Updated! Wikipedia Sockpuppets lead to Scam on paid Wikipedia entries

Very interesting article on the DailyDot talks about a huge (apparent) network of fake people editing wikipedia entries.  It seems to lead to a paid wikipedia  editing service.

It gets really interesting when they discuss that:

1. It's forbidden to edit wikipedia entries for money, and hugely frowned on to edit your own
2. Wikipedia admins  (may) work at some/most/all of the services
3. The kicker - potential clients get their pages modified or deleted before sales calls

Read more here 

Update 10/22/2013:  In Ars Technica, Joe Mullin discusses the deletion of 250 PR-firm-linked user accounts

Tor Servers crackable, according to ARS

Majority of Tor crypto keys could be broken, researcher says

 Rob Graham, CEO of penetration testing firm Errata Security, arrived at that conclusion by running his own "hostile" exit node on Tor and surveying the encryption algorithms established by incoming connections. About 76 percent of the 22,920 connections he polled used some form of 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman key.

...

He went on to cite official Tor statistics to observe that only 10 percent of Tor servers are using version 2.4 of the software. That's the only Tor release that implements elliptical curve Diffie-Hellman crypto, which cryptographers believe is much harder to break. The remaining versions use keys that are presumed to be weaker.

Ad Blocking Illegal? Well, let me see...

The (bad word) president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau thinks blocking third party cookies and ads might be illegal.  Apparently so does a writer at CNET.

While I'm not a lawyer (IANAL).   I do understand that the the Computer Fraud and Abuse act criminalizes:

" (a) Whoever ... (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—...(C) information from any protected computer;"

 Can I put a message into my browsing header that creates my own terms of service that states:

"This computer browser is accessing a web site to collect public information and images in HTML format published by the owner of the web server site.  For reasons of data privacy and security, the policy of the owner of the browsing computer prohibits execution of any computer programming code such as, but not limited to, Javascript, Oracle Java, Microsoft ActiveX, and others without explicit permission, and has automated policies set to block execution of this code.  Sites that use technical measures to bypass these protections are considered attackers of the browsing computer, and may be blocked and/or prosecuted under Computer Fraud and Abuse act of the United States of America.

If this policy conflicts with your web site, please block your information from being sent to the browser.  If you would like our policy to change, indicate your own policy, and we will determine whether our policy can be temporarily modified. "

I suspect this is way to long to put in the browser headers, but I could certainly put in a link to my cloud site, and save the logs of the sites that access the policy.  It could certainly be part of the web browser.

Secure calls on Android

I have not tested this, use at your own risk

Tor and CSipSimple on Android.  What could possibly go wrong?

https://guardianproject.info/howto/callsecurely/

http://guardianproject.info/

The Privacy Racket

I performed a vanity search a minute ago, to see how easy it was to link a username to my real identity, and I came across "mylife.com", which showed my name, town, age, and my immediate family's names and ages.  If I wanted to remove my information on line, I had to create an acocunt and gice them more information.  Great.  so I called them on the telephone.

They quickly removed my information with a minimum of additional information, they only verified my previous address (!).

Then the kicker.  The nice woman on the telephone informed me about all the places with public information on the web, and how difficult it would be to call them all.  On the other hand, there was a great service called "Safe Shepherd" which would make all those telephone calls for me for only $60 per year!

Such a deal!  Racket?  Scam? whatever.  sheesh. what will they think of next?

According to Wikipedia they have a free service too - wonder why the nice young lady didn't mention that?

Perry

The Boston Globe did what?!

The Boston Globe, or someone who said they were from the Globe, called us on the telephone a couple of days ago with a weird story that our credit card for delivery had expired, and asked for a new credit card number and expiration date.

Well, the Boston Globe isn't exactly a paragon of identity protection so Sue naturally thought it was a scam. After all, in this day and age, who would call their customers asking for credit card numbers?

Well, we got a letter in the mail today - and guess what? It was the Globe, and our credit card really had expired. Haha - I wonder how hard it is for them to update their customers' credit card numbers now?