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Browser Tools Aim to Warn Surfers of Spyware, Spam
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "New Web tools aim to protect surfers by flagging sites that are associated with viruses, spam or other scourges, but they sometimes disagree over whether a site is safe. From the article: 'Scandoo's service sometimes misses the mark in its efforts to flag adult content. On a recent day, it gave a green rating to the web site for Maxim Magazine's U.K. division, even though it contains nudity. It gave a red rating to the magazine's U.S. site, which contains no nudity. After an inquiry from the Online Journal, [executive Dan] Nadir said Scandoo decided to change the rating, reclassifying the U.K. site as red by default. "It was clear that it was misclassified, so we classified it correctly," Mr. Nadir said. A spokesman for Maxim Online said the discrepancy showed Scandoo's technology is "clearly broken."'"
No, it may have something to do with what is acceptable regarding nudity in Europe vs the US. Bare breasts is not apparently a big deal with our friends across the pond, but over here, it's cause to bring out the torches and pitchforks. Besides, last I saw Maxim (the US version) it contained no real nudity at all.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
The problem with programs like this is that they simply can't catch everything. This in itself isn't bad until you have users which rely on them. Once users rely on these tools, they let their guard down, and they immediately trust anything that the tool says is okay instead of remaining suspicious.
These are great tools, but they should add to personal judgement rather than replace it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Creating safety on the Internet is not reached through the means of blacklists, spamlists and all that, this only reduces the problem to a minor degree thus allowing people to stick their head in the sand, sometimes totally unaware of whats really going on. If you really want to start making progress you'll be trying to make the people aware of the problem and point them to their responsibility when they logon to the Net.
/also/ make them realize that their precious connection as well as their PC can also come to a grinding halt.
Not that it makes a big difference but the moment some people finally realize that when they're being sloppy with their computer it allows 3rd parties to compromise it resulting in abuse towards others. Even this isn't always enough ("so? as long as nothing happens to me, I got nothing to hide") so
Only after you've realized this will you have a good basis to take it to the next step, which is IMO actually setting up legal grounds for retaliation. But quite frankly I don't see this happening sometime soon. First due to the overhead, second the amount of money which is being made here on all levels (even the "good guys" trying to protect us really aren't moral knights or something) and finally.. Most people will remain stupid.
But what the fuck does nudity have to do with spam and viruses? Can we cut the bullshit, and keep the anti-virus, anti-spam and I'm-a-prude-please-don't-expose-me-to-the-natural- world software separate? Some of us are grownups and just because we don't like spam or viruses doesn't me we disapprove of nudity.
Nathan's blog
This kind of tool is cool and all, but it doesn't solve all problems. There are a bunch of users out there who surf the internet with the "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT" attitude, on purpose. These people download anything and everything with absolute disregard. Why do they do this? Here are some of the bigger reasons:
1) It's not their computer (their employer's, internet cafe's, school's, library's, etc.) so they don't care.
2) They go around with the thinking, "I'm nobody important, so why would they hack me? They only hack VIPs."
These users are JUST AS BIG a problem as the hackers, phishers, and scammers, for they enable and encourage botnets, theft, etc. Too often these idiot end users and incompetent systems admins are left alone. I say we go for a "tough love" policy. F*ck around the net? Get your computer/network completely blocked. Want to get it unblocked? Read a long-ass pamphlet regarding the safeguarding of your computer/network, take a quiz, and sign a paper agreeing to follow stricter guidelines. If you get warned repeatedly, you're either fined or taken offline permanently.
Now THAT, would get everyone's attention, and force morons off the net, where they don't belong.
eTrade SUCKS
works for plain old domain names that only use characters you can find on a US keyboard, but with support for internationalized domain names with unicode that isn't going to work for much longer. A spoofer could substitute a non-ASCII character in place of an ascii one since some foreign alphabets have characters that look similar to ones in the plain old Roman alphabet. Though I guess the font used by your browser would be partially to blame. Still, don't think you're safe just because you can recognize that s145hd0t.org is a spoofed URL.