Phishing Virus Alert: Massive Phishing Attack Targets Gmail Users - by Alex Johnson

An unusually sophisticated identity phishing campaign targeted Gmail users, seeking to gain control of their entire email histories and spread itself to all of their contacts, Google confirmed Wednesday.

The worm — which arrived in users' inboxes posing as an email from a trusted contact — asked users to check out an attached "Google Docs," or GDocs, file. Clicking on the link took them to a real Google security page, where users were asked to give permission for the fake app, posing as GDocs, to manage users' email account.

To make matters worse, the worm also sent itself out to all of the affected users' contacts — Gmail or otherwise — reproducing itself hundreds of times any time a single user fell for it.

Read more: Massive Phishing Attack Targets Gmail Users - NBC News

Privacy: Of Course the Government Wants to Read Your Texts - by Megan McArdle

Imagine, if you will, a law that said all doors had to be left unlocked so that the police could get in whenever they needed to. Or at the very least, a law mandating that the government have a master key.

That's essentially what some in the government want for your technology. As companies like Apple and Google have embraced stronger encryption, they're making it harder for the government to do the kind of easy instant collection that companies were forced into as the government chased terrorists after 9/11.

And how could you oppose that government access? After all, the government keeps us safe from criminals. Do you really want to make it easier for criminals to evade the law?

The analogy with your home doors suggests the flaw in this thinking: The U.S. government is not the only entity capable of using a master key. Criminals can use them too. If you create an easy way to bypass security, criminals -- or other governments -- are going to start looking for ways to reproduce the keys.

Or consider another case cited by the Times, in which the government is trying to get Microsoft to give up messages stored on a server in Ireland. With today's global networks, it's frustrating how easily criminals can move things out of reach of the law. On the other hand, do we want the law to have farther reach? It might be kind of frightening if other governments, with weaker civil liberties protections, could get access to any of our messages, just by getting an order from their local court.

It's not that the government is wrong about the frustrations. Law enforcement has always had to deal with the problem of criminals who flee the jurisdiction. Over time, things like extradition agreements have reduced that problem to a largely manageable level. But physically removing themselves from the area is very costly for the criminal, who loses the ability to travel freely, to see family and friends, to access assets left behind in the United States.

Moving your messages to a foreign server, on the other hand, requires little in the way of strenuous effort. As the cost of moving evidence beyond an investigator's reach goes down, the cost of an investigation goes up -- even if the foreign courts are cooperative, and they often are, you still have to file a case under different laws that may not map particularly well onto yours.

Read more: Of Course the Government Wants to Read Your Texts - Bloomberg View

The Internet: The Only Email System The NSA Can't Access - by Hollie Slade

When the NSA surveillance news broke last year it sent shockwaves through CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Switzerland. Andy Yen, a PhD student, took to the Young at CERN Facebook group with a simple message: “I am very concerned about the privacy issue, and I was wondering what I could do about it.”

There was a massive response, and of the 40 or so active in the discussion, six started meeting at CERN’s Restaurant Number 1, pooling their deep knowledge of computing and physics to found ProtonMail, a gmail-like email system which uses end-to-end encryption, making it impossible for outside parties to monitor.

Encrypted emails have actually been around since the 1980s, but they are extremely difficult to use. When Edward Snowden asked a reporter to use an end-to-end encrypted email to share details of the NSA surveillance program the reporter couldn’t get the system to work, says Yen.

“We encrypt the data on the browser before it comes to the server,” he explains. “By the time the data comes to the server it’s already encrypted, so if someone comes to us and says we’d like to read the emails of this person, all we can say is we have the encrypted data but we’re sorry we don’t have the encryption key and we can’t give you the encryption key.”

“We’ve basically separated the message that’s encrypted apart from the key – all the encryption takes place on your computer instead of our servers, so there’s no way for us to see the original message.”
This is different from all other systems, says Yen. While Gmail has implemented some encryption, they still have the encrypted message and the key to decrypt the message.

While half the team is now at MIT, some are still in Switzerland where the ProtonMail’s servers are housed for extra protection. “One of the key things we want to do is control our servers and make sure all the servers are in Switzerland which will increase privacy because Switzerland doesn’t do things like seize servers or tape conversations,” says Yen. This will help avoid a situation where the U.S government could forcibly shut them down, says Yen, similar to what happened to Lavabit last year.

Read more: The Only Email System The NSA Can't Access - Forbes

Facebook's email switch riles users

Most of Facebook's 900 million members probably haven't noticed yet, but over the weekend the social networking giant changed the default email address of every one of its members' profiles to an @Facebook.com address that the vast majority of users didn't even know they had.

What that means is that the email address you had listed as your main contact address (such as a Hotmail, Gmail or Sympatico address) is now hidden to friends who visit your profile page.
In its place, users have been assigned an @Facebook.com address that routes email directly to Facebook Messages.

Read more: Facebook's email switch riles users - Business - CBC News

Internet: Beware the ‘responsiveness trap’ of e-mail - by Harvey Schachter

A few years ago, it was common to hear about people who only responded to e-mail once or twice a day. Journalist Sarah Green was like that, with a three-times-a-day strategy, but now, like so many of us, she feels pressured to answer messages as soon as they arrive.

On Harvard Business Review’s Editors Blog, she notes that e-mail used to be seen as beneficial because it was asynchronous – you could communicate without having to connect at the exact same time with a correspondent. No longer.

“We’re essentially communicating in something like real time, without any of the benefits of actually communicating in actual real time. Instead of talking with one person and getting something done, we’re carrying on simultaneous conversations with hundreds of people and struggling to get anything done. When I look at my inbox, I hear a cacophony of voices all shouting for my attention,” she writes.

Read more: Beware the ‘responsiveness trap’ of e-mail - The Globe and Mail

Washungton Post: Peek Email Device May Find Life In Europe - by Michael Arrington

For the complete report from the Washington Post click on this link

The U.S. press hasn't been particularly kind to the Peek email device. It isn't that it doesn't do what it's supposed to do : email. The issue is more that people already have their phones to do this, and those phones can also deal with images, links to websites, etc. But the Peek may just be the perfect device for Europe, and Spain's FON is going to take a shot at distributing it here under the brand PeekFon.

P2P Blog : EU study: Online content needs to be free, outlawing P2P isn't working

For the complete report from the P2P Blog click on this link

EU study: Online content needs to be free, outlawing P2P isn't working

A vast majority of Internet users isn't paying for online content, according to a new study commissioned by the European Union, and most of them aren't willing to change this behavior even if sources for free content disappear. The European Commission's annual Digital Competitiveness Report got published today (PDF), and it highlights a number of issues related to IT policy in Europe from broadband penetration rates to the use of social networks and health information online.

One chapter of the study deals with online entertainment and its impact on content makers, and the results aren't really all that encouraging for the entertainment industry. Less than three percent of European Internet users had paid for online content during the three months preceding the survey the study is based on, and not many users are willing to bust our their credit card in the future.