Internet War

In the age of information almost everything in the world changes very fast in compare to the past, for instance people's behavior, wearing cloth, relationship and friendship and even traveling .Most of the time, I really try to be optimistic and see every thing good and bright. Changing people cloths in the world can not be so bad if we think about how convenience and comfort they are . I am not worried also about how people around the world change their languages as far as I think an international language can increase better and easier understanding of people . But how much can we be optimistic? Do you agree with me it is crazy that many old civilizations forget all about fathers customs? Do you think Internet is the most guilty one to spread western culture and causes many young generations of old countries attract to the west ? If you are still optimistic as much as I was ,please look at online advertising of US and Europe products more rigorous than before. How about online games? Can you see any thing unethical and abnormal which is just acceptable in western culture? Soon, you will find that they try to dominate their culture in other countries slowly and subtly without any barrier or defence.In my opinion ,as I mentioned at the first line every thing changes in this age and one of them is how countries war. Obviously not too many soldiers need for battling and not too many weapons require. Computer programmers are their soldiers and online ads or games and many other tools replace with guns and swords. The most painful thing is there is not any horn to alert that the war start and enemies do not wear armor in which can recognize friends among enemies or enemies among friends.

Football, Internet and Racism

300 million people are estimated to access Internet in the world. Among them you can see racist , violent and extremist who try to learn about this new medium and use it for their purpose. Internet is a very strong tool for individuals, organizations and groups who want to reach new audiences and recruiting especially among young generation.In 1995 just one site on the Internet has racism activity ,then in 1997 the statistics increased to 600 and today unfortunately it goes up to more than 2500 sites.

Sports world also are used as a tool for racism. For instance some groups that link to the neo-Nazis and right wing extremist use Internet to spread racism behaviour inside and outside football stadiums.Football supporter sites are the most active party in racism and xenophobia . Furthermore, some players, managers and clubs also work in this part but their activities are invisible to all.

Cyberterrorism

Cyber terrorism means that terrorist's use the Internet and other telecommunication tools in order to supporting organizational activities and for gaining expertise to achieve operational goals.Is cyber terrorism a synonym word for cyber crime?

Although some criticism state that the phrase cyber terrorism is not a proper term as in cyber space they only can produce annoyances not terror, others believe the effect of computer attack is more important than tools that is used by terrorists like bombs. They also declare economic disruption, fear and civilian deaths can be considered as terrorism attack too.

But do not forget even terrorists use computer and Internet for the strategy of spreading their massages quickly and to repeat them until they have saturated cyber space.

Reference :

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=432

No More Bothering Comments

The lecturer of cyberlaw - Dr. Sonny Zulhuda- guided the class how to protect our self from defamation issues especially in our blogs.He pointed at two options that we have when one particular comment try to defame one person in our blogs.The first one is replying to that comment in order to reject it and showing the disagreement to that comment and making our self away from defamation others. The second item which he explained it as a easier way, is simply delete the comment. I think even though this kind of recommendation seems very simple but on the other hand can prevent many fundamental issues in the future. To proving how subtle ways they are, I have to show you this case which happened earlier in Dubai.

A UAE online magazine has to shut down for one month and ordered to pay Dh10,000 in damages for defamation.The case is about an article published by the magazine under the title "Abu Dhabi TV: Emirate TV only in name", But the case was not related to an article by the editor or the journalist, and was only about comments posted by readers. The judge said comments should were replied or the website manager should deleted them.The web manager said the huge number of comments on the article demonstrated the interest of visitors in the subject, and also demonstrated that it was hard for them to carefully read all the comments.

So after reading this case do you agree with me we should be more careful listeners especially to the lecturer?!

Reference of news:

http://gulfnews.com/

A Defamation Case

Today, in cyberlaw class we learnt about defamation( damaging one person's reputation by publishing false communication). For being sure to understand all aspects of defamation, I searched about latest case related to this issue. Here is the interesting case that I found.

One of the ex-employee of Rite Aid Company sued the company and online employee screening (ChoicePoint) because of defamation.

The story started when he fired because the company discovered the loss of more than $7,000 worth of cash and merchandise and was suspected to him.Then the company sent all information to the ChoicePoint.

The employee who claimed himself innocent ,could not find any other jobs because of now-spotty background.But the firm said every thing about him was truth so it can not be liable.

Now, I can remember the four elements of the defamation which the lecturer explained them in the class. He also emphasized all of these elements are necessary in order to establish a case in defamation for the plaintiff:
1. it must be false;
2. the statements must be defamatory in the sense that it lowers the plaintiff’s reputation;
3. it must refer to the plaintiff; and
4. it must be published.

Reference of news:

http://www.hrtechnews.com/

Frauds do not discriminate me and you , my dear classmates

Online attacks include phishing, pharming and Trojans is one of the most organized crime in recent decades. High education institutes, universities and colleges also are targeted by cyber criminals.But what is wealthy in colleges website?

Attackers mostly focus on accessing the log in credentials which be used by students to enter in their personal university page. This credentials compass of students user names and passwords. After accessing to students' information two possibility may occur.

Each student's personal profile consist of many important data such as students loans and banking account, credit card (mostly used for paying tuition fees) and also personal information such as date of birth and mail address.So the first possibility is stealing these data.

The second possibility is frauds use these information to spreed more spams because an email which send by university usually do not identify as a spam also it may be enclosed by students.

So I suggest to all students specially my dear classmates to be careful more than before. Frauds do not discriminate me and you.

Online Governance

Who knows me and you in cyberspace?and how? Have you ever thought about it? Is there anything like a Yellow Book in the internet that records all numbers and addresses?If you want to find any one from the Internet your task is typing his address or name into your computer. Of course, the address is unique (has to be) therefore, the computer guides you to the exact person that you target.But the question is , is there any one or any organization that is responsible for this case? If any conflict happens who can solve it and base on which regulation?Following are some information that I found in order to answering to these questions.

In 1998, the U.S Department of Commerce managed to creation a nonprofit regulatory body with responsibility of administration of the Internet name and address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers established in response. According to the ICCAN website ,ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet.ICCAN also claimed in its website that it helped design and implement a low-cost system for resolving disputes over domain name ownership.

For more information please look at the ICCAN website :http://www.icann.org/

The Cyber Harassment Have Cost Us Children's Lives

I am very happy today as I heard the IOWA Division of Criminal Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force run a new website Thursday to help parents fight sexual predators.As a mother I am really worried about online harassment and children cheating and I am seriously agree with the Michael Ferjak statements: "I'm amazed frankly about how much they don't know about this.The sexting, the cyber harassment, cyber bullying those have cost us children's lives." He also declared removing the access of internet is not a good reply to this kind of crime. Even children deny to tell parents the truth because they afraid of losing their computer and internet.He stated parents always aware children to speak to strangers on the street but how about cyberspace?Have you ever spoken with your kids about online thieves? Therefore in my opinion parents must be fully aware of the potential risk of internet for children and also avoiding kids from the sexing and the cyber harassment depends completely on the subtle behavior of parents.The website has many useful tips for parent which I summarized main points here but I strongly recommend to all parents to read the website by them self.

Avoid unfamiliar "Chat Rooms",

Don't talk to people you don't know,

Never use your real name, age, or indication of your gender in your screen name or email address,

Never post personal information in a user profile.

The website address is http://iaicac.org

Reference of news:

http://www.kcci.com/

FBI Investigates iPad Cyber Security Breach

According to the Reuters today's news, the email addresses of more than 114,000 ipad users were disclosed therefore FBI started to investigate about this cyber threat.Gawker website was the first reporter.The breach of personal information happened when hackers group who named itself Goatse Security obtained a list of email addresses of ipad owners from AT&T ipad subscriber data. The list included email addresses of celebrities, chief executives and politicians.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and film mogul Harvey Weinstein are other victims of intrusion.

AT&T , has exclusive U.S right to carry both iphone and ipad ,accepted the breach but said the problem had solved.

FBI spokesman also said FBI has acknowledged the security breach and started its investigation.

ipad is a successful device in whole the world and ipad launched in April, has sold about 2million around the world. Critics believe this current issue do not have any affect to the popularity of ipad.

Reference of news:

www.reuters.com

Censorship in Cyberspace

Censorship refers to limit or control of publishing or accessing the internet's information. Base on this definition censorship is possible in some technical methods such as IP blocking (access to a certain IP address is denied) ,URL filtering ,DNS filtering and so on. It is obvious each country has specific regulation for freedom of speech in both online and offline condition and uses own method to band the internet.For instance Smart Filter which is a software program owned by Secure Computing is used by Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan in Asia. US and UK are other Secure Computing users.

It is not surprising that users respond to filtering and always attempt to find a successful way to break the censorship.Some common methods are proxy websites, Java Anon Proxy, Tor and Sneaker nets.

Countries around the world categorize in to 5 sections in term of Open net Initiative: Pervasive, Substantial, Nominal, Indirect, Watchlist.

Example of Pervasive are Cuba and China and Substantial's example is Australia.

On the other hand, Reporters without Borders published a list in 2010 and named 13 countries as internet enemies. China , Cuba, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are seen in this list.

References of information:

www.jerf.org/writings/communicationEthics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

Enticing Emails

In this post, I want to explain about one of the most common form of cyber crime.In this type of cyber crime , generally an email is send to the victim requesting to help for transferring large amount of money.Then the scammer requests money to pay for costs of transformation. As this money is send to scammer he/ she will disappear or may continue to fool the victim with some excuses such as may says a problem occurred during transformation that needs more money.

Another side of this crime is scammers aim to identify confidential information about their victim and use these information in another fraudulent activities in their names.It is a very dangerous situation for individuals and also firms. When criminals identified about ID numbers, bank accounts and addresses of individuals they can use it for opening accounts in the other's name, steal money and other kinds of crimes.The result of this kind of crime for victim could be bankrupt, or sentenced , prisoned and blacklisted.

So it is necessary to know about this kind of cyber crime in order to protect yourself from scammers.Be careful when use internet for transferring money and do not care and reply for any suspected email.

Related to this topic I read a news with this title"Australians tricked out of $70m in scams". The spokesman of Consumer watchdog Choice said "Electronic goods buyers are being warned to be aware of fake customs letters requesting payment for breaching pornography laws relating to pornography purportedly found on cameras and phones."

The First Recorded Cybercrime

It is interesting to know the first cyber crime related to the abacus which happened in 1820! Abacus which is the earliest and simplest form of computer ,was used about 3500 B.C in some parts of the world such as China.

Joseph- Marie Jacquard who had a textile manufacture in France introduced the loom.This device threatened employees in the firm whom decided to sabotage in order to discourage Jacquard from further use of the loom. This act considered as the first cyber crime in the world.

Copyright Protection in US

No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1997. The NET Act gives copyright protection for computer content and enforces sanctions when infringement is committed for private financial gain or by reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of copyrighted works having $1,000 or mote in retail value.

Another related law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).It grants ISPs protection from acts of user infringement .This law enacted in 1998.DMCA also criminalizes the circumvention of software protections and the development or distribution of circumvention products.

United States Patent And Trademark Office

United states Patent And Trademark Office or briefly UNPTO is an agency in America which has responsibility to issue patent for inventors and register for product's trademark.This agency does not work alone.It has close relationship and cooperation with European Patent Office (EPO) and Japan Patent Office(JPO). At the end of year 2009 this agency had about 9,000 employees, including more than 6,000 patent examiner and about 400 trade examining attorney.Patent examiners are mostly scientists and engineers without law degree and trademark examiners are licensed by attorney.It is also interesting to know the first patent in US was issued in 1790 for making Pot ash and Pearl ash by Samuel Hopkins and president George Washington signed it at that time.

Since 2004 inventors or their atterony can register online by compliting a PDF form from its website.USPO dicided to increase carefully reviews applications for software-related protection.

References of statistics:

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Today all my MBA classmates attended in a lecture with was about Cyber law and Privacy Regulation. The title of this lecture was exactly Selected Privacy and Security Issues in Information Technology - From the Lens of Laws, Regulation and Politics.The lecturer, Mr.Noriswadi Ismail ,spoke about data protection and privacy issues and explained these subjects with some examples such as CCTV in the London underground, CTOS and HSBC.During the speech he suggested us to read a book .

At the end of this speech attenders discussed about the difficulty of using Western model of privacy regulations in developing countries.Culture was mentioned as a most important problem to implement any European and US rules in other countries especially in Asia.

What is the responsibility of CI3?

I read a news with this title : The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) celebrated its tenth anniversary yesterday.So I was curious to know about this organization more. These are some information that I found.

From 2000 , the year this organization established, until now about 1.5 million cyber crime and child pornography recorded and investigated.

The mission of this organization is to receive, develop and investigate criminal complaints in order to investigate in cyber crime area faster.Also IC3 works as a partnership between NW3C (National White Collar Crime Center)and Federal Bureau of Investigation and provide facility for cyber crime's victims to report any suspected or actual computer crime. "this partnership has increased law enforcement's ability to collect,analyze and refer Internet crime complaints to our domestic and international law enforcement partners " said Bill Hinerman, FBI Unit Chief for IC3.

For requesting any help a victim can go to the IC3 website and fill a form which consist of why, when and how you believe you were defrauded and other details.

IC3 web address is www.ci3.gov/default.aspx

Reference of news:

http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/

TRUSTe

Web site needs help to create trust for their users. To do so an independent and non profit privacy initiative called TRUSTe was established.TRUSTe will give any web site its logo and seal if that website accept all its philosophies. Also sites must publish the following information on their sites to obtain the TRUSTe logo.

1- What personal information is being gathered by your site?

2- Who is gathering the date?

3- How the date will be used?

4- With whom the date Will be shared?

5- Users have the choice regarding to gathering, use and distribution of their data.

6- the site must protect users collected data such as credit card from loss or misuse

7- users must have the ability to update or correct information

It is obvious TRUSTe is not the only organization which provide such facilities for websites.

For more information look at http://www.truste.org/

Opt-In Vs Opt-Out

The opt-in means that users give permission to the company to send commercial email and ads to them or to share their information to any other seller that has agreement with the first sellers.For activating opt-in users check a box on web and enter their email addresses.

The opt-out has almost the same meaning as opt-in but the only difference is users have to uncheck the box on a web to hinder being in the firms email list and sending emails or giving others their information.

Criticises complain about this practice because mostly users are not aware about it and may be surprised when receiving email.

Although this practice is not fair and hurt users privacy but marketers like to use it because these techniques are part of traditional marketing strategy which is called permission marketing (meaning turning strangers into customers.)

Net Creation's Post Master Direct is a list broker and has 50 million opt-in names and email addresses ,13 million of them live outside of US.Brokers rent lists to other companies.(www.netcreations.com)

Credit Card Number Theft

A credit card number could be stolen in three different places on the Internet. It could be stolen from a users home or business computer, it could be stolen in transit from the users computer to the sellers web site or it could be stolen once it reaches the sellers site.

how likely is each of these ways?

1- Stolen from the users computer : Unlikely unless users store credit card numbers on their computers .

2- Stolen in transit:Almost impossible and in fact this situation has never been reported as long as vendors use a secure Internet connection(http).Encryption algorithms make this possibility remote.

3- Stolen at the merchants site:Probably the most user acceptable concern given the following possibilities

the merchant may be cheater

the merchant may be honest but have a dishonest employee

the merchant may be honest but fails to protect its database of credit card numbers from hackers .

So one of the most important way for transaction security is using encryption system.

Cyberlaw in Iran

The number of Internet users in Iran is increasing very fast .(Iran is in the eleventh step for the most Internet users in the world.)As we know computer is like a knife with two edges, therefore the number of computer crime goes up too. In this situation criticises complained about lack of laws for computer crimes and disability of traditional laws so they forced Parliament to enact some laws specifically for cyberspace that happened two years ago in about 25 wavers(2008).For instance punishment for any unlawful data collection is

- Imprisonment between 91 days to one year OR

- Fine between 5 to 20 million Rials OR

- both

and another computer crime is changing or modifying data which its punishment is as follow:

- Imprisonment between one to five years OR

- Fine between 20 to 100 million Rials OR

- both