iOS Developers Criticized Apple

The new app of the digital rights group EFF was released only for Android smartphones, because its developers criticized the terms of Apple’s developer agreement. The Alerts app of the Electronic Frontier Foundation will show news on its campaigns and encourage users to take action by sharing it online or emailing politicians.

The EFF developers claimed they could not agree to the outrageous terms in Apple’s Developer Agreement and the company’s DRM requirements, as they are bad for developers and users alike.

For example, the EFF disagrees with Apple’s bar on app makers making public statements about the terms, its ban on reverse engineering and the fact that Apple must approve any releases and can remotely disable applications. What the EFF didn’t like most was the requirement to include digital rights management in its iPhone app. Apparently, most of developers just have to sign the agreement because the Apple App store is a huge market and can hardly be ignored.

At the moment, Apple has over 9 million registered developers for its Mac and iOS platforms and 1.3m apps available on iOS’ App Store. The iOS developers have earned over $20bn so far, with iOS users spending over $10bn on apps and in-app purchases in 2013 alone. But now Apple faces more public criticism of its policies, with the iOS developers pointing to “the rapid decline of Apple’s software”.

In the meantime, other developers went public over approval issues with features in their iOS applications, sparking wider discussion about how the tech giant enforces its App Store policies. Apparently, the EFF continues this debate, being keen to pinpoint the individual clauses that may infringe developers’ digital rights.

4/5 of “Dark Net” Traffic Is to Child Abuse Portals!!

According to a study of Tor “hidden services” portals, over 80% of the “dark net” online traffic comes from sites that offer child-abuse content. For over 6 months, the researchers have analyzed traffic to websites through Tor’s technology, which is normally used to hide their addresses from search engines.

According to the findings, while sites with pedophile content make up only 2% of the estimated 45,000 hidden services websites on the Internet, they account for 83% of visits without considering automated “botnet” traffic. The research focuses on online portals that used Tor’s technology to hide themselves, not on the online behavior of individual Internet users who use Tor, as they don’t spend 84% of their time visiting child-abuse services.

It turned out that less than 1/6 of hidden services websites have been online for all six months of the study, which shows a short average lifetime for such online services. In the meantime, drug-related websites like Silk Road and Agora made up almost a quarter of the hidden service websites but 5% of overall traffic. As for whistleblower websites like SecureDrop and Globaleaks, they made up 5% of websites but less than 0.1% of website visits.

In response, Tor questioned the accuracy of the findings of the study, pointing out that the results may include visits to pedophilia sites from law enforcement and anti-abuse groups, along with DDoS attacks from hackers. Tor also emphasized that hidden services websites only account for 2% of total traffic with Tor’s anonymizing technology. In other words, you should not confuse websites hiding themselves with individual users who use Tor to surf the Internet anonymously.

One should admit that there are important uses for hidden services – for example, when human rights activists use them to visit Facebook or to blog anonymously. Some also suggest that the habits of people searching for child-abuse content on the Internet may also be a factor.

So, the findings of this recent research bring up new questions for Tor about how it could try to shut down the abusive websites and track their owners. The researchers have pointed out that Tor might be able to block access to such illegal services, but it is unknown whether Tor operators would bother doing this.

40% of Internet Users Suffered from Online Harassment

The results of the recent survey showed that almost 3/4 of the US Internet users claimed they have witnessed online harassment. 40% said they experienced it themselves. It was found out that young adults are most likely to have witnessed and experienced harassment on the Internet. Women aged 18-24 have experienced it disproportionately in comparison with other demographic groups.

About 3,000 Americans were interviewed for the study. Harassment was divided into two categories: “less severe”, including name-calling and attempts to embarrass people; and “more severe”, covering physical threats, stalking and sexual harassment.

According to the report, 73% of American Internet users have witnessed Internet harassment, with 40% having been its target. In the group of 18-29 year-olds, the figures rise to 92% and 65% accordingly.

Of people who’ve become a target of Internet harassment, 55% said it had exclusively been the less severe kind. Their share amounted to 22% of all users. In the meantime, 45% had also experienced more severe forms of harassment. Unsurprisingly, young women aged 18-24 were particular targets: more than ¼ of them say they have been stalked online, and the same number of them has been the target of sexual harassment.

As for male Internet users, they are more likely to have been physically threatened on the Internet: 26% compared with 23% of women aged 19-24. In total, men are more likely to experience any kind of online harassment: 44% compared with 37% of women.

Nevertheless, the report showed that women suffer more after the event: 38% of harassed women said they found it very upsetting, compared with 17% of harassed men. 2/3 of those who have been harassed on the Internet said the most recent incident happened on a social networking website or application, 22% pointed at the comments section of a website; 16% at an online game; 16% at a personal email account; and 10% at a discussion service.

The study also tried to figure out how welcoming Internet services were towards men and women. Here the report shows that online gaming stands out: more than a half of respondents believed that online games websites were equally welcoming to both sexes, but 44% of them believed they were more welcoming towards men. However, the research was carried out before the explosion of the “Gamergate” controversy – it is known that he latter has included a heated debate about harassment of women in and around the games industry.

The respondents also told how they had responded to the harassment. 60% said they had ignored it. Of the rest, 47% confronted the person online, 44% unfriended or blocked them, and 22% reported them to the relevant service.

The research also revealed that 92% of people believe the Internet allows people to be more critical of others, while 68% agreed it allows to support others as well. The study only covered the US adults, but not the issues like cyberbullying for children up to the age of 18.

UK Is Seriously Worried about Cybercrime

Many UK citizens have become victims of cybercrime, including identity theft, hacking or abuse on social media. The losses of the country from online fraud exceeded £670 million per year (this is given that many cases go unreported), with the true cost likely to be much higher.

According to the recent research, where over 2,000 people were surveyed, more than 50% of them said they had been a victim of online crime. This category included online-based fraud, ID theft, hacking and Internet abuse. Of those, a half also said they felt violated by their ordeal.
In the meantime, the same research shows that only less than 1/3 of the cybercrime victims had reported the incident. Almost 50% of those affected had no idea who to report an online crime to. However, the experts say this figure is expected to fall as a result of the ongoing work of the national fraud reporting centre. The good thing is that UK citizens who had suffered cybercrime admitted that such experience had shocked them into changing their behavior for the better. For example, almost 50% of them immediately changed their passwords for stronger ones and 42% said they became more vigilant when shopping online.
The statistics showed that for the United Kingdom as a whole, over £670 million was lost to the ten most common online frauds within the last 12 months. These figures show how serious a toll cybercrime can take. This has been no more apparent than in the last weeks, when large-scale personal photo leaks of celebrities happened. Unfortunately, as out lives move to the online world, this is becoming more common.
The security experts explain that people can all take simple steps to protect themselves by such simple ways as putting a password on computers or mobile devices, forgetting about clicking on a link received from an unknown sender and always logging off from an account or website.
As for people who still do not know who to report cybercrime to, the UK authorities remind that if you think you have been a victim of online economic fraud (if you have lost money), you can report it to the organization called Action Fraud – online or by phone. Victims of online abuse or harassment can report it to their local police force. It is also recommended to read general advice on how to stay safe online at getsafeonline.org.

Cybercrime Can Be Reported by Mouse Click in Australia

According to the government program that is expected to be unveiled soon, reporting online crime could be as easy as clicking a mouse. The reports are that the national police information agency called Crimtrac is finishing the scheme dubbed the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, or Acorn.

The statistics said that cybercrime affects about 5.4 million Australians annually, and the losses incurred amount to $1 billion. It is not a secret that the criminals become more and more sophisticated and increasingly use global networks.

A few days ago, CrimTrac CEO told a parliamentary inquiry that the new Acorn scheme, which is expected to be launched “shortly”, is supposed to complement the work already done by the agency. At the moment, the agency holds, on behalf of all police forces, the national fingerprint and DNA collections, along with an 8.7 million-record police report database and national child offender records.

The Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network will enable the Aussie citizens to securely report cybercrime online, via a website form. There are many types of matters that people can report to the agency: suspicious texts, emails or phone calls that may trick them into giving away their personal or banking information, a computer virus attack or even online bullying. The agency will also be possible to report the discovery of unauthorized, banned or “objectionable” material on the Internet.

It will be up to the police to determine which particular matters to investigate. The support with intelligence gathering will be provided with the Australian Crime Commission, while the consideration is also being given to a “tech crime offenders registry”.

The Untouchables Worried about Phones They Can’t Search

The FBI seems to be worried about Apple and Google’s smartphones that can’t be searched. According to James Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, the agency is “concerned” over Apple and Google marketing smartphones as they cannot be searched by law enforcement. This would force the FBI to investigate criminals like the old days. 

James Comey claimed that both Apple and Google are marketing their products expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law. The FBI confirmed that the bureau has contacted both companies to find out “what they’re thinking and why they think it makes sense”.

It is weird that the FBI can’t grasp that the phone makers have moved to encryption following the NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance from the National Security Agency. For example, Apple announced the enhanced encryption for its new iOS 8, saying that the new operating system makes it impossible for the company to decrypt a locked device – even under the law enforcement request.

Android’s encryption was optional, but it actually works in a similar manner. Google has also announced that in its upcoming Android L release, the encryption will be enabled by default. However, it is clear that the real ability for the tech giants to keep the spooks out of communication is rather limited. Google and Apple store data on the cloud, and the information can be obtained using a court order. The security experts point out that in most cases, encryption can only protect users from individuals trying to snoop in on a stolen or resold device, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation can easily get a warrant for data on anyone’s phone or for data stored in the cloud connected to anyone’s account.

76m Households Suffered from JP Morgan Data Breach

JP Morgan Chase bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, announced last week that a massive computer hack affected the accounts of about 76 million households plus 7 million small businesses. This number of people and businesses suffered made it one of the largest hacks ever discovered.

The bank admitted that the attack lasted for almost a month before it was discovered in the middle of summer. The event was disclosed two months ago, and JP Morgan estimated at the time that about 1 million accounts had been compromised. However, the estimations proved wrong, as it turned out that the attack was much more serious than expected.

JP Morgan pointed out that the financial data didn’t leak, and that there had been no breach of login information, including account or SSNs, passwords or dates of birth. The hackers stole the names, email addresses, addresses and phone numbers of account holders.

Thus far, no unusual customer fraud using the leaked data has been recorded, and the bank clients won’t be liable for unauthorized transactions on their account, if they promptly alerted the bank. The largest bank in the United States by assets is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the American secret service to find the hackers.

This hack, one of the largest ever, occurred after a series of massive data breaches at various American institutions – for example, on Target and Home Depot. The latter has recently confirmed that its payment systems were breached in an attack which affected 56 million payment cards. As for Target, the last year attack has impacted about 40 million payment cards, while compromising the personal details of almost 70 million customers.

Nevertheless, the industry observers point out that the JP Morgan hack is much more serious, because the bank holds far more sensitive data than retailers. A few months ago, media reports accused Russian hackers of hacking JP Morgan and stealing gigabytes of sensitive data.

Apparently, the hack started in June and went unnoticed until July, so the criminals managed to access the accounts of over 90 servers. The suggestions were that the hackers originally entered JP Morgan’s systems after hacking into the computer of one of the bank’s employees. JP Morgan’s stock fell 0.89% in after hours trading following the news.

Google Changes Its Search Algorithm to Fight Piracy Added: Monday, October

Google is going to introduce some changes in its search engine. They are supposed to make sure that some of the piracy services are less likely to appear in the results of searches for music, movies and other copyrighted material.

This is not the first time the search giant was going to change the way it targets piracy. Two years ago Google made the similar promise, which has since proved controversial. Entertainment industries were regularly claiming that Google did not follow through on that promise. Now the company says the results will be noticeable.

Google explained that it has now refined the signal in ways it expects to visibly affect the rankings of some of the illegal websites. However, the tech giant didn’t provide details on which websites were being demoted, or how it will affect their rankings. Apparently, the attribute showing how close to the top of its results a website appears when relevant keywords are searched.

In addition, the company claimed that it has been testing new ad formats which show links to legitimate digital music and video services when such keywords as “download”, “free” and “watch” are used; as well as removing terms from its autocomplete feature in the case when they “return results with many DMCA demoted websites”.

Google provided some statistics, saying that it had received just over 224 million takedown requests for search results last year, and the average time spent on dealing with them was less than 6 hours. The tech giant ultimately removed 222 million links, which means that only less than 1% was rejected or reinstated after review for various reasons: for example, because the company needed additional information, was unable to find the page, or came to a conclusion that the content was not infringing.

This was all about individual links to infringing content, but the latest change to Google’s search algorithm will focus on entire websites. The ones most likely to be affected are mentioned in Google’s online transparency report. The company ranked websites by the number of takedowns received: RapidGator, 4Shared and Dilandau were the most often mentioned last year – each of them accounted for over 7 million DMCA notices.

The BPI appeared the most active takedown-sender last year, submitting over 43 million notices to Google. The British anti-piracy outfit admitted that it would like to see other search engines, including Bing and Yahoo, follow the suit. The BPI is also pressing for Google to delist entirely websites that have been ruled against the law by the courts. They include portals blocked by British Internet service providers: The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, H33T, Fenopy, and another 21 websites. However, Google may push back against this pressure from the British outfit, claiming that it would be inappropriate to remove entire websites instead of certain links.

Finally, the BPI demands Google to be faster at removing “pirate applications” from Android’s Google Play store.

Amazon Will Open Physical Store?

The online retailer is going to open its first physical store for Manhattan (perhaps temporarily) ahead of the holiday shopping season. According to the publication in the Wall Street Journal from a few days ago, the largest e-commerce retailer in the United States will set up a store in Manhattan for the holiday shopping season. The journal cited anonymous sources close to the company and familiar with the matter.

Amazon didn’t comment on the issue, so it remains unclear whether the store will be permanent or open just for a holiday. According to the article, the store could act as Amazon warehouse and a showcase for inventory.

It is known that the giant online retailer has never opened brick-and-mortar stores. However, the company has installed pick-up lockers in the largest cities. The company was seen investing huge money in the rapid fulfillment of orders. For example, Amazon added 6 new distribution centers and 15 sorting centers ahead of the holiday season. At the moment, company operates forty total distribution centers in the United States.

Despite the article in the Wall Street Journal, Seattle-based Amazon claimed that it has made no announcements about a new location in Manhattan.

The Natural and Beautiful Tension Between Innovation and Standards

On the one hand, standards can drive an entire industry forward on a common basis and offer market economies of scale. Where would we be without common standards on the web or agreed audio andvideo standards or dedicated slices of spectrum that can be used globally with our mobile phones?

Standards are like four lane motorways down which lots of users can drive and benefit. Of course, before that motorway is built, someone has to do the initial trailblazing. But after the motorway is built, how do we keep innovation thriving and leverage an existing foundation to develop a new generation of standards from which we can all benefit? How do we find the balance between, on the one hand, stability and, on the other hand, constant innovation?

The answer may be found in a 45 year old biological theory that may offer a paradigm helping us to understand the symbiotic interplay of standards and innovation. The theories are from the biologist Stuart Kauffman who has studied the origin of life and behaviour of molecular self-organization. Kauffman argues that complex systems spontaneously self-organize into entities that are far more than the sum of their parts (which is also a key topic in the emerging discipline of network science).

Specifically, Kaufman argues that biological and other types of networks tend to both self-organize and attempt to expand into what he calls “the adjacent possible” to increase the diversity of what can happen next. He notes that if they try to expand too fast, they destroy their own internal organization. And if they try too slowly, they fail to adapt. In other words, there may be a natural law that this expansion happens only as fast as they can get away with it.

How does this relate to standards? Well, if Kaufmann’s law of the adjacent possible is a reasonable paradigm to accept, it makes it easier to understand that there can be little innovation without standards nor can there be standards without innovation. Standards and innovation are intertwined in a symbiotic relationship. The trick is figuring out how to innovateas fast as we can get away with it.

On that topic, the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) recently  created a Focus Group entitled Bridging the Gap: From Innovation to Standards. I’m sure they’ll be exploring some of these issues at their first meeting to be held 19-21 March 2012 at ITU. The meeting includes a workshop on ICT Innovations, particularly as it relates to what is happening in developing countries. It’s an open workshop so do consider participating and hear about some of the amazing innovations taking place in developing countries in the ICT space.