Ashley Madison Is The Latest Proof That The Internet Does Not Keep Secrets

Secrecy is at the core of Ashley Madison's business model. The dating site, which caters to people looking to cheat on their spouses, bills itself as “the world’s leading service for discreet encounters." Millions of people created Ashley Madison accounts, believing it to be a risk-free environment. No longer. On July 15, a group calling itself the Impact Team hacked into Ashley Madison's site, lifting the personal information of some 32 million users. The hackers on Tuesday posted what appears to be the full data set online. It includes an array of information about individual users, according to Quartz, including their name, address, phone number, birthdate and the last four digits of their credit card. Also included are details from user bios, with descriptors like, "I May Be Spoken 4 But I Speak 4 Myself.” Chat rooms and websites have long been a way for people to behave in a manner that they'd rather not publicize to their friends, neighbors and spouses. Logging into a website used to seem more anonymous and less detectible than flirting at a local bar; shopping online an embarrassment-free way of purchasing a vibrator or facial hair bleach. But as hackings, like those of Sony, the IRS and Home Depot, become more commonplace, this notion of online anonymity seems less realistic than ever. The Internet never was a place where people could be anonymous in plain sight, but people probably won't stop treating it that way. The Internet was created as a way of connecting people, but even its founders are skeptical about whether these connections can ever be truly private. Vint Cerf, who developed the TCP/IP network protocol, a technology that forms the basic communication language of the Internet, has expressed doubt that anyone can shield their identity on the web. “If you want a life of anonymity, join the French Foreign Legion,” he told Forbes in 2011, adding that “the Internet is brittle and fragile and too easy to take down.” Robert Kahn, who "invented" the Internet along with Cerf, told The Huffington Post that the web is no different than society as a whole. Using cash might make a transaction seem secret, "but cameras are everywhere," he wrote in an email. "There are lots of things one can do to conceal one's identity, but I suspect experts in the field can piece together clues of all kinds." There are ways to be more anonymous online. You can use Tor or a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to surf the web without leaving a trail of your IP address, the technique Ashley Madison's hackers used to upload their data. But none of these techniques are foolproof. Even users who are especially savvy at concealing their identity make mistakes. In 2012, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who went by the name "Sabu" and co-founded the hacking group LulzSec, was identified and arrested after he posted comments in a chat service thinking he was using a VPN, software that makes your browsing anonymous. He hadn't connected to the network, and was caught, and became an informant for the FBI. That kind of mix-up happens often, according to Rick Holland, a security analyst at advisory firm Forrester Research. “[Experienced Internet users] think they’re working in some kind of encryption and they’re not,” he said. “Even typing things on a computer -- they think they’re in a window within [their system] and really they’re connected to another.” People who are less savvy than Monsegur are even more at risk on the web, especially when giving personal information to sites like Ashley Madison. "When you sign up for something that’s a social networking outlet, you’re implicitly giving up some control over that information," said Scott Crawford, research director of information security at 451 Research. But Ashley Madison allows its users, if not actual anonymity, then the veneer of it. You can post under a pseudonym and log in with a fake email address. (Ashley Madison didn’t require email verification.) And even websites tamer than Ashley Madison offer the illusion of anonymity -- which is why people feel comfortable handing over swaths of personal information. It’s why people continue to purchase things on Amazon, even after purchase histories have been hacked and released. “Most people have no idea how vulnerable we are,” Holland added. “Whatever the opposite of anonymous is, that’s what we are.” The dangerous part of our naivety, Holland said, is that people continue to behave as if the web conceals identities. “People do things on 4chan because they’re hiding. People say things on Twitter that they would never say face to face, because the separation they have from the physical world makes them think their identity is secret.” The millions of users whose data was compromised in the Ashley Madison hack will have to confront their private life in public. But Holland doubts that people will stop treating the web as an anonymous space. In the future, users could create fake personas and have one-time use credit cards to protect themselves from data breaches, but he doubts they will. Crawford agrees. "There’s a certain amount of fatalism these days, that breaches are inevitable," he said. "Will that be the case in this instance? Hard to say.”

In India, Rural Internet Rollout Remains a Pipe Dream

Updated Aug. 20, 2015 5:42 a.m. ET NEW DELHI—India’s Communications Ministry has big plans to connect hundreds of millions of villagers to the Internet. But for now, it is struggling to conquer email. In a cramped government office, a secretary tells a visitor that it will take 15 minutes for an email she sent to arrive in his inbox. The local broadband connection is poor, he explains. When the message does arrive, he prints it and carries it to his boss, Aruna Sundararajan, head of Bharat Broadband Network Ltd., the state enterprise spearheading India’s Web-expansion push. Ms. Sundararajan prefers to have some of her work email delivered by hand. This is where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of a “Digital India” meets reality. In early July, the leader of the world’s largest democracy outlined ambitious plans to get rural Indians onto the information superhighway—in large part by ramping up a long-delayed effort to connect hundreds of thousands of villages to the national Internet backbone using fiber-optic cable. The original 2013 target date for completion has been shunted back to 2019. “India may have missed the industrial revolution, but will not miss the IT revolution,” Mr. Modi said, pledging to hook up 600 million rural Indians for online access to government services, education, e-commerce, banking and health care. Accomplishing that is a tall order. Fiber-optic cables—which transmit data at high speeds and at a lower cost than satellite or spectrum technology—can be difficult to put down in hard-to-reach areas. The installation program that started in 2011 is woefully behind schedule: Just 1% of the planned 250,000 central village hubs are connected to the Internet, according to the government. Mr. Modi is trying to kick the project into high gear by slashing red tape. The premier also set up the Committee on the National Fibre Optic Network to evaluate the previous government’s plan to lay 372,000 miles of last-mile cable at a cost of $3.1 billion. It has issued a report saying almost three times as much cabling is required and that the price tag for the government will rise to about $11.2 billion. “The old plan was a rural road, this is a broadband highway, a superhighway,” Ms. Sundararajan said. The committee also recommended allowing greater participation by state governments and the private sector in the construction and maintenance of a network that so far has been in the hands of a few state-owned behemoths. The proposals are awaiting cabinet approval. “The private sector is ready to go,” said Ankit Agarwal, global head of telecom products at Pune-based Sterlite Technologies Ltd. EQSTRTECH -0.41 % , which is one of the government’s main cable suppliers. Private firms are expected to deliver and operate the village hubs’ fiber-optic networks in 10 of India’s 29 states—including some of its largest—and lay cable in at least three others, according to the network committee’s report. Jaideep Ghosh, a partner at KMPG India who focuses on telecoms, said the industry wasn't “overly excited to take part.” He cited the expected slow pace of the installation and that telecommunications companies have already reached the most-lucrative population centers. Phone and cable companies “are focused on markets where money can be made.” Work in India is speeding up. More than 11,500 miles of optical fiber have been laid between April and June this year, a huge improvement from the same period a year ago, when around 250 miles of fiber was installed. But the task ahead remains gargantuan. In 2013, 1.06 billion Indians were still without Internet access, according to a report by McKinsey & Co. Internet penetration was 15% in India, compared with 46% in China. If connectivity can be improved in Asia’s third largest economy, it could become a vast new marketplace for online companies. Amazon has set up an Indian arm to tap India’s e-commerce market, which is set to soar to over $100 billion in the next five years from the current $11 billion, according to Morgan Stanley. MS -1.00 % Local e-commerce companies such as Flipkart Internet Pvt. and Snapdeal.com, owned by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd., have been getting large-scale financial backing from investors. In October, Japan’s SoftBank Corp. 9984 2.21 % invested more than $600 million in Snapdeal. India’s shortcomings in building traditional infrastructure mean it doesn’t have the roads, bridges, power lines and predictable electricity supply that would make it easier to connect the country. Getting access to land through India’s myriad local and federal government bodies that control access to rights of way has also checked momentum. Work on the network has so far only begun in 19% of the village clusters, and of those, 15% have faced delays getting access to the land because of red tape, according to the committee’s report. A shortage of duct through which to feed the fiber has also held progress back, as have problems with the government-developed technology to connect the cables to the schools, community centers and hospitals they are meant to serve with the Internet. “It is a monumental project but it really can be a game changer for India,” said Ms. Sundararajan. “We’re going from dial-up to actual broadband pace.”

Write to Joanna Sugden at joanna.sugden@wsj.com

Comparing America's 3 Largest Internet Service Providers

Summary The Internet Service Providers industry is expected to outperform the S&P broader market substantially this quarter, underperform significantly next quarter, then outperform significantly in 2015 and beyond. Mean and high targets for the 3 largest U.S. Internet Service Providers companies – Trulia Inc, United Online, Spark Networks - range from 16% to 81% above current prices. Find out which among Trulia, United and Spark offers the best stock performance and investment value. * All data are as of the close of Wednesday, December 31, 2014. Emphasis is on company fundamentals and financial data rather than commentary. To understand what types of companies the Internet Service Providers industry contains, we need to make some distinctions, as the category is not as self-explanatory as one might think. Oddly enough, the Internet Service Providers industry does NOT include internet service providers. Mention "internet service providers" and we automatically think of companies that provide access to the internet through television cables, telephone lines, or wireless satellite systems. But those internet "access" providers are categories into various other industries, such as: • the Telecom Services industry - which includes Verizon (NYSE: VZ), AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and others, which industry is compared here, • the CATV Systems industry - which includes DirectTV (NASDAQ: DTV), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), and Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) and others, which industry is compared here, and • the Entertainment Diversified industry - which includes Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and others, which industry is compared here. No, the Internet Service Providers industry being covered in this comparison is limited to companies that provide services over the internet, not service to the internet. If you ask me, they could easily avoid the confusion simply by adding one letter to the industry's title, calling it "Internet Services Providers" instead of "Internet Service Providers". But that would mean writers like me would have less to write about. So now that we have that whole mess straightened out, just what kinds of internet services do the largest three U.S. companies in the space provide? • Trulia, Inc. (NYSE: TRLA), headquartered in San Francisco, California, provides an online platform for locating homes for sale or rent, helping not just buyers and renters search for their next residence but also enabling real estate professionals to market their listings. The company's platform supplies such information as a home's nearby schools, crime rates, neighborhood amenities, home values, and local community services. It should be noted that Trulia's largest competitor - Zillow, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z), which provides similar home buying and renting information - is actually categorized into a different industry, the Property Management industry in the Financial sector. This is most likely because Zillow also allows borrowers to connect with mortgage lenders, even though the company does not offer any financial services per se. These classifications never cease to amaze. • United Online, Inc. (NASDAQ: UNTD), headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, provides social networking services and products under the Classmates, StayFriends, and Trombi brand names, which include social platforms that enable users to locate and interact with acquaintances from their past. It also offers dial-up Internet access services under the NetZero and Juno brand names, providing mobile broadband, DSL, email, Internet security, and Web hosting services. So there you go… this one does live up to its industry's name. • Spark Networks, Inc. (NYSE: LOV), headquartered in Los Angeles, California, provides online personals services and dating services for singles to meet, participate in community events, and form relationships through its principal sites ChristianMingle.com targeting Christian singles and JDate.com targets Jewish singles. It also offers travel and other recreational events, including weekend getaways, dinners, speed dating events, or other meeting events. Yet as popular as these online services may be, the companies' stocks have not provided very good service to investors on a relative basis, as per the graph below. Since the recovery began in March of 2009, where the broader market S&P 500 index [black] has gained 205% and the SPDR Technology sector ETF (NYSE: XLK) [blue] has gained 212%, only one of the three companies here compared has come close to the two benchmarks - namely Trulia [beige], which has risen 90% in its short 2.5 year publicly traded history, averaging a comparable rate of growth. For their part, United [purple] has gained 180%, while Spark [orange] has been rather unattractive with gains of just 55%. On an annualized basis, where the S&P has averaged 35.65% and XLK has averaged 36.87%, Spark has averaged 9.57%, United has averaged 31.30%, and Trulia has averaged 37.24% per year. These would still be great returns in any normal period. But the recovery since 2009 has not been a normal period, and much better returns have been found elsewhere. (click to enlarge) Source: BigCharts.com Looking at future earnings growth, the Internet "Services" Providers industry (we may as well call it by its clearer name) as a whole is expected to out-provide the broader market considerably, as tabled below where green indicates outperformance while yellow denotes underperformance. In the current quarter, the industry is seen outgrowing the market's growth rate at some 3.13 times its average, before slowing to a lesser but still robust rate of 2.68 times in 2015, and 2.21 times annually over the next five years. (click to enlarge) Zooming-in a little closer, the earnings growth rates of our three competitors look very promising, as tabled below. Although Trulia's and United's earnings are seen shrinking in the current quarter, both companies are seen growing in leaps and bounds going forward - with United beating the S&P's average growth at 13.97 times next quarter, and Trulia beating it at 21.63 times in 2015. But the earnings sparks fly for Spark as well, without a near term set back, as it is expected to beat the broader market's growth as far as the eye can see. (click to enlarge) Yet there is more than earnings growth to consider when sizing up a company as a potential investment. How do the three compare against one another in other metrics, and which makes the best investment? Let's answer that by comparing their company fundamentals using the following format: a) financial comparisons, b) estimates and analyst recommendations, and c) rankings with accompanying data table. As we compare each metric, the best performing company will be shaded green while the worst performing will be shaded yellow, which will later be tallied for the final ranking. A) Financial Comparisons • Market Capitalization: While company size does not necessarily imply an advantage and is thus not ranked, it is important as a denominator against which other financial data will be compared for ranking. (click to enlarge) • Growth: Since revenues and expenses can vary greatly from one season to another, growth is measured on a year-over-year quarterly basis, where Q1 of this year is compared to Q1 of the previous year, for example. In the most recently reported quarter, Trulia delivered the greatest revenue growth year-over-year at an exceptional degree, while Spark delivered the least, even shrinkage along with United. Since none of the companies' trailing earnings growth is available, the metric cannot factor into the comparison. (click to enlarge) • Profitability: A company's margins are important in determining how much profit the company generates from its sales. Operating margin indicates the percentage earned after operating costs, such as labor, materials, and overhead. Profit margin indicates the profit left over after operating costs plus all other costs, including debt, interest, taxes and depreciation. Of our three contestants, Spark operated with the widest profit margin while United operated with the widest operating margin. At the narrow end of the scale, United and Trulia contended with the narrowest margins. It is worth noting that all three companies reported negative margins, denoting loss by all. (click to enlarge) • Management Effectiveness: Shareholders are keenly interested in management's ability to do more with what has been given to it. Management's effectiveness is measured by the returns generated from the assets under its control, and from the equity invested into the company by shareholders. For their managerial performance, United's management team delivered the greatest returns on assets where Trulia's team delivered the greatest returns on equity. At the low end of the spectrum, Spark's team delivered the least. Here again it is worth noting that all three companies reported negative returns, denoting loss of assets and equity by all three. (click to enlarge) • Earnings Per Share: Of all the metrics measuring a company's income, earnings per share is probably the most meaningful to shareholders, as this represents the value that the company is adding to each share outstanding. Since the number of shares outstanding varies from company to company, I prefer to convert EPS into a percentage of the current stock price to better determine where an investment could gain the most value. Of the three companies here compared, Trulia provides common stock holders with the greatest diluted earnings per share gain as a percentage of its current share price, while United's DEPS over current stock price is lowest, even negative denoting loss. And of course, here again all three companies' figures are negative, denoting loss. (click to enlarge) • Share Price Value: Even if a company outperforms its peers on all the above metrics, however, investors may still shy away from its stock if its price is already trading too high. This is where the stock price relative to forward earnings and company book value come under scrutiny, as well as the stock price relative to earnings relative to earnings growth, known as the PEG ratio. Lower ratios indicate the stock price is currently trading at a cheaper price than its peers, and might thus be a bargain. Among our three combatants, United's stock is cheapest relative to company book value, while Trulia's is cheapest relative to 5-year PEG. At the overpriced end of the scale, Spark's stock is the most overvalued relative to company book, where United's is most overpriced relative to PEG. Since Spark's price to forward earnings is not available, the metric does not factor into the comparison, though it is worth noting that Trulia's price to forward earnings is tremendously overpriced compared to United's. (click to enlarge) B) Estimates and Analyst Recommendations Of course, no matter how skilled we perceive ourselves to be at gauging a stock's prospects as an investment, we'd be wise to at least consider what professional analysts and the companies themselves are projecting - including estimated future earnings per share and the growth rate of those earnings, stock price targets, and buy/sell recommendations. • Earnings Estimates: To properly compare estimated future earnings per share across multiple companies, we would need to convert them into a percentage of their stocks' current prices. Of our three specimens, United offers the highest percentage of earnings over current stock price for all time periods. At the low end of the scale, Trulia offers the lowest percentages for next quarter (shrinkage even), while Spark offers it for all remaining periods (with shrinkage for 2015). (click to enlarge) • Earnings Growth: For long-term investors this metric is one of the most important to consider, as it denotes the percentage by which earnings are expected to grow or shrink as compared to earnings from corresponding periods a year prior. For earnings growth, Spark offers the greatest growth in the current quarter, United offers it next quarter, where Trulia offers it in 2015 and beyond. At the low end of the spectrum, Trulia offers the slowest growth prospects over the near term (with some shrinkage), United offers it in 2015, while both United and Spark are tied for slowest growth annually over the next five years. (click to enlarge) • Price Targets: Like earnings estimates above, a company's stock price targets must also be converted into a percentage of its current price to properly compare multiple companies. For their high, mean and low price targets over the coming 12 months, analysts believe Spark's stock offers the greatest upside potential and least downside risk, while United's stock offers the least upside and Trulia's offers the greatest downside. It must be noted, however, that United's and Spark's stocks are already trading below their low targets. While this may mean increased potential for sharp moves upward, it may warrant reassessments of future expectations. It must also be noted that United and Spark each has only one broker making a prognostication, potentially limiting the targets' accuracy. (click to enlarge) • Buy/Sell Recommendations: After all is said and done, perhaps the one gauge that sums it all up are analyst recommendations. These have been converted into the percentage of analysts recommending each level. However, I factor only the strong buy and buy recommendations into the ranking. Hold, underperform and sell recommendations are not ranked since they are determined after determining the winners of the strong buy and buy categories, and would only be negating those winners of their duly earned titles. Of our three contenders, United is best recommended with 0 strong buy and 2 buys representing a combined 100% of its 2 analysts, followed by Spark with 1 strong buy and 0 buy ratings representing 50% of its 2 analysts, and lastly by Trulia with 0 strong buy and 1 buy recommendation representing 11.11% of its 9 analysts. (click to enlarge) C) Rankings Having crunched all the numbers and compared all the projections, the time has come to tally up the wins and losses and rank our three competitors against one another. In the table below you will find all of the data considered above plus a few others not reviewed. Here is where using a company's market cap as a denominator comes into play, as much of the data in the table has been converted into a percentage of market cap for a fair comparison. The first and last placed companies are shaded. We then add together each company's finishes to determine its overall ranking, with first place finishes counting as merits while last place finishes count as demerits. (click to enlarge) And the winner is… United in a class all by itself, outperforming in 14 metrics and underperforming in 7 for a net score of +7, followed far behind by both Trulia and Spark in a tie at -4 a piece. Where the Internet Services Providers industry is expected to outperform the S&P broader market substantially this quarter, underperform significantly next quarter, then outperform significantly in 2015 and beyond, the three largest U.S. companies in the space are expected to outgrow the broader market in earnings at pretty impressive rates - with Spark growing as much as 8.29 times next quarter, United growing as much as 13.97 times next quarter, and Trulia growing as much as 21.63 times the S&P's average growth rate in 2015. Yet after taking all company fundamentals into account, United Online, Inc. brings investors together given its lowest stock price to company book value, highest cash and revenue over market cap, lowest debt over market cap, widest operating margin, highest return on assets, highest EBITDA over market cap and revenue, highest future earnings over current stock price in all periods, highest future earnings growth next quarter, and most analyst buy recommendations - decisively winning the Internet Service Providers industry competition. Editor's Note: This article covers one or more stocks trading at less than $1 per share and/or with less than a $100 million market cap. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks. Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. The author wrote this article themselves, and it expresses their own opinions. The author is not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). The author has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

This was the Internet’s worst, best year ever

This year was a hugely momentous one in the evolution of the global network of networks we call the Internet. Since its creation as a side project of a handful of academics and military researchers in the United States some 50 years ago, the Internet has grown to encompass the whole world. But 2014 was in many ways a mixed bag for the Internet. It showed the Internet at its strongest, reaching more people, more ways than at any point in the past. But at the same time, it has also never been more threatened by everything from hackers to censors to autocrats newly attuned to the power of the online world. 1) The Internet has never been less free. In its early days, the Internet was thought of as a place where people around the world could live according to the principles of free expression and self-determination. But every year it is falling shorter of that ideal. The pro-democracy group Freedom House tallies global metrics for all sorts of online freedom, from the ability to experience an uncensored Internet to the healthy treatment of women online. In 2014, that scored dropped for the fourth year in a row. That said... 2) A tremendous number of people came online for the first time this year. The number of regular Internet users grew by about 250 million people in just the last 12 months. That's like adding the entire population of the United States to the online world all at once -- or the number of people living in all of Russia, France, Kenya, and South Korea combined. More people connected means more of them benefiting from the wealth of what's available online. On the other hand... 3) Even democracies abused the Internet. A March report from the group Reporters Without Borders identified government bodies around the world that are actively engaged in spying on what happens online. Some aren't surprising: Pakistan's main telecomm agency, North Korea's science branch, or China's chief information office. But that others exist within the confines of the planet's most celebrated democracies -- from the Centre for Development of Telematics in India to the National Security Agency in the United States -- reveals, says the group, a worrisome global "schizophrenic attitude" towards surveillance. And yet... 4) The rights of the online citizen were enshrined. Five years ago, Brazil's ministry of justice and the country's legal community began work on a sort of Internet bill of rights for the people of that nation. This year, the product of that work, called the Marco Civil da Internet, was signed into law. It guarantees, among other things, the citizen's right to a robust Internet connection and strong online privacy protections. The first of its kind in the world, the landmark law stands up for the idea that online rights are to be cherished and protected like any other set of civil rights. But... 5) Other countries turned informal Internet crackdowns into official rules and laws. In Russia, where bloggers are often some of the few voices speaking out against the Kremlin, new rules were adopted requiring those with even modest online followings to submit to the same restrictions as the mainstream media. In post-coup d'état Thailand, the military ordered Internet service providers to submit to its dictates. And in Somalia, the al-Shabab militia went one step further: in the parts of the country it controls, it formally banned the Internet altogether. Still... 6) The World Wide Web passed the billion domain mark. In the early days of the World Wide Web -- the Internet's killer app -- there were so few Web sites that aficionados would hand-curate directories of everything that was neat, intriguing, or simply just available online. Just two decades later, it would take someone typing out a similar list of everything available online about 150 years. Barely into adulthood, the World Wide Web is remarkably robust and only getting more so. On the other hand... 7) Hackers exposed the Internet's fundamental insecurities. No matter if it was the work of North Korea, disgruntled ex-employees, or other hackers, the recent breaching of Sony's computer networks was eye-opening. The Internet was built on trust. But it became inescapably clear this year just how far some are willing go to turn it into a global battleground. And the initial decision not to screen the movie at the center of the hack revealed that, when it comes to responding to online threats that move offline, we are frighteningly unprepared. Even so... 8) Millions of people in the United States voiced their opinions on "net neutrality." Whatever side of the debate over the fair treatment of online content you are on, the unprecedented nearly 4 million comments received by regulators at the Federal Communications Commission were a remarkable display of how the once obscure policy issue has captured the attention of the American public. And while this was only the U.S. making laws, given the prime role the U.S. plays in the Internet, people all around the world paid close attention to its outcome. Nonetheless... 9) Governments moved to splinter off their own piece of the digital world. More and more, leaders decided that it's easier for them to shape what happens online if they make sure that a greater part of it takes place within their borders. Some in Germany and Europe, for example, began entertaining the idea of a so-called "Schengen Zone" where Europeans' digital data, from e-mails to social media traffic, would be housed on servers within the confines of that continent. The Internet is one of the few things the people of the world share without regard to political boundaries. But increasingly dividing lines that carve up the rest of our lives are being imposed upon it. Hang on... 10) Fighting for the Internet drove people into the streets. In Mexico in April, thousands formed a human chain to object to a telecommunications bill that would, among other things, allow the shutting down of the Internet during political protests. In Bolivia in May, activists crawled through roadways dressed as snails to protest slow Internet speeds. And in Hungary in October, people threw computers into the streets to protest a proposed tax on Internet use. The Hungarians won: the government backed down from the idea. In 2014, people around the world were willing to defend the Internet like any other political value they hold dear. That, in fact, people seemed to have never been more passionate about the fate of the Internet is perhaps, the one main lesson from this past year in the Internet's life. And that likely bodes well for its future. Nancy Scola is a reporter who covers the intersections of technology and public policy, politics, and governance.

While You Were Offline: Sony Gets Hacked, the Internet Freaks Over Star Wars

Internet in Cuba only for the rich — or enterprising HAVANA: With their smartphones and tablet computers, they look much like young people anywhere in the world. But these Cubans have to go to extremes just to get an internet connection and somehow get around the strict control of the Communist authorities. In the capital Havana, clusters of young Cubans can be spotted at weekends in groups near hotels, embassies and business centers in a desperate attempt to get online — somehow. "Some people capture wireless signals after getting the codes from friends who work here, but I know there are others who manage to crack passwords with special software," one computer enthusiast said, speaking on condition of anonymity at the foot of an office block. Lurking down a small street abutting a hotel, another strategy is at work. Several youngsters tap away furiously on their devices — they are online thanks to a shared connection courtesy of a classmate posted at hotel reception. Suffice it to say that in Cuba, wireless signals — or failing that, any internet connection — are highly coveted. They are under strict control, reserved for companies, universities and institutions. A privileged few — journalists, artists and doctors, in particular — are entitled to a particular connection. And that's it. In 2013, only 3.4% of Cuban households were connected to the internet, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which rates the connectivity of countries. Since June last year, the Cuban authorities have gone a small way to affording the island's 11.3 million population a rare chance to access the Internet, opening about 100 centers for the public to get online. But at $4.5 per hour, rates are prohibitively expensive in a country where the average monthly wage is around $20. Previously, only hotels could offer the Internet to the public, but again with a prohibitive rate of up to $10 an hour that only foreign visitors could afford. The state telecommunications service provider, ETECSA, does not offer mobile Internet to its customers, while the 3G network is only for foreign visitors using roaming and offers often patchy performance. ETECSA has now allowed subscribers to access their mail from their smartphones, but it only applies to the domain @nauta.cu. The company has also opened a service to send pictures from phones to any email address. They are minor concessions in a country where foreign-branded smartphones are increasingly visible. "Cuba remains one of the most restrictive countries in the world in terms of Internet freedom," Sanja Tatic Kelly, project director for Freedom on the Net, at the American NGO Freedom House, told AFP. "Rather than relying on the technically sophisticated filtering and blocking used by other repressive regimes, the Cuban government limits users' access to information primarily via lack of technology and prohibitive costs," she said. The Cuban authorities do censor certain websites — press and blogs that are against the Castro leadership, pornography and Skype -- but Tatic Kelly noted: "The total number of blocked websites is relatively small when compared to many other authoritarian states like China, Iran or Saudi Arabia." The more tech-savvy Cubans have found a way around that too, downloading software that can hide their IP addresses to avoid detection and mislead snooping eyes into thinking they are surfing the net in another country. For those who are less tech-smart, they can always rely on the "paquete" — USB sticks packed with pirated films, TV shows, pop music and games and sold on the black market for a few US dollars. Cuba's rulers say they need to keep a tight rein on the internet to protect the island from cyberattacks. Over 18 months, Havana has been the victim of cyberattacks from thousands of addresses registered in over 150 countries, according to deputy minister of communications Wilfredo Gonzalez. That brooks no argument with Tatic Kelly. "Cuba does not register as one of the leading countries experiencing cyberattacks," she said, citing data from online security experts Kaspersky Lab, which ranks Cuba 199th in terms of countries hit with counterattacks. At number one, the most targeted, is Russia, it says, with the United States third. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=internet in Cuba,Cuba internet,Cuban Government,Cuba Stay updated on the go with The Times of India’s mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

Reinventing the Internet to Make It Safer

SAN FRANCISCO — What if it isn’t too late to start from scratch? It was only about 40 years ago that Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn holed up in the conference room of a Hyatt hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., and sketched out the sets of rules and protocols that laid the foundation of the modern Internet. Photo “Everything was built with performance, not security, in mind.” — Howard E. Shrobe, computer science professor at M.I.T. “Everything was built with performance, not security, in mind.” — Howard E. Shrobe, computer science professor at M.I.T.Credit Katherine Taylor for The New York Times Despite big advances in speed, performance, memory and machines, their decisions continue to form the basis for modern digital communications — much to the detriment of security, some experts argue. But the United States government is teaming up with computer scientists to do something about it. Five years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, decided to explore what the Internet might look like if we could rebuild the computer systems from the ground up, employing the hard lessons we have learned about security. The idea was simple, yet seemingly impossible. The program, called Clean Slate, consisted of two separate but related efforts: Crash — short for Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts — a multiyear project aimed at building systems that were much harder to break into, that could continue to fully function when they were breached and that could heal themselves, and MRC, short for Mission-Oriented Resilient Clouds, which applied similar thinking to computer networking and cloud computing. While Clean Slate was designed to make machines more aware of their environment, a separate effort at Darpa, called Active Authentication, is intended to make machines more aware of their operator. The program is exploring ways that machines could recognize humans by analyzing behavior, like a typing pattern, rather than a password or a fingerprint. The Clean Slate programs were designed to run for only four years. The Crash program finished last year, though three of its projects have continued for a fifth year. The MRC program will wrap up this year. With the advent of cloud computing and shiny new phones, tablets and watches, it can be easy to forget that in many ways our computer systems are still very old. “The software we run, the programming language we use and the architecture of the chips we use haven’t changed much in over 30 years,” Howard E. Shrobe, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a recent phone interview. Dr. Shrobe and others note that the Internet’s basic design decisions were made when computer hardware was significantly more expensive than it is today. Forty years later, the consequences of decisions made in those resource-constrained days remain. “Everything was built with performance, not security, in mind,” Dr. Shrobe said. “We left it to programmers to incorporate security into every line of code they wrote. One little mistake is all it takes for the bad guy to get in.” Never before has the problem been laid so bare. Last spring, security researchers stumbled on a two-year-old mistake a programmer had made in a critical piece of security software used by companies like Amazon, Netflix and Yahoo as well as by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon. It was built into a range of technology from weapons systems to home Wi-Fi routers. They called it Heartbleed. Five months later, researchers discovered another serious error, this one in a program run by 70 percent of the machines that connect to the Internet. Only this time, it had taken 22 years to discover the bug, which could be used to seize control of hundreds of millions of computers. They named it Shellshock. Together, the Heartbleed and Shellshock bugs affected more than half the Internet, putting web vulnerabilities in the limelight. But for security experts, the bugs were just further evidence that it may be time for a do-over. Dr. Shrobe, who oversaw the Clean Slate program for Darpa until last year, said that from the beginning he wanted the programs to be more than a thought experiment. “It was always my intent to offer a menu of technical options that companies who make computers and computer software could introduce into the commercial stream,” he said. “We’re beginning to see some of that work take effect now.” He points to one Crash program called Clean Slate Trustworthy Secure Research and Development, which those involved with it nicknamed Custard. It is not a full replacement of existing infrastructure but a way to use software and other technologies to run computers in a safer mode that can sort out who has permission to conduct which operations. “It is a huge, phenomenal step forward,” said Peter G. Neumann, a computer security pioneer at SRI International, the Silicon Valley engineering research laboratory that worked with Cambridge University on the Custard project. Dr. Neumann and Dr. Shrobe say Custard can eliminate an entire class of cyberattacks caused by buffer overflows, a common design flaw that allows hackers to send a message that overwhelms a computer’s memory, causing the program to fail and allowing the attacker to inject malicious code. Over the last year, there has been significant and growing interest from companies in using Custard in their products, as well as from nonprofits, research communities and academia. While nobody expects an entirely new Internet infrastructure to emerge in 2016, Dr. Shrobe and others say they see demand building for a long-term solution to computer security. And there may be a window to do it as the world’s computing goes mobile and the Internet braces for the Internet of Things — the hundreds of millions of cars, shoes, thermostats and lampposts that will soon be online. “Everyone has been burned by now,” Dr. Shrobe said. “People are much more aware of the problem. The question is, What do you do now?”

China to fine internet companies Tencent, Baidu for porn: Report

BEIJING: China's ministry of culture said it would fine 11 internet companies including Tencent Holdings and Baidu for spreading pornography and violence, state news agency Xinhua said. China launched an anti-pornography campaign in April as part of wider efforts to "clean up" the internet. The move has coincided with a crackdown on online freedom of expression, which has intensified since President Xi Jinping came to power early last year. Xinhua said mobile game platforms run by Tencent, which runs one of the most popular mobile messaging apps in China, search engine giant Baidu and another nine companies were alleged to be involved in pornography, gambling and violence. The report cited a statement from the culture ministry as saying that some products had challenged "accepted moral values". Spokespeople for Tencent and Baidu did not answer calls to their mobile phones late on Tuesday in China. Liu Qiang, a deputy director in the market department of the ministry, said the fine amounts would be published later. "We hope that major companies can shoulder their due, social responsibilities and offer healthy, quality, cultural products," Xinhua cited Liu as saying. The ministry also discovered comic and animated products that contained "bloody, terror and violent content" on 21 websites run by companies such as China Telecom and Tencent, Xinhua said. In August, Chinese authorities warned Baidu to clean up its content after pornographic files were found on its online storage service. In May, internet firm Sina Corp was fined 5.1 million yuan by Beijing authorities for allowing "unhealthy and indecent content" on its online reading channel and on its main website. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=internet porn China,China porn,Tencent Holdings,Baidu,Sina Corp Stay updated on the go with The Times of India’s mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.

The process of finding the best Albuquerque assisted living facility for your loved one

The process of finding the best Albuquerque assisted living facility for your loved one is sometimes a very difficult and trying one. For some people, they do it by digging into the local directories and phone books trying to find some local assisted living communities after which they give them a call and visit a couple of them. While you might still be able to find an appropriate facility, this is surely something that you wouldn’t want to experience. Knowing about an easier option of finding a great facility is something that everyone will certainly appreciate. It is of paramount importance that you do everything possible to find the most ideal Albuquerque senior home in your home where your family members, parents or grandparents are assured of the best care on a daily basis. Internet advancement has however made things much easier and it is now possible to access the vital information easily. Moreover, the internet allows you to compare the different options available at your disposal and you can be sure that you will be able to make the best and most informed decision about the whole issue. According to a recent survey, more than 50% of people looking for centers of Albuquerque assisted living makes use of the internet in their search. This is incredibly amazing as the internet can help you undertake a comprehensive research of the various facilities available at your area at the comfort of your home in the most convenient way. Depending on your specific circumstances, you are able to determine which facility is capable of offering your aged or sick loved one with the kind of care that they need and help them lead a better quality life. Location matters a lot As every expert in this area will tell you, location of the Albuquerque senior home really matters a lot and this is one of the factors that will certainly determine the decision that you are going to make. You will need to find an assisted living community which makes it possible for friends and family to be able to visit the aged person regularly and once that can be accessed easily at all times. The good thing is that there are lots of excellent facilities of this nature located all over the country and you can always rest assured that you will be able to get the kind of care and support which is needed. Fortunately, the internet allows you to conduct your research at ease and be in a position to make the best decisions possible.