Where librarians and the internet meet: internet searching, Web 2.0 resources, search engines and their development. These are my personal views and not those of CILIP or any other organisation I may be associated with.
Filtering systems - if they're going to work really do need to work properly. A friend of mine recently informed me that my site was banned at her place of work because it was deemed by their filtering software as a personals/dating site. Futuresoft, the producers of the i:filter software in question say of themselves "Managing and controlling corporate internet resources is fast and easy with DynaComm i:filter 8.0. The new graphical interface provides administrators quick access to real-time system information, as well as the ability to easily modify or create web filtering policies with a minimum of effort." I took a look for myself and sure enough:
The incompetence of these people is really worrying. I'll be interested in their response to me. If they can actually be bothered.
Many of you will, I'm sure, know Gary Price - either through being fortunate enough to listen to one of his talks, or through the site 'ResourceShelf'. I've known Gary for rather too many years for either of us to comfortably remember, and he's one of a number of people who I will bow down in front of and say 'I'm not worthy!' Believe me, if Gary doesn't know something about the net, it's because it's not important.
I'm really pleased therefore to bring your attention to INFOdocket which is a new venture that he and his partner Shirl Kennedy are running. The subtitle of the site is 'Information Industry News + New Web Sites and Tools'. There's always something worth reading on the site and it comes complete with handy RSS feed as well. If you want to keep up to date with what's going on in the information/library world, this is a must read.
This is just a quick post with a few quick thoughts and reminders on staying safe while you're online. I'm blogging this as a friend on Facebook had a concern that they had been asked to reset their password on Facebook and was having problems as a result.I thought I'd just pass on a few things to remember - hopefully you can just tick them off in your mind, but reminders are always a good thing.
1. If you get an email from someone like eBay or Facebook do not automatically assume that it's from them. It's very easy to spoof email addresses, and while Gmail is pretty good at picking this up and alerting users, not all email packages are as good. Ask yourself if this is common practice for this particular website to contact you in this fashion. If it's not, be doubly on your guard.
2. If there's a link embedded in the email, do NOT click on it. Again, it's really easy to fake this, and simply because you think the link will take you to the site that you expect, it's not necessarily the case. Hover your mouse over the link and check the bottom left hand corner of the browser (if you're using Firefox) and see what the URL actually is.
3. If you do click on a link, even if you think you've gone to eBay, Facebook, PayPal etc, check the URL of the site in the address bar at the top of the screen - if it's not what you're expecting, just close the window down. Scammers will do their level best to ensure that the page they create is as exact a match as possible to the original site, including linking to images from that site.
4. If you are asked for your password details or any other personal information it's unlikely in the extreme that this has come from a legitimate site. Do not provide this information.
5. Even if you are fairly sure that the communication is genuine, open up a new tab or window and type in the URL of the site yourself. It'll only take a few more seconds and is a safer way of working. If there's a problem with your account in any way you'll find out soon enough.
6. If you're going to a secure site such as your bank or PayPal, check the URL to see if it starts with https:// and if there is a padlock symbol that's displayed in the browser (usually bottom right corner).
7. Do not panic! Scammers are banking on the fact that you'll act in haste without thinking things through. However important the email seems to be, however dire the emergency, close the email, get a cup of coffee, talk to a colleague or friend and *think* about the email. Is it really likely that your bank will have contacted you like this? Have they ever done so before?
8. Take a copy of the email, open a new window, go to your bank site, PayPal etc, find the contact details and cut and paste the email you've received into the email and ask if it's genuine. They really won't mind you asking.
9. Do not worry about looking stupid or being an idiot. You'll look a lot more of an idiot if you lose money or your account is hacked.
10. If in doubt at all, change your password on the site. Then change it again a couple of minutes later, just to be sure. Go to the website directly each time. Sure, it's a pain, but it's a lot less of a pain than trying to get your account back.
11. Set up a shadow email account. Ensure that all the email you get sent to your main account is copied and sent onto the second account, though of course, this may not be possible with work emails. That way you'll still have copies of all emails sent to you in case you've deleted them by accident.
Hopefully those few pointers will help keep you safe when you're online. Most importantly, do not panic. Unlike spilling a cup of coffee, matters will not be improved if you act quickly - quite the opposite in fact.
I'm usually quite hard to impress when it comes to social media, browsers and so on. I'd seen the hype about Rockmelt and was quite keen to try it out. I have to say that from an initial 10 minute play, I think it's great, and Firefox is going to have to run in order to keep up. Having said that, let's take a bit of a look at it.
It's called 'social' for a reason, as both sides of the browser are reserved for your friends and contacts, with the main part of the screen available for displaying pages. This does mean that more scrolling is required, but not a great deal (but I can close either side if necessary.) This is what the thing looks like:
On the left hand side of the screen are a listing of friends which it has taken (with permission) from Facebook. You can toggle this with a listing of all your friends who are online at the moment. Above we have the usual menu/tabbing system, and it quickly and effectively imported all my bookmarks from Firefox. Interestingly it didn't ask about Chrome or IE. On the right hand side of the screen are RSS feeds from favourite sites, which can very quickly be added with a mouse click.
If I want to see what is happening in my social circle, I can just click on a feed:
I can quickly share, retweet or reply without having to go to the website. If I want to share a link that I've found, it's as easy as clicking on the 'share' option at the top of the screen, and choosing the social media resource that I want to share it with - Facebook or Twitter.
If I cant to catch up with specific friends, I can choose a friend and see what they've posted recently:
Chatting to someone within Rockmelt is also very easy. Click on their name, open up a dialogue box and then chat with them if they're online, send them a Facebook message or post to their wall:
I can't yet see a way of tweeting to them, and I'd like to have more ways of contacting that individual other than Facebook. While the see the obvious value of Facebook in being a primary resource, there are others out there which it would also be useful to integrate with; Twitter and LinkedIn being obvious examples.
When you open a new tab Rockmelt displays a list of most visited sites, recently closed tabs and your history, which is really helpful. Search is really nice as well. Click on the search option, top right and get a list of results, which you can scroll through as necessary.
However, we're not finished yet, since I can either open up the results into the main browser page, or I can simply click on each result as well, getting it to load. So much for Google's preview option that I mentioned yesterday. What you can't see from the screenshot though is just how lightening fast this is. I clicked, it displayed instantly, I clicked again and it changed pages instantly. This is really starting to impress me now, and I did promise myself that I wouldn't say 'Rockmelt rocks!' but y'know - it actually does. Another thing that I liked about search is that if I start typing my search Rockmelt also inserts the names of my friends as well, so I can quickly go to the profiles that Rockmelt displays for me on the screen.
I have much more playing around to do with this browser, but I'm already starting to wonder about making it my default browser instead of Firefox. It's smart, effective, easy to use, simple to install, integrates nicely and is well thought out. Excellent so far!
I've seen some bad and badly placed adverts in my time, but this one over at YouTube is the worst.
I was alerted to it by DigitalMaverick who expressed some surprise about it, and I can only agree. It doesn't look like an advert on first quick site - I think it's specifically designed to confuse people into thinking that YouTube is asking for their details - particularly since the Betfair advert appears below and to the right - it's only the tiny 'Close Ad' option top right of Mr Thug that gives it away. I wonder how many people have been conned into this. If you put your details in you're then invited to press play to hear Andy Gray's tips (the previously referred to Mr Thug - sorry Andy, but really!).
Very poor show YouTube, and as for Betfair - I won't be using your services thanks very much.
There was an interesting article on the BBC website recently called Blizzard backs
down over gamers using real names.The basics of the story are that the World of Warcraft people (Blizzard) wanted gamers to use their real names on forums. After a hail of fury, during which there were 50,000 comments on 2,500 pages they've now changed their minds.
I really wonder what 'real name' actually means. Is it your birthname, name you were christened (in whatever religion) with, full name or first and last? What if you're known by a shortened version (like me?). What if your name is 'John Smith'? Why is 'Jane Brown' a better name than 'Aramanthe Wolfsbane'? Names are just identifiers, and they work within the specific confines of the environment. The problem occurs when you move that person from one arena to another, and I'm seeing this happen most often at the moment with Twitter, as people struggle to introduce themselves. There's certainly lots of people who I 'know' by their Twitter names, and that works perfectly well for me.
I first started doing stuff online back in the late 1980s and I didn't use my 'real name' - I used a name from a science fiction book, and for years, that's how plenty of people knew me - and even today there are many people who would struggle if they had to call me anything else. It never caused a problem, and even within a 'real live' world it was not an issue.
As long as someone can be identified in some way, within the confines of that social grouping, for me, that works. The problem comes when it becomes necessary to relate what's being said in an online forum to what happens elsewhere - if someone who can't be identified starts referring to their experiences and making claims about 'the real world' it's fairly meaningless. I'm also aware that terms like 'the real world' and 'the virtual world' have less and less credibility these days. Of course 'anon' is even worse, and I do wonder why anyone would assume that they'd be taken seriously when it's not possible to identify them at all.
I suspect that over time the whole name thing is going to be less important, and it's going to be one of the side effects of things like Twitter - since we can only ever have one 'Jane Brown' people will become more inventive, and I suspect that if you call yourself 'Aramanthe Wolfsbane' that could actually provide rather more information. (I should point out that's a name I plucked out of the air, and I don't personally known anyone who uses that name, but if it's yours, and you found this post via searching, I'd love to have your opinion on names!)
This is one to watch out for, since it's quite clever. I was out on a course yesterday and checked my mail via my iPhone and saw that I'd got an email from PayPal. Happens quite often, and this one said that my account had been limited due to some irregularities. Normally I'd have discounted this, since Google is pretty good at catching spam and phfishing attempts, but there it was, in my inbox. I'd also used my account recently to buy something slightly out of my usual run of mill eBay purchases, so I wasn't actually surprised. Also the 'limited' - not blocked, not suspended, just limited. Very reasonable language. When I got home I looked at the email - this was what I saw in the inbox:
Looks reasonable doesn't it? Except that Google is quite good about indicating the validity of senders, because everything else that I get from PayPal looks like this:
See the little key? It's an authentication logo. Google describe it thus: "Displays a key icon next to authenticated messages from certain senders
that spammers attempt to fake. Currently works for mail from PayPal and
eBay only." (If you use Gmail, click on the little green lab flask top right, it's one of the options you can add to your settings.)
So I knew immediately that this was a fake. Opening up the email however, it still looks reasonable. I quote:
"As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the
PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding
your account.
We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third
party.
We have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features in case your
account has been accessed by an unauthorised third party. We understand
that having limited access can be an inconvenience, but protecting your
account is our primary concern.
Reference Number: PP-000-986-257-397
We've limited access to your account temporarily .We'll review the
limitation once you respond with the information we've requested.
We have attached a form to this email. Please download the form and
follow the instructions on your screen. NOTE: The form needs to be
opened
in a modern browser which has javascript enabled (ex: Internet Explorer,
Firefox ,Netscape)
Thank you for helping to resolve this problem.
Yours sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal
account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
"
I carried on looking at the email - Google gives you the option to show more details, which are:
From a quick look it tallies - but looking closer, this has actually come from paypai - instead of the lowercase l we've got a lower case i which if you didn't look closely could have been missed. I checked the details of ownership for paypai.co.uk which didn't tell me a great deal. I also looked at the full headers for the email (Gmail gives you an option to show all which includes this stuff, and there's a handy guide on how to read them as well) which told me the IP address of the sender, and I was able to track this back to an internet company in the US. I then followed it back even further to another system (using the IP address again), and amazingly enough was able to get fairly far into the server without a password - to the point of checking specific users - although there was nothing terribly helpful there. However, that's by the by.
Back to the email. There was a 'form' attached to the email, which had to be opened in a 'modern' browser, as mentioned in the main body of the thing. Now, if it's an HTML form, which it was, rather than just a text file, it could link to any kind of code, and perhaps I'm ultra cautious, but no way was I going to be opening that! I did try it on the iPad, but just got a blank screen. I did run a check on the various reference numbers listed, and did find one reference and the chap who wrote about it had the same email that I got, only he did open up the form, only to get a request for credit card details. Doubtless these would go back somewhere, and while that might provide more information, I'm not that interested.
Of course - what I did before any of the above, was to open a new browser tab and type in the PayPal address myself. With stuff like this I always type in the address myself; I don't rely on clicking addresses in emails since they're not always what they seem. Of course, I logged directly into my PayPal account without a problem, since there wasn't one!
It was a very professional scam - the language was reasonable, wasn't over the top and cleverly made use of an address that was very close to the original. Fortunately I wasn't taken in since I just went straight to PayPal and then explored further. I was surprised that Google actually let it slip through in the first instance, but the verification icon (or lack of) clearly indicated it wasn't what it said. So - if you get anything like this yourself I would suggest:
1. Don't panic.
2. Go to the appropriate site (PayPal, eBay, Bank etc) by opening up a new window and typing in the URL yourself - if there is a problem with your account you'll find out soon enough that way, and can take appropriate steps.
3. Check out any headers if you're still not sure - does the sending address actually match, since it's easy to spoof these things.
4. Don't open any attachments.
5. Obviously (please - it is obvious isn't it?) don't give anyone any credit card details, passwords, nothing.
6. If you're still unsure, do nothing - send a copy of the email to the appropriate organisation and ask if they sent it to you.
I reported the email to Gmail as a phfishing attempt and sent copies of it back to the service provider. Will anything come of it? Doubtful.
I spent an enjoyable evening at the Royal Society event 'Future Technologies' last night, as part of its 350 years anniversary. The panel included
Sir Tim Berners-Lee FRS , inventor of the World Wide
Web and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Stephen Fry, writer, broadcaster and technophile
Professor Dame Wendy Hall FRS , leading computer
scientist at University of Southampton
Dr Jim Haseloff, synthetic biologist from University
of Cambridge
Bill Thompson, technology critic and commentator on
digital culture.
There was a live webcast, which will be shown on Royalsociety.tv at some future point. I made some brief notes in case you're desperate to know what happened. The first part of the evening was spent with the panel in discussion, and then it moved out into the audience. The hashtag for the evening was #SFFuture.
"What was the most important advance in the last 350 years, and what will be the most important advance in the next 350 years?" SF: We're all foolish. What surprises me is how people respond to technology, rather more than the technology itself. Probably the most important advance was the electronic motor and the next advance will probably be biological, but who knows? JH: Information processing in the last 350 years, and in the next, we're moving towards manipulating biological systems. TBL: "The scientific method" TBL then refused to predict, but would like to see more ways of supporting democracy and science. BT: Digital computers for the past, biological for the next 350 years.
They talked about tipping points, and SF recalled the stuck in a lift moment, which was the tipping point for Twitter. BT said that the personal computer was a computer, as you could use computers and tools for yourself. TBL said that for him a tipping point was email, which lead to everything else, and spam indicated the tipping point itself, since people saw the point of sending out emails to millions of people.
There was a general talk on disadvantages for children who do not have access to the internet, which was then widened out to a lack of access to the rest of the world.
As usual, SF was particularly interesting, so I've snipped out a few points he made. He doesn't know what the world will be like when we're all on the net, but that it will be 'human shaped'. We can't work out what's going to happen and even the inventors such as TBL have no idea either. He also derided the 'old is natural' concept. It's a complete misunderstanding, since everything we do is new. For example, we now don't beat children, and this is the first time in history this has happened and the concept is completely new - old is not particularly natural. JH came in at this point and said that even our crops are not natural, since the breeding process changes them, and said that we have an attachment to natural crops, but what does that actually mean?
Questions were then asked from the audience. 'Should there be complete freedom on the web?' TBL said that it's not a technology question, it's a case of a question for society. Ignore technology, and look at society. WH made the point that while the web itself is free, it creates huge monopolies. 'How does culture get changed by the web?' TBL said that you'll always find small communities on the web, and they are a balance on the scale of tiny through to large, and it's perhaps more how cultures change the web. SF pointed out that people worry about this with every technology; books, penny dreadfuls, cinema, tv, video games etc. 'Will technology dumb us down?' WH said that we can't predict what people will do with technology, it's moving too quickly. SF said that people will do what people will do. Was amused to see iPhone 4 and said it was going to be great for prostitutes.
I had my question all ready, and was going to ask about how libraries need to change and adapt, and what they'll look like in the future. I even had the microphone in my hand - but much to my frustration, we ran out of time. However, there was a twitterwall and my question and my opinion on the value of libraries was repeatedly scrolled up the screen, so I managed to get the point across to the audience, even if it didn't go further.
An interesting article that I picked up from BBC News which I think is long overdue. Icann, the organization that oversees this has finally agreed to the creation of the .xxx domain which should be up and running in early 2011. There are already more than 100,000 pre-reservations. Hopefully this will make it much easier to block this type of material but what I'd like to see (which won't happen) that *all* pornographic material has to be on a .xxx domain, and if anything is hosted on a site that isn't, it can be closed down.
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