Internet Privacy Bill rejected in California for the 2nd time
Bill SB242 also known as the internet privacy bill was rejected 19-17 by lawmakers in California for the 2nd time after coming under heavy opposition by those pesky social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook who want the bill abolished because it will defeat the purpose of their website which is to exploit internet privacy.
The bill would have prevented any website from displaying users personal information publicly and any request to remove personal information would have had to be done within 96 hours or they face a fine of up to $10,000 per offense. It would also allow parents to control the accounts of their children and remove anything personal such as phone numbers or addresses which had been posted publicly online.
The bill has been wildly supported by the Child Abuse Prevention Council, California State Sheriffs’ Association and the Consumer Watchdog association.
It seems that companies such as Facebook are paying off lawmakers in order to reject these bills, because we cant think of any reason why anyone with a child would reject such a bill, it seems insane…
Osama Bin Laden death video and picture scams
There is a few scams going around at the moment to peak peoples curiosity at the death pictures or video of Osama Bin Laden. Dont be fooled by these malicious scams.
The first one is related to Facebook which allows you to view a video of the death of Osama. It has been reported that users walls have been filled up with invitations to watch the death video of Bin Laden as you can see in the image below.
Once you click these links you will get redirected to several pages and then end up at this page. The danger happens when you click the “Watch Video” from this page. Once you click the browser will install malicious code on your computer. You shouldnt have been using Facebook anyway, but count this one as a freebie from us to you.
The 2nd scam is email claims to have the exclusive death pictures of Osama Bin Laden. The emails contain a zipped attachment called Fotos.exe which when extracted installs a banking trojan. You can view a sample of the email below in Portuguese which in English translates too:
After the pronouncement of the death of Osama Bin Laden several pictures of the body were released on the internet. According to American newspapers not all are real.
The real photos are available on the link below.
The 3rd scam is related to Twitter. There was a Twitter account called @ReallyVirtual that tweeted about hearing the raid on Bin Laden while it happened. I’m not sure why but many people ended up at his page and from there is a link to the owners blog which has scareware malware tricking you into running free malware or antivirus programs to scan your computer and of course it then asks you to pay to remove the fake threats found. As mentioned about no one wanting to protect their privacy should be using Twitter anyway so count yourself lucky you have been warned.
The government says there is no expectation of privacy
In an unprecedented move this week, the US government is handing over a court order to Twitter to release all the data and information it has on the Twitter account of WikiLeaks. “The government says there’s no expectation of privacy when logging into Twitter” a San Francisco-based lawyer representing one of the WikiLeaks backers, John Keker stated.
Allowing the court order to go through would create a map of people that are tied to the free speech website WikiLeaks and would set a precedent for any future cases and any other company in the United States would also have to hand over information if deemed necessary such as Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, Skype and Facebook. “It is incredibly powerful to know who the opposition is and who they’re working with,” says Keker even if it means tracking all of their online activities.
Bruce D. Brown a media lawyer later chimed in on the case saying “This is just round one in what promises to be an ongoing fight about the government trying to have the tools to bring WikiLeaks into an American court.”
On December 14 2010 the ruling was handed down for Twitter to give the government all information of the users linked to the Twitter account including IP addresses, email accounts, billing details, user activity, contact details and subscriber names… maybe you are on that list! Since then the judges have barred the networking company from disclosing the government’s demand, but on Jan 5 2011 she removed that block and let the government do what they wish in the interest of the investigation. Since then they have been focusing on 3 names that they uncovered, a member of the Icelandic parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir, a Dutch activist and businessman Rop Gonggrijp and a computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum.
A lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union Aden Fine was quoted as saying “It’s very alarming that the government is trying to obtain detailed information about people’s communications over the Internet.” and later “They shouldn’t be able to get that in the first place, but above all they shouldn’t be able to get it in secret.”
And if you think the 4th amendment will protect you against this invasion of privacy think again. The 4th amendment does not apply to transactional information such as phone numbers or IP addresses.
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