operatives, maybe this is not the best time to brag about our technical prowess.

All your browsers are belong to us

This is discouraging. Apparently *researchers participating in the latest Pwn2Own contest successfully exploited each of the top four most popular browsers. This is from Your Favorite Browser Just Got Hacked, But Don’t Panic. Here's an excerpt:

This past week marked the 8th annual Pwn2Own, where security researchers come from near and far to flex their talents. The goal? Demonstrate exploits on the latest builds of popular browsers, get a pile of cash in return.

The good news: because of the nature of the competition, none of the specifics of these exploits are made public until the companies behind the browsers get a chance to patch things up. So while the bugs being exploited here might be lurking in your browser, you’re probably not in danger of actually getting nailed by them before they’re cleaned up.

Mozilla, for example, tells me they’ll have Firefox patched by the end of today. None of the other browser makers had responded to our requests for comment at the time this was published.

Sure enough, Mozilla offered up two patches to users because of that. As of the time of this writing, the latest version of Firefox is 36.0.4.

*We would probably call them "hackers" in another setting.

You're not paranoid if you don't trust public Wi-Fi, but you're still weird because 3/4ths do

Naked Security tells us about a survey in which 77% of respondents expressed no concern for security when using public Wi-Fi. See Most people think public Wi-Fi is safe. Seriously?. It was the British Office of Communications study, but there's no reason to think Americans would be any different. (See page 322 of the report; 326 in PDF.)

Naked Security says:

It's a grievous error to trust Wi-Fi to the degree that these numbers reflect.

What's the harm? Well, companies, people and governments could be spying on you.

They provide some recommendations:

Don't automatically join a network based on its name.

Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Use a VPN.

Turn off geo-tagging for those services like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that use it.

Do all of those. Also wear a belt and suspenders.

Those snooping cell phones - they're such busy bodies

Google and Apple know where you've been and how long you were there if you carry a phone with one of their operating systems. This is according to Psst! Your phone is snooping on you. What you need to know and how to stop it – video. (Via article of the same title at theguardian.com.)

Most users don't care, otherwise they'd opt out or use different phones. IPhone has a privacy feature which enables the user to refuse to give information to app providers. Unfortunately for Android users, those features are hard wired into the phone's operating system.

How long before NSA gets access to it? Oh wait. They already do.

There's a way to hide your data with a special phone pouch. How does it work? From Detraktor.com:

This is accomplished by having a conductive material encapsulate the device, card or passport. The conductive material acts as a Faraday Cage which shields all RF signals from going into or out of the device or card.

I assume there's a wire mesh inside the pouch. Meanwhile, I'll be making my own tin-foil-hat.

Editor's note: You know they haven't made tin foil in years, don't you? -- Robo-ed | Dammit, I smell a conspiracy! Sleepless.

Stealth technology to send unreadable emails through NSA radar

Some of us would like to think our emails are personal and private, like the old snail mail was. But that isn't the case. The big email providers in the U.S. like Yahoo and Gmail are not only subject to the demands of National Security Letters and possibly unauthorized snooping by the NSA, but the companies themselves snoop in our emails to use our words against us in a marketing sense, or to use their rationalization, to enhance our online experience.

Not too long ago we talked about Hushmail.com, a Canadian email provider, as a viable alternative to the American email biggies. Now there's another one. This one is located in Switzerland and is called ProtonMail. Here's a writeup about it at Forbes.com titled The Only Email System The NSA Can't Access. (Forbes link via Liberty Pen.)

The problem with secure services like Hushmail and Proton is that their end to end encryption means nothing when your email correspondents still use the American biggies. So emails to those people go right into the databases of Google, Yahoo or whichever service they use. It's a good start, but if the Snowden scandal didn't send those people out looking for more secure email services then there probably isn't much that will.

Yahoo no longer honors users' request not to track

Now that's not very nice. Mega email provider Yahoo isn't honoring users' requests not to track them. To log into Yahoo mail the user has to accept cookies. And after logging out a tiny little notice appears on the page.

Do Not Track is no longer enabled on Yahoo. Your experience is now personalized. More info.

Here's a screen shot:

The "More info" page goes to their privacy page which basically says they'll use your personal info for marketing purposes or to satisfy law enforcement requests. Doesn't the NSA tap their data anyway? That seems to be what the Snowden documents said.

In any event, giving them the benefit of the doubt on that, it's still rude to track customers when they've asked you not to.

Typepad may have recovered from attack

We noted previously that Typepad (this blog's host) has been the victim of a vicious DDoS attack which took them off line completely for a several days. And blogs like mine (with the blogs.com suffix) were off even longer.

Anyway, as of this morning, 4/24/14, they may be out of the woods. I hate to sound too optimistic because the last victory celebration was premature. But here's hoping.

It really must be hard on the poor workers who had to pull all nighters to sort it all out and straighten it up.  Kudos to them.  And let's add one more hope: that the culprits get what's coming to them.

Yesterday was Backup Day

Did you back up your hard drive yesterday? It was World Backup Day, for whatever it's worth to have an annual reminder. Via Naked Security.

The online cloud storage facilities were probably busy all day sucking in new files. But anyone who doesn't trust the cloud will probably find portable drives quite adequate. There's a nifty little utility called RichCopy 4.0.217.0 that makes it very easy to back up Windows files. The user can set the default so that it compares the date and size of the files on the main drive with those on the backup drive, and it replaces only the files that have been changed. It's a real time saver. It's discussed and downloadable here.

So back it on up. It's very easy once a periodic routine is in place.

How long before the computers that run our cars get hacked

The highly publicized computer hack of Target store credit card information was a loud wake up call. If we didn't already know that computers are vulnerable to hackers, we certainly do now.

So along comes these guys who have developed a little device that when installed in a vehicle can control the computers in that vehicle which control just about everything the vehicle can do. See Forbes.com -- This iPhone-Sized Device Can Hack A Car, Researchers Plan To Demonstrate. But their device has its limits:

For now, the tool communicates via only Bluetooth, limiting the range of any wireless attack to a few feet. But by the time the two researchers present their research in Singapore, they say they’ll upgrade it to use a GSM cellular radio instead that would make it possible to control the device from miles away.

Terrific. If these white hat hackers can develop such a system it's only a matter of time before the criminal hackers can do it.

Via dailycaller.com.

Companies that have a choice are are willing to move their data outside U.S because of NSA snooping

Common sense told us this would happen. So it really can't be called an "unforeseen consequence."

Canada-based cloud hosting provider Peer 1 Hosting surveyed 300 UK and Canadian companies and found that 25% of those businesses are now moving their data outside the U.S. because of NSA security concerns. Meanwhile, a whopping 77% of decision-makers at these companies say they would sacrifice data performance and speed in favor of a more secure connection.

See Thanks, NSA: 25% of UK and Canadian businesses are moving data outside the US, says report at Pando.com. Via .

But how about those of us who live here? A VPN service might provide an encrypted pipeline through which to surf the web. But any service subject to U.S. jurisdiction would likely have to submit all their users' internet traffic to federal agencies under a blanket order. There's a chance that lawmakers might try to protect us with some statute prohibiting the practice without a warrant. But it's worthwhile to remember that little old laws didn't stop J. Edgar Hoover.

Updated 4/26/2017: John Mason emails to point to a new article comparing VPNs at thebestvpn.com.  Thanks John.

Downgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 7

Windows 8 has been disparaged up one side of the internet and down the other. Combine an unpopular operating system with an economic downturn and computer buyers have sent the PC business into a tail spin.

So it was interesting to hear a remark from an IT guy today. He said people are bringing new PCs into the store's repair shop and asking them to be downgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 7. Can't be done, he says, because the manufacturers haven't produced drivers to accommodate that change.

Maybe that's true for the PCs they sell. However, a little bit of search engine research tells us there is an exception. Most of the off-the-shelf computers probably came preloaded with the everyday Windows 8 system. However, those with Windows 8 Pro can be downgraded. See this item at the Microsoft Support page: How to downgrade from Windows 8.

Of course, there's the upgrade to Windows 8.1, which for my old laptop was a half measure. I ended up installing Classic Shell again to get the superior look of Windows 7. Then there's the possibility of another upgrade, and maybe Windows 8.2 will finally give users the control they once had.  But who knows?

But if the gentle reader will tolerate a slight detour, now would be a good time to point out an obvious analogy. There's a parallel here between Windows 8 and Obamacare. Both were promised to be super awesome. Both disappointed. Maybe Obamacare can take a cue from Microsoft and offer a downgrade program to allow people to go back to the insurance plans they had before. New Democrat bumper sticker: "If you liked your health care plan, you can go back to your health care plan. This time we mean it."

Moving from Yahoo email to Hushmail

I've used Yahoo email for quite some time and endured all they've subjected me to: the hacking, the advertising, the user unfriendly improvements, the knowledge that my emails probably go to some agency of the U.S. government, and who knows what else.

But this frog is about to jump out of that pot of slowly heating water. I've recently opened an email account at Hushmail.com, a Canadian company, with the hope that it will provide better privacy from the U.S. government, advertisers who want to mine email info for clues as to what I might be willing to buy from them, and also Obama's Big Data campaign info collection machine.

In any event, their Privacy Policy looks fairly decent. Here's an excerpt:

We will only disclose account data in the following circumstances:
If we receive an order enforceable under the laws of British Columbia, Canada, compelling us to disclose account data for a specific user account. The account data we disclose may include data in an unencrypted format. Because such orders generally state that we are not permitted to disclose the existence of the order to a user, we will not disclose to any user the existence, or nonexistence, of any order we may have received.

[Their emphasis.] Presumably, an overly broad order from the U.S. FISA court wouldn't bind them. Of course there could be a treaty between Canada and the U.S. that lets Eric Holder into their database, especially since the 19 Twin Tower terrorists entered the U.S. through Canada. But I haven't researched this and don't know.

However, I do like this part:

We do not analyze your email for the purpose of displaying advertisements.

[Their emphasis.] That sort of analysis is the way Yahoo makes money off us.

But then we get to the Disclaimer. The first sentence says that the company "does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any of the information" at their website. WTF? They say they'll do something and then say we can't trust them. It looks like something Irwin Mainway would write.

Anyway, they currently provide three levels of email service for individuals. One is free with a storage cap at 25 MB. The next level provides 1 GB storage at $34.99/year, and one up from that gives the user 10GB storage at $49.98/year.

Post Script: Indian reservations are sovereign territories within the U.S. with treaties establishing the relationship between the tribes and the U.S. government. We've seen how the tribes conduct businesses, e.g. tobacco sales and casino gambling, outside U.S. government regulations. Maybe they should get in the email business. There must be millions of Americans who would like to get the U.S. government out of their in-boxes.

HHS website hacked -- became Ugg boot ad

Hackers turn US health services site into online Ugg boot store.

Seems that a government health service website got hijacked by hackers who replaced the government web pages with ads for Ugg boots and NFL jerseys. This is both funny and sad. It's funny because the affected websites were run by the same government outfit that is supposed to implement and run Obamacare. And it's sad because the people at that agency are probably doing the best they can do.

Weekly Standard broke the story. And it was the section of HHS afflicted was the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Native American Center for Excellence subsection (nace.samhsa.gov.) Today, four days later, the website says it is undergoing maintenance. See screenshot on the right.

It must take constant vigilance to ward off hackers. But it must be done. And if this incident shows how vulnerable the HHS system is then it demonstrates the regard the leaders of our government have for the people on whom they've foisted a healthcare overhaul all for the purpose of fulfilling their imagination of a utopian empire filled with subservient subjects.

Via Naked Security where their very first commenter is such a tool that she tries to blame Republicans.

Firefox 24 now available

Seems like only yesterday Firefox 23 came out. Then along comes 24. One can almost hear the ominous ticking from the TV show "24."

According to Naked Security 17 vulnerabilities were fixed, seven of which were critical. However:

Reading through the security fixes it does not appear that any of these flaws are being actively exploited in the wild.

It's hard to keep up with it, but it certainly is good that Mozilla is staying current on the hot spots. Here's the link to download the installer. Better safe than sorry.

Genius hackers tell NASA - "Stop spy on us!"

This might qualify for a Darwin award. Naked Security is reporting that some Brazilian hacker group defaced a NASA web page last week leaving a message that said "Stop spy on us," among other things.

One has to speculate that these geniuses mistook NASA for NSA.

On the other hand, according to Naked Security:

The hacked sites housed information on the Kepler space telescope, planetary exploration, the moon and more, all run out of the organisation's Ames Research Center.

Furthermore, the message made reference to "The Illuminati." So perhaps the spying they wanted stopped was the actions of real astronomers and scientists who gaze into space.

The truth is out there!

IT guy hacked Zukerberg after Facebook ignored his bug report

We've reached a point where using the internet has made our personal information very vulnerable to snoopers. If it's not hackers trying to get into our bank accounts, it's the government scooping up every tiny bit and byte it can about us. It's incumbent on service companies to make sure our information stays private. So this story is presents a sort of cosmic justice.

Seems that an IT guy found a bug in Facebook's security that let him post remarks on anyone's Facebook wall. (This site says a Facebook wall is a "section in your profile where others can write messages to you or leave you gifts." But presumably one has to have been invited to write messages or leave gifts.) Like the good guy he was trying to be, he dutifully notified Facebook about it. And they blew him off.

So he put up a post on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall. Here's the story on DigitalTrends.com. Facebook responded by disabling the guy's Facebook account, although it was only temporary. And they finally got around to fixing the bug.

Meanwhile, if Facebook makes you depressed, you're not alone. From the scientific community we learn that real social networks enhance a person's well being while Facebook does the opposite:

Rather than enhancing well-being, as frequent interactions with supportive “offline” social networks powerfully do, the current findings demonstrate that interacting with Facebook may predict the opposite result for young adults—it may undermine it.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the behavior researchers.

Google down 5 minutes and internet usage drops 40%

Are internet users that dependent on Google?

Google incurred a complete blackout between between 23:52 and 23:57 BST (5:52pm and 5:57pm CDT) on Friday August16, 2013. Daily Mail reported it based on the the web analysis company GoSquared's calculations.

This had a huge effect in the number of pageviews coming into GoSquared’s real-time tracking – around a 40% drop, as this graph of our global pageviews per minute shows.

Chinese? Iranians? Snowden? Anonymous hackers? NSA? Blown fuse? Squirrels chewed through the wire? No explanations were given, so we'll have to supply our own conspiracy theories.  But woudn't it be nice to learn that it wiped out the dossiers Google keeps on all of us?

Whatever the cause, it is rather astonishing that at that particular time 40% of internet users appeared to be trying to use a Google product, and being unsuccesful, they waited it out rather than going to a competitor.

Google, Gmail and privacy

Anyone with a healthy dose of skepticism has been avoiding Google products for quite some time. And it's not that surprising to see a privacy advocate issue a news release like this: Google Tells Court You Cannot Expect Privacy When Sending Messages to Gmail -- People Who Care About Privacy Should Not Use Service, Consumer Watchdog Says. This admission from Google was supplied in a court filing in a class action suit alleging that Google violated wiretap laws by collecting information from emails sent to or from Gmail users. Via Naked Security.

Google defends their process by contending that their automated system of extracting email content in order to target ads at users is a common business practice which other free email services are doing and that they've disclosed all of this to their users, who, by the way, have consented to it.

The suit may get dragged out for a long time, or it could get dismissed by the judge, or maybe Google will end up settling it by agreeing to a few minor changes to their terms of privacy plus a few million dollars paid to the plaintiffs' attorneys.

But regardless of the outcome, there remains the issue of trust. Google doesn't say how long they store the emails, although we can hope that the duration is at least limited by the life of the equipment on which it is stored. Google's filing says they have 400 million Gmail users, and apparently those users are satisfied with it. But it's good bet that very few have actually read the agreement they accepted when they signed on. They merely accept whatever Google does in exchange for free email.

Privacy has been eroding for a long time, and in the last ten years that erosion has drastically accelerated. And recent disclosures tell us that our emails are legally available to government agencies. So there's another level of trust required if we are to believe that said agencies will not use the data to or detriment.

What should we do? There's a good article describing how to get Google out of your life -- see How I divorced Google. Some of the things he suggests are fairly common place, such as removing and blocking cookies and trackers. Others are more complicated, like redirecting hosts files.

As for search engines, the author suggests DuckDuckGo.com because they don't retain or forward any information about the user. I like the Netherlands based Ixquick.com because they say right up front that they won't comply with Prism.

But the most obvious suggestion is to simply avoid Google products.