• Twitter boycotted Saturday by some

    Twitter

    By Suzanne Choney

    How do you get the word out about a boycott of Twitter when it's Twitter that's needed to get the word out? It was tough, especially in the case of the hastily organized one for Saturday meant to protest the site's new policy of censoring certain tweets, or posts, in some countries.

    Some users spread the word by using the black-bar approach (above). But, like Twitter itself, the boycott translated to many different emotions and reactions:

    Twitter

    As Saturday became Sunday in some parts of the world, for those who did boycott, this man's tweet spoke volumes about how some people feel about Twitter:

    Twitter

    Yet others said perhaps another (better-organized) boycott is in order:

    Twitter

    This person, involved in the "Occupy" movement, was torn between protests:

    Twitter

    On Twitter's worldwide "trending" chart, the boycott did not make the top 10:

    Twitter

    Twitter, contacted by msnbc.com Saturday, declined to comment on the boycott.

    But one of the tweets posted by its Twitter's communications team (@twittercomms) suggested "#TwitterBlackout reading," including analyses by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a fellow from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society for different perspectives on the new policy.

    "Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that," wrote Jillian C. York, the EFF's director of international freedom of expression, on a blog. "But alas, Twitter is not above the law. Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content."

    Zeynep Tufekci, the Berkman Center fellow, wrote that the new policy is "not made hard to circumvent. Twitter helpfully included instructions on how to change your country ('manually override' the country setting which is determined by IP). I don’t know about you, but does this sound like Twitter is caving? Also, obviously, Tor users and proxy users will be able to access the content fairly easily."

    Twitter said Friday its users "now send a billion tweets every four days," and that it will not be filtering tweets, something that is "neither desirable nor realistic. With this new feature, we are going to be reactive only: that is, we will withhold specific content only when required to do so in response to what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request."

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  • Google doodle celebrates 'world's largest snowflake'

    Google

    By Suzanne Choney

    Google doodles often honor people, like Freddie Mercury or Mark Twain, but Saturday's doodle pays homage to the "world's largest snowflake."

    The snowflake was seen on Jan. 28, 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana; at least that's the word from the Guiness World Records, which says a rancher saw the snowflakes coming down, calling them "larger than milk pans," and measuring one of them at 15 inches.

    However, noted the New York Times in 2007, "no corroborating evidence supports the claim."

    Still, it makes for a fun, animated doodle on Google's home search page. When you go to the page, you'll see a lone cow grazing in a snow-covered field get slightly perturbed when the snowflake drops down (doubling as the second "o" in the name "Google") but then continue foraging.

    Also worth noting on Google's search page is this statement, beneath the search box: "We're changing our privacy policy and terms. Not the usual yada yada," with a link to learn more.

    Google

    The tech giant announced earlier this week it is consolidating more than 60 separate privacy policies for its online products, which is drawing fire from some who are troubled that with the new policy there's no opt-out choice for users. Eight U.S. lawmakers have sent a letter to Google expressing concerns about the policy, due to take effect around March 1.

    Google, which also sent an email this week to users of its services about the change, is obviously trying to spread the word about  it. And a big snowflake is one way to help draw attention to the issue — even if some may think that approach is all wet.

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  • Twitter censorship policy leads to boycott

    Twitter

    By Suzanne Choney

    Anger over Twitter's new policy to censor messages on a country-by-country basis is resulting in protests by some Twitter users who say they will refuse to tweet on Saturday.

    Using the hashtags of #TwitterBlackout and #TwitterProtest, some of the short-messaging blog's 100 million users are finding each other on the site to spread the word about the boycott.

    Twitter said Thursday it would begin restricting tweets, which are limited to 140 characters, in certain countries around the world — which came as upsetting news to many who used Twitter as a means of communication to help start revolutions in the Middle East in the past year, and to those in other countries where dissidence is discouraged.

    "We urge you to reverse this decision, which restricts freedom of expression and runs counter to the movements opposed to censorship that have been linked to the Arab Spring, in which Twitter served as a sounding board," the Reporters Without Borders group said in a letter Friday to Twitter. "By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization."

    Twitter

    A sampling of some of the comments on Twitter.

    Some civil liberties organizations and news sites asked Twitter users to try to understand the site's new policy before protesting it.

    "Twitter's increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions," said the U.S.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation on Friday.

    "By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another."

    The EFF also said that Twitter "has not yet blocked a tweet using this new system, but when it does, that tweet will not simply disappear — there will be a message informing you that content has been blocked due to your geographical location. Fortunately, your geographical location is easy to change on the Internet. You can use a proxy or a Tor exit node located in another country."

    Social media news website Mashable told Twitter users to "relax," and reminded them that "Twitter’s technology appears to be easy to circumvent. And further, Twitter appears to clearly be telling users how to get around its censors." (That's something that msnbc.com's Rosa Golijan wrote about as well).

    Despite the furor, as of Friday evening ET, "TwitterBlackout" and "TwitterProtest" were not trending high on Twitter itself. Instead, the top-trending phrases referred to subjects such as "The Grey," a newly released movie, and "Happy National Chocolate Cake Day."

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  • The face behind the 'Honey Badger' voice

    Randall, the voice behind the Honey Badger video, speaks with TMZ.

    By Suzanne Choney

    The man who narrates the wildly popular video-gone-viral, "Honey Badger," has a few choice words about the creature itself, which pretty much destroys anything in its path and eats anything it wants (including, ugh, a cobra).

    "Because of today's society, I feel it's an animal that I feel a lot of people can relate to ... I think a lot of people are fed up ... a lot of people want to be able to take want they want," he told TMZ in an interview this week.

    "And I believe firmly .... that everyone inside of them has an inner honey badger just waiting to get out, they don't care, they want to take want they want and now's the time to do it."

    Wow, what a selfless guy (he goes by "Randall"). The timing of the video is likely tied to his new book, a guide to "nasty a-- animals." At least on his own website, he takes a more subdued approach to things:

    The more we can learn about other animals, and realize we are not alone on this planet — the better off we can be as both humans and a society as a whole! Now, that being written, this doesn’t mean we have to be all “Debbie Downer” about it — we just need to educate one another and learn what we as individuals and as a nation, can do to treat our wildlife and animals better!

    So, it turns out that he does give a .... hoot. Even if Honey Badger doesn't.

    (Note, although many of you have seen "Honey Badger," for those who haven't it, it's below, but includes NSFW language and some pretty graphic (and disgusting) animal scenes:

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  • What if a virus infected a virus? 'Frankenware' spotted by security firm

    By Bob Sullivan

    What if two computer viruses got together on your computer and had a baby? 

    It does happen, says security firm BitDefender, and the result is more mutant than mutt. The firm has taken to calling the third, new piece of malware produced by the odd couple — with apologies to Mary Shelley — "Frankenware." The spontaneous software offspring might be dangerously unpredictable, and it can be harder to defend again, BitDefender says.

    There are so many computer viruses flying around out there that they can't help bumping into one other while wreaking havoc on our computers. In fact, virus writers account for this. In order to protect and defend a hard-won compromised computer, some virus writers actually install their own antivirus programs after they infect a PC. That way, another bad guy can't come along and hijack an already hijacked machine, said Catalin Cosoi, head of the Online Threats Lab at BitDefender, based in Romania.

    But what happens when an already-infected machine is attacked by a virus that inserts code into every executable file it finds on a machine? What if a virus infects a virus?

    In rare cases, says Cosoi, a third virus with unpredictable capabilities is created. But it's not that rare: His firm recently searched 10 million pieces of malicious software and found 40,000 distinct examples of this. 

    "As with evolution, these things happen accidentally," he said. "The combination doesn't usually work, but sometimes it does."

    It helps if the two pieces of malicious software have complementary features, he said — for example, if one is a keylogger while the other is designed with a wormlike ability to propagate quickly.

    The good news is that, generally, such hybrid viruses can be easier to detect than their parents, because antivirus software that uses "signature" definitions — which identify malicious programs by looking for telltale lines of computer code — have "twice the chance" to detect the troublemaker. On the other hand, some other virus detection tools might overlook the Frankenware because the new file will be a different size from its parents, Cosoi said. 

    John Harrison, a product manager with Symantec, said his firm had never found something like the Frankenware BitDefender is describing, but he did say most PCs that are successfully attacked by virus writers have multiple malicious programs on them. Generally, when a computer has a security vulnerability, the secret doesn't last long, and a hacker feeding frenzy follows.

    "We've seen computers with 25 different pieces of malware on them, even more," he said. "They are often stealthy. ... By the time the user notices the PC has slowed down or there's a blue screen, it could be the 100th piece of malware." 

    So the idea that two such programs could collide and accidentally create a hybrid isn't that far-fetched. But the real question is: Could such Frankenware pull a Frankenstein and wreak unexpected havoc on the real world?

    Cosoi wasn't ringing any alarm bells. Virus writers do what they do for money, and this kind of random, destructive interaction wouldn't profit anyone. For that reason, he thought all the incentives in the computer underworld would probably be enough to limit such possibilities. In other words, virus writers will probably work to prevent such an occurrence because it would hurt their business.

    And, most important, nothing of the sort has been discovered. The 40,000 Frankenware samples that BitDefender has found are no more dangerous than their "parents."

    However, it's important to note that virus writers, even if they seem quite professional in their craft, hardly undertake rigorous product testing. Mistakes happen.

    "If you throw a bunch of malware on a computer, that doesn't automatically mean it will create new malware and it rarely works," he said. "But when it does, it could be dangerous. I can see how a new kind of malware that spreads faster and is more viral than any of the two (parents) ... could turn into something more dangerous."

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  • Facebook Timeline poll: 'Overwhelming negative' reaction

    Sophos

    By Suzanne Choney

    Sophos Security polled more than 4,000 Facebook users about the new Timeline feature, rolling out now, and more than half said that Timeline "worries" them because of security issues.

    "The response was (an) overwhelming negative" one, said Graham Cluley, Sophos' senior technology consultant. Granted, "the kind of people who participate in our polls might be more conscious of privacy and security-related issues than the average man in the street." But it is an indicator of the unease around Facebook's most noticeable change in years, and about the kind of information it will serve up more visibly than ever before, such as your comments and photos, organized by year.

    With Timeline — which no one can escape — "Facebook is encouraging users to enter even more personal details about themselves and their life experiences, and making it simpler for others to view the information," Cluley writes on the Naked Security blog.

    "But might this not also make it even easier for identity thieves to put together a profile about an individual, discover the name of their first pet, and so forth? That's all information which could be put to a nefarious use."

    Cluley said when he tried out Timeline after it was unveiled last fall, "I found myself shocked by the realization of just how much I had shared on Facebook over the past few years" in the way of "status updates, photographs, groups I had joined and 'Like's I had made."

    It's hard to tell how serious the poll-takers are, as one of the answers to "What do you think of the Facebook Timeline?" by nearly 33 percent was: "I don't know why I'm still on Facebook." Another 8.39 percent said they figured they'll "get used to" Timeline, and nearly 8 percent said they like the new feature.

    Cluley doesn't think TImeline will "be the catalyst for many people to leave. After all, we've seen Facebook revamp its site in the past, watched its users grumble, and yet still the site grows in popularity." And, as he says, many of us who stay with Facebook would miss it — specifically our friends — if we left it.

    "But, if nothing else, use this opportunity to re-evaluate what you share online, spring clean your Facebook account and online friend relationships, and ensure that you are only sharing what you want to share, with who you want to share it with," he advises.

    Cluley personally went more hard-core than that because of Timeline. "Previously Facebook had managed to keep my history of interactions with it out of my sight, but now it was there for me to see. And combined with the challenge I felt in keeping up-to-speed on Facebook's morphing privacy settings I knew it was time to go."

    He said he downloaded more than 48 MB of photos and status updates he'd had stored away on the social network — then deleted his account. (You can read his tale of why he left Facebook here).

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  • Newly found Android malware infects millions: report

    Symantec

    By Athima Chansanchai

    Android malware has infected possibly one to five million downloads — "the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year," a major security company reports.

    As posted on its blog, Norton by Symantec identified 13 apps on the Android Market that are all hiding Android. Counterclank, a Trojan horse that steals information, and could also download more files and display ads on the device. 

    The combined total downloads of those apps could be as high as five million. These are the apps, which are mostly games that appeal to those who like guns and girls (some of them are more risque than others):

    Symantec

    Some of these apps are still available on the Android Market, so consider yourself warned if you still want to download anyway.

    As shown in 2011, when McAfee research pinned Android as "the most 'popular' platform for new malware" by the third quarter, Google's mobile operating system and Android Market continue to be irresistible to malware. Lookout Mobile Security's "Malwarenomics: 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions" report found that for U.S. Android users, the likelihood of clicking on an unsafe link is 40 percent.

    With downloads from Android Market reaching 10 billion in December, we're likely to see more malware slipping through, and more need for increased vigilance and discretion when choosing apps.

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    On Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.

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