George Orwell's 1984 is calling...

On the heels of SOPA’s defeat, attention is being drawn to two additional measures making the rounds in the domain of global politics.  Apparently SOPA is a drop in the bucket compared to the worldwide ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) agreement and the H.R. 1981 bill (Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011) in Congress.  If you thought SOPA and PIPA violated the sanctity, security, and liberty of the internet – wait till you get a load of this.

During the month of October 2007, several countries of the world such as the United States, members of the European Union, and Japan, expressed the intent to pen a treaty that helped the war on intellectual property theft.  Rather than focus on the physical knockoffs of cosmetics, handbags, or what have you – the agreement is more geared toward theft that occurs in the non-physical realm – the internet naturally.

Since its inception, any form of ACTA that has been proposed encourages disturbing crackdown methods through a SOPA-like modus operandi as well as 24/7 IP surveillance by ISPs.  If you are confused as to what that may mean, allow me to break it down for you and outline each of the dubious steps that this treaty seeks to take.  Here are the facts you need to know about ACTA.  ACTA would:

1. Introduce a form of internet filtering just as SOPA did.  ISPs and search engines would be forced to remove the alleged infringing sites from their listings.
2. Allow the law to carry out such actions without having to obtain a court warrant…once again “just as SOPA did.”
3. Enforce a mandatory law that all ISPs and internet websites keep detailed IP logs of their users.  This means your internet provider or favorite website will have to maintain permanent records of your browsing habits…even SOPA on the surface didn’t appear to suggest going that far.
4. Punish users branded repeat offenders if they access or share copyright infringing material three times or more.  Once more, this would all be without any due process and would require zero intervention by the courts.
5. Penalize any accused infringers regardless whether they have “no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.”  Here are three scenarios where this language could be incredibly damaging: (1) You invite your friend over to play the video/pc game they have been dying to play but have not purchased yet.  (2) You are a blogger covering the upcoming release of a hot summer flick and embed the movie trailer uploaded by the movie company itself on your post. (3) You are a YouTuber and upload a video of your birthday party that had a great DJ playing several of this year’s best artists as you all danced.  Even though you do not seek to rob the intellectual property rights of any of the entities mentioned above, you face some hefty fines and potential jail time in each case.  This is especially true if you catch the attention of a serial infringement claim abuser.
6. Have all of the above and more (take a look at the full agreement) applied universally on a worldwide scale.  Enough said.

The usual suspects involved in ACTA, or its American cousin H.R. 1981 proposed by SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith no less, are major entertainment bodies like the MPAA and RIAA.  In a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy, the MPAA dropped several terms of endearment towards the agreement.  Excerpts from the letter that underscore how desperately the MPAA desires the acceleration of ACTA’s passing are as follows.

We urge you to support the Administration’s efforts to negotiate a sound and comprehensive ACTA that codifies best practices for copyright enforcement. […] Outcries on the lack of transparency in the ACTA negotiations are a distraction.

We appreciate the US government’s efforts thus far to broaden its consultative process on the ACTA. Despite these exceptional efforts, the protests persist, fostering apprehension over the Agreement’s substance.

The US motion picture industry continues to be a cornerstone of America’s creative economy, employing millions of Americans in skilled, high value jobs. […] The US motion picture and television industry is one of the few US industries that consistently generates, even in these difficult economic times, a positive balance of trade, distributing films to over 150 countries around the world. In 2007, that surplus was $13.6 billion.

Opponents of ACTA are either indifferent to this situation, or actively hostile toward efforts to improve copyright enforcement worldwide. Many of them decried the WTO TRIPS agreement when it came into force in the 1990’s and they now insist that any effort to build upon the TRIPS minimum standards for enforcement is “anti-consumer and anti-innovation.”

Out of those several concerning passages the fact that MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman called protests a “distraction” is enough to send collective shivers down the spines of internet denizens everywhere.  It is unfortunate that an American agency would go so far as to call civil protest as nothing more than pesky prattle.  It is my understanding that one of the cardinal rights of the Constitution was the freedom to present a dissenting opinion.  The MPAA is presenting a dissenting opinion to critics of ACTA, H.R. 1981, SOPA, and PIPA is it not?  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander my friend.

We are not yet in the age of Orwell’s spine-tingling 1984.  This does not change the fact that the current course of actions we are taking is setting us straight into the chapters of that chilling book.  As of right now, the passing of ACTA is being coordinated between several countries around the world (see this archive for the total) and is speedily being pushed through the EU Parliament.  Global cooperation is indeed a beautiful thing.  The thing is…cooperation is largely founded on the principle of “live and let be.”  The alphabet soup of proposals mentioned in this article neither allow innocent citizens to “live” or “let be.”

If any of what I said is considered “hostile” thinking then so be it. You can show your disapproval of ACTA along with me by signing this official White House petition.

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Unlike other photo-sharing websites like Flickr or Photostream, Google’s Picasa Web Albums allows you to automatically synchronise pictures between your online account and the local hard disk/ removable disk. You can set up sync for as many different folders as you wish, and add more features like watermark, resizing, adding changes in features like brightness, sharpness, contrast and tuning effects like sepia, grain, focus etc.
Once added, these amazing attributes will be applied to all the pictures before they get uploaded. Especially if you store a large number of pictures on your computer, you would be glad you synced them to your Picasa Web Albums if something goes wrong and you lose the files on your hard disk.

I’ve been using Picasa for over three years now, and have absolutely no complaints! Well except for one. If you have been using the Auto-sync feature of Picasa, you might have noticed that sometimes new/different folders get created when you re-sync the folders on different days. Thus, all the pictures on the old folder which have already been uploaded will be re-uploaded to the new folder, using up extra space. Since you only have 1 GB of free storage, it would be better to avoid this problem. So, here’s a tip:
Instead of sync-ing the folders, select the folders from the left side-bar and click “upload” to ensure that the same folder is used each time. This might not be automated, but it isn’t a lot more effort either!

Please share your experiences with Picasa and other photo-sharing services with us

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How can companies and individuals protect themselves from phishing attacks of this magnitude? The biggest way to fight back against these attacks is through training. Both companies and individuals can better train themselves to be more aware of their actions. Companies can offer better internal training practices or allow employees to seek outside security awareness training. Individuals can assist by educating themselves on best practices to prevent identity theft.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is when an Internet hacker tricks his or her victim into believing that he (or she) is a legitimate company, government agency or individual in order to obtain privileged or private information.  For example, passwords, credit card information, proprietary information and personal information are all in danger under a phishing attack.  Previously, phishing was mostly limited to email, but now the attacks go through social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as text messages and IMs.  Here are a few examples of how social media/texting phishing may look:

• Email:  You get an email that looks like it’s from your bank asking you to verify your account information.  Included in the message is a verification link that looks like it leads to your bank’s website. In many cases, the hackers have made an exact duplicate of your bank’s website so that it looks legitimate, but if you look at the URL, it will not be the URL for your bank or financial institution.
• SMS: You get a text message telling you to call your bank and verify the code on the back of your credit card.  The text displays your credit card number and billing information.
• Facebook: You see a status update from a family member saying to click on a link to see something scandalous or funny.  You click the link and it goes to a fake Facebook log-in page asking you to verify your credentials.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

• If an email contains grammatical or spelling errors, or the wording seems to be written by a non-native English speaker, this is almost certainly a phishing attack.  Also, an email with any sense of urgency such as, “Please help!  I’m stuck in London and need $2000 to get home,” or an implied threat such as, “If you don’t act now, your account may be penalized or canceled,” should be an immediate red flag, especially if there is no legitimate contact number or website included.
• Make sure to set your Internet browser settings to the highest security level.  The major browsers – Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 – include a “reputation management” setting, which can identify fraudulent web sites before you click the link.
• Update your Anti-Virus and malware applications regularly.
• Don’t use e-mail to provide passwords and important financial or account information to another party, even a spouse or employee.  If your computer is hacked, this information is at risk.
• Verify any links before opening them.  The malicious links that install spyware on your smartphone or computer will show up in emails, tweets, text messages and Facebook.
• Make sure to check for encryption.  A legitimate web site will always be encrypted; look for “https” in the address bar to confirm this.
• Be wary of downloading PDF and JPEG files that you cannot verify.  They may mask malware that can steal your information.
• Now that most cell phones are mini-computers, these are a hacking risk, too.  Viruses and spyware can be installed on your phone the same way they can infect your laptop or desktop computer.  Take the same precautions with your phone that you do with your computer.

By using common sense and diligently maintaining your computer’s security, you can stay one step ahead of the cyber-attacks.  Additionally, companies and individuals can take the charge by training and educating themselves to prevent computer fraud and identity theft from occurring.

This post was submitted by University Alliance on behalf of Villanova University. If you’re looking for IT security training, Villanova offers CISSP certification training courses in addition to information assurance courses.

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Whether we want to believe it or not, every move we make online is not only trackable, but it is already being tracked.  That’s how advertising companies know what ads to show you.  They watch your internet surfing habits and scan your emails to figure out what interests you have.  The technology is cutting edge and very smart, but many people are now wondering if there is such thing as privacy anymore when it comes to being online.

One of the great things about owning a home is being able to get away from it all.  You can shut the door to your house and relax in the confines of your family.  You don’t have to worry about being bothered or being seen.  But once we turn on that computer, we are opening the door to our private lives.  You might think you are the one doing research with that search engine, but that search engine is doing more research on you than you even realize.

This is one reason that more private companies are being started to help people regain control of their information online.  With these services you can monitor your information online, get rid of any personal information online that you don’t want to exist, and you can preserve your reputation from being soiled.   There are a few search engines that are only for finding people, but with the proper steps you can get your name taken off of these steps.

Privacy protection is not just for those how have done things online that they are ashamed of, it’s also for people who just want to protect and guard their identities from the possibility of theft.  Identity theft is a real and growing crime in the United States, and you really do need technology to fight technology.  By doing nothing you are just leaving yourself even more unprotected from these privacy breaches.

So do we have privacy online?  Well if we are doing nothing to protect our privacy when we are online then no, we don’t.  But we don’t have to let the newest advances in technology scare us.  With every new threat there is often a new solution as well.  And even though facial recognition technology is one of the latest threats to our privacy, it can help wake people up to start guarding their reputations online.

Jon is a writer for an identity theft protection website at www.SafeIdentityProtection.com that helps consumers find what ID theft services work best.  Read the Reputation.com reviews to learn how to protect your reputation online.

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“How do I make the best use of SEO to get more visitors to my blog, website or sales page?”

What we all forget is that Search Engine Optimization or SEO is not a mule to carry visitors to your blog, website or sales page! SEO is a very sensitive tool which is meant to provide search engine users with relevant, up-to-date and authentic information. SEO is something we all should use to get “more targeted” visitors, and not just “more visitors”!

A targeted visitor is one who is in majority of cases likely to stick around on a website or blog simply because it contains valuable information about the topic(s) he/she was looking for. Targeted visitors are most likely to be interested in subscribing to your blogs, buying stuff off your websites and following your advertisers’ links! Thus, Search Engine Optimization or SEO when done correctly will be beneficial to the blog/website owners as well as the search engine users.

Search Engine Optimization

By personal experience, I have realized several times that websites and blogs which provide very high quality content sometimes ignore SEO practices, because of which they become more and more difficult to find when you are looking for some information urgently. Also, in several cases, websites and blogs with little or no amount of useful information rank pretty high on search engines by exploiting SEO techniques like link building and inflating the keyword density of their web pages.

Lack of awareness about the importance and benefits of Search Engine Optimization along with exploitation of loopholes present in the algorithms of search engines

1. Leads to low quality search results being delivered to the users, and
2. Lowers the traffic and income of websites and blogs.

The need of the hour is for all webmasters and bloggers to realize that SEO is extremely necessary and beneficial for everyone, and that Search Engines will no longer remain useful when we don’t use SEO responsibly. So, let us all take a vow to abide by ethical SEO practices and promise to provide high quality, unique and search engine optimized content to our readers and spread the same message to others!

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