Pinoy Journos Launch Fakeblok Chrome Extension to Block FakeNews

Fakeblok – Real journalists want you to stop sharing fake news on Facebook.

The Fakeblok fake news blocker is a Chrome plug-in that would sanitize your Facebook newsfeed from fake news sites.

Fakeblok calls your attention when links from websites that tend to post fake news appear on your Facebook newsfeed. This list of links is curated, fact-checked and monitored by a group of independent media professionals. The Fakeblok project is a collaboration between the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

Calling out fake news
Posts from fake news sites (that are on the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility’s list) will be grayed out on your Facebook feed. And a caption will tell you to approach the article with caution.

A service from real journalists
The list of sites that tend to post fake news is moderated and maintained by a group of independent media professionals, in cooperation with the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

Citizen participation welcome
If you come across something on your Facebook newsfeed that you feel is fake news, you can report it to Fakeblok. A team of journalists will look into your concern. And if verified, the website will be added to the Fakeblok list of sites.

Fakeblok is for everyone
This service is currently by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, for the Philippine setting.
 

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The Last Half-Life Writer Have Left Valve For Good

All The Half-Life Writers Have Left Valve For Good

The main writers for the #HalfLife franchise consist of a few dudes: Marc Laidlaw, Randy Pitchford, Kelly Baley, Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek. Wolpaw departed the studio earlier this year in order to head up writing Psychonauts 2 with Double Fine and good old Tim Schafer, and now, Chet Faliszek, the last of the bunch, has moved on to greener pastures too.

Chet Faliszek Is The Last Half-Life Writer To Leave Valve

This man basically everything Valve has ever touched. He's worked on Half Life 2: Episode One and Two, both of the Left 4 Dead games, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Portal, and, what I consider Valve's greatest achievement, Portal 2.

For 12 years this guy has been a vital part of one of the most successful gaming companies on the planet, and he's been heading up the HTC Vive team since its inception, too. You've definitely been influenced by his work because who hasn't been touched by one of these games or strapped that nonsense to their face?! 

I was with Valve for 12+ years, but a fan for even longer. Can't wait to play what is coming next. pic.twitter.com/FumRoP0VTS

— Chet Faliszek (@chetfaliszek) May 2, 2017

It seems that Valve have lost almost all of their original writing chops. 

This company has made some incredible games, and seeing as I'd rather replay The Order: 1886 than get into a MOBA, Maybe your one of the gamers who longs for a fresh single player/multiplayer experience in a genre or DOTA 2.

Perhaps the beloved gaming company simply isn't interested in developing titles that aren't going to rake in cash at the speed of CS: GO and Dota 2. However, Chet did say that he was excited to play whatever was coming next.

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ONE OF THE LARGEST ANIME TORRENT WEBSITE “NYAA.SE” DOMAIN NAMES HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED

Popular anime torrent website Nyaa was suddenly closed and has lost the rights to several of its domain names. 

The page has suddenly unavailable early yesterday morning. The only thing we know for sure is all four nyaa domains (nyaa.se, nyaa.eu, nyaatorrents.org, and nyaatorrents.info) have been suspended by the Registrar because each of the domain returns an error message.

Due the lack of access to the site left the anime and hentai lovers in a shock around the world. There is no official statement about what happened to the site and it’s domain names. Meanwhile, many Nyaa users are looking for Nyaa alternatives.

The whois records of Nyaa.se, Nyaa.eu, and other Nyaa domains show a “server hold” status which means domains are deactivated.

Nyaa Torrents is a BitTorrent community focused on Eastern Asian media including anime, manga, and music. Nyaa Anime is one of the largest public anime-dedicated torrent indexes.

This can affect you if you watch anime from Kissanime or other sites. Because of most fansubs community downloads raw videos from this website & then after adding subtitles, it is uploaded on Kissanime.

Since NYAA is now down and out, anime lovers can use these three top alternative websites to download their favorite anime content.

Horrible Subs is perhaps the best alternative to NYAA.se. This website is second best-loved anime torrent download website after NYAA and has a daily reader base of nearly 1 million and Alexa rank of 2797. The UI of Horrible Subs is very simple and you can use XDCC/Magnet links to download the latest anime content.

Anime Sharing is the number 2 alternative anime and hentai download website we bring you. The UI of the website is quite similar to KickassTorrents or ExtraTorrent and it has a good search engine which gives you best anime/hentai torrent download results. The website has an Alexa of 3445 and gets around a million visitors daily. It also as a anime/hentai dedicated forum.

Anime Bytes is another alternative to NYAA. This anime content website is not as popular as NYAA and others because it is necessary to get a registration from this website. According to sources, the Anime Bytes admin have stopped accepting new registrations as of now but they do open up the registrations from time to time.

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Pinterest is now blocked by China's The Great Fire Wall

The site has followed the example of Facebook, Twitter and many others after the photo sharing site was blocked in China, according to data from censorship monitoring organization GreatFire. GreatFire checks a range of the internet’s top websites for accessibility in China on a regular basis, and its system noted that Pinterest.com has been unavailable in China for the past seven days.

The Great Fire Wall, China’s internet censorship system, is prone to glitches and temporary blocks, but the fact that Pinterest has been inaccessible from China for a week now suggests that it has been very deliberately censored. Which brings us to the question of which a site that is famed for sharing images of animals, wedding dresses, recipes and other photos would be targeted by the Chinese government and deemed unfit for purpose in the country.

Pinterest is not exactly a mainstream service in the country, a number of clones sprouted up in China when the U.S. service struck out in 2012, but the block is significant as it represents one of the few popular Western social media sites that was freely accessible in China. It’s not exactly clear why the site is being blocked, but it could well be related to timing. ‘Two Sessions,’ the annual gathering of China’s governing classes, is taking place right now in Beijing which puts the government on high-alert for potential problems. Pinterest, it seems, had caught the eye.

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Russian Photographer Uses Facial Recognition To Find People He Snaps On Subway

Social Media Had Taken Your Privacy!

A smart but also slightly scary project by Russian photographer Egor Tsvetkov. In order to show how easy it is for complete strangers to gather information about you, Egor spent six weeks taking around 100 pictures of subway commuters in St Petersburg before using a facial recognition app called FindFace to track down their internet profiles.

In 70 percent of cases, he was quite easily able to identify the people he had photographed. Often, there was a striking difference between a person’s real look and the image they projected on their social network profile: a shy and grim young man might appear to be the life and soul of the party and a lover of extreme sports on his VKontakte page.




He used open source software to scan the 55 million plus users of VKontakte, Russia's biggest social network, and despite some of his photographs bearing little resemblance to their online pictures, Egor was (rather alarmingly) able to find around 70% of the people he snapped. “My project is a clear illustration of the future that awaits us if we continue to disclose as much about ourselves on the internet as we do now,” he said. 

In an age where people are using social media more than ever, perhaps it's time we started to think about how much information we really want to share with the world.

The Your Face Is Big Data project is aimed to show to people that our right to privacy is endangered by the development of digital technologies, according to Tsvetkov.

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Google Doodle Celebrates Halloween with Games

Google Doodle Celebrates Halloween with a Interactive Games in Google Homepage.

You have  a character  like cat in a Harry Potter with a wand.

The mechanics is simple to defeats a ghost is by drawing its symbol anywhere.

Each ghost has symbol in their heads, you must draw the symbol at fast as you can.

If you lost there are sharing buttons and links to a Wikipedia.

About Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of All Hallows' Evening), also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day.

Happy Halloween!!

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Know the present weather forecast on Facebook

Notice I have weather notification on my wall and Facebook now where I am and what is the weather on my location.  Well it cool  how Facebook helps as in a daily life. So if you missed the new weather forecast just look on your Facebook wall and be updated on weather before you planning going out.

So what you think?

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People like Giphy's GIF service and now has over 100 million users every day

It won't shock you to hear that GIF hosts like Giphy and Gfycat are thriving in an era where there's a new meme every minute. But just how well are they doing? Supremely well, according to Giphy. It just posted its first "State of the GIF" report, revealing that it has over 100 million active daily users. Yes, that's daily and not monthly. That amounts to over 1 billion GIFs served per day, and more than 2 million hours of viewing time. So what's the trick to getting that many viewers?

The company attributes at least some of its success to being proactive. It's not just waiting for you to upload a funny GIF yourself -- it has "thousands" of partners (including big names like Saturday Night Live and South Park Studios) that contribute their own animations. Event partners like MTV (for the VMAs) and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert have racked up hundreds of millions of views by themselves, and there's even a studio dedicated to producing original GIFs. Wide availability on phones helps, too.

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Google Plus Updated

Redesigned Google+ to make it simpler and faster to:

•     Use Collections and Communities
•     See your home stream

If you use the Google+ app on a mobile phone or tablet, you'll see the new Google+ when your app updates.

Note: Not all features are available across all platforms. If you can't find something you're looking for, please try a different device.

Photo tagging
To see or delete name tags in photos, use the Album Archive.
See location info for photos

    To see location information for a photo, use the Android app or switch back to classic Google+.
    To edit or hide location info for a photo, switch back to classic Google+.

Comments
You can put an image directly in a comment. Links in comments show up with a preview of the link.

Profiles
Profiles in the new Google+ have been simplified.
What info your profile shows

•     Your profile shows your Collections, Communities, and posts.
•     Some info is visible on your Google+ profile to people using classic Google+, but doesn't show in the new Google+.
• You can change or remove profile info. Switch back to classic Google+ and edit your profile.

Which profile people can see
People using the new Google+ can only see your new Google+ profile.
How the "Photos" tab works
The "Photos" tab on your Google+ profile no longer shows in the new Google+. You can see it by switching back to classic Google+. You can also use Google Photos to store, share, and manage your photos.

Events
In the new Google+, you can only make new events in the Android app. To make events on a computer, switch back to classic Google+.
Note: If you’re using a work or school account, you won’t be able to use events.

Hangouts
The new Google+ doesn't include Hangouts. To use Hangouts, visit the Hangouts homepage or download the Hangouts app.

Location sharing
With the new Google+, you can:

•     Go to someone’s Google Account page to see locations they’re sharing with you.
•     Go to Locations in the Android app to see a map of people who are sharing their location with you.

Keep in mind: You can no longer share your location from the new Google+ iPhone or iPad app. If you previously set up Location Sharing with the iPhone or iPad app, you can:

•     Use My Account to see and change your Location Sharing settings.
•     Continue sharing your location if you're using Location History in the Google app.

Custom URLs
You can’t use custom URLs for profile pages in the new Google+.

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Cisco has created a new technology, can cut live pirate video streams

Just ask anyone who has watched a bootleg stream for a pay-per-view boxing match or the Super Bowl -- new streams usually pop up faster than the copyright holders can take them down. The party might soon be over, however. Cisco has created a new technology, Streaming Piracy Prevention, that promises to automatically cut off illegal live feeds.

According to piracy monitoring specialist Friend MTS, in the last month alone its online threat analysis has uncovered over 12,000 unique instances of HD channels (1280 x 720 frame size or higher) on pirate services, being sourced from Pay TV service providers around the world. Expand this to SD resolution, often targeted at mobile devices, and the number increases to over 22,000 channels. With almost no operator is exempt, content is being source from the smallest to the largest Pay TV providers in the market.

The approach uses a forensic watermark to identify the sessions and subscriptions being used to leak the video (say, an HBO or UFC account), and shuts down those sources in real time. Companies wouldn't have to send legal warnings and hope that offending streams go down before the event is over. They could take action as soon as they get wind of a feed, without any go-betweens slowing things down.

While clever, Cisco's technique might raise concerns even if you have no qualms paying to watch big sporting events. Just because a company can circumvent the usual notice-and-takedown routine doesn't mean that it should. What happens if there's an error, or local laws require notices? While the likelihood of a mistake isn't high, it's possible that copyright holders could create trouble while clamping down on unofficial streams.

Pirate services obtain content by capturing and restreaming feeds obtained from official sources, often from something as humble as a regular subscriber account. These streams can then be redistributed by thousands of other sites and services, many of which are easily found using a simple search.

Dedicated anti-piracy companies track down these streams and send takedown notices to the hosts carrying them. Sometimes this means that streams go down quickly but in other cases hosts can take a while to respond or may not comply at all. Networking company Cisco thinks it has found a solution to these problems.

The company’s claims center around its Streaming Piracy Prevention (SPP) platform, a system that aims to take down illicit streams in real-time. Perhaps most interestingly, Cisco says SPP functions without needing to send takedown notices to companies hosting illicit streams.

“Traditional takedown mechanisms such as sending legal notices (commonly referred to as ‘DMCA notices’) are ineffective where pirate services have put in place infrastructure capable of delivering video at tens and even hundreds of gigabits per second, as in essence there is nobody to send a notice to,” the company explains.

“Escalation to infrastructure providers works to an extent, but the process is often slow as the pirate services will likely provide the largest revenue source for many of the platform providers in question.”

To overcome these problems Cisco says it has partnered with Friend MTS (FMTS), a UK-based company specializing in content-protection.


Source: TorrentFreak, Cisco Blogs

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Massive DDoS attacks on Dyn DNS cause outages at Twitter, Spotify, SoundCloud and other sites

Several waves of major cyberattacks against an internet directory service knocked dozens of popular websites offline yesterday, with outages continuing into the morning GMT +8 (Manila time).

Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, Shopify, and other websites have been inaccessible to many users throughout the day. The outages are the result of several distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the DNS provider Dyn, the company confirmed. The outages were first reported on Hacker News.

“We are actively in the third flank of this attack,” Dyn’s chief strategy officer Kyle York told reporters around 4:30 p.m. ET today. “It’s a very smart attack. As we mitigate, they react.”

Dyn’s general counsel Dave Allen added that, with the help of other infrastructure companies Akamai and Flashpoint, Dyn has determined that some of the traffic used in the attacks comes from the Mirai botnet, a network of infected Internet of Things devices used in other recent large-scale DDoS attacks.

(print screen from digitalattackmap.com)

Dyn and other DNS providers operate as a link between the URLs you type into your browser and the corresponding IP addresses. DDoS attacks are frequently used to censor specific websites by overwhelming them with junk traffic and knocking them offline. However, by attacking Dyn, it’s possible to overwhelm that directory function and cause outages and loading problems across a large swath of the internet.

(print screen from cybermap.kaspersky.com) hmm notice all attacks originate from China?)

Other sites experiencing issues include Box, Boston Globe, New York Times, Github, Airbnb, Reddit, Freshbooks, Heroku and Vox Media properties. Users in Europe and Asia  (Symbianize) may experience fewer problems than those in the U.S. — according to DownDectector’s outage map, the DDoS attacks against Dyn are primarily impacting U.S. users. 

 (print screen from norsecorp)


The DDoS attacks on Dyn began yesterday morning. Service was temporarily restored around 9:30 a.m. ET, but a second attack began around noon, knocking sites offline once again.The DNS provider said engineers were working on “mitigating” the issue, but a third wave began around 4:30 p.m. ET before being resolved roughly two hours later.

At the moment, Dyn DNS is still dealing with the attack and its cause remains unknown.

Update: This incident has been resolved. Posted about 7 hours ago. Oct 21, 2016 - 22:17 UTC

The nation-wide internet outage was enabled thanks to a Mirai botnet that hacked into connected home devices, according to security intelligence company Flashpoint. 

Mirai is not a new hacking tool. A massive Mirai attack took down the site of popular security researcher Brian Krebs in late September, peaking at a nearly unprecedented 620 Gbps. 

Mirai takes advantage of weak security protocols on IoT devices -- in the Krebs case, 145,000 devices were infiltrated, including security cameras and DVRs in homes and offices around the world.

The author of the Mirai malware made its code open-source, and security experts have been warning of a possible large-scale attack since this information came to light.

Watch Live Worldwide Cyber attack on your PC  click here

Here’s a list of websites that readers have told us they are having trouble accessing:

ActBlue
Basecamp
Big cartel
Box
Business Insider
CNN
Cleveland.com
Etsy
Github
Grubhub
Guardian.co.uk
HBO Now
Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
Imgur
Intercom
Intercom.com
Okta
PayPal
People.com
Pinterest
Playstation Network
Recode
Reddit
Seamless
Spotify
Squarespace Customer Sites
Starbucks rewards/gift cards
Storify.com
The Verge
Twillo
Twitter
Urbandictionary.com (lol)
Weebly
Wired.com
Wix Customer Sites
Yammer
Yelp
Zendesk.com
Zoho CRM
Credit Karma
Eventbrite
Netflix
NHL.com
Fox News
Disqus
Shopify
Soundcloud
Atom.io
Ancersty.com
ConstantContact
Indeed.com
New York Times
Weather.com
WSJ.com
time.com
xbox.com
dailynews.com
Wikia
donorschoose.org
Wufoo.com
Genonebiology.com
BBC
Elder Scrolls Online
Eve Online
PagerDuty
Kayak
youneedabudget.com
Speed Test
Freshbooks
Braintree
Blue Host
Qualtrics
SBNation
Salsify.com
Zillow.com
nimbleschedule.com
Vox.com
Livestream.com
IndieGoGo
Fortune
CNBC.com
FT.com
Survey Monkey
Paragon Game
Runescape

If you’re experiencing connection problems, you can try changing your DNS settings (instructions for how to do this on Mac and Windows are here). Anecdotally, our staff has used OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) and OpenNIC servers and seen connectivity improve. 


Source: https://www.dynstatus.com/incidents/nlr4yrr162t8

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Over 43 Million Weebly Accounts Hacked

Over 43 Million users have been stolen from the San Francisco-based website building service Weebly, according to breach notification site LeakedSource, who had already indexed a copy of the stolen data that it received from an anonymous source.

LeakedSource posted details of the cyber attack in its blog post on Thursday explaining what happened. The attack believed to have been carried out in February 2016.

"Unlike nearly every other hack, the Co-founder and CTO of Weebly Chris Fanini fortunately did not have his head buried deeply in the sand and actually responded to our communication requests," LeakedSource says. 

"We have been working with them to ensure the security of their users meaning password resets as well as notification emails are now being sent out."

The stolen data contains personal data of 43,430,316 Weebly customers, which includes usernames, email addresses, passwords, and IP addresses.

Stolen passwords were stored using the strong hashing function "BCrypt," making it difficult for hackers to obtain user's actual password.

These password hashes also believed to have used a Salt – a random string added to the hashing process to further strengthen passwords in order to make it more difficult for hackers to crack them.

Weebly confirmed the data breach, saying the company has started notifying affected customers and already initiated password reset process and new password requirements.

LeakedSource has also published details of a data breach affecting more than 22.5 million customers of location-based check-in service Foursquare, though the company denied the claims.

Even if stolen passwords are much difficult to crack, it's still a good idea to change the password for your Weebly account, just to be safe.

This is just the latest in a string of megabreaches. Yahoo recently revealed that data for 500 million users were stolen, and breaches of Dropbox, MySpace and Tumblr have all come to light this year.

source: www.leakedsource.com

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Yahoo wants the US to explain its email scanning system surveillance order

Yahoo's call, outlined in a letter published on Wednesday, comes after a report from Reuters showed that the web company built a powerful surveillance system that scanned all incoming emails for a specific string of characters. Yahoo built the system at the request of the US government in 2015, according to Reuters.

In a letter to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, Yahoo's general counsel, Ron Bell, called on the government to clarify the "national security orders they issue to internet companies to obtain user data."  The company said that although the letter references allegations made against Yahoo, "it is intended to set a stronger precedent of transparency for our users and all citizens who could be affected by government requests for user data."

"We appreciate the need for confidentiality in certain aspects of investigations involving public safety or national security," the letter reads, "However, transparency is critical to ensure accountability and in this context must include disclosing how and under what set of circumstances the US government uses specific legal authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA], to obtain private information about individuals' online activities or communications."

The American Civi Liberties Union (ACLU) also filed a motion this week before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, calling for the court to release the Yahoo order. As Reuters reports, the ACLU also asked the court to release more than 20 other orders that were previously issued.

Yahoo did not admit to building the email scanning system in the letter, nor did it detail the specific order it reportedly received to create it, saying "we find ourselves unable to respond in detail." National Security Letters and FISA court orders usually involve gag orders and are rarely made public. In a post published Wednesday, Yahoo characterized reports about its email scanning system as "misleading."

"As we've said before, recent press reports have been misleading; the mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems," the company said. "We therefore trust that the US government recognizes the importance of clarifying the record in this case," the company added.

Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft said earlier this month that they have never received a surveillance request like the one Yahoo reportedly received.

source: Reuters

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How to create GIF straight from YouTube

We seen a lots of  GIF posted on Facebook, and recently Facebook allow you to upload Video or GIF (moving image) on your Profile Picture.

The Graphics Interchange Format (better known by its acronym GIF /ˈdʒɪf/ JIF or /ˈɡɪf/ GHIF) is a bitmap image format that was developed by US-based software writer Steve Wilhite while working at the internet service provider CompuServe in 1987^[1] and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

How about create your own GIF  from your favorite YouTube videos?

Here's a quick how to create  GIF  straight from YouTube.

First open a YouTube video then just add  "GIF"  before the word youtube on the link then press Enter.

You will redirect to a website ( gifc.om) where you can select a part of the video to make a GIF.

Hit the create Gif  then wait a seconds and Whoalaa....  You have Gif you can share it now  :)

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Google added fact checking and it's time for Facebook move now against fake stories

Facebook has stepped into the role of being today’s newspaper: that is, it’s a single destination where a large selection of news articles are displayed to those who visit its site. Yes, they appear amidst personal photos, videos, status updates, and ads, but Facebook is still the place where nearly half of American adults get their news, and we Filipino we spend time checking our Facebook feeds.

Google yesterday announced it will introduce a fact check tag on Google News in order to display articles that contain factual information next to trending news items. Now it’s time for Facebook to take fact-checking more seriously, too.

Facebook has a responsibility to do better, then, when it comes to informing this audience what is actually news: what is fact-checked, reported, vetted, legitimate news, as opposed to a rumor, hoax or conspiracy theory.

It’s not okay that Facebook fired its news editors in an effort to appear impartial, deferring only to its algorithms to inform readers what’s trending on the site. Since then, the site has repeatedly trended fake news stories, according to a Washington Post report released earlier this week.

The news organization tracked every news story that trended across four accounts during the workday from August 31 to September 22, and found that Facebook trended five stories that were either “indisputably fake” or “profoundly inaccurate.” It also regularly featured press releases, blog posts, and links to online stores, like iTunes – in other words, trends that didn’t point to news sites.

Facebook claimed in September that it would roll out technology that would combat fake stories in its Trending topics, but clearly that has not yet come to pass – or the technology isn’t up to the task at hand.

In any event, Facebook needs to do better.

It’s not enough for the company to merely reduce the visibility of obvious hoaxes from its News Feed – not when so much of the content that circulates on the site is posted by people – your friends and family –  right on their profiles, which you visit directly.

Outside of Trending, Facebook continues to be filled with inaccurate, poorly-sourced, or outright fake news stories, rumors and hoaxes. Maybe you’re seeing less of them in the News Feed, but there’s nothing to prevent a crazy friend from commenting on your post with a link to a well-known hoax site, as if it’s news. There’s no tag or label. They get to pretend they’re sharing facts.

There is a difference between a post that’s based on fact-checked articles, and a post from a website funded by an advocacy group. There’s a difference between Politifact and some guy’s personal blog. Facebook displays them both equally, though: here’s a headline, a photo, some summary text.

Of course, it would be a difficult job for a company that only wants to focus on social networking and selling ads to get into the media business – that’s why Facebook loudly proclaims it’s “not a media company.”

Except that it is one. It’s serving that role, whether it wants to or not.

Google at least has stepped up to the plate and is trying to find a solution. Now it’s Facebook’s turn.
 

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Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Startup Marketed to Target Activists

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, VK, Google's Picasa and Youtube were handing over user data access to a Chicago-based Startup — the developer of a social media monitoring tool — which then sold this data to law enforcement agencies for surveillance purposes, the ACLU disclosed Tuesday.

Government records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that the big technology corporations gave "special access" to Geofeedia.

Geofeedia is a controversial social media monitoring tool that pulls social media feeds via APIs and other means of access and then makes it searchable and accessible to its clients, who can search by location or keyword to quickly find recently posted and publicly available contents.

The company has marketed its services to 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies as a tool to track racial protests in Ferguson, Missouri, involving the 2014 police shooting death of Mike Brown.

With the help of a public records request, the civil rights group found that Geofeedia had entered into agreements with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for their users' data, gaining a developer-level access to all three social networks that allowed them to review streams of user content in ways that regular users of the public cannot.

The Denver Police Department recently signed a $30,000 annual deal with Geofeedia.
Here's what the major tech giants offered Geofeedia:

• Facebook allowed the company to use its "Topic Feed API" that let Geofeedia obtain a "ranked feed of public posts" centered around specific hashtags, places or events.
• Instagram provided Geofeedia access to its API (Application Programming Interface) that is a feed of data from users' public Instagram posts, including their location.
• Twitter provided Geofeedia with "searchable access" to its database of public tweets. However, Twitter added additional contract terms in February to try to safeguard further against surveillance, and when found Geofeedia still touting its product as a tool to monitor protests, Twitter sent Geofeedia a cease and desist letter.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have all moved to restrict access to Geofeedia after learning about the tool's activities when presented with the study's findings.

Above all, the companies articulate their role as a home for free speech about important social or political issues.

Yet there is a severe disconnect between these positions and the data access they have provided.

Beyond the agreements with Geofeedia, we are concerned about a lack of robust or properly enforced anti-surveillance policies. Neither Facebook nor Instagram has a public policy specifically prohibiting developers from exploiting user data for surveillance purposes. Twitter does have a “longstanding rule” prohibiting the sale of user data for surveillance as well as a Developer Policy that bans the use of Twitter data “to investigate, track or surveil Twitter users.” Publicly available policies like these need to exist and be robustly enforced. Here is what we’re asking of the social networks:

• No Data Access for Developers of Surveillance Tools: Social media companies should not provide data access to developers who have law enforcement clients and allow their product to be used for surveillance, including the monitoring of information about the political, religious, social views, racial background, locations, associations or activities of any individual or group of individuals.
• Clear, Public & Transparent Policies: Social media companies should adopt clear, public, and transparent policies to prohibit developers from exploiting user data for surveillance purposes. The companies should publicly explain these policies, how they will be enforced, and the consequences of such violations. These policies should also appear prominently in specific materials and agreements with developers.
• Oversight of Developers: Social media companies should institute both human and technical auditing mechanisms designed to effectively identify potential violations of this policy, both by the developers and end users, and take swift action for violations.

The government should not have preferred access to social media speech for surveillance purposes. We are confident the companies agree. Facebook and Instagram have already cut off access to Geofeedia and Twitter should do the same. It’s also time for all three of the companies to live up to their words by taking the additional concrete steps.

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Google will launch dedicated search results for mobile in the next few months

In a few months' time, you might notice getting different sets of search results on a phone and on a computer even if you use the same terms. That's because Google has decided to start indexing mobile websites separately, according to Search Engine Land. Mountain View has been toying with the idea since last year -- the continued growth in the number of mobile users might have finally convinced the tech titan to push through with it. Gary Illyes, the company's trends analyst, has revealed the info at digital marketing conference Pubcon, where he also assured people that Google will still have a desktop index. It just won't be as fresh and as up to date as the one for mobile.

Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or “primary” index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index.

The big G launched several other features in the past meant to encourage website owners to tweak their domains for phone users. Last year, it made sure its mobile search results prioritize websites optimized for phones. More recently, it started marking Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on the results page, so people can choose the website with the fastest loading time.

The most substantial change will likely be that by having a mobile index, Google can run its ranking algorithm in a different fashion across “pure” mobile content rather than the current system that extracts data from desktop content to determine mobile rankings.

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This interactive map shows free Wi-Fi passwords at Airports around the world

Nothing can be more annoying than spending hours at the airport due to a delayed flight. The wait time worsens even further when you need to spend huge bucks for access to airport lounges so that you get connected to Wi-Fi, or you are locked out of all the Wi-Fi hotspots.

Anil Polat, a travel blogger and computer security engineer, has launched an interactive map, which offers every free Wi-Fi hotspot at each airport along with all the login information that you would need including usernames and passwords.

Polat created WiFox, an app for Android and iOS and, after he realised how difficult it could be to access the free Wi-Fi that many airports claim to offer. “Finding an open wireless connection in many airports isn’t always easy, or possible, without a password,” Polat shares in his blog foXnoMad.

Click on an airport on the map below to see both the password and the Wi-Fi’s location.


 

Polat, a frequent traveller, writes on his website that his “long term goal is to visit every country in the world” while also helping others “travel smarter.” He reached out to his readers and asked for passwords they may have from airports across the world, which he then collected into a simple list to share with the masses.

“I originally had a list of passwords in a blog post on my site where readers could contribute more passwords they came across when travelling. Some time later, a reader gave me the idea to turn the original password list into a map, and I later decided to put it into an app,” he told. “The goal of WiFox is to create a crowd-sourced map of all the airports in the world so users can get online when travelling, either through the Wi-Fi offered or using airport lounge passwords.”

Adding further Polat said, “This list becomes more useful the more of you who send me passwords you find at airports. If you get any lounge passwords or for other access points, please leave a comment on this post or email me directly.”

To avail the service, all you need to do is just click on a specific airport and the information about the available connections instantly pop up. Polat updates this map regularly and it already features more than 130 airports across the globe. While the app is not free, you can download WiFox on iOS and Android for $1.99. The info from the app is available offline so that travellers can use it before finding any kind of Internet source.

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Superlogout a website you can use to instantly logout of all active online accounts

Superlogout a website you can use to instantly logout of all active online accounts which can be visited  click here.  (be warned you get logged out instantly from all online accounts)  is a great tool for people who surf the Internet using public Wi-Fi or Internet Cafes.

As soon as you visit Superlogout, it will automatically get to work logging you out of a few dozen major services including Amazon, Google, Netflix, Steam, Tumblr, and YouTube. Once you’re logged out, the site will display a green “OK” next to each service.

Facebook and Twitter are not in the list,  so they not included I tested it ....

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Chrome's December update will be less RAM eater

Accordingly, the upcoming Chrome 55 will include an upgraded JavaScript engine that significantly reduces the memory footprint. Given that many modern websites thrive on JavaScript, this should lead to some dramatic improvements -- Google says its test sites (including the New York Times, Reddit and YouTube) used 50 percent less RAM on average than Chrome 53.

You'll have to wait until December 6th to try the finished version of this update on the desktop, although you'll almost certainly get to try it earlier if you're willing to run pre-release code. Whatever you try, it's important to stress that this won't improve performance across the board. You'll mainly notice the difference if your device doesn't have much memory to start with, or if you're juggling Chrome alongside other apps (especially if you have many browser tabs open). Take heart if Chrome is still chewing up resources, though -- the V8 team still expects more improvements ahead, and it's particularly interested in lightening the load for entry-level devices with under 1GB of RAM.

source:  V8project, chromium.org 

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