A recent report by Citizen Lab uncovered that commercial spyware produced by Gamma International is designed to trick people into thinking it’s Mozilla Firefox. We’ve sent Gamma a cease and desist letter today demanding that these illegal practices stop immediately.
As an open source project trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world, defending Mozilla’s trademarks from this type of abuse is vital to our brand, our users and the continued success of our mission. Mozilla has a longstanding history of protecting users online and was named the Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy in 2012 by the Ponemon Institute. We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be – and in several cases actually have been – used by Gamma’s customers to violate citizens’ human rights and online privacy.
It’s important to note that the spyware does not affect Firefox itself, either during the installation process or when it is operating covertly on a person’s computer or mobile device. Gamma’s software is entirely separate, and only uses our brand and trademarks to lie and mislead as one of its methods for avoiding detection and deletion.
Through the work of the Citizen Lab research team, we believe Gamma’s spyware tries to give users the false impression that, as a program installed on their computer or mobile device, it’s related to Mozilla and Firefox, and is thus trustworthy both technically and in its content.
Government Spyware Disguised as Mozilla Firefox
Is there no limit to the mendacity of government and business? Mozilla reports that it has sent a cease and desist letter to spyware firm Gamma International to prevent them from hiding their malicious code behind the Firefox brand. Excerpt:
Has the Internet Already Killed Television?
From NPR:
In a flashy presentation to advertisers Wednesday night, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to forecast that Internet video will displace television watching. Instead he declared: "That's already happened."
Schmidt said "the future is now" for YouTube, which recently passed the milestone of 1 billion unique visitors every month. But, he added with the Third World in mind, if you think that's a large number, "wait until you get to 6 (billion) or 7 billion."
Schmidt and YouTube, which billed the event as a "brandcast," shifted away from the video platform's relationship to TV.
Are Americans Leaving Facebook in Droves?
It is likely only a matter of time before Facebook goes the way of Friendster and Myspace. If you are wondering what Friendster and Myspace are, others may be doing the same about Facebook in a few short years. The Guardian reports that users are beginning to leave Facebook in droves. Excerpt:
Facebook has lost 10 million users in the US and seen no growth in monthly visitors in the UK over the past year, according to data from market research firm Nielsen.
Research shows that the number of unique visitors to the Facebook website from computers, smartphones and tablets has fallen from 153m in March 2012 to 142m in March this year, having peaked at 158m last August.The article speculates that the drop in web traffic may not indicate an equally large drop off in actual use, as many people may simply be using Facebook's smartphone app instead of visiting the website. But it is also quite likely that many people have begun to leave Facebook over privacy concerns.
The news came as Facebook announced its latest quarterly results, saying it had 1.11 billion monthly active users around the world, up 23% from a year ago. Mobile monthly active users were 751 million, up 54%. But much of the growth is coming from poorer nations, where advertising revenues are lower.
Bloated: Pre-loaded Apps Take Up 50% of Smartphone Storage Capacity
Thinking about getting a new smartphone? Be sure to double check the amount of storage space it offers and cross check that with the amount of space already taken up when you turn it on for the first time. Geek.com reports that, because of preloaded apps, the new 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 actually only has about 8GB of free space on it. Excerpt:
When a product’s packaging tells you that you’re going to get a certain amount of storage there’s an expectation that it will deliver something close to that amount for you to use. With Android phones, it’s common to simply not warn buyers that the available storage is partially used by the system and pre-loaded apps. If built-in storage is a big deal to you, the 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 may not be your best choice.
If you head to the Storage section of the Settings on a new Galaxy S4, you’ll find that only 8.82GB is available to the user. That’s the total space available to you, so applications that were pre-loaded by your carrier and anything you sync over during account creation will pull from that amount. The rest of that 16GB you can’t even see as the user — Android tells you that the phone only has 8.82GB total, entirely cutting out the space used by the system itself.
Las Enforcement Takes Stand Against Secure Online Communication
Governments are among the greatest threats to data privacy and information security on the internet. Law enforcement groups in the United States are now effectively demanding that the privacy and security of all online communications be compromised because there might be criminals using those means of communications. From the Washington Post:
A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort.The thing is, when you have a means of communication that actually is secure, there is no way to wiretap or intercept it, that is the point of a secure means of communication. The article continues:
Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.
There is currently no way to wiretap some of these communications methods easily . . . the companies argue that they have no means to facilitate the wiretap . . .What government agencies want is a backdoor into these secure means of communications. In other words, they want to compromise the security of all means of communication. Excerpt:
Susan Landau, a former Sun Microsystems distinguished engineer, has argued that wiring in an intercept capability will increase the likelihood that a company’s servers will be hacked. “What you’ve done is created a way for someone to silently go in and activate a wiretap,” she said. Traditional phone communications were susceptible to illicit surveillance as a result of the 1994 law, she said, but the problem “becomes much worse when you move to an Internet or computer-based network.”This case is especially interesting because the FBI and other government agencies have no qualms about illegally wiretapping the communications of Americans citizens. Here, they have legal authority to do so, but they are incapable of doing so because the technology is secure. What's their solution? To make the technology insecure.
Over 50 Million User Accounts Compromised at LivingSocial
From All Things D:
LivingSocial, the daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive cyber attack on its computer systems, which an email from CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy — just sent to employees and obtained by AllThingsD.com — said resulted in “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers.”
The hack includes customer names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. The breach has impacted 50 million customers of the Washington, D.C.-based company, who will now be required to reset their passwords.
US Government and Corporations Lobby Against European Data Privacy Rights
The US government along with allied corporations represent a threat not only to the data privacy rights of Americans, they are going after the Europeans too. From Info World:
Some of the proposed changes to Europe's data protection laws would strip citizens of their privacy rights, a coalition of international civil liberties organizations said Thursday. The European Parliament is currently considering proposals from the European Commission for a complete overhaul of the E.U.'s data protection laws . . .See Naked Citizens for more information.
Creating one regulation to replace national data protection and privacy laws in the 27 E.U. countries obviously requires compromise, but many parliamentarians report never seeing lobbying on such a scale before. In an effort to reach some sort of consensus, more than 4,000 changes to the draft text have been proposed. . . .
The civil liberties coalition, which includes Access, Bits of Freedom, EDRI, La Quadrature du Net and Privacy International, has set up a website, nakedcitizens.eu, to help concerned citizens contact their representatives in the Parliament. The groups have also presented a report based on their analysis of the proposed amendments.
"Among the thousands of amendments tabled are a large number that threaten to severely weaken privacy rights in the U.K.," the report said. "These damaging amendments are largely the result of an unprecedented lobbying storm by big U.S. tech companies, the U.S. government and the advertising industry."
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