Posted on October 26th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
The net neutrality fight is on, as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal for new rules moved on to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Now, the two sides are digging in: AT&T, telcos, and unions on one side; Google and content providers on the other.
I tend to favor protecting end-to-end in the Internet context, but I’m [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Filtering, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Network Neutrality, Privacy, Software, Spam, VoIP, badware
Posted on October 9th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
My former ONI colleague Rafal Rohozinski, now of Information Warfare Monitor, has a great interview where he discusses methodology and findings for both projects. Well worth a read!
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Filed under: Berkman, Digital Media, Filtering, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, NSA, Privacy, Security, badware, international, national security
Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Derek Bambauer
The Washington Post covers a letter by security researchers and academics urging Google to adopt encryption (HTTPS) as the default for all of its services. (Disclosure: I signed the letter.) The letter makes the case convincingly:
Google uses industry-standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) encryption technology to protect customers’ login information. However, encryption is not enabled [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Digital Media, Encryption, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Law School, Media, Privacy, Security, badware
Posted on January 20th, 2009 by William McGeveran
Perhaps lost amidst some other minor news today, we learn of possibly one of the largest data breaches ever. According to the Security Fix blog on the Washington Post, a large payment processor called Heartland Payment Systems was infiltrated by a piece of malicious software:
Heartland does not know how long the malicious software was [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Privacy, Security, badware
Posted on December 18th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
Network World has an interesting article called “CAN-SPAM: What Went Wrong?” This title is akin to: “Subprime Mortgages: A Bad Idea?” There are three depressing trends: spam remains a huge problem, both in IT costs and in volume; legal efforts have been mostly useless; and experts still disagree about solutions. There are two interesting ones: [...]
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Filed under: Computer crime, Filtering, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Microsoft, Security, Software, Spam, badware
Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by William McGeveran
The Minnesota State House has passed the “Hannah Montana bill”, 119-12. The proposed legislation, which I discussed last month, bans software that jumps the queue at Ticketmaster and other sites that sell event tickets. The state Senate passed a slightly different version of the bill easrlier this month, and now must consider the [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Music, Software, badware
Posted on March 12th, 2008 by William McGeveran
The Minnesota Legislature is considering a proposed bill aimed at an important and very large constituency: fans of tween-pop sensation Hannah Montana who couldn’t get tickets to her, like, totally sold-out show here a few months ago (and their frustrated parents). The same phenomenon occurred nationwide as ticket brokers swooped in to buy up [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Minnesota, Software, badware
Posted on March 27th, 2007 by William McGeveran
Ethan Zuckerman has a fantastic post up about Google’s response to scams by hackers who hijack other peoples’ blogs and wikis: it lists the link with the warning message, “This site may harm your computer.” They do so based on analysis by the Berkman Center’s rapidly growing “Stop Badware” project, which analyzes malicious code [...]
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Filed under: Berkman, Digital Media, Filtering, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Microsoft, Scholarship, Search Engines, Security, badware
Posted on February 1st, 2007 by Derek Bambauer
Simple: don’t send unsolicited e-mail, right? It’s more complex than that. Kelly Jackson Higgins at Dark Reading has a list of suggestions / rules on how not to be labeled as a bad actor. Some are easy: when someone asks not to receive messages anymore, unsubscribe them! Some are more complex: make sure you don’t [...]
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Filed under: ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Notes, Security, Spam, badware
Posted on October 21st, 2006 by William McGeveran
Wendy Seltzer has dissected the End User License Agreement (the agreement where the user needs to click “I Agree”) for Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system. She is not impressed. Many commenters to her post chime in with their own objections to the EULA.
Discussion question: Is this “badware“?
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Filed under: Berkman, Digital Media, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Microsoft, Open Standards, Privacy, Security, Software, badware