Google Helps Egyptians Bypass Twitter Ban

Sets up dedicated phone lines to translate voicemail to tweets for Egyptians deprived of Internet connectivity

We have been covering the Egyptian unrest against President Hosni Mubarak 30 year regime that has taken a near-totalitarian turn in the last few weeks. Aware of the journalistic role of social networking websites like Twitter played to bypass the media blackout imposed by the Iranian regime, Egyptian government pre-emptively blocked access to Internet throughout the country. Although this couldn't daunt the technologically savvy Egyptians, the vast majority found their voices quelled by the Internet blackout.

Google has collaborated with Twitter engineers to introduce a service that allows people leave voicemail using a telephone, which is machine translated into an audio file and posted to the hashtag #egypt. This way, even those without Internet connection can report latest developments and have their say in the Egypt stream on Twitter. The service can be accessed by leaving a voicemail on the following international phone numbers: +16504194196, +390662207294, +97316199855. The same numbers can also be used to listen to the voice messages, while those with Internet connections can check the #egypt stream or visit twitter.com/speak2tweet.

After being criticised for its privacy violations, big brotherly approach, and many-a-conspiracy theories of world domination, it's great to see Google reaching out and employ one of its recent acquisitions for the good of humanity. Looks like this service will go a long way in letting a majority of Egyptian citizens express their voices and report fresh developments from the veil of censorship imposed by the government. Let's hope President Mubarak doesn't kill the phone lines.

via techtree 

'Facebook, Twitter making us less human'

LONDON: A leading academic in the US has claimed that social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are threatening to dominate our lives, making us more isolated and 'less human'.

Professor Sherry Turkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has even branded the use of the technology a form of 'modern madness', reports the Daily Mail.

She argues that, under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, technology is isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Turkle, who is leading an attack on the information age with her book Alone Together, even suggests social networking can make us mad, citing 'pathological behaviour' she has witnessed, such as mourners at funerals checking their iPhones.

Her book is part of an intellectual backlash in America calling for the people to devote less time to sites such as Twitter.

Other American academics have also criticised the growing trend of internet activity. One, Professor William Kist, of Kent State University in Ohio, has cited the death in Brighton of Simone Back who posted her suicide note on Facebook at Christmas.

None of the 42-year-old Back's 1,058 'friends' on the site called for help. Instead they traded insults on her page.

But defenders of Twitter and Facebook claim social media has many benefits and has, for example, led to more communication for people who are separated by long distances.

via timesofindia

Beware Goo.gl Fake Antivirus Worm on Twitter

Twitter and Twitter users are being targeted by a malicious worm. The worm sends out tweets with a goo.gl shortened URL link directed to a rogue antivirus application. The attack demonstrates once again how URL shortening can be a Pandora's box as users click on links with no clue where they might lead.

A post on Naked Security by Sophos' Graham Cluley describes the threat. "Thousands of Twitter users are finding that their accounts have been tweeting out malicious links without their permission, pointing to a fake anti-virus attack," adding, "A quick search on the popular micro-blogging network finds many tweets from users containing no message other than a goo.gl shortened link (Google's equivalent to bit.ly or tinyurl), which itself points to a URL ending with "m28sx.html".

Attacks hiding behind shortened URLs are not new, and are also not technically challenging to execute. By their very nature, URL shortening services like goo.gl and bit.ly take cumbersome, long URLs and condense them down to a nice, short alias that can be used in its place. The concept makes it much easier to send some exceptionally long links, and is a necessity for a site like Twitter which caps messages at 140 characters.

Adam Wosotowsky, principal researcher at McAfee Labs, explains, "Shortened URL sites are not 100 percent malicious, so blocking the domain completely can cause false positives, which is something researchers try and avoid. Goo.gl is an example of a site associated with Google, so blocking the domain may be frowned upon by Google, allowing the spammer to continually abuse the site."

Wosotowsky elaborates, "As we stated in our 2011 Threat Predictions, we currently track and analyze--through multiple social media applications and all URL shortening services--more than 3,000 shortened URLs per minute. We see a growing number of these used for spam, scamming and other malicious purposes, and we expect to see shortened URL abuse invade all other forms of Internet communications."

Shortened URLs provide attackers a simple, and commonly accepted means of obscuring malicious links. McAfee recommends using its proprietary URL shortening service--mcaf.ee. McAfee's shortened URLs are scanned and filtered to weed out malware. Of course, you can't really control what URL shortening service other people use to send links to you.

To avoid falling victim to Trojans, drive-by downloads, and other malicious attacks hiding behind innocent-looking shortened URLs, try using a tool like Tweetdeck that offers an option to reveal the full-length link behind the shortened URL before visiting it.

via pcworld

Technology : US wants Wikileaks evidence from Twitter

The US government has subpoenaed the social networking site Twitter for personal details of people connected to Wikileaks, court documents show. A subpoena presses Wikileaks, Assange thinks that Google, Facebook are facing similar requests about his site.

U.S. investigators have gone to court to demand the details of WikiLeaks' Twitter account, according to documents obtained Saturday, part of the criminal case which Washington is trying to build against the secret-spilling website.

WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange said he believed other American Internet companies such as Facebook and Google may also have been ordered to divulge information on himself and colleagues.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a subpoena ordering Twitter Inc. to hand over private messages, billing information, telephone numbers and connection records of accounts run by Assange and others.

The subpoena also targeted Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of supplying the site with classified information; Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian and one-time WikiLeaks collaborator; and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum, both of whom have worked with WikiLeaks in the past.

The subpoena, dated Dec. 14, asked for information dating back to November 1, 2009. Assange blasted the U.S. move, saying it amounted to harassment, and vowed to fight it.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," he said in a statement.

A copy of the subpoena, sent to The Associated Press by Jonsdottir, said that the information sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" and ordered Twitter not to disclose its existence to Assange or any of the others targeted.

But a second document, dated Jan. 5, unsealed the court order. Although the reason wasn't made explicit in the document, WikiLeaks said it had been unsealed "thanks to legal action by Twitter."

The micro-blogging site Twitterr declined to comment on the topic, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.
via salon