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Fri
23
Dec
John Lister's picture

Holocaust Denial Site Tops Google Rankings

Google has tweaked its search algorithm after discovering holocaust denial sites were topping the results for some queries. The incident may have highlighted a difference in the way Google and other search engines rank pages. The issue came to light ... when a newspaper reporter experimented with searches for the phrase "did the Holocaust happen" and discovered that the top result returned by Google was a site specifically dedicated to denying the Holocaust. Other journalists checked up potentially controversial queries and found unsettling top results, such as a search for "are ... (view more)

Wed
05
Oct
John Lister's picture

Should You Use a Password Manager?

Lately we've been posting a lot of articles about websites and services that have been hacked . One of the primary recommendations we have also repeated is that users should use unique and hard-to-guess passwords for each site, as this will help to ... prevent any further breaches. The reasoning is that if user account data is stolen on one site ( Yahoo is a good example ), the same username and passwords may also be valid on other sites - but only if users are using the same account names, passwords or password hints. Unfortunately this is often the case, because using the same passwords on ... (view more)

Thu
22
Sep
John Lister's picture

North Korea Has Just 28 Internet Sites

North Korea has just 28 websites, an audit has revealed. It includes sites for education, travel and cookery. What information was already known about the secretive country showed that it has its own Intranet: a restricted, internal network that ... appears to be the only information accessible to the few North Koreans with access to computers. However, the country does have a few sites on the worldwide Internet, all with addresses ending in .kp in the same way that many Canadian sites often end in .ca. Until now, nobody was sure exactly how many such sites existed. Full Domains List Exposed Like ... (view more)

Thu
08
Sep
John Lister's picture

Adult Site Hacked; 800,000 Accounts Exposed

A hack of nearly 800,000 accounts on an adult entertainment site could be among the most embarrassing ever. The breach at "Brazzers" may expose some of the very personal tastes of the site's users. The stolen data doesn't come from the main Brazzers ... site, which sells access to videos the company has made itself. Instead, it comes from the site's discussion forum, where users can discuss the scenes on the site and talk about what they'd like to see in future videos. Passwords Stored Without Encryption The data is said to include 790,724 email addresses (not including ... (view more)

Thu
01
Sep
John Lister's picture

2012 Dropbox Hack Far Worse Than Feared

A 2012 hacking incident has turned out to be far worse than initially believed. It turns out that the theft of more than 60 million account details also included passwords. Online storage company Dropbox admitted to the breach at the time, but only ... said a list of email addresses of customers had been stolen. It either didn't know or didn't say that passwords were also compromised. The incident was particularly embarrassing at the time, as the hack proved simple thanks to a Dropbox employee's poor lack of judgement. The employee's LinkedIn password had been stolen as part of a ... (view more)

Tue
14
Jun
John Lister's picture

Microsoft Pays a Whopping $26B for LinkedIn Buyout

Microsoft has agreed to buy business networking site LinkedIn for $26 billion. Analysts are less than certain about what it plans to do with the site. For those not familiar, LinkedIn works a little like Facebook but is designed primarily for ... business rather than personal contacts. It has a reported 100 million active users that access the site at least once a month. That compares to reports of 1.65 billion active users for Facebook. One of the most popular uses is to find potential clients or employers through mutual contacts. It's also possible to "endorse" a contact for ... (view more)

Wed
18
May
John Lister's picture

Irony Strikes As Hacking Site Hacked

A major website used by hackers to exchange stolen data has itself been hacked. The breach has exposed hundreds of thousands of user accounts. The site called "Nulled" hosted discussion forums for users to exchange tips on how to hack into websites. ... It also included a section for buying and selling data such as stolen account information. Ironically, given the new development, the site had the slogan "Expect the unexpected." At the time of writing, the site was offline for "temporary unscheduled maintenance," with its database leaked onto other websites for ... (view more)

Thu
03
Mar
John Lister's picture

New 'Drown' Bug: Millions of Secure Sites Could be at Risk

An estimated 11 million secure websites could be vulnerable to hackers exploiting a security bug. Amazingly, the bug has to do with technology that is over 20 years old. There's little, if anything website visitors can do as the bug needs fixing by ... site operators. However, it is possible to check if a site appears to be vulnerable. The bug has been dubbed Drown, a name rather tenuously derived from "Decrypting the RSA algorithm with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption." Researchers who uncovered the bug aren't publishing the precise details. At the moment it's not known if ... (view more)

Wed
02
Mar
John Lister's picture

Critics Say Kids Search Engine Too Judgmental

A search engine designed specifically for children has caused controversy, thanks to its filters. Critics say the creators are wrong in their choice of "bad words" to block. The site, named "Kiddle," takes several steps to make itself suitable for ... children. For example, it deletes its entire logs of user searches once every 24 hours and doesn't store any personal details. Of course, this also means it can't refine results like Google does. For example, the search engine won't automatically learn if a user searching for "football results" wants to know ... (view more)

Wed
16
Dec
John Lister's picture

Facebook Rethinks 'Real Name' Policy

Facebook is testing a change to its policy requiring people to use their real name on the site. The idea is to keep the principle of accountability while dealing with some practical issues. The site has always had a policy that users must operate ... with "the name their friends and family know them by." The idea is that it makes users accountable for what they say in posts and messages, and thus helps to stop people hiding behind anonymity. The policy often causes criticism. Some people disagree with the idea of having to be identifiable on the site. Writing in a blog post this week, ... (view more)

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