Tag: privacy-rights

Mobile startup offers unprecedented plan: 500MB of data, free incoming calls

On Tuesday, the American mobile phone market took one step closer to looking a bit more like the European or Asian markets: free incoming calls, inexpensive outgoing calls, and a focus on data. A Canadian startup, TextNow , just launched a new mobile service in the United States. For $18.99 per month, you get 500MB of data, 750 rollover minutes, and unlimited texting and incoming calls. In the US, it’s the norm for both the sending and receiving parties to be charged for a call. But nearly everywhere else in the world, only the person who originated the call actually pays. “Incoming calls don’t really cost us that much, ” Derek Ting, the company’s CEO, told Ars. “Carriers charge you anyway because they can get away with it.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Mobile startup offers unprecedented plan: 500MB of data, free incoming calls

Update: Researchers say Tor-targeted malware phoned home to NSA

A search reveals the address used in an attack on Tor users’ privacy referenced an IP address belonging to the NSA, routed through SAIC. Malware planted on the servers of Freedom Hosting — the “hidden service” hosting provider on the Tor anonymized network brought down late last week—may have de-anonymized visitors to the sites running on that service. This issue could send identifying information about site visitors to an Internet Protocol address that was hard-coded into the script the malware injected into browsers. And it appears the IP address in question belongs to the National Security Agency (NSA). This revelation comes from analysis done collaboratively by Baneki Privacy Labs , a collective of Internet security researchers, and VPN provider Cryptocloud . When the IP address was uncovered in the JavaScript exploit —which specifically targets Firefox Long-Term Support version 17, the version included in Tor Browser Bundle—a source at Baneki told Ars that he and others reached out to the malware and security community to help identify the source. The exploit attacked a vulnerability in the Windows version of the Firefox Extended Support Release  17 browser —the one used previously in the Tor Project’s Tor Browser Bundle (TBB).  That vulnerability had been patched by Mozilla in June, and the updated browser is now part of TBB. But the TBB configuration of Firefox doesn’t include automatic security updates, so users of the bundle would not have been protected if they had not recently upgraded. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Update: Researchers say Tor-targeted malware phoned home to NSA

Indian IT firm accused of discrimination against “stupid Americans”

Sean MacEntee Infosys, an Indian IT software and services company with offices throughout the world, has been accused of discriminating against American job applicants. One Infosys employee who raised concerns about the company’s hiring practices was repeatedly called a “stupid American, ” the lawsuit states. Infosys has about 15, 000 employees in the US “and approximately 90 percent of these employees are of South Asian descent (including individuals of Indian, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi descent), ” the lawsuit states . Infosys allegedly achieved this ratio “by directly discriminating against individuals who are not of South Asian decent in hiring, by abusing the H-1B visa process to bring workers of South Asian descent into the country rather than hiring qualified individuals already in the United States, and by abusing the B-1 visa system to bring workers of South Asian descent into the United States to perform work not allowed by their visa status rather than hiring individuals already in the United States to perform the work.” Infosys “used B-1 visa holders because they could be paid considerably lower wages than other workers including American-born workers, ” the lawsuit states. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Indian IT firm accused of discrimination against “stupid Americans”

Simple technique puts graphene capacitors on par with lead-acid battery

If the bottom is a layer of graphene in a super capacitor, then storage can be increased by making the solution above it as low-volume as possible. Lawrence Livermore National Lab Individual pieces of graphene have some pretty amazing properties, but finding a way to produce bulk materials that make good use of those properties has been rather challenging. Now, researchers have figured out a way to make graphene-based electrodes in bulk through a process so simple that it can be adapted to the manufacturing techniques that we currently use to make paper. And the resulting capacitors, at least in these test cases, had storage capacities that approached those of lead-acid batteries. Those of us who have taken basic physics tend to think of capacitors as two parallel, charge-holding plates, since that’s how they’re taught. But electrochemical capacitors perform a similar trick on a much smaller scale, by having the charges held by individual ions that absorb to an electrode. To boost capacity, the simplest thing to do is to increase the surface area for the ions to interact with. That’s why graphene seems so appealing; since it’s only a single atom thick, it should be possible to stick a tremendous amount of surface into a relatively small volume. The problem, however, has been getting the ions into the graphene itself in order for them to interact. Once the graphene is prepared, lots of factors like pore size and inter-sheet spacing come into play, since these control how quickly ions can get into the graphene. A team at Australia’s Monash University came up with an easy solution to this: put the ions in place during the manufacturing process. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Simple technique puts graphene capacitors on par with lead-acid battery

University of California to allow open access to new academic papers

The University of California—an enormous institution that encompasses 10 campuses and over 8, 000 faculty members— introduced an Open Access Policy late last week. This policy grants the UC a license to its faculty’s work by default, and requires them to provide the UC with copy of their peer-reviewed papers on the paper’s publication date. The UC then posts the paper online to eScholarship , its open access publishing site, where the paper will be available to anyone, free of charge. Making the open access license automatic for its faculty leverages the power of the institution—which publishes over 40, 000 scholarly papers a year—against the power of publishers who would otherwise lock content behind a paywall. “It is much harder for individuals to negotiate these rights on an individual basis than to assert them collectively, ” writes the UC. “By making a blanket policy, individual faculty benefit from membership in the policy-making group, without suffering negative consequences. Faculty retain both the individual right to determine the fate of their work, and the benefit of making a collective commitment to open access.” Faculty members will be allowed to opt out of the scheme if necessary—if they have a prior contract with a journal, for example. Academic papers published in traditional journals before the enactment of this policy will not be made available on eScholarship at this time. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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University of California to allow open access to new academic papers

SkyDrive follows Metro into oblivion as Microsoft abandons trademark case

“How’s SkyDrive?” “Oh, SkyDrive… won’t see him no more.” Microsoft One month after a British court ruled that Microsoft’s SkyDrive infringed on a British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) Group trademark, Microsoft has decided not to appeal and will find a new name for its cloud storage service. A press release Microsoft provided to Ars today states that BSkyB and Microsoft have agreed to a “settlement of trade mark infringement proceedings in the European Union brought by Sky against Microsoft in the English High Court… According to the settlement, Microsoft will not pursue its planned appeal of this decision and Sky will allow Microsoft to continue using the SkyDrive name for a reasonable period of time to allow for an orderly transition to a new brand. The agreement also contains financial and other terms, the details of which are confidential.” Microsoft said it would not provide any details beyond what’s in the press release, which also makes a vague reference to “joint projects” to benefit Microsoft and BSkyB customers. A new name for SkyDrive was not announced. The release does not specify whether the name change would occur in Europe only or worldwide, but it seems likely that Microsoft would want to have one name for the service in every region. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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SkyDrive follows Metro into oblivion as Microsoft abandons trademark case

Trusting iPhones plugged into bogus chargers get a dose of malware

The Mactans charger uses a BeagleBoard for its computational power. Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang, and Chengyu Song Plugging your phone into a charger should be pretty safe to do. It should fill your phone with electricity, not malware. But researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology have produced fake chargers they’ve named Mactans that do more than just charge your phone: they install custom, malicious applications onto iPhones. Their bogus chargers—which do, incidentally, charge the phone—contain small computers instead of mere transformers. The iPhone treats these computers just as it does any other computer; instead of just charging, it responds to USB commands. It turns out that the iPhone is very trusting of USB-attached computers; as long as the iPhone is unlocked (if only for a split second) while attached to a USB host, then the host has considerable control over the iPhone. The researchers used their USB host to install an app package onto any iPhone that gets plugged in. iOS guards against installation of arbitrary applications with a strict sandboxing system, a feature that has led to the widespread practice of jailbreaking. This attack doesn’t need to jailbreak, however. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Trusting iPhones plugged into bogus chargers get a dose of malware

Rideshare drivers given citizen arrest by SF International Airport officials

Hopefully none of these cars at SFO are in for a citizen arrest. dreamagicjp Officials at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) say they have been making citizen arrests of rideshare drivers throughout July. Airport spokesperson Doug Yakel told Ars on Tuesday that airport officials have made 12 such arrests since July 10. Rideshare companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar use mobile apps to help city dwellers find rides in areas where cabs are scarce or expensive. But taxi service is heavily regulated in big cities nationwide, and rideshare companies have ruffled feathers by operating outside of traditional restraints placed on taxi drivers. Cities like New York and Chicago have made it difficult for rideshare companies to operate, and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) slapped Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar with $20, 000 fines in November 2012 (although the commission later rescinded the fines ). In December of last year, the CPUC issued a proposal for examining the legality of the rideshare services, and the commission is expected to revisit the issue sometime this week. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Rideshare drivers given citizen arrest by SF International Airport officials

Thailand bans using Bitcoin in any way, local startup reports

A Bitcoin startup based in Thailand now says that it has suspended all operations  because the Bank of Thailand has effectively banned bitcoins in the southeast Asian country. As Bitcoin Co. Ltd. reports: At the conclusion of the meeting, senior members of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department advised that due to lack of existing applicable laws, capital controls, and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets the following Bitcoin activities are illegal in Thailand: – Buying bitcoins – Selling bitcoins – Buying any goods or services in exchange for bitcoins – Selling any goods or services for bitcoins – Sending bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand – Receiving bitcoins from anyone located outside of Thailand This appears to be the first time that any country has outright banned the digital crypto currency . Further, it remains unclear exactly how Thailand would even enforce such a ban. Ars has been unable to confirm the ban with the Bank of Thailand , when this ban goes into effect, and how this decision came about. Bank representatives did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Thailand bans using Bitcoin in any way, local startup reports

Man gets ransomware porn pop-up, goes to cops, gets arrested on child porn charges

A man from just outside of Washington, DC turned himself in to local police—with his computer in tow—after receiving a pop-up message from what he believed was an “FBI Warning” telling him to click to pay a fine online, or face an investigation. While specific details on the case are scant as of yet, it appears that the suspect here fell victim to a type of ransomware that has been proliferating for years now—raking in millions for the scammers behind it. Police said Jay Matthew Riley, 21, of Woodbridge, Virginia, walked into Prince William’s Garfield District Station on July 1, 2013 to “inquire if he had any warrants on file for child pornography.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Man gets ransomware porn pop-up, goes to cops, gets arrested on child porn charges