techcrunch.com - 6/28/2011
Rip Empson
Oh, so you thought Google was done after it rolled out Google+, Circles, Sparks, Huddle, and Hangouts? No, no, no. Google will be done when that's Google-brand oxygen you're breathing. This afternoon, the search giant's rollout announcements have continued, as the official Google blog quietly declared (relatively speaking) that the Google Search page (and products across the Google empire) will be getting "a bit of a makeover" over the next few months. And there are new web fonts, too. OMGoogle!
Basically, these updates will focus on adding enhanced usability, cleaner design, and an improved UX to Google products. While these changes will roll out across all Google products, it looks like the focus will be on cleaning up Google Search, Maps, and Gmail. According to its blog, the intention behind this iterating is to succeed in "bringing forward the stuff that matters to you and getting all the other clutter out of the way". But what does that mean? More specifically, Google will be adding bolder colors for actionable buttons, hiding those that aren't essential until they're actually needed, etc.
And, as you can see below, the results page will also be getting a bit of a new look. Users will find a new gray bar and a blue search button to highlight the search box at the top of the page. Oh, and how about a black nav bar?
Other updates to search and results include an updated design for the left-hand panel of tools, in which Google has muted the color of the tools and reserved the use of bolder colors to highlight key action buttons, tools and filters. The URL will also be relocated directly beneath the headline for each search result, and links on the homepage moved to the top and bottom edges of the browser, all in the name of cleaning up the search experience.
These updates also are a sign of the enormous array of gadgets and devices on the market today, and frankly, of Google's ubiquity across these platforms and devices. Google is essentially rolling out more featherweight design that will be optimized for use across mobile, high-res monitors, TV, and so on. Consistency in the face of fragmentation is everything. Oh, and Google also mentioned that, as part of this new look, there will also be some new technologies put to use, like HTML5 and WebGL, to name two familiar faces.
Google is also adding to its collection of free, open-source fonts -- another hundred-plus fonts, to be precise. So, now you can search or browse hundreds of font families, then add them to your Google Font Collection, view them in a sample layout, and then grab the Google-served code to add them to your website. Just like that. Google Web Fonts are available via the Google Web Fonts API, which you can learn more about here.
But 'will there be Comic Sans 2?', you ask. I'm not at liberty to say.
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Google Gets All Designy With Updated Homepage Search Results And Free Fonts http://bit.ly/kxyqec
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Social Wars! Google Unveils Facebook Competitor Google+ http://bit.ly/jBEpTz
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Social Wars! Google Unveils Facebook Competitor Google+
foxnews.com - 6/28/2011
After years of rumors and hints, Google Tuesday launched a trial of its Facebook competitor, a social network called The Google+ Project.
And the company clearly isn't shy about it.
In a blog post announcing the launch of The Google+ Project, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Engineering for the company, argued that the subtlety of real world interactions are lost online due to the rigidity of today's tools. Google, he said, could succeed where other services have failed.
"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Gundotra said. The service launched in a limited beta Tuesday afternoon. And getting it live was a massive, lengthy struggle, explained Wired's Steven Levy.
"Developed under the codename Emerald Sea, it is a result of a lengthy and urgent effort involving almost all of the company’s products," Levy wrote. "Hundreds of engineers were involved in the effort. It has been a key focus for new CEO Larry Page."
To set Google+ apart from Facebook, which some recent reports have pegged at 750 million users, Google is claiming to have a better approach to privacy, taking on the hot-button issue that has burned both companies before.
"For us, privacy isn't buried six panels deep," Google vice president of product management Bradley Horowitz told Reuters.
Google's social network revolves around Circles -- long rumored to be the project's name -- which helps you segment the people you know into, well, circles: friends, family, coworkers and so on. Create as many as you want, and then drag a picture of a person into one of them to add them.
"Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said, adding a not-so-subtle dig at Facebook: "Today’s online services turn friendship into fast food -- wrapping everyone in “friend†paper -- and sharing really suffers."
The Google+ service consists of several linked components: a continuous news feed similar to Facebook's called “the Stream†and a second, related component called “Sparks†that reveals posts related to one’s specified interests.
Other elements of the new service include Hangouts, a video chat; Huddle, for group chats; and Sparks, a personalized recommendation service. Once logged into the Google network, nearly all Google sites will feature a special toolbar that runs across the top of the page, reminding you that you're logged into Google+.
But will it be enough to get those hundreds of millions to switch? Gundotra told Reuters that wasn't necessarily the goal.
"People today use multiple tools. I think what we're offering here offers some very distinct advantages around some basic needs," he said.
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After years of rumors and hints, Google Tuesday launched a trial of its Facebook competitor, a social network called The Google+ Project.
And the company clearly isn't shy about it.
In a blog post announcing the launch of The Google+ Project, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Engineering for the company, argued that the subtlety of real world interactions are lost online due to the rigidity of today's tools. Google, he said, could succeed where other services have failed.
"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Gundotra said. The service launched in a limited beta Tuesday afternoon. And getting it live was a massive, lengthy struggle, explained Wired's Steven Levy.
"Developed under the codename Emerald Sea, it is a result of a lengthy and urgent effort involving almost all of the company’s products," Levy wrote. "Hundreds of engineers were involved in the effort. It has been a key focus for new CEO Larry Page."
To set Google+ apart from Facebook, which some recent reports have pegged at 750 million users, Google is claiming to have a better approach to privacy, taking on the hot-button issue that has burned both companies before.
"For us, privacy isn't buried six panels deep," Google vice president of product management Bradley Horowitz told Reuters.
Google's social network revolves around Circles -- long rumored to be the project's name -- which helps you segment the people you know into, well, circles: friends, family, coworkers and so on. Create as many as you want, and then drag a picture of a person into one of them to add them.
"Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said, adding a not-so-subtle dig at Facebook: "Today’s online services turn friendship into fast food -- wrapping everyone in “friend†paper -- and sharing really suffers."
The Google+ service consists of several linked components: a continuous news feed similar to Facebook's called “the Stream†and a second, related component called “Sparks†that reveals posts related to one’s specified interests.
Other elements of the new service include Hangouts, a video chat; Huddle, for group chats; and Sparks, a personalized recommendation service. Once logged into the Google network, nearly all Google sites will feature a special toolbar that runs across the top of the page, reminding you that you're logged into Google+.
But will it be enough to get those hundreds of millions to switch? Gundotra told Reuters that wasn't necessarily the goal.
"People today use multiple tools. I think what we're offering here offers some very distinct advantages around some basic needs," he said.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Firefox for Android Includes Do-Not-Track Feature
appscout.com - 6/27/2011
Alan Henry
Firefox 5 was launched last week, and while very little changed on the desktop, the Android version of the browser finally shed the beta tag and brought one of its most talked-about features for the fore: the "Do Not Track" private browsing features that were available in the beta.
The Mozilla Foundation touted the introduction of Do Not Track to Firefox 5 for Android as a highlight for the release, and proof that Firefox offered the same feature-set across all browsers. The mobile version of Firefox 5 also supports add-ons and support for the SwiftKey alternative keyboard. Developers also rolled in a number of performance improvements and tweaks with the new version of the mobile app.
At the same time, the Do Not Track feature does a good job of stopping Web sites you visit from keeping an eye on where you came from and where you go, and stops those sites from dropping cookies on your Android phone and using scripts to watch what you're clicking or viewing on their site. It's a great feature for those folks who are obsessed with private browsing.
Unfortunately however, Firefox 5 for Android is still on the buggy side, and even though it's given up the beta tag, it still is only available on certain higher-end Android phones and has been known to force-close on some of those. Additionally, using Firefox 5 on Android forces Web sites to load their desktop versions instead of their mobile variant if there is one available.
Even so, Firefox 5 for Android is free and available now in the Android App Market.
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Alan Henry
Firefox 5 was launched last week, and while very little changed on the desktop, the Android version of the browser finally shed the beta tag and brought one of its most talked-about features for the fore: the "Do Not Track" private browsing features that were available in the beta.
The Mozilla Foundation touted the introduction of Do Not Track to Firefox 5 for Android as a highlight for the release, and proof that Firefox offered the same feature-set across all browsers. The mobile version of Firefox 5 also supports add-ons and support for the SwiftKey alternative keyboard. Developers also rolled in a number of performance improvements and tweaks with the new version of the mobile app.
At the same time, the Do Not Track feature does a good job of stopping Web sites you visit from keeping an eye on where you came from and where you go, and stops those sites from dropping cookies on your Android phone and using scripts to watch what you're clicking or viewing on their site. It's a great feature for those folks who are obsessed with private browsing.
Unfortunately however, Firefox 5 for Android is still on the buggy side, and even though it's given up the beta tag, it still is only available on certain higher-end Android phones and has been known to force-close on some of those. Additionally, using Firefox 5 on Android forces Web sites to load their desktop versions instead of their mobile variant if there is one available.
Even so, Firefox 5 for Android is free and available now in the Android App Market.
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Android Firefox has Do-Not-Track Feature http://bit.ly/jZagTh
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Monday, June 27, 2011
New tools aim to plug Facebook leaks http://bit.ly/kZWEoH
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New tools aim to plug Facebook leaks
(CNN) -- Your Facebook friends aren't the only ones reading those wall posts.
Many of Facebook's 600 million members make intimate "friend" connections with corporations without knowing the extent of those relationships.
Facebook users forge these ties when they install a Facebook application from a company, click a "Like" button on a company page or log into many third-party websites by using their Facebook accounts. In many cases, these actions also cause unknowing users to fork over their names, lists of friends, e-mail and home addresses, phone numbers and other personal info.
People who sign up to send greeting cards on Jibjab by using the Facebook Connect button, for example, give that site's owner access to information they've posted on their Facebook profiles. Ditto for apps, those little utilities and games that show up on or interface with the social network. Facebook says users install 20 million apps on the website per day.
Instead of wading through the swamps of app-connection and privacy settings pages buried within Facebook's menus, some third-party developers have designed tools to help people manage the information they're sharing, often unknowingly, with strangers and corporations.
Social Monitor, a service that launched Thursday, is a Web browser extension that looks at apps attached to the user's Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
Social Monitor's dashboard shows an indicator next to each app, which looks like those scary Homeland Security threat level signs at airports. The colors signify how much info the app can access from a social-network profile. Next to that color rating, users see an evaluation of the Facebook app developer's reputation in terms of data privacy.
The Social Monitor tool was developed by Unsubscribe.com, which provides a popular service for opting out of unwanted mass e-mails.
While investigating the market, Unsubscribe.com researchers discovered some unsettling trends with Facebook usage.
Users connect their Facebook accounts with a new service, and therefore granted the keys to their personal info, every three days on average, according to Social Monitor's beta testing research. Most people don't bother to turn off that access to unused apps or are unaware of the option, according to the Unsubscribe.com study. The company did not site the number of subjects who participated in the research.
"Keeping your Facebook authorization hygienic is something that's going to be very important," said Unsubscribe.com CEO James Siminoff. "It's becoming harder to disconnect from this stuff."
To inform Social Monitor's developer-reputation rating, Unsubscribe.com researched or attempted to contact thousands of people behind popular Facebook apps. Many, even ones who had collected tens of millions of people's info, could not be reached, Siminoff said.
Some developers say they make games and other apps for the sole business purpose of collecting personal info and selling access to their databases. Facebook in November suspended its relationships with developers who were caught brokering data.
"Even in the top 10, they're getting huge amounts of information from their customers, and you can't find out who these developers are, where they are," Siminoff said, referring to the most popular Facebook apps. "This seems like a dangerous thing."
Developers of Twitter apps can access people's private messages. (So Congressmen looking to commit a digital indiscretion may want to think twice about doing so through UberSocial.) Next week, Twitter will ask users to give special permission to developers that want access to those correspondences.
Other apps provide shields against even less tangible social-network data snoops.
Disconnect, which has incorporated since CNN reported on the project's launch last year, offers a Web browser extension that blocks Facebook, Twitter and Google from collecting browsing history.
Facebook's "Like" button and the social sharing buttons sprinkled throughout the Web call back to the social-network companies every time it recognizes a visitor. Each company that uses these features says it deletes the info after a reasonable period of time.
The Like button appears on one-third of the top 1,000 websites and Twitter's share feature on one-fifth of those most-trafficked sites, according to data compiled by Disconnect.
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Many of Facebook's 600 million members make intimate "friend" connections with corporations without knowing the extent of those relationships.
Facebook users forge these ties when they install a Facebook application from a company, click a "Like" button on a company page or log into many third-party websites by using their Facebook accounts. In many cases, these actions also cause unknowing users to fork over their names, lists of friends, e-mail and home addresses, phone numbers and other personal info.
People who sign up to send greeting cards on Jibjab by using the Facebook Connect button, for example, give that site's owner access to information they've posted on their Facebook profiles. Ditto for apps, those little utilities and games that show up on or interface with the social network. Facebook says users install 20 million apps on the website per day.
Instead of wading through the swamps of app-connection and privacy settings pages buried within Facebook's menus, some third-party developers have designed tools to help people manage the information they're sharing, often unknowingly, with strangers and corporations.
Social Monitor, a service that launched Thursday, is a Web browser extension that looks at apps attached to the user's Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
Social Monitor's dashboard shows an indicator next to each app, which looks like those scary Homeland Security threat level signs at airports. The colors signify how much info the app can access from a social-network profile. Next to that color rating, users see an evaluation of the Facebook app developer's reputation in terms of data privacy.
The Social Monitor tool was developed by Unsubscribe.com, which provides a popular service for opting out of unwanted mass e-mails.
While investigating the market, Unsubscribe.com researchers discovered some unsettling trends with Facebook usage.
Users connect their Facebook accounts with a new service, and therefore granted the keys to their personal info, every three days on average, according to Social Monitor's beta testing research. Most people don't bother to turn off that access to unused apps or are unaware of the option, according to the Unsubscribe.com study. The company did not site the number of subjects who participated in the research.
"Keeping your Facebook authorization hygienic is something that's going to be very important," said Unsubscribe.com CEO James Siminoff. "It's becoming harder to disconnect from this stuff."
To inform Social Monitor's developer-reputation rating, Unsubscribe.com researched or attempted to contact thousands of people behind popular Facebook apps. Many, even ones who had collected tens of millions of people's info, could not be reached, Siminoff said.
Some developers say they make games and other apps for the sole business purpose of collecting personal info and selling access to their databases. Facebook in November suspended its relationships with developers who were caught brokering data.
"Even in the top 10, they're getting huge amounts of information from their customers, and you can't find out who these developers are, where they are," Siminoff said, referring to the most popular Facebook apps. "This seems like a dangerous thing."
Developers of Twitter apps can access people's private messages. (So Congressmen looking to commit a digital indiscretion may want to think twice about doing so through UberSocial.) Next week, Twitter will ask users to give special permission to developers that want access to those correspondences.
Other apps provide shields against even less tangible social-network data snoops.
Disconnect, which has incorporated since CNN reported on the project's launch last year, offers a Web browser extension that blocks Facebook, Twitter and Google from collecting browsing history.
Facebook's "Like" button and the social sharing buttons sprinkled throughout the Web call back to the social-network companies every time it recognizes a visitor. Each company that uses these features says it deletes the info after a reasonable period of time.
The Like button appears on one-third of the top 1,000 websites and Twitter's share feature on one-fifth of those most-trafficked sites, according to data compiled by Disconnect.
Let a tech help secure your personal data today!
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Celebs Reveal Their Most Beloved Apps
Which celebrity uses a smartphone to watch her weight? Who's bettering the world with an app? And what app gets the most celeb shout-outs?
While on the red carpet at the 15th Annual Webby Awards in New York City, we put the question to a wide range of celebrities, who revealed not their intimate secrets but instead their favorite apps.
Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer divulged that they are developing their own app called AOK, which stands for Acts of Kindness. The good-willed app is a community based rewards system where users submit their acts and observations of kindness.
Marlon Wayans told us he finds the iAnnotate app useful, which allows him to read his scripts and make notes on them.
Both Damian Kulash, lead singer of the band OK Go, as well as viral video star Antoine Dodson got excited over the highly addictive game, Angry Birds, which not only won a Webby Award for Best Mobile Game, but also came out a winner among celebs. “Who doesn’t love Angry Birds?” Kulash said.
Antoine Dodson also pointed out his app, the unsurprisingly named Bed Intruder app, which hasw sound clips and video of his now famous television debut. It lets you click to play his now famous lines, “you better hide your kids, hide your wife.”
Among Kulash’s other favorite apps are the Sonos Controller, which allows you to stream music from you iPhone, iPod, or iPad throughout your home.
Jake Hurwitz, famous for his comedy sketch Jake and Amir on CollegeHumor.com, said he uses his phone to stay in shape with iMapMyRun. But Ricky Van Veen, creator of CollegeHumor.com, would rather listen to his stomach when it comes to apps.
"[My favorite is] Seamless Web, because I can order my lunch when in a meeting and I when I get out of the meeting, it’s sitting on my desk.”
The Gregory Brothers were all about sticking to what they know: music and family. They use the Ocarina app which turns your iPhone into an ancient flute; the Safari web browser, “ because Safari does everything,” and Hipstamatic for creative digital photography, “capturing our favorite family moments.”
Comedian Lisa Lampanelli doesn’t leave home without the Weight Watchers mobile app. She says it helps her “count how many points you’ve gone over, because trust me, I always do.” She also likes having a map app on her smartphone, “so I can yell at my husband and see I told you were wrong about the directions!”
Drew Patterson, CEO and Founder of travel site JetSetter says he is a “big fan of the New York Times crossword puzzle" -- "though he noted he was "to afraid to admit it.”
What's on your tablet, smartphone or whatever? What's your favorite app? Leave a note in the comments and give a shout-out to the tool that gets you through the day.
Don't have an ipad to run these apps on?
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ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT!
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While on the red carpet at the 15th Annual Webby Awards in New York City, we put the question to a wide range of celebrities, who revealed not their intimate secrets but instead their favorite apps.
Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer divulged that they are developing their own app called AOK, which stands for Acts of Kindness. The good-willed app is a community based rewards system where users submit their acts and observations of kindness.
Marlon Wayans told us he finds the iAnnotate app useful, which allows him to read his scripts and make notes on them.
Both Damian Kulash, lead singer of the band OK Go, as well as viral video star Antoine Dodson got excited over the highly addictive game, Angry Birds, which not only won a Webby Award for Best Mobile Game, but also came out a winner among celebs. “Who doesn’t love Angry Birds?” Kulash said.
Antoine Dodson also pointed out his app, the unsurprisingly named Bed Intruder app, which hasw sound clips and video of his now famous television debut. It lets you click to play his now famous lines, “you better hide your kids, hide your wife.”
Among Kulash’s other favorite apps are the Sonos Controller, which allows you to stream music from you iPhone, iPod, or iPad throughout your home.
Jake Hurwitz, famous for his comedy sketch Jake and Amir on CollegeHumor.com, said he uses his phone to stay in shape with iMapMyRun. But Ricky Van Veen, creator of CollegeHumor.com, would rather listen to his stomach when it comes to apps.
"[My favorite is] Seamless Web, because I can order my lunch when in a meeting and I when I get out of the meeting, it’s sitting on my desk.”
The Gregory Brothers were all about sticking to what they know: music and family. They use the Ocarina app which turns your iPhone into an ancient flute; the Safari web browser, “ because Safari does everything,” and Hipstamatic for creative digital photography, “capturing our favorite family moments.”
Comedian Lisa Lampanelli doesn’t leave home without the Weight Watchers mobile app. She says it helps her “count how many points you’ve gone over, because trust me, I always do.” She also likes having a map app on her smartphone, “so I can yell at my husband and see I told you were wrong about the directions!”
Drew Patterson, CEO and Founder of travel site JetSetter says he is a “big fan of the New York Times crossword puzzle" -- "though he noted he was "to afraid to admit it.”
What's on your tablet, smartphone or whatever? What's your favorite app? Leave a note in the comments and give a shout-out to the tool that gets you through the day.
Don't have an ipad to run these apps on?
Don't miss your opportunity to win an iPad2 from Geeks On Call.
ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT!
Enter Now at www.GeeksOnCall.com
Friday, June 24, 2011
Making it harder for ads to track you http://bit.ly/lwqukk
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Making it harder for ads to track you online
cnn.com - 2/21/2011
Mark Milian
As companies gather, and sell, information about people's Web activity, more users are asking that question. And so are governments, ad giants and startups looking to capitalize on a gestating shift in the industry.
Data collection for the purpose of tailoring ads to each visitor, a process called "behavioral targeting," has exploded in recent years. Now, several initiatives are jockeying to become the standard way by which people can opt out of Web-advertising systems that log browsing history.
So far, online ad agencies and their Web-publisher clients have operated without many restraints. Yahoo, for instance, automatically tells 75 different third-party services when a person has landed on its home page, and Microsoft's MSN.com, another portal, transmits similar information to 41 third-party databases, according to independent research conducted by privacy-software firm Disconnect and reviewed by CNN.
News sites like CBS' CNET.com sends info to 46 third parties, and the Walt Disney Company's Go.com, which hosts ESPN.com, alerts 41, according to this data, compiled by Disconnect founder Brian Kennish.
"In recent years, many players have entered the behavioral targeting space," wrote researchers from NYU and and Stanford University in a recent report. This type of ad targeting "holds the promise of more effective advertising while presenting users with ads that are more relevant to their interests."
CNN.com shares limited information with 31 partners. CNN and most other sites don't share names of visitors.
Not all the companies collecting such information are doing so for advertising purposes. Some, like comScore and Omniture, use the data for traffic-analytics services they sell to publishers. Other clients such as Facebook and Twitter receive that information when their link-share buttons appear on a page but say they don't use the data for tracking purposes.
Why advertisers want to track you
Advertisers are among the most voracious documentarians of where people go on the Web.
The more an advertiser knows about a person's interests and browsing and buying habits, the more likely it is to deliver a message that results in a purchase, industry executives say. If an ad server knows someone has recently visited pages about scuba diving, odds are an ad for scuba gear will catch that person's attention -- and maybe his wallet.
The top four services that collect Web-browsing info for ad targeting are run by Google, according to the Disconnect research, which sampled 201,358 Web pages. AdSense, for one, can collect nearly one-quarter of people's browsing histories -- thanks to the prevalence of text-based ads around the Web.
Google says it does not combine the info from these separate ad networks -- DoubleClick for graphics, AdWords for syndicated text and AdSense for search -- to create more comprehensive profiles. The Justice Department plans to review Google's recent proposal to acquire ad-optimization company Admeld.
Profiles of Web users have become so valuable that some companies, like RapLeaf, have built businesses around compiling detailed profiles of people tied to their real names.
"I was writing ad servers for DoubleClick, and even I didn't know where my data was going," Kennish said. "And when I say 'I didn't know where my data was going,' that (RapLeaf's aggregated profiles) is what I'm talking about."
Why do so many companies seem so eager to overstep privacy boundaries?
"The thing about engineers," said Kennish, himself a programmer, "if they have a technical challenge, they're going to solve it regardless of the ethical implications."
Letting users opt out
What some critics call overzealous and reckless data hoarding by online advertisers may usher in a reckoning.
The proposed Do Not Track bills in the U.S. Congress, which are still in their infancies, offer too broad a solution to the issue, several experts say. They emulate the National Do Not Call Registry, which lets Americans add themselves to a list that excludes them from phone solicitations.
The proposed Do Not Track bills "would probably destroy the Internet economy," Kennish said. Instead, governments should add rules incrementally, he said.
Kennish's Disconnect is developing a system of buttons that websites and browser providers can use to clearly demonstrate a site's tracking policies. It will offer the service for free.
Also, a consortium of ad giants, faced with government scrutiny, has expedited an initiative to let people easily opt out of targeting.
The Digital Advertising Alliance has signed on nine of the top 10 online ad providers, said Peter Kosmala, the group's managing director. The 10th will join "in the next few days," Kosmala said. The DAA has support from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, RapLeaf, AOL and many other big names.
The efforts center around the Advertising Option Icon, a blue button that looks like a triangle surrounding an "i" and which will appear on ads that collect browsing info. Clicking it will provide visitors with information about tracking programs and options for disabling tracking.
Unlike Disconnect's free tools, the DAA will license its button to companies for a $5,000 annual fee.
The program will not offer a one-click method for disabling ad tracking from every network, Kosmala said. He also doesn't like the word "tracking" to describe the installation of cookies on people's computers to record Web history for targeted ads.
"It's my strong belief that consumers like a more granular level of control, rather than something that blunt," he said. When asked about the Do Not Track legislation, he said: "We're very strong believers in the self-regulatory models."
Can the ad industry police itself?
But the ad industry has taken on, and subsequently dropped, initiatives for self-policing privacy in the past, as many point out and as Kosmala acknowledges.
"Unfortunately, the self-regulatory groups and organizations that are created in response to the threat of regulation are often extremely short lived," Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, wrote in a report in May.
Kosmala was a part of one of those failed efforts, called the Network Advertising Initiative. The DAA will be different, he said, because a division of the federal government's Council of Better Business Bureaus has committed to enforce the ad agencies' promises.
Still, tech companies are offering their own solutions. All the largest browser makers except Google have instituted or have plans to include a setting in their software that allows users to opt out of tracking.
Such opt-out settings have a ways to go, however.
One out of every 50 users of Mozilla's Firefox, the second most popular browser, have discovered the hidden setting and elected to enable it, said a person who learned the statistic from Mozilla, but was not authorized to speak publicly. The feature, in its current form, is not recognized by most advertisers and therefore doesn't do much.
Kosmala declined to comment on whether he supports the single-button opt out ability built into browsers.
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Mark Milian
As companies gather, and sell, information about people's Web activity, more users are asking that question. And so are governments, ad giants and startups looking to capitalize on a gestating shift in the industry.
Data collection for the purpose of tailoring ads to each visitor, a process called "behavioral targeting," has exploded in recent years. Now, several initiatives are jockeying to become the standard way by which people can opt out of Web-advertising systems that log browsing history.
So far, online ad agencies and their Web-publisher clients have operated without many restraints. Yahoo, for instance, automatically tells 75 different third-party services when a person has landed on its home page, and Microsoft's MSN.com, another portal, transmits similar information to 41 third-party databases, according to independent research conducted by privacy-software firm Disconnect and reviewed by CNN.
News sites like CBS' CNET.com sends info to 46 third parties, and the Walt Disney Company's Go.com, which hosts ESPN.com, alerts 41, according to this data, compiled by Disconnect founder Brian Kennish.
"In recent years, many players have entered the behavioral targeting space," wrote researchers from NYU and and Stanford University in a recent report. This type of ad targeting "holds the promise of more effective advertising while presenting users with ads that are more relevant to their interests."
CNN.com shares limited information with 31 partners. CNN and most other sites don't share names of visitors.
Not all the companies collecting such information are doing so for advertising purposes. Some, like comScore and Omniture, use the data for traffic-analytics services they sell to publishers. Other clients such as Facebook and Twitter receive that information when their link-share buttons appear on a page but say they don't use the data for tracking purposes.
Why advertisers want to track you
Advertisers are among the most voracious documentarians of where people go on the Web.
The more an advertiser knows about a person's interests and browsing and buying habits, the more likely it is to deliver a message that results in a purchase, industry executives say. If an ad server knows someone has recently visited pages about scuba diving, odds are an ad for scuba gear will catch that person's attention -- and maybe his wallet.
The top four services that collect Web-browsing info for ad targeting are run by Google, according to the Disconnect research, which sampled 201,358 Web pages. AdSense, for one, can collect nearly one-quarter of people's browsing histories -- thanks to the prevalence of text-based ads around the Web.
Google says it does not combine the info from these separate ad networks -- DoubleClick for graphics, AdWords for syndicated text and AdSense for search -- to create more comprehensive profiles. The Justice Department plans to review Google's recent proposal to acquire ad-optimization company Admeld.
Profiles of Web users have become so valuable that some companies, like RapLeaf, have built businesses around compiling detailed profiles of people tied to their real names.
"I was writing ad servers for DoubleClick, and even I didn't know where my data was going," Kennish said. "And when I say 'I didn't know where my data was going,' that (RapLeaf's aggregated profiles) is what I'm talking about."
Why do so many companies seem so eager to overstep privacy boundaries?
"The thing about engineers," said Kennish, himself a programmer, "if they have a technical challenge, they're going to solve it regardless of the ethical implications."
Letting users opt out
What some critics call overzealous and reckless data hoarding by online advertisers may usher in a reckoning.
The proposed Do Not Track bills in the U.S. Congress, which are still in their infancies, offer too broad a solution to the issue, several experts say. They emulate the National Do Not Call Registry, which lets Americans add themselves to a list that excludes them from phone solicitations.
The proposed Do Not Track bills "would probably destroy the Internet economy," Kennish said. Instead, governments should add rules incrementally, he said.
Kennish's Disconnect is developing a system of buttons that websites and browser providers can use to clearly demonstrate a site's tracking policies. It will offer the service for free.
Also, a consortium of ad giants, faced with government scrutiny, has expedited an initiative to let people easily opt out of targeting.
The Digital Advertising Alliance has signed on nine of the top 10 online ad providers, said Peter Kosmala, the group's managing director. The 10th will join "in the next few days," Kosmala said. The DAA has support from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, RapLeaf, AOL and many other big names.
The efforts center around the Advertising Option Icon, a blue button that looks like a triangle surrounding an "i" and which will appear on ads that collect browsing info. Clicking it will provide visitors with information about tracking programs and options for disabling tracking.
Unlike Disconnect's free tools, the DAA will license its button to companies for a $5,000 annual fee.
The program will not offer a one-click method for disabling ad tracking from every network, Kosmala said. He also doesn't like the word "tracking" to describe the installation of cookies on people's computers to record Web history for targeted ads.
"It's my strong belief that consumers like a more granular level of control, rather than something that blunt," he said. When asked about the Do Not Track legislation, he said: "We're very strong believers in the self-regulatory models."
Can the ad industry police itself?
But the ad industry has taken on, and subsequently dropped, initiatives for self-policing privacy in the past, as many point out and as Kosmala acknowledges.
"Unfortunately, the self-regulatory groups and organizations that are created in response to the threat of regulation are often extremely short lived," Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, wrote in a report in May.
Kosmala was a part of one of those failed efforts, called the Network Advertising Initiative. The DAA will be different, he said, because a division of the federal government's Council of Better Business Bureaus has committed to enforce the ad agencies' promises.
Still, tech companies are offering their own solutions. All the largest browser makers except Google have instituted or have plans to include a setting in their software that allows users to opt out of tracking.
Such opt-out settings have a ways to go, however.
One out of every 50 users of Mozilla's Firefox, the second most popular browser, have discovered the hidden setting and elected to enable it, said a person who learned the statistic from Mozilla, but was not authorized to speak publicly. The feature, in its current form, is not recognized by most advertisers and therefore doesn't do much.
Kosmala declined to comment on whether he supports the single-button opt out ability built into browsers.
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Thursday, June 23, 2011
What Makes a Password Stronger http://bit.ly/iSTCQN
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What Makes a Password Stronger
wsj.com - 6/23/2011
STU WOO
For all its benefits, the Internet can be a hassle when it comes to remembering passwords for email, banking, social networking and shopping.
Many people use just a single password across the Web. That's a bad idea, say online-security experts.
"Having the same password for everything is like having the same key for your house, your car, your gym locker, your office," says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer for online-payments service PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc.
Mr. Barrett has different passwords for his email and Facebook accounts—and that's just for starters. He has a third password for financial websites he uses, such as for banks and credit cards, and a fourth for major shopping sites such as Amazon.com. He created a fifth password for websites he visits infrequently or doesn't trust, such as blogs and an online store that sells gardening tools.
A spate of recent attacks underscores how hackers are spending more time trying to crack into big databases to obtain passwords, security officials say. In April, for instance, hackers obtained passwords and other information of 77 million users in Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Network, while Google Inc. said this month that hackers broke into its email system and gained passwords of U.S. government officials.
So-called brute force attacks, by which hackers try to guess individual passwords, also appear to be on the rise, Mr. Barrett says.
PayPal says two out of three people use just one or two passwords across all sites, with Web users averaging 25 online accounts. A 2009 survey in the U.K. by security-software company PC Tools found men to be particularly bad offenders, with 47% using just one password, compared with 26% of women.
Another PC Tools survey last year showed that 28% of young Australians from 18 to 38 years old had passwords that were easily guessed, such as a name of a loved one or pet, which criminals can easily find on Facebook or other public sites. Other passwords can be easily guessed, too. Hackers last year posted a list of the most popular passwords of Gawker Media users, including "password," "123456," "qwerty," "letmein" and "baseball."
"If your password is on that list, please change it," says Brandon Sterne, security manager at Mozilla Corp., which makes the Firefox browser and other software. Hackers "will take the first 100 passwords on the list and go through the entire user base" of a website to crack a few accounts, he says.
People typically start changing online passwords after they've been hacked, says Dave Cole, general manager of PC Tools. However, "after a relatively short time, all but the most paranoid users regress to previous behaviors prior to the security breach," he says. He and other security experts recommend people change or rotate passwords a few times a year.
To come up with a strong password, some security officials recommend taking a memorable phrase and using the first letter of each word. For example, "to be or not to be, that is the question," becomes "tbontbtitq." Others mash an unlikely pair of words together. The longer the password—at least eight characters, experts say—the safer it is.
Once people figure out a phrase for their password, they can make it more complex by replacing letters with special characters or numbers. They can also capitalize, say, the second character of every password for added security. Hence "tbontbtitq" becomes "tB0ntbtitq."
No matter how good a password is, it is unsafe to use just one. Mr. Barrett recommends following his lead and having strong ones for four different kinds of sites—email, social networks, financial institutions and e-commerce sites—and a fifth for infrequently visited or untrustworthy sites.
Even the strongest passwords, however, are useless if criminals install so-called malware on computers that allow them to track a person's keystrokes. Security experts say people can avoid this by keeping their antivirus and antispyware software updated and by avoiding downloading files from unknown websites and email senders.
Some security experts recommend slightly modifying passwords within each category of site. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. offer free password-strength checkers, but users shouldn't rely on them wholly because such strength tests don't gauge whether a password contains easily found personal information, such as a birthday or a pet's name.
It's especially important to have a separate password for an email account, says Mozilla's Mr. Sterne. Many sites have "Forgot my password" buttons that, when clicked, initiate a password-recovery process by email. Hackers who break into an email account can then intercept those emails and take control of each account registered using that address.
Some websites, such as Google and Facebook, now let people register a phone number along with their account. If a person forgets his passwords, the sites reset the passwords by calling or sending a text message to that person.
Mr. Barrett says people should be able to remember four or five good passwords. If not, they can write them down on a piece of paper and stick it in their wallet, and then throw the cheat sheet away once all the passwords are memorized.
People who still struggle to remember them all can use a password manager. Several, such as LastPass, are free. LastPass prompts users to create a master password and then generates and stores random passwords for different sites. Some security experts warn against using managers that store passwords remotely, but LastPass Chief Executive Joe Siegrist says hackers can't access the passwords because all data is encrypted.
The worst thing that people can do after creating their different passwords: Put it on a sticky note by their monitor. "That defeats the entire purpose," says Mr. Sterne.
Heather O'Neill, a 27-year-old tech-company employee in San Francisco, had her Google email account broken into earlier this year. She says she used the same password for several sites, and that it was a weak one.
"I can't have one password for everything," she says. "Everything is going to be different."
Ensure your data is secure... Book Your Appointment Now!
Call Toll Free
1-800-905-4335
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STU WOO
For all its benefits, the Internet can be a hassle when it comes to remembering passwords for email, banking, social networking and shopping.
Many people use just a single password across the Web. That's a bad idea, say online-security experts.
"Having the same password for everything is like having the same key for your house, your car, your gym locker, your office," says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer for online-payments service PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc.
Mr. Barrett has different passwords for his email and Facebook accounts—and that's just for starters. He has a third password for financial websites he uses, such as for banks and credit cards, and a fourth for major shopping sites such as Amazon.com. He created a fifth password for websites he visits infrequently or doesn't trust, such as blogs and an online store that sells gardening tools.
A spate of recent attacks underscores how hackers are spending more time trying to crack into big databases to obtain passwords, security officials say. In April, for instance, hackers obtained passwords and other information of 77 million users in Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Network, while Google Inc. said this month that hackers broke into its email system and gained passwords of U.S. government officials.
So-called brute force attacks, by which hackers try to guess individual passwords, also appear to be on the rise, Mr. Barrett says.
PayPal says two out of three people use just one or two passwords across all sites, with Web users averaging 25 online accounts. A 2009 survey in the U.K. by security-software company PC Tools found men to be particularly bad offenders, with 47% using just one password, compared with 26% of women.
Another PC Tools survey last year showed that 28% of young Australians from 18 to 38 years old had passwords that were easily guessed, such as a name of a loved one or pet, which criminals can easily find on Facebook or other public sites. Other passwords can be easily guessed, too. Hackers last year posted a list of the most popular passwords of Gawker Media users, including "password," "123456," "qwerty," "letmein" and "baseball."
"If your password is on that list, please change it," says Brandon Sterne, security manager at Mozilla Corp., which makes the Firefox browser and other software. Hackers "will take the first 100 passwords on the list and go through the entire user base" of a website to crack a few accounts, he says.
People typically start changing online passwords after they've been hacked, says Dave Cole, general manager of PC Tools. However, "after a relatively short time, all but the most paranoid users regress to previous behaviors prior to the security breach," he says. He and other security experts recommend people change or rotate passwords a few times a year.
To come up with a strong password, some security officials recommend taking a memorable phrase and using the first letter of each word. For example, "to be or not to be, that is the question," becomes "tbontbtitq." Others mash an unlikely pair of words together. The longer the password—at least eight characters, experts say—the safer it is.
Once people figure out a phrase for their password, they can make it more complex by replacing letters with special characters or numbers. They can also capitalize, say, the second character of every password for added security. Hence "tbontbtitq" becomes "tB0ntbtitq."
No matter how good a password is, it is unsafe to use just one. Mr. Barrett recommends following his lead and having strong ones for four different kinds of sites—email, social networks, financial institutions and e-commerce sites—and a fifth for infrequently visited or untrustworthy sites.
Even the strongest passwords, however, are useless if criminals install so-called malware on computers that allow them to track a person's keystrokes. Security experts say people can avoid this by keeping their antivirus and antispyware software updated and by avoiding downloading files from unknown websites and email senders.
Some security experts recommend slightly modifying passwords within each category of site. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. offer free password-strength checkers, but users shouldn't rely on them wholly because such strength tests don't gauge whether a password contains easily found personal information, such as a birthday or a pet's name.
It's especially important to have a separate password for an email account, says Mozilla's Mr. Sterne. Many sites have "Forgot my password" buttons that, when clicked, initiate a password-recovery process by email. Hackers who break into an email account can then intercept those emails and take control of each account registered using that address.
Some websites, such as Google and Facebook, now let people register a phone number along with their account. If a person forgets his passwords, the sites reset the passwords by calling or sending a text message to that person.
Mr. Barrett says people should be able to remember four or five good passwords. If not, they can write them down on a piece of paper and stick it in their wallet, and then throw the cheat sheet away once all the passwords are memorized.
People who still struggle to remember them all can use a password manager. Several, such as LastPass, are free. LastPass prompts users to create a master password and then generates and stores random passwords for different sites. Some security experts warn against using managers that store passwords remotely, but LastPass Chief Executive Joe Siegrist says hackers can't access the passwords because all data is encrypted.
The worst thing that people can do after creating their different passwords: Put it on a sticky note by their monitor. "That defeats the entire purpose," says Mr. Sterne.
Heather O'Neill, a 27-year-old tech-company employee in San Francisco, had her Google email account broken into earlier this year. She says she used the same password for several sites, and that it was a weak one.
"I can't have one password for everything," she says. "Everything is going to be different."
Ensure your data is secure... Book Your Appointment Now!
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Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Dropbox's password nightmare highlights cloud risks http://bit.ly/klVDbe
visit GEEKSONCALL.COM today & have a tech ensure your data is safe!
visit GEEKSONCALL.COM today & have a tech ensure your data is safe!
Dropbox's password nightmare highlights cloud risks
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's the security nightmare scenario: A website stuffed with sensitive documents leaves all of its customer data unprotected and exposed.
It happened this week to Dropbox, a cloud storage site used by 25 million customers to store documents, videos, photos and other files. For four hours on Sunday, a site glitch let visitors use any password to log in to customers' accounts.
Dropbox fessed up to the mistake in blog post on Monday. A code update gone awry introduced what the site delicately called an "authentication bug." The error was fixed five minutes after it was discovered, but for a four-hour stretch, the site's defenses were down.
"This should never have happened," Dropbox wrote in its blog.
But it did -- and as individuals and corporations move to storing sensitive information in online lockers, they could get burned.
"Any trust in the cloud is too much trust in the cloud -- it's as simple as that," says Dave Aitel, president and CEO of security firm Immunity Inc. "It's pretty much the standard among security professionals that you should put on the cloud only what you would be willing to give away."
Like many other consumer-focused cloud services, Dropbox essentially traded some security for ease of use. The company encrypts and decrypts data on its own servers -- which makes it easy for users to login with just a password, instead of a complex encryption key. But it also leaves a lot in Dropbox's hands.
"It's giving them all the keys to the castle," Aitel says. "When you're your own hosting provider, you're self-insured. But when you let someone else keep the encryption keys, it's like outsourcing or offshoring. You're giving up accountability."
5 data breaches: Embarrassing and deadly
It's a lesson that Lockheed Martin (LMT, Fortune 500) and other big firms learned earlier this year, when their SecurID tokens used to access sensitive corporate systems were compromised.
Back in March, RSA, a division of EMC Corp. (EMC, Fortune 500), disclosed that hackers had broken into its systems and made off with information about its SecurID products. Late last month, defense contractor Lockheed disclosed a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on its IT systems.
RSA admitted that information obtained in the March hacking was used in the Lockheed Martin attack. RSA ended up offering to replace SecurID tokens for its customers, and a few including Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and SAP (SAP) immediately accepted.
"The larger global picture is cost vs. security," Aitel says. "You make tradeoffs so it's cheaper month to month, but your chips are on the roulette wheel."
More chips are going on the wheel every day. The idea of cloud computing for everyone will get a major boost this fall when Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) launches iCloud, its own "let us store everything" offering. An RBC Capital analyst predicted this week that iCloud could debut with 150 million subscribers right off the bat.
Meanwhile, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) continues pushing the idea that all of our data should live online. The Chromebooks it launched this month do away with the hard drive entirely and rely entirely on GMail, Google Docs and other cloud services.
At the same time, a spate of high-profile security breaches are offering a daily reminder of the vulnerability of online information.
Sony (SNE) was subjected to major hacks in April and May, which affected several of its gaming systems and potentially compromising tens of millions of credit card numbers.
Last week, Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) revealed more details on a hack attack from last month, revealing that far more credit card accounts were accessed than originally reported: 360,000.
This week, hacking groups Lulz Security and Anonymous announced they have teamed up to target governments around the globe in what they're calling "Operation Anti-Security."
Aitel notes that hacking, security problems and data privacy concerns are nothing new. But he hopes the crop of recent high-profile issues will make users aware that the technology is fallible.
"This is certainly the way things have always been," Aitel says. "But people are coming to a global awareness about how things need to be."
Are you concerned about the safety of your personal data? One of Our technicians can ensure the security of your data today!
Book Your Appointment Now!
Call Toll Free
1-800-905-4335
Chat Live Now
http://ping.fm/hiIXk
It happened this week to Dropbox, a cloud storage site used by 25 million customers to store documents, videos, photos and other files. For four hours on Sunday, a site glitch let visitors use any password to log in to customers' accounts.
Dropbox fessed up to the mistake in blog post on Monday. A code update gone awry introduced what the site delicately called an "authentication bug." The error was fixed five minutes after it was discovered, but for a four-hour stretch, the site's defenses were down.
"This should never have happened," Dropbox wrote in its blog.
But it did -- and as individuals and corporations move to storing sensitive information in online lockers, they could get burned.
"Any trust in the cloud is too much trust in the cloud -- it's as simple as that," says Dave Aitel, president and CEO of security firm Immunity Inc. "It's pretty much the standard among security professionals that you should put on the cloud only what you would be willing to give away."
Like many other consumer-focused cloud services, Dropbox essentially traded some security for ease of use. The company encrypts and decrypts data on its own servers -- which makes it easy for users to login with just a password, instead of a complex encryption key. But it also leaves a lot in Dropbox's hands.
"It's giving them all the keys to the castle," Aitel says. "When you're your own hosting provider, you're self-insured. But when you let someone else keep the encryption keys, it's like outsourcing or offshoring. You're giving up accountability."
5 data breaches: Embarrassing and deadly
It's a lesson that Lockheed Martin (LMT, Fortune 500) and other big firms learned earlier this year, when their SecurID tokens used to access sensitive corporate systems were compromised.
Back in March, RSA, a division of EMC Corp. (EMC, Fortune 500), disclosed that hackers had broken into its systems and made off with information about its SecurID products. Late last month, defense contractor Lockheed disclosed a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on its IT systems.
RSA admitted that information obtained in the March hacking was used in the Lockheed Martin attack. RSA ended up offering to replace SecurID tokens for its customers, and a few including Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and SAP (SAP) immediately accepted.
"The larger global picture is cost vs. security," Aitel says. "You make tradeoffs so it's cheaper month to month, but your chips are on the roulette wheel."
More chips are going on the wheel every day. The idea of cloud computing for everyone will get a major boost this fall when Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) launches iCloud, its own "let us store everything" offering. An RBC Capital analyst predicted this week that iCloud could debut with 150 million subscribers right off the bat.
Meanwhile, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) continues pushing the idea that all of our data should live online. The Chromebooks it launched this month do away with the hard drive entirely and rely entirely on GMail, Google Docs and other cloud services.
At the same time, a spate of high-profile security breaches are offering a daily reminder of the vulnerability of online information.
Sony (SNE) was subjected to major hacks in April and May, which affected several of its gaming systems and potentially compromising tens of millions of credit card numbers.
Last week, Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) revealed more details on a hack attack from last month, revealing that far more credit card accounts were accessed than originally reported: 360,000.
This week, hacking groups Lulz Security and Anonymous announced they have teamed up to target governments around the globe in what they're calling "Operation Anti-Security."
Aitel notes that hacking, security problems and data privacy concerns are nothing new. But he hopes the crop of recent high-profile issues will make users aware that the technology is fallible.
"This is certainly the way things have always been," Aitel says. "But people are coming to a global awareness about how things need to be."
Are you concerned about the safety of your personal data? One of Our technicians can ensure the security of your data today!
Book Your Appointment Now!
Call Toll Free
1-800-905-4335
Chat Live Now
http://ping.fm/hiIXk
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