Site owners have five days to file a counter-notice, but neither payment processors or ad networks have any obligation to respect it. Even worse, they are granted “immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement”.

I suggest you check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this post by Mythbuster Adam Savage and this nice infographic for additional information about SOPA.

The Internet can be a mighty weapon; the latest company to find out about this is GoDaddy, who support SOPA and Protect-IP.

A Reddit user suggested to move away domain names and hosting from GoDaddy to other providers to boycott the company for their pro SOPA stance. This got the ball rolling with regular users and companies moving domains away from GoDaddy at a rapid pace. It is not clear how many webmasters and companies have moved domain names and hosting from GoDaddy to other companies, but it is likely that the value is in the tens of thousands already.

Other hosting companies sized the opportunity with special offers for GoDaddy customers who move their domains and hosting (see blog posts on Name, Hostgator or Easy DNS for example.

Godaddy released a press release a day later, stating that the company “is no longer supported SOPA”, and that “Go Daddy will support it [again] when and if the Internet community supports it”.

And while it is nice to see that GoDaddy has changed their stance on SOPA, you’d still want to ask yourself if you want to continue working with a company who supported the bill in the first place.

You may also be interested in a list of companies and organizations who openly support SOPA. You find the list here.

This is all great news but there are still some technologies that have got to change in 2012 and they need to do this very quickly or else the technology we use will move so far ahead of them that innovation itself will begin to suffer.  Those technologies are all concerned with the Internet itself or with Internet communications.

Let’s start with the ADSL or DSL broadband lines coming into our homes and offices.  Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a country such as Sweden which already enjoys 50Mb/sec lines or faster you’ll be lucky to get a stable connection on a tenth of that.  Indeed the old 2 miles from the telephone exchange line is wearing thin with many but telecoms companies and governments simply aren’t doing enough to rectify the problem.  Here in the UK we think that people who live in countryside villages and who still have to use dial up or get a 512k/sec broadband line have a bad deal.  In some countries where the distances are far further such as the USA, Canada and Australia the problems are 100 times worse.

It’s a similar story with mobile networks.  The USA was late to the 3G game but has forged ahead with 4G connections.  Many other countries however are still several years away from moving to 4G, but which time it’ll be time to move onto something else in all probability.  The mobile networks also need to sort out the mess that is unlimited data plans and manage their networks in such a way as to allow people to use mobile broadband properly.  The pricing for mobile broadband also has to drop by at least 50% next year.  There’s already more than enough money to be made and many people, especially those in isolated areas would love to move away from an ADSL line and onto a SIM contract.  At the moment though it’s still far too expensive to do this.

Many people think that a universal wireless solution like a full roll-out of 4G or WiMax will solve the problem and make traditional broadband lines obsolete.  Telecommunications companies need to protect their bottom lines however and, as such, a lot of innovation is being stifled for reasons of profit and share prices.

When we actually are able to get online though using our sexy new devices we find that the web is still looking as old and outdated as it was in 2003.  Back then we didn’t have the preponderance of smartphones, tablets and touch-screen PCs that we do now.  Even next year’s iMacs are rumoured to be multi-touch but almost none of the world’s largest websites have moved to a touch-friendly design yet.  I did this with my own website last month and firmly believe it’s absolutely essential.  Some companies are making a move in this direction with the BBC launching a part-touch-friendly website recently but the new YouTube redesign is traditional menus and mouse control only.

It’s one thing having new interfaces and new form factors that enable us to use the web in new and exciting ways, and new operating systems that are designed primarily around touch.  If we can’t get good, quick and stable connections to the web though, or properly and effectively use the websites we visit when we get there all this technology is going to waste.  Here’s hoping that 2012 brings us much more than just a move to IPv6 and some 4G radio spectrum auctions.  What technologies do you think really need to change in 2012 and do you agree with me here?  Why not tell us in the comments.

This still doesn’t hit the magic price point of $99.  This is the point at which something drops to the magic ‘obtainable’ price and hearts and minds are won.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that technology is still relatively expensive to manufacture.  There are also only so many manufacturing plants worldwide and the current demand for high-tech electronics such as Apple’s iPad and smartphones dominates many of them.

You might think then that mass-producing these devices would inevitably drive manufacturing costs down.  It’s not quite that simple though as it also emerged today that the new $79 kindle actually costs $84 to make, with Amazon set to make the extra money back through books store sales.

The mark-up on the price of the iPad also isn’t great when you factor in the distribution and retailer costs.  The raw components for technology are, in some cases, becoming harder to mine and some costs are going up, not down.

You might think then that what we really need is a push back to slightly older, some might say “tried and tested” technology that genuinely is cheap as chips to manufacture to help push it into the homes of low-income households worldwide.  But issues around supply and manufacture will always make this technology just as expensive to produce as a new invention as they are all made from the same raw components.

The problem is though that millions of children worldwide are missing out of the educational benefits that computers and the Internet bring.  Pensioners around the world are continuing to be isolated because of the lack of Internet communications and don’t have access to online shopping services that can help them.

The US government said today that last year the number of Americans with broadband at home rose to 68%.  I don’t know what you think but when compared to some scandanavian and far-eastern countries this is pretty pathetic.  It’s a number shared by too many developed countries however and in the developing world we’re often looking at single digit percentages.

What’s need is a greater effort and a greater subsidy to help low-income households around the world get a computer of some description and a broadband connection at home, and to make sure that every child has easy access to both.  In a time when the budgets of world governments are being stretched, and household budgets are being stretched further, the gap between the have’s and the have not’s is widening faster than ever before.

In a report by USA Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said “In this difficult economy, we need everyone to be working together on solutions, Broadband is a key to economic and educational opportunity and these kinds of commitments to close the digital divide are powerful.”

Never was a truer word said.  Now let’s see if world governments are prepared to do anything about it.

Opera Reader is an experimental Opera version that does away with all the scrolling on the Internet. It’s premise is to display all contents of a website directly on the screen. It basically breaks down a website into pages that are displayed just like the pages of a book. The developers have used a scroll and book comparison to highlight the differences. Scrolls are like standard websites that go on and on until the content ends, while books use pages that offer several advantages over scrolls.

Opera Reader turns scrolls (aka scrolling web pages) into books (aka paged web pages). Whenever you open a compatible web page in Opera Reader, you will notice that all of its contents are displayed on the screen without horizontal or vertical scrollbars. Here is how a compatible page looks in the standard Opera browser and in Opera Reader.

The core difference is the missing scrollbar. Opera Reader users can use the mouse to flip pages. Alternatives including using the keyboard (left and right) or gestures on touch enabled devices.

Separating a website into pages does not reduce the browser’s functionality at all. It is still possible to search, print or work with the whole web page like it would be in a standard version of Opera.

The Opera team has published a few examples on the Opera Reader website. This includes a basic newspaper, the novels Oliver Twist and Alice in Wonderland and a sample Wikipedia page.

The biggest issue with Opera Reader in its current form is that websites need to add specific CSS3 code to support the feature. Opera needs to come up with a way to automate the processing of web pages in Opera Reader. If the company manages to do that, it could change the way we read contents on the web forever.

Opera Reader is currently available as a preview version for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices. Interested users can download the preview release from the official project website over at Opera. (via)

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to find something out, you’d probably have to visit a library, or look it up in a collection of encyclopedias. If you wanted to buy food, you’d go to the supermarket, or if you wanted to browse for a new TV or gadget, you’d go to an electrical outlet and look around. Now, we can Google virtually any fact we like and get the answer instantly, we can do our grocery shopping online and have it delivered directly to our doors, and for anything else there are a multitude of Internet companies selling electrical goods that offer significant savings to those found in actual shops.

So the question is, with all these services that enable us to do virtually anything from the comfort of our armchairs, are we getting to dependent on our Internet connections? Have you ever wondered what would happen if the Internet were to be disconnected globally just for one day? Is your Internet connection really just as important as your gas or electricity supply?

For many people, especially those who run a business from home, the answer to this question could be a resounding yes! The Internet being down for just a day could devastate a business that operates on a schedule and to tight deadlines. This is why many service providers promise an always-on service with 99.999% uptime, for companies and people who simply must have the Internet at all times. Some people even go to the length of installing more than one Internet line into their homes and offices, just for the occasion when one service goes down. Imagine if you have a small workforce working online. You still have to pay these people, even if they are unable to do their work due to a service disruption. Without electricity, you can run computers on battery backup or a generator for a number of hours, but if your working environment is in the cloud, you’re truly stumped without your Internet.

Many people are also looking at satellite connections and mobile phone technology to provide backups to their primary Internet connections. After all, having more than one cable into your home or office is no good if a construction worker puts a spade through a bundle of cables at the end of your street!

So think to yourself. What would you do without the Internet for a day, or a week? How would you get on? What kind of inconvenience would it be? How much money would you lose? Should you consider backing up your connection with an alternative service?

The New York Times yesterday reported that fake reviews are a growing trend. The story concentrates on tourism and product review sites.

Product owners, marketing agencies or individuals can buy reviews online for a small amount of money. If you visit Fiverr for instance, you will notice that you can buy positive reviews for $5 on almost every site imaginable. But Fiverr ist just one of the sites where you find people willing to put up fake reviews on websites.

The ingenious aspect of this is that hiring people to post fake reviews bypasses most of the site’s fake detection security. If you were to do it on your own, you would connect with certain characteristics like the computer’s IP address, browser version or operating system which might be used to identify manipulation, even if proxy servers or virtual private network connections were used. A single cookie could be enough for that.

But with unique users from all over the world, it is not possible to use hard facts to identify fraud.

Cornell researchers recently published a paper about fake review detection. The algorithmic approach looks for strong and slight deceptive indicators in a review to determine whether it is fake or not. Indicators on the other hand are not proof, and it will happen that the algorithm detects legit reviews as fake and vice verse.

Some sites could implement a better procedure to avoid the majority of fake reviews. Amazon for instance could only allow reviews by users who have purchased the product on their site. While that would certainly reduce the number of reviews on site, it would eliminate the majority of fake reviews as well.

Businesses who use these marketing techniques will adapt. They would simply have to do some initial teaching, or review writing of their own, to deceive the algorithm.

One element that has not been mentioned yet, and that has not been addressed in the paper, is the option to write fake reviews with a less than perfect rating. I personally read the negative reviews first on most sites to get an understanding of what’s wrong with a product. Some complaints here are less serious than others. A picky user might complain that the product arrived late, or that the breakfast buffet at the hotel did not have enough carrots on one day. Those might be serious issues for them, but they might not be serious to the majority of potential customers.

My guess is that we will see better fake reviews in the coming years. We will see fake reviews with less-than-perfect ratings, and fake reviews that use the findings of the research paper to avoid detection.

Your take on fake reviews on the Internet? Let me know in the comments.

There are two main attack vectors on today’s Internet. First the programs that users make use of to connect to websites, and second user ignorance, carelessness and lack of security sense.

Inexperienced users fall prey to attacks at a much higher rate than experienced users. Even commonly known best security practices, like making sure that an Internet browser is updated when the developer releases a new security patch, are often run in a time frame that is giving attackers ample time to exploit those issues.

But it is not only the technology that is making attacks successful. It is also its users. Phishing for instance has been a problem for more than a decade on the Internet. One would think that users would learn to identify phishing emails by now, but that’s not the reality. People fall for phishing attacks on a daily basis. This article would go to far to look at the root causes for this, but it is likely that ignorance plays a large part in this.

Lets go back to the browser for a moment. Most users know that they have to upgrade the browser when a new version comes out. Most browsers come with automatic update checks and installations these days. Only Google Chrome updates without user interaction, the other browsers, at least for now, display the update notification and give the user the option to run the update. If users opt out, they leave their browser insecure if the update fixed security issues.

Do you want to know how your browser compares to others? Sites like Browserscope allow you to run tests and compare the results with other versions of the same browser and Internet browsers from other companies.

Lets assume you have got your browser updated to the latest version, and that you generally update the application immediately when a new version comes out. You are secure now, right? Nope, you are not. Why? Because it is not only about the browser software. Browsers make automatic use of other applications, commonly called plugins. Popular plugins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Java are attack vectors as well, and successful ones too.

If you fail to update the plug-ins that are enabled in the browser, you are still prone to attacks. That’s why companies like Mozilla have started to integrate plug-in checks into the browser to inform the user about updates.

But you are secure when you update your operating system, browser and plugins whenever they are updated, right? Wrong again. Two attack vectors remain. First the user and second software vulnerabilities that have not been discovered or fixed yet. (There are actually more if you consider the local network as well. The computer could have a virus for instance that could render all browser security pointless. Another vector are local area network attacks)

A browser cannot help a user who enters his credit card number, verification code and social security number in a web form on a site like paypal.com.sxrixxree.cn. Browsers could block the web address if it has been previously identified as a phishing website, if it was not, it is up to the user to come to that conclusion.

Browser developers are trying to automate security as much as possible, especially for users who do not know a thing about it. But even with all that automation, it boils down to the individual user in the end. Tech savvy users know that everyone should have at least a basic understanding of security to avoid the dangers on today’s Internet. The reality on the other hand looks grim, and it does not look like it is going to change anytime soon.

How do you cope with the dangers on today’s Internet? Do you try to educate family and friends, or have you given up on that?

The truth is that in casually posting your intellectual property to the web, you may be throwing away the rights you once held over that property. While you may have taken a picture, if you agree to terms that surrender those rights, others may be free to manipulate and profit from that image in whatever way they see fit. You likeness could wind up on a website, a flyer, or even a billboard in New York City, all because you failed to understand the importance of intellectual property rights and the internet.

Protecting yourself requires different measures for different property and purposes. For example, most people have little interest in profiting off of the things they post on Facebook further down the road. As such, simply reading user agreements when signing up for web services and uploading content to them can ensure that your property is safe. There was a great deal of suspicion around Facebook’s user agreements a few years ago that caused many people to fear their intellectual property rights to things posted to the could disappear. Users responded, and the agreement was changed. This kind of consciousness is absolutely necessary to protect yourself from theft.

When you have something of value, however, things are more complicated. You have to decide how close you are going to hold your rights, file for protection, and prepare to fight for your intellectual property should an attempt be made to steal it. For most people this can seem like a pretty difficult set of tasks to tackle, but it doesn’t need to be.

First, decide how you want to protect your property, or if you even want to at all. You may choose to deliberately open something up to the public domain, providing it to those on the internet to use at their discretion. However, most people require at least some level of protection. For such people, “copylefting” or creative commons licenses may be best. These grant permission for your property to be used under certain circumstances, and with restrictions you set.

Finally, copyrighting may be necessary if your intellectual property has significant value and you want to upload it to the internet. Copyrighting requires you to submit documentation about your property to the government, which will validate that you have sole rights to the property and will then offer it protection. Most people have no idea how to submit this information. A quick visit to the U.S. government’s site here can provide most of the information you need to know. Of course, if you really feel you need help, paid programs like are available that can help you out. For most people, however, software is not necessary to understand the filing process.

Protecting yourself is no simple task. Yet with a little knowledge, a lot of thought, and maybe even a little help from software, you can protect your intellectual property from theft.

Martin’s Addendum:

Webmasters may want to look specifically at the document Copyright Registration for Online Works. While it is not possible to copyright a domain name, it is possible to copyright contents on a website. Then again, you will have to pay a fee and, from what I can gather, copy all contents of your website that you want to copyright on CD, DVD or in paper form, which is not really practicable for large sites.

To many open questions for my taking: Can foreign nationals register copyrights in the US? How much are the fees, and how much is the deposit the document is referring to? Lastly, is there a way to copyright a website’s contents without making it available on CD or DVD?

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011 legislation that was introduced last month by Leahy that would, in many cases, require police to obtain a search warrant to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices. The one exception to this is that it does not require a warrant for police to look at your historical whereabouts as recorded by the movements of your cell phone, even if the location data is only a few hours old.

The U.S Department of Justice has argued in court in the past that warrant-less tracking should be allowed because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cell phone’s previous locations. In April, the associate deputy attorney general, James Baker, with the Department, launched a frontal attack on the very notion of requiring search warrants for locations. Baker told a Senate panel that a requirement like that, either for historical or live tracking data, would hinder “the government’s ability to obtain important information in investigations of serious crimes.”

As his bill has no GOP supporters, Leahy has stated that he hopes to gain Republican support. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’ll have a heck of a time passing it.”

EPCA is notorious for being convoluted and difficult to follow, even for judges. The wording, reading like a hedge maze, currently means that Internet users have more privacy rights if they store data locally. This is a legal loophole that some companies are concerned could slow the shift to cloud-based services. Changing the law may streamline that process for some companies.
Over the last year or so, the Digital Due Process coalition has been urging Congress to update the law. The coalition is comprised of companies including Google, Loopt, AT&T, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as liberal, libertarian and conservative advocacy groups, none the least of which is the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The coalition embraces four principles, one of which is that a warrant signed by a judge needs to be required for the contents of private communications. A warrant should require to access location data. EFF has said that the bill Leahy introduced fulfills about 1.5 of the core principles they endorse.

Leahy appears to be genuinely serious about protecting the public’s right to privacy. He stated that next week, his committee would be holding a hearing on the administration’s proposal for cybersecurity legislation which was released last month. The aim of the proposal is to force companies to do more to fend of cyber-attacks. This is refreshing news in the wake of recent cyber-attacks from hactivists groups and bank heists.

Legislation that could actually require companies to be responsible for the private information they have access too? It’s a sad commentary on reality when such legislation would be required. What happened to the days when companies appreciated their clients and treated them with respect? That’s what it really boils down to, ultimately. Respecting and appreciating the people that make a business successful. One would think that protecting sensitive information like that would be a no-brainer but, as we’ve seen recently, that is not the case.

Perhaps legislation to enforce such a respect is in order. We can’t know for sure how effective it would be but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

As far as legislation protecting the rights of citizen’s electronic privacy, it certainly seems to make sense. Why shouldn’t laws be updated to reflect the times we currently live in? When it comes to protecting the public’s privacy and keeping the public safe, there is a fine line to be drawn. However, a public that has no protection from its own law enforcement agencies isn’t a free public at all. Checks and balances are supposed to be the basis on which our entire government’s system runs. The people are entitled to those same checks and balances as well. Privacy is one of the hallmarks of freedom, after all.

Overall it’s quite a scary picture as it’s become clear that if you are an ordinary person, celebrity or public figure it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible to maintain your anonymity online. However criminals, terrorists, pedophiles and even those responsible for state-sponsored cyber-warfare use the weaknesses of the Internet to maintain secrecy, both in their identities and, as in the case of the darknets, even the content of their discussions.

Different countries are also showing different approaches to the Internet, some of these are contradictory. It’s reported that some people within the pentagon want much tighter controls on our net freedoms. Other countries such as France have already imposed new and unpopular laws governing how we use the web, and a discussion in the British government is currently trying to figure out how to accommodate the Internet into existing laws.

Many people have talked about an Internet ID for every person online. With the Internet currently working as it stands though this would be very difficult to ever get working. Firstly you would need the active cooperation of every country worldwide. It’s normally very difficult getting world powers to agree on simple matters, but a contentious issue such as Internet freedoms would be very complex indeed. Any final legislation that emerged would be so completely watered down as to be pretty much useless.

You would then have to find a way to make an Internet ID work. How would it accommodate Internet cafes or using a computer at work? Would it be tied to an IP address? If the latter was the case then it would be far too easy to create false-positive results when searching for an individual.

Another idea is to change email so that all emails are verifiable from the source. This has been talked about for years and is much more workable. The new system, if it were ever to be implemented, would digitally tag an email with the ID of the computer, user and IP address that sent it. Originally designed as a method to combat spam, this would certainly help trace people, some of the time anyway, but still has its flaws.

The biggest problem stems from what the Internet is. In its current form it’s just impossible to regulate in the way some people might like it done. This means we would need a second generation Internet but this again has its problems. Any new style of Internet would either have to be backwardly compatible with the existing net, and thus susceptible to many of its flaws, or would consequently take years to get off the ground. The people of the world would essentially be rebuilding the Internet from scratch. It could even mean wholesale hardware and server upgrades too.

There are advantages to this idea though that stem from the fact that the current Internet was never designed to do the things we are now asking of it. Mankind still wants to push the boundaries and a new set of Internet protocols could be the best answer moving forward.

If there were to be any constraints on the Internet and how we use it though the biggest problem would be selling this to the public. On occasion we’ve given up some civil liberties on the grounds of fighting terrorism or crime, but the backlash from people unwilling to give up the complete freedoms they have online could end up being too much for world leaders to bear. It could simply make the whole project unworkable.

The fact remains though that we have a problem that isn’t going away. While security and network researchers and experts occasionally suggest new mechanisms to help, it will take a critical mass to actually get anything off the ground. This might not happen until we outgrow the current Internet architecture and public damand makes a switch essential, such as the current changeover to IPv6.

That again, could be many years away, but experts and researchers need to be planning now for what would replace the Internet that we currently have, how it would work, how it would protect people and critically, how we can still maintain our freedoms.

This first part of this article series seemed to raise some strong feelings from you all, and I must ask that you please continue to respect other people’s cultures and beliefs when commenting. In part two I want to examine the west’s current approach to the Internet.

There have been several major Internet events in the last year that have raised all sorts of questions about the Internet freedoms we all enjoy, and what the future of the Internet should look like. The first of these was the WikiLeaks scandal where hundreds of thousands of secure military documents were ‘stolen’ by a soldier and later exposed.

Now one thing I’m not going to do here is get into a discussion about the leaks themselves, or how the Pentagon’s internal security allowed the documents to be appropriated in the first instance. It is interesting to note the US government’s initial response to the leaks however.

People were reported inside the Pentagon saying that it should not be possible to publish these types of documents on the Internet, and that governments should have greater control over what can and can’t be published online.

It’s very interesting this as, while this was probably a reaction resulting more from initial anger than reasoned judgement, we know that major western powers are thinking about this and that there are diametrically opposing viewpoints.

The French for instance recently passed a file sharing law that many countries in the European Union strongly disagree with, and the UK government has publicly stated that the Internet should not be constrained.

The UK is another interesting case. Here recently a premier league footballer had obtained what’s known as a “super-injunction” against a former reality television personality that he’d had an affair with. The reasons for the injunction are still not clear though blackmail has been suggested. Despite the British press doing their bit to maintain the injunction and not naming the footballer, hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter publicly outed him.

This has started a debate in the UK about our own laws but not in the context of constraining the Internet, quite the opposite in fact. The debate here has been about bringing UK law up to date so that it can accommodate the Internet.

This doesn’t mean that any new laws, if and when passed, won’t give greater powers to the authorities over finding the identities of people who break the law online so that they can be prosecuted. Indeed every Internet service provider in the UK, after 9/11 was required to fit a “black box” so that email traffic in the country can be monitored for crime and terrorism detection purposes. Many people opposed this at the time but the Labour government in power in the early 00′s got it through parliament.

Now I’m not going to speculate what freedoms we should all have online, you will decide that for yourself, but it’s becoming clear that there is a very strong debate going on in the west about the Internet and if it should be constrained. It’s still possible that some constraints will be put in place, all in the name of terrorism, crime and national security, and this will be a major battle-ground for people’s who have so far enjoyed unfettered access to what they want to see and do online.

In part 3 of this article series I’ll look at how the Internet is being used by criminals and terrorists, and also how major world powers are already using it in warfare.

Iran looks set to create its own Internet, just for the Iranian people. In a report by the Wall Street Journal the country sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet and, possibly, a way to defend the regime against the pro-democracy protests that have spread like wildfire across the middle-east this year.

On that score it would make sense in some ways as social networks including Facebook and especially Twitter were used to help mobilise pro-democracy activists and get people massing on the streets. This move would essentially cut the whole of Iran off from the wider Internet and indeed the wider-world.

Now I said that the way curtailing of Internet freedoms happens usually mirrors the political conventions of the country involved. This is probably going to be seen as an unexpected twist.

China, the world’s largest communist state has broadly allowed access to the general Internet. It took some years to get this far and many websites are still curtailed or blocked completely. The Chinese government are part of the wider world community however and while questions still remain about the country’s Human rights record, it does at least recognise that opening up to the wider world can only be a good thing.

It’s China that has been apparently encouraging the secretive leader of North Korea, Kim Yong Il, to open up his own economy, an idea that has so far failed to gain acceptance.

North Korea is far more closed and secretive than China, and is the most closed society on Earth. It’s widely accepted that only supporters of the regime are permitted to live in the country’s capital city, and footage has been seen of entire villages being forced to watch the public floggings and sometimes executions of those to question the regime.

North Korea has not embraced the Internet. Instead they have their own internal network, a country-wide intranet if you will. This system is available on the only computer operating system available in the country, a modified version of Linux. It is extremely limited and delivers only propaganda about the state. To this day, most people in North Korea live their lives completely oblivious to what’s really happening in the world around them.

Iran however by contrast is a democracy. Its leaders are elected officials. There have been questions raised about just how democratic the country’s political system truly is but you might expect them to adopt a stance more in keeping with China, not the secretive North Koreans.

The answer probably lies in the recent uprisings in the countries around them and the fact that only around 10% of the Iranian people currently have access to the Internet. This move is clearly all about control.

This does raise some interesting questions about what the Internet currently is and what is might be set to become. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow in Part 2 when I’ll look at the challenges faced by western countries.

More and more, people are turning to social media both to see what’s happening in the world and to get commentary on it. Because it is real-time, you can often get the news faster from Twitter than you can by waiting for the 6:00 news, your daily newspaper or even by turning to your local 24-hour news station. There may be a story trending on Twitter before the media even hear about it.

Twitter set traffic records the night Osama was killed. From 10:45 to 02:20 ET on May 2, there were an average of 3000 tweets per second about Osama. The traffic peaked when President Obama addressed the American public with around 5100 tweets per second. This was not a traffic record in terms of numbers, but it is a record in terms of sustained volume of traffic. While people may have been watching the speech on TV, they were clearly discussing what they heard as well.

Perhaps the most interesting role played by social media in the way we get news now is the local, eye-witness view. Never before have we been able to hear what’s happening from someone who is being directly impacted by what’s going on, in real time. Videos of the Japanese tsunami were on YouTube hours after the event. These were taken by local people, not reporters paid by the big networks.

This is why it’s so interesting to read the Twitter feed of 33 year old Sohaib Athar, a computer programmer living in Abbottabad. Being a techy, of course when the planes started flying over, he tweeted about it. By the time it became clear what was going on, he’d acquired quite a following. As he says himself, he’s the person that live blogged the death of Osama bin Laden without knowing about it. He and maybe one or two others are the eye-witness view of Osama’s death that would not have been possible even a few years ago.

Now, what do the powers that be think of the new way we get and talk about our news? Well, they seem to be using the social networks as much as we are. They’re using them to get a pulse on public opinion. Often, you’ll even get a report on what’s being said on the Twitter feed alongside the reporter’s coverage. As soon as Athar realized what he was blogging, he knew that the media want to know all about it. He had media contacting him even before it became clear what he was blogging. Now, he himself is part of the story.

What do the newsmakers think? Well, the smart ones have jumped on board. Everyone from the Pope to the Queen has a Twitter feed and a YouTube channel. Have you checked out the White House Flickr feed? There are numerous pictures posted of the President in meetings concerning the Osama raid.

Social networks have changed the way we get and interact with the major news of the day. Long, long gone are the days when we sit down to watch the 6:00 news to find out what’s going on in our world. Now, our news is real-time and always somehow close to home. It’s one effect of the new global village, I suppose. Looking at what happened online surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden highlights the change in thinking as news consumption gets less centralized and more personal.

So, where were you when you heard about Osama bin Laden? How did you hear? Did you run to the TV or to Twitter? Did you have both going? How do you get your news nowadays?

That said, it’s done now and a massive 77 million people have had their personal information exposed.  We still don’t know how much information this includes and what it could be used for.  One thing is for certain, people such as the ‘security expert’ who went on the BBC this week and said if you haven’t seen fraudulent transactions on your credit card yet you’re probably safe, are just idiots.  How quickly do these people think criminals can get through 77 million records?

I thought I’d write up some strategies here to help keep you and your personal information safe online.  Some of these you will be able to implement and some you won’t, but in conjunction they ought to make you safer.

Keep your email and online files password safest

This isn’t just to do with Spam, it’s something I wrote about here a few days ago.  Create yourself a super-strong password (see below for advice on how to do this) that you use only for your email, contacts and anywhere that you store documents online, such as SkyDrive or DropBox.  It’s essential to keep this information safe.  You are being trusted by others with valuable contact information attached to your email account for, sometimes, several hundred other people including their full addresses, mobile phone numbers, dates of birth and more.  This isn’t to mention any personal financial or other sensitive data you’re storing in your online files.

Use different passwords in different places

This isn’t always easy to do as people have trouble remembering passwords so tend to have just one or two.  There’s nothing to stop you writing down a list of passwords in a file on your phone (if you have a code lock on the handset) or at home if you have them in code.  For instance you could have the letter s appended to the beginning of the password.  To any glancing eye it just looks like an extra letter on the code.  You will know that is the password you use for shopping websites.  A g could signify gaming websites and so on.  While remembering passwords might be a pain when away from home and on new computers, your own computer equipment will usually remember the passwords for you.

Create a strong password

The strongest and most secure password follow the same rules…

• Make it at least 10 characters in length
• Use a mixture of Lower and Upper-case letters
• Use numbers (you can substitute some for letters too, 0/o, 1/i/l, 5/s and so on)
• Use symbols (which you can also substitute for letters, $/s, _/L, #/o for instance)
• Do not ever use the following (common words, names, date of birth, the word password)

One thing to note with this is that many websites still won’t allow you to use certain characters (usually *) in passwords.

Never use your banking passwords or PIN

Your banking password and card PIN number are for your banking ONLY.  Do not ever use them on any other service or website!

Minimise the information you share

This can be difficult.  On websites such as social networking it’s easier to do and you should never share…

• Address
• Phone numbers
• Date of Birth

But sometimes, especially in the case of a website you’ll have financial dealings with this is unavoidable as they need your date of birth and address for security.  Go back to my previous rule about different passwords for different websites for this situation then.

If a web service is hacked though any and all information that you share is vulnerable.  If you must give away this information to validate yourself on a website can you remove or change it afterwards?  Will the website’s service still work for you if you later log into your account and either remove the information completely or change it, perhaps by changing the phone number to 12345?

Be careful with usernames and email addresses

You can inadvertantly share useful information in your email address and usernames.  It’s common for someone to append their date or year of birth to these.  Always avoid doing so!

Use online banking

If you use online banking you can keep a much closer eye on transactions on your accounts.  Rather than have to wait up to 30 days for your statement to arrive, online banking will usually show you the most recent transactions whenever you log in.  This is an excellent way to see if someone is fraudulently using your credit or debit cards so that you can inform the bank promptly and have those cards cancelled, minimising the economic effect on you.  Remember it can take the banks a while to refund money to you.

Reduce the surface area for attack

Again this is something I wrote about at the beginning of the week.  Try not to sign up for every website and web service going.  Don’t spread yourself out on the web so far that you’ll never remember where you have accounts.  Keep and eye on your email and junk folder.  Occasionally these websites will send you an email and you can use this as a reminder to go back there and either remove or replace any personal and sensitive information, or preferably, just close the account completely.

Be vigilant

To be honest there’s absolutely nothing you can do to prevent a hacking attack such as the one that recently hit Sony.  It could happen to any company at any time, no matter how big or small they are.  The trick is to not have the information that can be exploited avillable to begin with but this is rarely easy in today’s Internet age.  The best advice I can give is simply to be vigilant and aware of what’s going on with your banking and your accounts.  With these simple rules you won’t be completely protected, but you can at least minimise the damage if something does go wrong.

HTML Entities Converter

HTML Entities, what’s that again? It can happen that you want to post HTML Code, or any other code for that matter, on a website. You want to post that code, not execute it. It now depends on the website how the code is interpreted. It should be displayed and not executed, but some websites execute the code nevertheless. Instead of showing <font size="20px">Hi</font> it shows the text Hi in a font size of 20 pixels. The HTML Entities Converter converts code into a format that is not interpreted as code on websites.

Just paste your code into the form on the page and click the Make Code button afterwards to turn the code into text that is not interpreted by websites as code. (link)

Word Count Tool

Counting words may not always be important, considering that many services such as Twitter do that for you. If you write articles on the other hand you might want to count the words. Maybe you get paid per word, or you want to make sure that the word count does not exceed a limit.

The Word Count Tool counts the words of text that is pasted into its form.

Just paste the text into the form and click on the Submit button to get an exact word count seconds later. (link)

Creative Commons Search

The majority of contents on the Internet are not free to use. You can get into serious legal trouble if you use images, text or media without the permission of the copyright holder. An exception to that are contents that have been published under a CC license as they usually allow you to use them on the Internet.

The Creative Commons search engine crawls the web for those contents. Say you need a photo of a car or location to post on your website, blog or Facebook page. You can use the search engine to find that photo and use it even if you do not have the written permission to do so.

The search engine supports Google web search, Google Images, Flickr, Blip.tv, Jamendo, SpinExpress and Wikimedia Commons.

It is still recommended to verify the Creative Commons license before you start using the media. It is also fairly common that attribution is a condition for the license which basically means that you need to attribute the work to the original creator or website. (link)

Online Alarm

An online alarm may be helpful if you want to be notified at a later time, for instance that your tea is ready, that you have to shut down the computer now because you need to go to work or a meeting, or that your break is over and it is time to continue working.

Kuku Klok is a Flash based online alarm that runs in the background, provided that the web browser and page stay open. You can set the alarm and pick one of the available alarm sounds that include traditional sounds, a Slayer guitar riff and military trumpets. Should be something for everyone. (link)

Short Text

With Short Text it is possible to save text on the Internet. The text becomes available under its own web address, which could be handy for several purposes, like posting to Twitter or saving text in the cloud.

It does not seem possible to delete text once it has been posted though. (link)

Which useful Internet tools are you using? Let everyone know in the comments.

Text can be set as private, comments can be allowed, it is possible to use rich text and to link videos or images.

This starts with pretty basic annoyances, blinking text for instance or background music which are thankfully more or less a thing of the past. It goes one with annoyances that many modern websites have, exit popups, tracking cookies, articles that are split into multiple pages to increase pageviews or links that use a custom color to make them harder to detect.

Bookmarklets for Zapping Annoyances is a collection of web browser bookmarklets to get rid of specific annoyances. Bookmarklets are small programs that affect (for instance change, add or remove features) the active website when they are executed.

The website lists 20 bookmarklets along with descriptions of what they do and in which browser they can be used in. The website itself appears to be relatively old since it lists Netscape as one of the browsers and not Google Chrome or Safari. Chance is however high that the scripts will work in all modern web browsers.

The bookmarklets need to be dragged and dropped to the browser’s bookmark’s toolbar or a folder of the bookmarks.

Probably the most interesting from today’s point of view are the following bookmarklets:

• zap images – replaces all images on the website with its alternate text.
• printer friendly – tries to find and load a printer friendly version of the page
• restore context menu – re-enables the context menu if a page has blocked access to it
• zap cookies – removes cookies that have been added by the website

I have tested several of the bookmarklets and they all worked flawlessly. Interested users find all 20 over at Squarefree.

It’s been widely reported that the Internet is rapidly running out of addresses using the existing addressing system, IPv4.  The estimate is that the current pool of addresses will run dry in November this year.  IPv6 has been around now for a few years but has never been implemented on a global scale.  The new system would give the world enough addresses to last many years to come.

“The good news is that internet users don’t need to do anything special to prepare for World IPv6 Day” said Lorenzo Colitti, a network engineer at Google.  ”Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95%) of users will be unaffected. However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices.”

The IPv6 day is being co-ordinated by the Internet Society which is a not-for-profit group that help educate individuals and businesses about Internet issues.

The aim is that all companies that sign up to the test will make all their pages available on the IPv6 system so that tests can be conducted and problems can be ironed out.  Both Google and Facebook already offer IPv6 sites.

“By providing an opportunity for the Internet industry to collaborate to test IPv6 readiness we expect to lay the groundwork for large-scale IPv6 adoption and help make IPv6 ready for prime time.” said Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer at the Internet Society in a statement.

In November 2010 Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, warned that the net faced “turbulent times” if it did not move quickly to adopt IPv6.

The free portable program offers to reset, restore, clear or repair a variety of Internet related settings on the computer system.

In particular, it can do the following:

• Reset Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
• Repair Winsock (Reset Catalog)
• Renew Internet connections
• Flush DNS Resolver Cache
• Repair Internet Explorer
• Clear Windows Update History
• Repair Windows / Automatic Updates
• Repair SSL / HTTPS / Cryptography
• Reset Windows Firewall configuration
• Restore the default hosts file
• Repair Workgroup Computers view

When can this program be helpful to the Windows user? The developer lists a few problems that it may resolve.

• Internet or network problem after removing adware, spyware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, etc.
• Loss network connection after installing/uninstalling adware, spyware, antispam, vpn, firewall or other networking programs.
• Unable to access any webpage or can only access some webpages.
• Pop-up error window with network related problem description.
• No network connectivity due to registry errors.
• DNS lookup problem.
• Fail to renew the network adapter’s IP address or other DHCP errors.
• Network connectivity issue with limited or no connections message.
• Windows update does not work
• You are having problems connecting to secured websites (ex. Banking).
• Internet Explorer stopped working or crashes all the time.
• Other networking problems.

Complete Internet Repair is easy to use. Just select the items that you want to repair and click the go button afterwards. The status of the repair is displayed in a log in the program window. Some repairs may require a restart of the computer to complete.

Complete Internet Repair is a handy program for users who are experiencing Internet connectivity issues. The program can be used to repair several common Internet related problems. The portable program is available for download at Rizone3, the website of the developer.

Webconverger belongs to the Live CD group, with a few differences though. The software has been designed initially for kiosk usage but can be used for all web browsing needs. The software is derived from Debian and uses Firefox with Adobe Flash and pdf reading support.

The distribution has been hardened in several ways. It boots for instance directly into the web browser ignoring any hard drives on the computer system it is booted from. The web browser and underlying operating system are stored in memory which means that no data can be passed on to the local system.

This environment is ideal for Internet banking, financial transactions, shopping and business related web browsing. Webconverger limits the possibility to fall pray to certain attack forms on the Internet. It is for instance not possible to be infected (permanently) with a trojan or worm considering that the malicious code cannot store itself in another location but the computer memory.

The usual precautions still have to apply though as it is for instance still possible to snoop on the network traffic in a browsing session. Users who only open the secure websites of the services they want to interact with should be save however (unless the site has been hacked).

Webconverger should run on most computer systems that have a CD-ROM drive. The software runs for example on a Pentium 3s with 128MB of RAM. Webconverger is available for download at the official project website. The distribution is offered in ISO format which means that users need to burn it to CD or DVD before they can use it.

First of all, let’s have a look at the ways you can make more time for yourself using the internet. If you have important writing to do, sure you could do it the old fashioned way and sit down next to the fireplace with a pad and pen and start making notes. Or, you could go to the internet and do a search for virtual assistants and then outsource your writing work to someone else. Think about it, your time is valuable. Even if you are a professional writer, a fast writer, and you really know your stuff, chances are that you can find someone more qualified than you to do the writing for you. While they are doing your writing you can be focusing on the next project, catching up on family time, or even writing something else. Time is money, after all and your time is probably worth more than the money you will spend to hire someone else to do your work for you.

By the same token, you can easily use the internet to find someone to do all the other things that take up your time. Need someone to take your clothes to the cleaners? Need someone to wash your car? need someone to figure out the menu for your daughters wedding reception? No problem. The internet is filled with experts who are ready to help you solve all of your problems. A simple search on Craigslist or Fiverr will find you plenty of people willing to do anything for $5 or less.

So that’s one way. Another is to think outside of the box. When you have to go somewhere, what is it that you spend the most time on? If you are like most people, the chances are that you spend the most time on commuting or going from place to place. Things like traffic and weather can cause huge delays that not only time but also money since your motor is running and your meter on life is running too. By using the internet or a web enabled device, you will be able to find the quickest route, see where the traffic is snagged, and probably you can even find a store or business closer to where you are so that you don’t have to spend so much time and money to get there.

Another factor to consider is telecommuting. Why should you spend your time and money to go to your job when you can just as easily do your work from your home? This is a god send in the increasingly expensive and inflationary world since it means you no longer need to spend your hard earned cash paying the baby sitter or nanny to watch your kids while you go to the office for a virtual meeting. A net meeting is a much better idea.

In fact, I use the internet to make myself a better person all the time. I’ve used it to figure out the best diet for my lifestyle and blood type and to plan a regular workout that takes into account my age, body mass index, and work experience. At the moment, I am working with a life coach to learn what is really important to me. We meet three times a week on Skype and have long video conferences about my past, my present, and my future. She has referred me to a number of websites that have told me my personality type, what kinds of things I like, and how I should be spending my time.

Furthermore, last year, I actually used the internet to launch myself into a new career. I got on the job boards at Monster. and I paid someone to revamp my resume using oDesk. There was a resume and a sample writing necessity for getting the job, so I outsourced the writing to an Indian in Mumbai and then I submitted the completed application using a Skype phone number. the interview was a breeze since I had a silent keyboard in front of me and could look up the answers to each question the interviewer asked. By the way, she was from a call center in Bangladesh. Once they had made certain I knew what I was doing, I was offered the job. Since then my virtual assistant in Mumbai handles all the correspondence and another source in the Philippines does all the actual work. I simply collect the check and distribute shares to everyone. It’s a win for everyone.

Whenever I need to buy something online, I always find the product and then I look for a coupon or discount code. By simply typing the name and the words ‘coupon’ and ‘discount’ code in Google, I can usually find reductions of anywhere from 35-60% on just about anything. The one exception is gas, but I actually use an application on my iPhone to find where the cheapest gas is so that I don’t needlessly spend money on more expensive gas. It’s a small savings, but over time, things like this really add up.

Would you believe that I actually had groceries delivered to my house last week from a website and it ended up costing me less than if I had gone to the shops myself. I don’t know how they do it, but I think I’ll be using that service again.

Some people say that the internet can’t provide love, but I met both of my last girlfriends online and I’ve used sites like PlentyOfFish to meet single women that just need some male companionship with no strings attached. Not to mention, I’ve found more than a few ways to ‘up my game’ in the real world and my track record with women has, as a result, gone from zero to hero.

So, as you can see, the internet makes me feel better, gives me love, does my work for me, and overall improves my life in ways that I would have never imagined. Thank God for the internet.