SECURITY - eMail Domains

I just have to comment on paying attention to the domains you receive eMail from.

I got an eMail reminding me 'to confirm your account' on a site I never heard of.

The domain was "@zainiraq.net"

IRAQ.net!

Ya, like that's a safe site, .....NOT.

You need to pay close attention to eMail domains when the eMail looks suspicious or from a site you never heard of.

Suspicious eMail may even claim to be from a site you do deal with.  I and an eMail that claimed to be from AARP but the text didn't look right, it was from a domain ending in ".top"

If you get eMail that does look like it's from a site you deal with but has a link to update you account info, DO NOT use the link in the eMail.  If you deal with the site, you should have it bookmarked in your browser, use that to access the site.  Also, many sites will have a Support contact, you should copy the eMail and Headers, and paste that into their message system so they know someone is trying to spoof them.

All suspicious eMail domains should be added to your SPAM filter.  In my case, my eMail provider has a very good system for that.  Then your eMail client should also have a way to filter eMail domains.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "The Third Wave"

"This online pioneer sees a future where everything is internet" PBS NewsHour 4/21/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the 30 years since Steve Case co-founded AOL, the global tech landscape has seen immense growth and change.  What new developments wait in the near future, and what does the rapidly expanding online world mean for human life? Case explores those issues in his new book, “The Third Wave.” Case joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his vision of the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Back in 1985, when Steve Case co-founded America Online, only 3 percent of Americans were actually online.  Fast-forward some 30 years, and we can see the global change brought about by the Internet and an ever-growing array of devices and social media.

So, what is next?

Well, we get a glimpse from Steve Case himself.  He is the author of a new book, “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future.”

Steve Case, it is good to see you.

STEVE CASE, Author, “The Third Wave”:  It’s good to see you again.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So you borrowed that term the third wave from the futurist Alvin Toffler.

STEVE CASE:  Yes.

When I was in college in the 1980, I read Toffler “Third Wave.” It completely mesmerized me inspired me.  I spent the last almost four decades pursuing some of the ideas he talked about.

So, when I was writing a book, I wanted to pay respect to him.  I open the book with talking about my experience reading Toffler.  And I hope others will similarly be inspired by my book, and because the future once again is going to change, and the path forward is going to be different than what we saw in the last two waves.  And that’s what I was trying to lay out in this book.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, in a thumbnail, first wave was the creation of the Internet, which you were involved in.  Second wave was building on that, you describe, social media devices and so forth.

What is the next wave?

STEVE CASE:  It’s really integrating the Internet seamlessly throughout our lives.

And there is a lot of things that haven’t changed that much in the first wave or the second wave.  How we learn, our kids learn is about the same.  How we stay healthy is about the same.  How we manage energy is about the same.  Even how we think about food is about the same.

And work itself is starting to change in the third wave because of the freelance economy, what some call the gig economy.  So, I think it’s important for everybody, not just businesspeople or technologists, to understand what is happening next.  And that is what I try to lay out in this book with sort of a — a little bit of a road map forward and a little bit of a playbook in terms of how you can think about orchestrating your career and your life, and how you think about maybe your kids and even your grandkids.  What world are they going to be inheriting?

PRIVACY - Blocking Ad-Block Software in EU

"Blocking Ad-Blockers May Be Illegal in the EU Thanks to the Cookie Law" posted by Rich-M on CHF 4/23/2016

NOTE:  You must be a member to post on CHF (Computer Help Forums)

A letter from the President of the European Commission may spark an ongoing war between privacy advocates and online publishers that use anti-ad-blocking filters on their sites.

Alexander Hanff, CEO of Think Privacy Inc., has penned a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, EC's president, this past winter, asking for clarification regarding the language of the e-Privacy Directive's Cookie Law.

Mr. Hanff wanted to know if the cookie law is referring strictly to browser cookies or the general notion of gathering "any information stored on such equipment [is] part of the privacy sphere of the users requiring protection."

Scanning for ad-blockers breaks the EU's e-Privacy Directive

The response of the European Commission was clear, and that any type of server or client-side scripts that attempt to access or collect information stored on the user's devices fall under the e-Privacy's umbrella, meaning that publishers need to ask for permission before gathering any type of data, not just about cookies.

Under Mr. Hanff's expert opinion, this also includes ad-blocking blocking technologies that prevent users from viewing a website's content if they have an ad-blocker installed in their browser.

In order to work, those websites need to run JavaScript code in the users' browsers.  These scripts gather information about the users' local configuration, an action which falls under the Commission's interpretation of scanning and collecting private user data, hence must be prompted and asked for permission.

Based on this response, to comply with this new interpretation of the cookie law, Internet publishers must ask you if they can scan your browser for ad-blocking software, and then prompt you to disable the ad-blocker if you agree.

The problem of server-side scripts

Mr. Hanff's says that his original letter only included the question of client-side scripts that scanned for ad-blockers, but he points out that the answers received from the European Commission include references and legal opinions that cover server-side scripts as well.

Under this latter category, any analytics service could potentially be affected.  Mr. Hanff has answered Softpedia's inquiry, and he argues that this is true.  Any analytics service, that employ client or server-side scripts, should also ask for permission.  Until now, only analytics services that deployed client-side cookies were affected by the EU Cookie Law.  This means that analytics services, commercial or deployed in-house, relying on server-side scripts are also impacted and may need to ask for permission.

This is just one of the questions we can raise from this letter.  Of course, the ramifications of this response might need to be debated by people with actual in-depth knowledge of EU law, and not us.

What is certain is that Mr. Hanff has pledged to use the answer he received from the European Commission to start legal actions against any publisher that blocks users with ad-blockers installed to access their websites.

Below are tweets from Mr. Hanff on this matter, along with images of the answer he received from the European Commission.

Read more here