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The way in which some of the US' largest ISPs handle domain name typos, monetizing them through Barefruit, has opened a vulnerability that if exploited by phishers and hackers could be an open and unfettered conduit for the injection of their malicious payloads onto the Internet. Reported late last week by Dan Kaminsky, this particular security hole has been patched. The fundamental danger, though, remains. A new hack has Wordpress hackers disabling all of your Wordpress plugins (including, you see, Akismet or any other anti-spam comment spam stopper plugin), which then allows them to inject comment spam into your blog at will. So if you suddenly find yourself getting an enormous amount of comment spam all at once, or if you suddenly find your blog pages coming up blank (because with your plugins disabled, that often can be the case) you may be the victim of this latest plugin-disabling comment spam hack. Following complaints about police officer safety based on concerns that the policeman (policeperson?) rating site ratemycop.com (that's Rate-My-Cop .com, get it?) posed a danger to law enforcement personnel because it outed the full roster, including names and badge numbers, of police officers at nearly 500 police departments around the country (to the tune of some 140,000 police officers), RateMyCop's host - GoDaddy - unceremoniously and without warning pulled the plug on the site. So who is in the wrong here? To quote that famous Buffalo Springfield song, we say nobody's right if everybody's wrong. A few days ago we reported that a third and fourth undersea telecom Internet cable had been cut, following the initial disruptions caused by damage to two underwater cables that had been blamed on anchors dropping on the cables, plunging millions of people in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East, into Internet darkness. Now the plot thickens as a fifth undersea Internet cable outage is reported, and Iran is taken offline. Total users affected so far by the outages exceeds 80million. As a third and then fourth submarine Internet cable are cut, further disrupting power to India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Qatar, and other Middle East countries, officials admit that the cuts to the undersea cables have not been caused by poorly dropped anchors, but deny that the cable cuts are the result of malicious activity. Verizon Wireless is subsituting its own search engine - complete with ads which earn revenue for Verizon - even overriding their users' own preferences - whenever a user of Verizon's fiber optic Internet service (FiOS) mistypes a domain name. The "feature", as Verizon refers to it, is known as Verizon's "Advanced Web Search" (although their technical name for it, which we just love, is "DNS Assistance"). The lawsuit against Yahoo over the jailing of two Chinese journalist whom they helped the government of China to identify has been settled, after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang met with the families of the two journalists. In a rush of pollyanic* optimism, their lawyer says "It's no longer possible for a corporation to say 'We were just following orders'." *Pollyannic refers to a constantly optimistic outlook as epitomized in the character of Pollyanna, the main character in the bestselling novel of the same name, authored by Eleanor H. Porter, and first published in 1913. To say that someone is being 'pollyannic' is to say that they are being overly optimistic, such as "It's pollyanic to think that the economy will turn around by the end of the year." "Reach out, reach out and muzzle someone." If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the "reach out and touch someone," slogan that was famously used to tout bell giant AT&T. Over the years, however, ATT has apparently decided on a more heavy-handed approach. Now, according to the telecomm titan, they will suspend your AT&T high speed Internet and AT&T DSL services if you talk mean about them. So much for meaningful dialogue! Is your ISP inserting their own ads into your browser, trying to cash in on your browsing experience? Now you can bust them, with this new way of testing it! Do you want to stay connected via ssh to a remote computer, even when you're idle? Whether you are on a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine, don't you just hate it when you are connected to a remote system via ssh, and you do something in another window, only to find when you return to your ssh session that you've been automatically disconnected by the remote system, and you have to log in all over again? Here's how make it so that you can stay connected to the remote computer with ssh no matter how long you are idle. Not to be left out of the Internet Ad boom (such as those ubiquitous "Ads by Google" Adsense ads), it has been discovered that ISPs are cashing in on the ad money craze by inserting ads into your browsing experience using a service called NebuAd - that is, as you are browsing from website to website, your ISP may be adding their own contextually matched ads for you to see, overlayed on top of what you are browsing, based on what you are browsing! If your Blackberry isn't working, you're not alone. Neither is anybody else's. In fact, Research in Motion (RIM) is experiencing what may be their largest network outage ever, affecting users of their (overly)popular Blackberry device around the world. Reports from the U.S., Canada, and the UK abound. Can't get into your Hotmail email? Not getting that expected email from a Hotmail user? That's because the Hotmail servers are down, again. RegisterFly has lost their accreditation to act as a domain registrar. What this means is that if you have registered domains through RegistrFly, you need to find a new domain registrar and transfer your domains to them. And ASAP, as RegisterFly has been ordered to cease registrar operations by March 31st! Network neutrality, laws requiring dating sites to perform background checks and ISPs to rat out their users, laws banning anonymous posting, and cyber bullying legislation. Is it all part of a move towards a nanny Internet? Microsoft joined the Internet Video sites today with its launch of Microsoft Soapbox. The new free Internet video site, offering free Internet video clips contributed by users, like YouTube and YouTube owner Google's Google Video, hopes to capture YouTube viewers' hearts and allegiance. On first glance, Microsoft Soapbox looks like YouTube and Google Video in the ways that you would expect. But is Microsoft Soapbox similar to YouTube enough to really be a contender? And is "similar to YouTube" enough, or does it need to be far better? You didn't have to be a customer of AT&T Internet to find that an ATT Internet outage disrupted your Internet communications this morning. AT&T, which also includes Pacbell (Pacific Bell) and SBC Global, accounts for a significant portion of Internet routing and traffic between Internet sites in the San Francisco Bay area, and so when parts of the ATT Internet infrastructure go down, traffic between all sorts of places on the Internet gets disrupted and falls into a black hole. Ever had the situation where you are sitting in a Starbucks, or some other Tmobile Hotspot, and you want to use the hotspot network - and your computer can't find the T-Mobile Hotspot server? I mean, the URL simply doesn't work and you get an error message from your browser? Well, here's the work-around. Our new email newsletter publishing service is the perfect way to send out Christmas newsletters for the holidays, and email newsletters all year round! Whether you are an individual, a small or non-profit organization, or a big corporation, our pre-accredited email newsletter service provides you with premium services at a budget price! Perfect whether you want to send family newsletters or corporate email newsletters, or try your hand at ezine publishing! And with our unique automatic "blog-to-newsletter" service you can publish an article on your blog and have it automatically sent as a newsletter at the same time! The "this is spam" button is not an unsubscribe button! The "this is spam" button is a "whack this sender because they sent me this email without permission" button. Dueling Net Neutrality bills have been introduced in Washington DC this week, one by Democratic House representatives Markey, Eshoo, Inslee and Boucher, the other by Republican Senator Ted Stevens and Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye. Oh yes, and another one by Senator Wyden. I'd like to talk about the other side of the email equation - what happens for legitimate senders, whose email is blocked as spam because an ISP decides that certain words in their email are not ok. Efforts to legislate net neutrality were shot down today, with the House Commerce Committee rejecting a rider clause to the pending "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Efficiency (COPE) Act of 2006", and voting 42-12 to pass the COPE act absent the net neutrality clause. Net neutrality is a hot topic right now. Here's what one Internet business owner and customer has to say about it. A massive DOS has taken out the DNS servers of registrar Joker. The result has been that countless domains which are registered through Joker and whose DNS is serviced by Joker effectively fell off the Internet. What is "net neutrality"? We've been getting a lot of questions asking us to explain what this new term, "net neutrality" means. So we will. It all started with the introduction of the "Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006". Online suicide pacts are leading to an increased number of suicides. These Internet suicide pacts encourage those who might otherwise not take that final step. In Japan, the problem of web suicide pacts has reached such a proportion that ISPs now watch for and report "suicide circles". The Feds want your search records from Google, in a lawsuit designed to prove how much searching there is being done for child pornography. Should you be worried? You bet you should. And guess what. AOL, MSN and Yahoo have already given those records up. Free email providers get far more out of free email services than do the users of the free email services. "Richard Bangs Adventures" by Yahoo is an adventure travel website, profiling a different adventure and adventurer each month. Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and Gmail access is being denied to military personnel in the Navy and the Marines who are stationed overseas. The military has blocked access from all government-owned computers, citing concerns about computer security and viruses. The line in the sand has been drawn, and that line is the Internet. The world wide web has become embroiled in a world wide custody battle over who will control the Internet. Earlier this year, as other countries' grumblings became outright cries ... What is the precursor of the Internet? Want a brief history of the Internet? Who invented the Internet? When was the Internet first created, anyways? Few people under the age of 40 realize that the Internet we know today actually evolved from a collaboration between government and academic sites. AllTopix (AllTopix.com) is an online community for teens which is attempting to fill the teen chat void created by the closure of Yahoo Chats to those under 18. Yahoo chat rooms have been closed off to anyone under the age of eighteen, following an agreement between Yahoo and NY's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. "We need to be vigilant to protect our children," says Spitzer Yahoo IM and MSN Instant Messenger are about to start talking to each other, so that users of one service can easily chat with their friends on the other service. Hotmail, Yahoo email, Gmail, and other free email services may be free, but they come with a price. Is it worth it? Internet service provider Level3 tells their side of the story in their battle with Cogent which lead to Level3 cutting off Cogent's Internet traffic. Internet service providers Level3 and Cogent are feuding, and Level3 has blocked all traffic from Cogent, causing both Cogent's and Level3's customers to lose Internet connectivity. Industry experts are not amused. Is Microsoft about to buy AOL? Or at least a stake in Time Warner's AOL? That's what the rumours are, and nobody is denying them. A typo (typographical error) in an IP address led to Brian and Sarah Doom being wrongl accused of child pornography. "Oops," said Cox, the fumble-fingered ISP. "See you in court,", said Brian and Sarah Doom. Yesterday Microsoft announced its new free anti-phishing add-in for the MSN search toolbar, claiming it to be "the first such technology." Today Earthlink lobs a shot across Microsoft's bow, saying "not so." In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which so far has taken the lives of 68 people in a ferocious howling storm the likes of which had not been seen since Hurricane Camille in 1969, T-Mobile in an act of largesse opens up their wifi wireless Internet Hotspots to the citizens of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Zobot Botzor.exe (a/k/a worm-rbot.cbq, rbot.cbq, and rbot.ebq) and Mytob worm authors are believed to have been arrested in Turkey and Morroco. Authorities in both countries, in cooperation with the FBI and Microsoft, arrested Farid Essebar and Atilla Ekici, using online nicknames Diab10 and Coder, who are believed to have authored the worms. Many people and organizations are opposed to the proposed merger of Verizon and MCI, believeing that it would create a monopoly of unprecedented proportions and power. One of the largest state associations of ISPs, the California ISP Association (CISPA) testified before the ... According to a site with the rather unlikely and cumbersome name of "dating-webhosting.com", as many as 60% of all webhosting sites do not deliver what they promise. Indeed, according to dating-webhosting.com, they may take your money and not deliver at all. Says a note ... The new proposed TLD (top level domain), .XXX, has run into fierce opposition from President Bush and his administration, along with conservative groups and even governments around the world. The .XXX top level domain, which has already been preliminarily approved by ICANN, is to ... Rumours abound that Yahoo is about to roll out its own VoIP service. And soon. The most recent rumours started when Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said that in his estimation Yahoo was set to roll out a VoIP service within ... Jason Smathers, who pleaded guilty to stealing a list of 92 million email addresses from America Online (AOL), has been sentenced to one year and three months in prison. According to reports, Judge Alvin Hellerstein gave Smathers a sentence on the lenient ... In an at least temporary victory for Redmond giant Microsoft, in a lawsuit which defending Mountain View giant Google is calling "a charade", a Washington state trial court has ordered ex Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee to refrain from starting his new job at ... China has been in the news with relation to the Internet a lot of late. They recently joined the anti-spam "London Plan", have expanded their Internet offerings to their citizens with MSN Spaces' Chinese portal (which admits to censoring in China), and, ... Hacking and politics have contrived to make strange bedfellows. According to a report by the British news organization, The Sun, hackers have come forward and started to take down web sites which are fomenting terrorism, and inciting terrorist acts - something ... Governments around the world are using various methods to crack down on Internet porn in general, and that involving children in particular, and the United States is considering the Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005 (more about that in a minute). The ... Yahoo will be announcing on Monday that it has purchased Arlo Rose's Konfabulator for an undisclosed amount of money. Yahoo will also be announcing that it will drop the price for Konfabulator from the current $19.99 to zero. That's right. Zippo. ... Is it a case of sour grapes, or good business? Microsoft this week has sued Google. Not over technology or copyright. Nope. Over poaching one of their top executives, Executive Vice President Kai-Fu Lee. It's no secret that Microsoft has ... Remember how last month Aunty told you about AOL's new AIM Mail free web mail service? Well, AOL has not only made it official that they are providing 2gig of email storage, putting them squarely in competition with both Gmail and Yahoo, but they ... Every year Security Space puts out a report on the top ISPs, measured by number of web servers hosted on the ISP's networks. Who do you think that the top three ISPs are? Well, if you said MSN, AOL and/or Earthlink, well, you'd ... It turns out that crime does pay, after all. Informants, that is. Microsoft has announced that they will pay out a promised $250,000 USD reward to two informants who helped lead authorities to Sasser creator Sven Jaschan. The teenaged Jaschan was tried ... As the battle heats up over whether to allow China to acquire major United States business holdings, China has turned its attention to another global business issue: spam. China has long been known as a major source of spam - indeed it ... Prosecution among the first under the federal CAN-SPAM Act ATLANTA, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- EarthLink's investigation of Peter Moshou, aka the "Timeshare Spammer," has resulted in Moshou pleading guilty today to violating the CAN-SPAM Act on a federal charge brought by the ... Al Gore may not have really invented the Internet, but we can still bloody well control it, the U.S. seems to be saying. In a gesture which is being seen by some as the U.S. thumbing its nose at the global Internet community, the ... For all of you naysayers who insist that the Federal anti-spam law should be called the "YOU-CAN-SPAM" act instead of the CAN-SPAM act, and who say that it will never be a useful tool, Florida spammer Peter Moshou just might beg to differ. In ... The conspiracy theorists are out in force, this time accusing Microsoft's MSN of intentionally disabling the right click function in FireFox, while not doing the same for Internet Explorer (IE). Now,mind you, just because Microsoft engenders its share of conspiracy theorists doesn't ... A report released this week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that when it comes to Internet searching, and turning up adult content, MSN is better at blocking such results than either Google or Yahoo. Whether this is a bug or a ... Is the T-Mobile Sidekick About to Become the MCI Sidekick? This news release just came across Aunty's desk, and inquiring minds want to know!: ASHBURN, Va., June 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MCI, Inc. today announced a four-year agreement with Danger, Inc., provider ... .EU Domain name applications can now be officially submitted. EuroDNS, the leading Luxembourg-based European Domain Name Registrar, is now an Official Accredited .EU Registrar, and is accepting applications for ‘.eu’ Domain Names. Bearing in mind that the ‘First Come First Served’ rule always ... Congratulations, Earthlink! A leader in legal action against spammers, in the PC World "Best ISP" survey, and now a leader in web hosting! ATLANTA, June 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EarthLink (Nasdaq: ELNK), the nation's next generation Internet service provider, today announced that ... PC World has just released a survey they took of more than 6,000 Internet users, in order to determine who the best ISP was. And the answers may surprise you. The 6,000 survey participants, all PC World subscribers, were asked to rate their ... Microsoft has just announced that they are now requiring that email sent to Hotmail accounts must use Microsoft Sender I.D. or the email will be marked with a big yellow box and put in the junk folder or maybe even deleted. That ... Webmasters whose websites deal with adult content may soon have to start policing the ages of the models and performers who appear in content on their website, even if they did not generate or solicit the content - indeed even if the content ... The United States House of Representatives has voted to restrict the Patriot Act so that it cannot be used to pry into the library borrowing and book purchasing of U.S. citizens. You would think that this would be a no-brainer - ... Earlier this week Aunty reported to you that Microsoft was censoring Chinese users of its new Chinese-based web and blogging portal. Today Silicon.com is reporting that Microsoft has confirmed this in an email to Silicon.com, in which Microsoft admits that it does maintain a ... A mock trial, in which ISPs were sued for damage done by a zombie network to a few fictitious companies' business and financial interests, found that a jury of IT professionals overwhelmingly held the opinion that the ISPs were not responsible for the ... A New York judge has ruled that Internet service provider RoadRunner must reveal the identity of a customer who sent email to the Public Relations Society of America's board of directors, claiming that the Public Relations Society of America's executive director, Catherine A. ... There's a hue and cry being raised about Microsoft's new MSN portal in China not allowing Chinese users to access or share certain "forbidden" sites and ideas on the Internet. In particular, Chinese users of MSN's blogging service, MSN Spaces, are forbidden ... Google sure does a lot of nifty things with their search and archive capabilities! And one of those things is that it now archives your search history. Meaning that if you are logged in to Google, and perform a Google search, ... Commercial Trials Set for Dallas, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle San Jose, Calif and Atlanta (June 6, 2005) — Covad and EarthLink, the nation’s next generation Internet Service Provider, today announced a new Voice over IP (VoIP) joint market trial that will give ... Internet web portal and ISP Yahoo, and router and software giant Cisco, have joined forces to jointly produce an anti-spam product based on Yahoo's Domain Keys and Cisco's Identified Internet Mail system. Domain Keys, which was announced last year, is Yahoo's entry into the ... AOL's previously announced Instant Messenger-based AIM Mail email system is now a reality. Windows users who upgrade to the new AIM version 5.9 will have access to the new web-mail service, which is one of the first of its kind to integrate instant messenger ... It seems like just yesterday that Aunty told you about how ISP and broadband providers are lobbying to prevent municipal wifi, which would keep you from being able to have city-wide free wifi such as some cities are now offering. Well, apparently some of ... The Federal government is arguing, despite rulings by the court to the contrary, that under the Patriot Act they are, or at least should be, allowed to demand customer records and information from ISPs (Internet service providers) in secret, and without a court ... According to Cecilia Barnes, men have shown up at her place of employment in Oregon expecting to be able to have sex with her. Which is odd, because she's not a sex therapist or a prostitute. Perhaps less odd, though, ... Some coffee shops are starting to tell their customers to "drop in, turn off, and tune in". Only unlike Timothy Leary, who uttered the original and infamous "turn on, tune in, and drop out", the coffee shops are talking about free wifi, ... An Open Letter from the Federal Trade Commission to ISPs and Network Professionals: Dear Network professionals: We are writing on behalf of an international group of government agencies to request that your organization join a worldwide effort to prevent spammers from compromising consumers’ computers and ... Free of Pop-Up Ads, myEarthLink Gives Internet Users Access to Customizable Content Online At No Charge ATLANTA, May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ ... There is a hue and cry being raised across the web about Yahoo's use of web beacons, which some liken to "super cookies", and which allow the tracker to track a user's movements not only within their own website, but even when the ... |