Potential Corporate Monitoring Concerns Tor Users
April 7, 2016
The Dark Web has been seen as a haven by anyone interested in untraceable internet activity. However, a recent article from Beta News, Tor Project says Google, CloudFlare and others are involved in dark web surveillance and disruption, brings to light the potential issue of Tor traffic being monitored. A CDN and DDoS protection service called CloudFlare has introduced CAPTCHAs and cookies to Tor for monitoring purpose and accusations about Google and Yahoo have also been made. The author writes,
“There are no denials that the Tor network — thanks largely to the anonymity it offers — is used as a platform for launching attacks, hence the need for tools such as CloudFlare. As well as the privacy concerns associated with CloudFlare’s traffic interception, Tor fans and administrators are also disappointed that this fact is being used as a reason for introducing measures that affect all users. Ideas are currently being bounced around about how best to deal with what is happening, and one of the simpler suggestions that has been put forward is adding a warning that reads “Warning this site is under surveillance by CloudFlare” to sites that could compromise privacy.”
Will a simple communications solution appease Tor users? Likely not, as such a move would essentially market Tor as providing the opposite service of what users expect. This will be a fascinating story to see unfold as it could be the beginning of the end of the Dark Web as it is known, or perhaps the concerns over loss of anonymity will fuel further innovation.
Megan Feil, April 7, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Wikipedia Grants Users Better Search
March 24, 2016
Wikipedia is the defacto encyclopedia to confirm fact from fiction, although academic circles shun its use (however, scholars do use it but never cite it). Wikipedia does not usually make the news, unless it is tied to its fundraising campaign or Wikileaks releases sensitive information meant to remain confidential. The Register tells us that Wikipedia makes the news for another reason, “Reluctant Wikipedia Lifts Lid On $2.5m Internet Search Engine Project.” Wikipedia is better associated with the cataloging and dissemination of knowledge, but in order to use that knowledge it needs to be searched.
Perhaps that is why the Wikimedia Foundation is “doing a Google” and will be investing a Knight Foundation Grant into a search-related project. The Wikimedia Foundation finally released information about the Knight Foundation Grant, dedicated to provide funds for companies invested in innovative solutions related to information, community, media, and engagement.
“The grant provides seed money for stage one of the Knowledge Engine, described as “a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy information on the Internet”. It’s all about search and federation. The discovery stage includes an exploration of prototypes of future versions of Wikipedia.org which are “open channels” rather than an encyclopedia, analysing the query-to-content path, and embedding the Wikipedia Knowledge Engine ‘via carriers and Original Equipment Manufacturers’.”
The discovery stage will last twelve months, ending in August 2016. The biggest risk for the search project would be if Google or Yahoo decided to invest in something similar.
What is interesting is that former Wiki worker Jimmy Wales denied the Wikimedia Foundation was working on a search engine via the Knowledge Engine. Wales has since left and Andreas Kolbe reported in a Wikipedia Signpost article that they are building a search engine and led to believe it would be to find information spread cross the Wikipedia portals, rather it is something much more powerful.
Here is what the actual grant is funding:
“To advance new models for finding information by supporting stage one development of the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia, a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet.”
It sounds like a search engine that provides true and verifiable search results, which is what academic scholars have been after for years! Wow! Wikipedia might actually be worth a citation now.
Whitney Grace, March 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
To Search the Dark Web
February 11, 2016
If you have wondered how, exactly, one searches for information on the Dark Web, take a gander at “The Best TOR Search Engines of 2016” at Cyberwarzone. Reporter CWZ writes:
“On the TOR network you can find various websites just like you find on the ‘normal web.’ The websites which are hosted on the TOR network are not indexed by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, but the search engines which are listed below, do index the TOR websites which are hosted via the TOR network. It is important to remember that you do need the TOR client on your device in order to access the TOR network, if you cannot use a TOR client on your device, you can use one of the free TOR gateways which are listed below in the web TOR providers tab.”
The article warns about malicious TOR clients, and strongly suggests readers download the client found at the official TOR website. Four search engines are listed— https://Ahmia.fi, https://Onion.cab, https://onion.link/, and http://thehiddenwiki.org/. CWZ also lists those Web TOR gateways, through which one can connect to TOR services with a standard Web browser instead of using a TOR client. See the end of the article for that information.
Cynthia Murrell, February 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Bing Goes Green, as in Dollar Bills and Brand New Logo
January 29, 2016
The article on Microsoft News titled Microsoft Releasing New Bing Logo Today briefly overviews the recent growth and profitability of the often mocked and overlooked search engine. Microsoft also updated Cortana lately, which is deeply connected to Bing search. So what will the new Bing logo look like? The article explains,
“In the new logo, Microsoft is switching its color scheme to green as it “is easier to see over yellow” and “b” in now in upper case. This new version of the logo will be used across various Microsoft apps and services. Speaking to AdAge, Rik van der Kooi, Microsoft’s corporate VP of advertiser and publisher solutions said that Bing is the only search engine that is experiencing steady, consistent growth and have increased our share for 26 consecutive quarters.”
The article also points out that it is Bing powering Yahoo, AOL, Apple Siri and several other services, from behind the scenes. The green logo looks less like an imitation of Google, especially with the capitalization. Perhaps the new logo is meant to be easier on the eyes, but it is also certainly trying to keep up the positive attention Bing has been receiving lately as 1/3 of the search market.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 29, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is Yahoo Going the Way of AOL?
January 25, 2016
Yahoo hired former Googler Marissa Mayer as its new CEO to turn the company around. The company is headed towards stormy waters again, which could leave only the ship’s hull. Yahoo could sell its main operating business and all that would be left is Yahoo Japan, Alibaba shares, and $5 billion in cash. Mayer would then get the boot, says South China Morning Post in the article, “Yahoo Destined For Tech Graveyard Due To Poor Choice In Chief Executive Officer.”
Yahoo has gone through five CEOs in the past decade and its current shares are trading well below value, making the company only worth at an estimated $2 billion.
Yahoo’s current problems began when the company was formed. Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo were great inventors, but they were inexperienced running a company. Yahoo failed to accept Microsoft’s offer and while it floundered, Google stole the search market.
“Determining the right kind of chief executive for a tech company at a particular stage of development represents the most frustrating and critical issue. The weakness of chief executives with a tech start-up or product background like Mayer is that they try to invent and innovate a large corporation out of a problem and into a breakthrough strategy.”
The article explains that Yahoo needed to be knocked down and then rebuilt from the ground up. A huge movement like that requires more from a tech manager who is only used to positive growth, praise, and giving huge benefits to staff.
This points out that people with different talents are needed to manage a company as well as the importance of a diverse team with varied experience. Some people are meant to invent and work in the tech field, others are meant to be business leaders.
Whitney Grace, January 25, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IBM and Yahoo Hard at Work on Real-Time Data Handling
January 7, 2016
The article titled What You Missed in Big Data: Real-time Intelligence on SiliconAngle speaks to the difficulties of handling the ever-increasing volumes of real-time data for corporations. Recently, IBM created supplementary stream process services including a machine learning engine that comes equipped with algorithm building capabilities. The algorithms aid in choosing relevant information from the numerous connected devices of a single business. The article explains,
“An electronics manufacturer, for instance, could use the service to immediately detect when a sensor embedded in an expensive piece of equipment signals a malfunction and automatically alert the nearest technician. IBM is touting the functionality as a way to cut through the massive volume of machine-generated signals produced every second in such environments, which can overburden not only analysts but also the technology infrastructure that supports their work.”
Yahoo has been working on just that issue, and lately open-sourced its engineers’ answer. In a demonstration to the press, the technology proved able to power through 100 million vales in under three seconds. Typically, such a high number would require two and a half minutes. The target of this sort of technology is measuring extreme numbers like visitor statistics. Accuracy takes a back seat to speed through estimation, but at such a speed it’s worth the sacrifice.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 7, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
DuckDuckGo Grows in 2015
December 30, 2015
Do you not love it when the little guy is able to compete with corporate giants? When it comes to search engines DuckDuckGo is the little guy, because unlike big search engines like Google and Yahoo it refuses to track its users browsing history and have targeted ads. According to Quartz, “DuckDuckGo, The Search Engine That Doesn’t Track Its Users, Grew More Than 70% This Year.” Through December 15, 2015, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion queries up from twelve million queries received during the same time period in 2014. DuckDuckGo, however, still has trouble cracking the mainstream..
Google is still the biggest search engine in the United States with more than one hundred million monthly searches, but DuckDuckGo only reached 325 million monthly searches in November 2015. The private search engine also has three million direct queries via desktop computers, but it did not share how many people used DuckDuckGo via a mobile device to protect its users’ privacy. Google, on the other hand, is happy to share its statistics as more than half of its searches come from mobile devices.
“What’s driving growth? DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, reached via email, credits partnerships launched in 2014 with Apple and Mozilla, and word of mouth. He also passes along a Pew study from earlier this year, where 40% of American respondents said they thought search engines ‘shouldn’t retain information about their activity.’… ‘Our biggest challenge is that most people have not heard of us,’ Weinberg says. ‘We very much want to break out into the mainstream.’”
DuckDuckGo offers an unparalleled service for searching. Weinberg stated the problem correctly that DuckDuckGo needs to break into the mainstream. Its current user base consists of technology geeks and those in “the know,” some might call them hipsters. If DuckDuckGo can afford it, how about an advertising campaign launched on Google Ads?
Whitney Grace, December 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Getting Smart About Cutting the Cable Cord
December 21, 2015
A few years ago, I read an article about someone who was fed up with streaming content because he wanted new shows and access to all the channels so they resubscribed to cable. I have to admit the easiest thing to do would be to pay a monthly cable bill and shell out additional fees for the premiere channels. The only problem is that cable and extra channels are quite expensive. It has since become easier to cut the cord.
One of the biggest problems viewers face is finding specific and new content. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon Prime are limited with licenses and their individual content and having to search each one is time consuming. Even worse is trying to type out a series name using a remote control instead of a keyboard. Technology to the rescue!
The Verge talks about “Yahoo’s New App Is A TV Guide For Cord Cutters” called Yahoo Video Guide that allows viewers to search by a name and instantly watch it.
“Whenever users find what they want to watch, they can click a button to “Stream Now,” and the app will automatically launch a subscription service that hosts the film. If the program isn’t available online, users can buy it, instead.”
The coolest feature is that if viewers want to channel surf all they do so with GIFs. The viewer picks a GIF that fits their mood and the app will sort out content from there.
Finally, all those moving images have a different function than entertaining reddit users.
Whitney Grace, December 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
New Patent for a Google PageRank Methodology
December 18, 2015
Google recently acquired a patent for a different approach to page ranking, we learn from “Recalculating PageRank” at SEO by the Sea. Though the patent was just granted, the application was submitted back in 2006. Writer Bill Slawski informs us:
“Under this new patent, Google adds a diversified set of trusted pages to act as seed sites. When calculating rankings for pages. Google would calculate a distance from the seed pages to the pages being ranked. A use of a trusted set of seed sites may sound a little like the TrustRank approach developed by Stanford and Yahoo a few years ago as described in Combating Web Spam with TrustRank (pdf). I don’t know what role, if any, the Yahoo paper had on the development of the approach in this patent application, but there seems to be some similarities. The new patent is: Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a Web-link graph.”
The theory behind trusted pages is that “good pages seldom point to bad ones.” The patent’s inventor, Nissan Hajaj, has been a Google senior engineer since 2004. See the write-up for the text of the patent, or navigate straight to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s entry on the subject.
Cynthia Murrell, December 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Harsh Criticism of Yahoo
September 24, 2015
Kill dear old Yahoo? IBTimes reports on some harsh words from an ivory-tower type in, “NYU Professor: Yahoo Ought to Be ‘Euthanised’ and Marissa Mayer’s Pregnancy Saved her Job.” It seems marketing professor Scott Galloway recently criticized the company, and its famous CEO, in a televised Bloomberg interview. In his opinion, any website with Yahoo’s traffic should be rolling in dough, and the company’s struggles are the result of mismanagement. As for his claim that the “most overpaid CEO in history” only retains her position due to her pregnancy? Reporter Mary-Ann Russon writes:
“Galloway says that Yahoo would not be willing to face the public backlash that would come from firing a woman in such a position of power who has just announced she is pregnant.
“This is not a stretch since there are still far fewer women in leadership positions than men – as of March 2015, only 24 of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies are women – and the issue with how companies perceive family planning remains a sore point for many career-minded women (Read: Gamechangers: Why multimillionaire ‘mom’ Marissa Mayer is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t).
“However, Galloway also pointed the finger of blame for Yahoo’s woes at its board, which he said has been a ‘lesson in poor corporate governance,’ since there have been five CEOs in the last seven years.”
Though Yahoo was a great success around the turn of the millennium, it has fallen behind as users migrate their internet usage to mobile devices (with that format’s smaller, cheaper ads). Though many still use its free apps, nowadays most of Yahoo’s revenue comes from its Alibaba investment.
So what does Galloway recommend? “It should be sold to Microsoft,” he declared. “We should put a bullet in this story called ‘Yahoo’.” Ouch. Can Yahoo reverse their fortunes, or is it too late for the veteran Internet company?
Cynthia Murrell, September 24, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
