Net Security techniques to be used in stopping child pornography

There was a time when the Internet boom began when it seemed as if the quickest way to make it to a millionaire was by setting up an adult site. While many made several millions from hosting such websites, it has also seen the web usage going more down the road that once used to be less traveled - Child pornography.

Five major Internet service companies - Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, EarthLink and United Online - announced that they are joining hands with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to launch a campaign against child exploitation on the Internet. Together they intend to fund a new technology coalition with NCMEC to develop and deploy tools that will disrupt and stop the predators in their devious acts. Given the rich, vast and varied expertise each of these companies possesses they will collectively be able to address this serious issue.

The Objectives: The Coalition has four main objectives - Developing and implementing technology solutions; Improving knowledge-sharing among industry members; Improving law enforcement tools; and Researching predators' technologies to enhance industry efforts.

Tools that would be developed would in many ways be similar to those we use to fend of phishing, spams or virus attacks. Considering that technology exists today to prompt you before you view adult oriented results on most good search engines, it should not be too difficult to better this technology to crawl the web and accurately pin point pictures pertaining to child exploitation.

As regards individuals privacy issues, it goes without saying there will have to be a tradeoff to keep a tab on what the Internet user is doing yet not get unnecessarily nosey when the user goes about his activities innocently.

While there will always be crooks out there to outsmart any new technology that is introduced, it is opined with the combined muscle power of the five big names on the Internet, the net will in the days ahead be a whole lot safer for the future generations.

Net Security techniques to be used in stopping child pornography

There was a time when the Internet boom began when it seemed as if the quickest way to make it to a millionaire was by setting up an adult site. While many made several millions from hosting such websites, it has also seen the web usage going more down the road that once used to be less traveled - Child pornography.

Five major Internet service companies - Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, EarthLink and United Online - announced that they are joining hands with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to launch a campaign against child exploitation on the Internet. Together they intend to fund a new technology coalition with NCMEC to develop and deploy tools that will disrupt and stop the predators in their devious acts. Given the rich, vast and varied expertise each of these companies possesses they will collectively be able to address this serious issue.

The Objectives: The Coalition has four main objectives - Developing and implementing technology solutions; Improving knowledge-sharing among industry members; Improving law enforcement tools; and Researching predators' technologies to enhance industry efforts.

Tools that would be developed would in many ways be similar to those we use to fend of phishing, spams or virus attacks. Considering that technology exists today to prompt you before you view adult oriented results on most good search engines, it should not be too difficult to better this technology to crawl the web and accurately pin point pictures pertaining to child exploitation.

As regards individuals privacy issues, it goes without saying there will have to be a tradeoff to keep a tab on what the Internet user is doing yet not get unnecessarily nosey when the user goes about his activities innocently.

While there will always be crooks out there to outsmart any new technology that is introduced, it is opined with the combined muscle power of the five big names on the Internet, the net will in the days ahead be a whole lot safer for the future generations.

Web Privacy Laws tightened for US Internet companies

Thanks to 9/11 the world is definitely been a different place since that day. The world over, security laws had been tightened. The Internet too has become increasingly critical to terrorism investigation. In a recent development, top law enforcement officials have asked top Internet firms to save data of transactions of individual Internet users for up to two years.

The intention is to monitor use of Internet and better track down people indulging in child pornography and terrorist activity. With this new directive, all major Internet providers will not just keep track of your preferences at various web sites and a history of where all you went but also a track of your Email traffic and Web searches. This requirement has come up due to the fact that a large number of investigations have not gotten anywhere because of a lack of data.
Mr Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association said "The issue for us is not whether we retain data, but we want to see it done right. Our concerns are who pays for it, what data is retained, and if it is retained legally without violating federal laws and subscriber agreements."

Google spokesman Steve Langdon said "We believe (data retention and preservation) proposals deserve careful review and must consider the legitimate interests of individual users, law enforcement agencies, and Internet companies," While companies like AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft cooperated with the government, they have made it clear that their assistance was limited to ensure that the users privacy was not violated.

While there is no denying that keeping such records may well help find that missing child faster or foil a bomb attack, it is important to remember that National Security is being achieved at the cost of compromising individuals privacy? Is that the American way of life we all know so well? I doubt it.

How safe is your corporate mail account?

Most people I have come across prefer to part with their corporate mail IDs when requested. I often used to find this rather annoying when they change jobs without any intimation and with it their Ids. Consequently you lose a good friend or a customer (if you are a businessman). I have often also wondered why they don’t have a Yahoo or MSN id. Which is safer if definitely a debatable subject.

However now, there is news for all you corporate ID users. Study has revealed that in most of the big companies in the United States and in the Europe, companies actually hire employees to read and analyze outbound mail. The justifications may be plenty ranging from wanting to safe guard from legal, financial or regulatory risk to wanting to check industrial espionage. How many of the employees know that their outgoing mail has been read? Actually, hardly any.
In the results of the survey that was conducted in the United States and Europe spanning over 406 companies employing more than a thousand employees, almost 38 percent admitted to employing people to read and sift through out going mails. In the US, amongst companies employing more than 20,000 employees, this number went up to 44 percent. According to Gary Steele, chief executive of Cupertino, California-based Proofpoint Inc. which conducted the study along with Forrester Research, "There are organizations where employees think they can say whatever they want to say and nobody is going to read it."

These results will surely ruffle some feathers because a lot of people would be affected. After all, no one wants to have his or her secrets being snooped into. In this case especially depending on who is sifting through your mail, it can evoke reactions from nothing making it look all normal to probably some weird person impersonating you later on, or modifying the contents of your mail somehow to blackmailing you.

Another point worth considering is that this method will only check the mails being sent through the company server. What stops me from sending a mail through my laptop sitting in the confines of my office if I had a mobile phone to connect me to another ISP?

Screensavers - Not password savers!

Wanted that Screensave with that bikin clad blonde or of that Red Ferrari you may never get to own? Well whats the easiest thing to do? Go to google and type in the words Screensaver and Voila! there it is.

However, be advised that more than half of the links that Google returns take you to Web sites loaded with either spyware or adware. That means you may stand the chance of your personal data being compromised or have your email bombarded with spam. In a study recently conducted study by McAfee and anti-spyware activist Ben Edelman, it was established that most of the sponsored sites that the reputed search engines send you to contain a lot of spyware. AOL, Ask.com, Google, MSN, and Yahoo all figure in that list of reputed search engines without exceptions.
In a comparitive study, it has emerged that MSN search results had the lowest percentage of dangerous sites (3.9 percent) while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1 percent). Google and Yahoo and AOL figured somewhere i between.

Solution:

McAfee has on its web site a tol called the Site Advisor for tackling the problems. It has been found to do a great job of protecting you from the Web's dark side. This tool is free! Mc Afee also has a plug in called the site advisor which places a small box in the corner of the web browser that turns green for safe sites and red for the unsafe ones. SiteAdvisor ratings are based on threats that include software downloads loaded with adware or spyware, malicious code embedded in Web pages, phishing attempts and scams, and the amount of spam that a registered user gets.
With Google and MSN and Yahoo, it also puts a rating icon next to the the individual search results. This makes it so much safer and one would not make the mistake of clicking onthe link that is unsafe.

With tools such as Site Advisor, it may be easier now to not click on that wrong site. But Site Advisor too is not perfect. The best solution would therefore be not to download any screensavers.