Items tagged with Website
A new study has found something very disturbing on some of the top websites in the world. Researchers from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy have conducted research that found that over 400 of the top 50,000 websites in the world are using "session replay scripts" to track user behavior. This practice is common and the real problem with these websites according to the researchers is that the sites are often not stripping out personally identifiable user information from the data the scripts glean. The researchers are concerned that this sort of session data is a potential treasure trove for hackers because that data sometimes includes information like passwords. Researchers...
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The world's first-ever dot-com celebrates its thirtieth birthday tomorrow, and to celebrate, it's gone offline! To be fair, that could be due to the fact that it's getting inundated with traffic, given everyone and their dog seems to be curious about what the oldest Web domain looks like. If you are able to access it, at https://www.symbolics.com/, what you'll find is a cutesy town that acts as a bit of a Web archive. Meanwhile, the company that originally owned the domain has moved to symbolics-dks.com, where it looks the exact same as it has for many years. Symbolic.com's old look The story of the original domain is interesting, and not just because it's kind of symbolic for being the first...
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It's been nothing but a wild ride for John McAfee, founder of the popular antivirus software that's now owned by Intel. His efforts made him a millionaire, though that was before he was wanted for questioning in Belize regarding the murder of a neighbor. His bizarre journey includes bath salts, faking a heart attack, fleeing the country, and activities not fit for print on this site, though the end result is that John is back in the U.S. and ready to hear your complaints about whatever it is that irks you. John's newest venture is called Brownlist, a website with the motto, "It's payback time." The idea is that average people who have been wronged in some way can log in, post their complaint,...
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Well, this surely isn't a good look. The United States government has never been particularly adept when it comes to web technologies, and given the red tape that's used just about everywhere in Washington, D.C., that's probably not something that should come as a shock. After a botched launched and growing concerns of privacy violations, a new report has pinpointed a specific case where a used found "an apparent security flaw that disclosed eligibility letters addressed to individuals from another state." Once he finally managed to get the website to accept his login attempts at all, he was presented with a "receipt of an application to the Health Insurance Marketplace and the eligibility of...
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After three weeks of downtime, Apple finally finished restoring its Developer website. Apple was forced to unplug its Developer portal back in July after it was discovered the site had suffered a security breach by an "intruder" who attempted to secure personal information from registered developers. At the time, Apple ensured that sensitive personal information was encrypted and couldn't be accessed, but was unable to rule out the possibility of stolen names, physical mailing addresses, and email addresses. After shutting down the site, Apple began work overhauling its developer system by updating its server software and rebuilding its entire database, hence why it's taken so long to restore....
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The old maxim was that as soon as you bought some piece of technology, it would already be obsolete. If you waited, something better would come along, but then, you would never buy. New site Decide.com, which launched Monday, aims to help you decide exactly "when" to buy "what." It's particularly useful now. That old maxim used to apply mostly to PCs and larger electronics. Now it applies to so many things, including smartphones and tablets, that it can be a confusing mess in your mind. Ah, but both of those aren't covered yet (smartphones and tablets). What are covered are TVs, laptops, and cameras. Specify the product name within those categories, and Decide.com will give you a "Wait for a...
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Wikipedia. What would you ever do without it? It really makes you wonder how difficult homework is these days given that nearly every subject on the planet is covered in one form or another on the know-it-all website. Of course, that "easy homework" is really only easy if the information that one finds is accurate, and that's why the site's founders are cracking down on misinformation in hopes of making the pages we frequent so often more trustworthy. In an effort to curb the rampant posting of bad information, the company is hoping to impose new restrictions on article editing, a move that will certainly anger those who favor a more hands-off approach yet please those who want a little more...
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It's baaaaaack! Barely two months after Circuit City, a long standing icon in the world of consumer electronics, shut its doors for goods, the doors are back open...online, anyway. After the bankrupt company was forced to liquidate everything, Systemax -- the same company responsible for sites such as TigerDirect.com and the revival of CompUSA -- managed to purchase Circuit City's Internet domain names and trademarks for around $6.5 million.Since making the purchase, it has re-created a Circuit City website that will see the brand name live on. From a business standpoint, it's a brilliant move. The Circuit City brand has been around for 60 years, and it obviously has a great deal of recognition...
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Tide and their Loads of Hope campaign have reached out to us for help. We, in turn, are reaching out to you, our readers. Loads of Hope provides relief for disaster victims. Here's the deal, it's a really short campaign. In reality, Loads of Hope is a long-term relief effort, but this is a short, focused campaign to get as much "hope" washed over victims as we all can. And yes, it is very short: it needs to be done before 9PM EDT. That's not much time!Despite that, we know (?) we can count on you, our loyal readers, to help in a good cause. So, what we want you to do is to go to this Tide site. And what we, or really, Loads of Hope wants you to...
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Now that buying a fixer-upper in the 'burbs, putting in mildly radioactive granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and laminate flooring, and then selling it is a recipe for losing money instead of getting rich quick, people looking to make a fast makeover buck have turned their attention to the Internet. They troll the tubes looking for floundering websites that might have potential, buy them for a little money, change a few fonts and get some Search Engine Optimization going, then try to sell them for a profit. Peter T. Davis, who calls himself a “Web property developer,” said he owns about 20 Web sites, including message boards about model railroads and coin collecting.Mr. Davis...
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Security company Finjan recently proclaimed that it detected over 1,000 different Website domains had been compromised during the first two weeks of June by a known malware toolkit, "Asprox," which has been around for over a year (according to Symantec). "… a new round of mass Web attacks has started during May 2008. Hackers successfully compromised a large number of government and top businesses websites worldwide to infect visitors with malware. The attack toolkit being used (which is aliased as "Asprox") has been around for [a] few years; however, during the last year we have noticed a rise in the number of attacks using it. The attack toolkits is designed to first search Google for webpages...
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If Christians disappear off the face of the Earth because of "The Rapture," there's a site that has recently launched that will let you say "I told you so" via email to your "left behind" friends and relatives.For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when -- according to Christian end times dogma -- Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist."You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ," reads the website, which is purportedly run "by...
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Nothing is so humorous as when the web site of a security vendor gets hacked. OK, OK, it was hilarious when the RIAA site was hacked, too. And I'll admit: it's probably not as funny if it's your security vendor.A Trend Micro spokesman confirmed that the company's site had been hacked Thursday, saying that the attack took place earlier in the week. "A portion of our site -- some pages were attacked," said Mike Sweeny, a Trend Micro spokesman. "We took the pages down overnight Tuesday night -- and took corrective action."On Thursday security vendor McAfee reported that more than 20,000 Web pages have been affected by the attack. The pages are infected with malicious code that tries to install password-stealing...
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It's a weekend, and a holiday weekend to boot, so the site might stay this way for some time. Someone apparently used SQL injection to wipe, and we do mean wipe, the RIAA's website clean of content.Apparently the RIAA is so busy suing consumers that they forgot to hire a decent programmer. With a simple SQL injection, all their propaganda has been successfully wiped from the site.It started out on the social news website Reddit, where a link to a really slow SQL query was posted. While the Reddit users were trying to kill the RIAA server, someone allegedly decided to up the ante and wipe the site’s entire database.Anyone have a backup?...
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It's become a holiday tradition! That's to say, early postings of "Day After Thanksgiving" sales (also known as Black Friday), particularly with regards to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has warned that posters had better "watch out." As opposed to Santa looking for bad behavior, Wal-Mart will be looking.Wal-Mart's lawyers have an early holiday message for Web sites that post Black Friday ads ahead of their official release date: Don't do it. Wal-Mart Stores said on Friday that its lawyers have sent letters to the Web sites, saying publishing the ads before their official November 19 release date violates Wal-Mart's copyrights and other rights. To police the web sites, Wal-Mart has outsourced...
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Today AMD has unleashed a new gaming microsite to provide a forum for gamers to communicate, collaborate and stay in tune with the latest developments in PC gaming. Gamers will have the ability to access exclusive game content and contests while customizing aspects of the site to fit every user’s preferences. The press release states, in part: The site is now available on https://game.amd.com/ and here are some of the cool features worth mentioning: Gaming: Dedicated news, reviews and other syndicated content such as trailers, screenshots, tips and tricks. Gamers are able to get a “behind-the-scenes” look at AMD, while accessing exclusive...
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No one should be surprised nowadays when a site gets hacked. Even sites that you would expect would have an extremely high level of security are vulnerable, as shown by the hacking today of the United Nations official website. Slogans accusing the US and Israel of killing children appeared on the pages reserved for statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Other pages on the site were also breached by the group, who described their actions as a "cyberprotest". The UN only took sections down for "maintenance;" most of the site remained available. However, at the time of this writing the Secretary General's page was still being repaired....
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At Microsoft's annual research conference Techfest, a new method to help keep internet services secure was unveiled based on images of cats and dogs. A popular method to determine whether a human or automated software is trying to access an internet service in use today is the Captcha, a series of randomly generated letters and numbers that must be reproduced. Since computers can now read Captcha sequences, which often confuse humans, a new security method has been developed by nations around the globe. The new security feature is based on the idea that a human can easily distinguish a dog from a cat, when an image of one is displayed, whereas an automated piece of software can...
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We made that up. It's not a real award. But the RIAA has a webpage, written as if they were addressing Special Olympians, that explains how marvelous, hardworking and underpaid rock stars and record company executives are, and explains that the real price you should be paying for a Celine Dion CD is $33.86 -- and I can't believe there is a webmaster skilled enough to keep this thing on the internet. In a USA Today article entitled, "Spending a Fortune for Fun: The cost of entertainment is rising along with our willingness to pay it ," the reporter observes, "though some factions of the industry see price resistance -- CD prices are relatively low and home videos rentals are...
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Some of you may have not even thought about it, but the internet is used by many blind folks each day. Special software that has been developed is able to verbalize what most of us are able to see on the screen. Target's site however, isn't able to work properly with the software, and as MSNBC reports, now finds itself the target of a lawsuit filed by the NFB. "Last month a federal judge in California allowed the NFB's case to proceed, rejecting Target's argument that its Web site wasn't subject to the Americans With Disabilities Act, a 1990 law that requires retailers and other public places to make accommodations for people with disabilities....
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A new bill that passed 410-15 in the U.S. House of Representatives could soon spell the end to chat room use on public terminals, like ones found in schools in libraries. The bill is a response to the increasing threat of child predators on sites like MySpace. The problem with the bill though, is that it's a bit vague in its wording, and could be interpreted to mean the barring of any site that a personal profile can be made on (such as hardware forums). So, is it a well thought out bill that will protect children using the internet, or a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that's been around before Myspace was even here? "Even though politicians apparently meant to restrict...
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The official website for Splash Damage's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has gone live. The new site is your basic game homepage, equipped with some nice images in the media gallery. ...
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