Privacy fears over Facebook home

5 April 2013 Last updated at 05:46 ET

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Mark Zuckerberg: 'The home screen is really the soul of your phone'

Facebook's "home" software for Android phones could "destroy" privacy, warn industry watchers and analysts.

Unveiled on 4 April, home is a "wrapper" for Android and puts Facebook feeds on a phone's main screen.

But the detailed data that could be mined from home users could intrude on private life, commentators warned.

Many took issue with the claim that home put people, not apps, at the heart of the mobile experience, saying it would help Facebook sell ads.

Handset home

Home was shown off in a presentation given at Facebook's campus by the social network's founder Mark Zuckerberg. He said it was an attempt to do away with app-centred systems that were a legacy of the computer world in which people clicked on an icon to start a program.

Once installed on a phone, home takes over the lock screen and main display turning it into a live feed of information, notifications and images Facebook users are sharing.

The "always on" nature of home bothered industry watcher Om Malik from tech news website GigaOm who said it could be a route to gathering data about users that would otherwise be hard to find.

"This application erodes any idea of privacy," he wrote. "If you install this, then it is very likely that Facebook is going to be able to track your every move, and every little action."

Users of home could see their privacy "destroyed", he warned.

Harry McCracken at Time pointed out that many other apps can grab data like home but said it would be "comforting" to get confirmation from Facebook that it had no plans to datamine the lives of its users.

Their worries were echoed by Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch who said "The Facebookification of the mobile web is a threat to openness, to choice, to privacy - but only if you care about those things".

Ms Lomas wrote that home would create many winners and losers and said it was a way for Facebook gradually to take over more and more functions on phones. Home will have monthly updates and Ms Lomas expected many of those to use Facebook as the core controls for a handset.

She also wondered if home would be a success or prove unpopular with users.

"Facebook thinks it's more important to people than it actually is," Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, told Reuters.

"For the vast majority of people, Facebook just isn't the be-all and end-all of their mobile experience," he said. "It's just one part."

"I see a more apathetic response among Facebook users than Facebook might be expecting," he added.

Jan Dawson, senior telecoms analyst at Ovum, said home was the "next best thing" to creating a Facebook operating system for mobiles.

Mr Dawson added that the change would let Facebook track more of a user's behaviour on devices and to serve up ads.

"That presents the biggest obstacle to success for this experiment: Facebook's objectives and users' are once again in conflict," he said. "Users don't want more advertising or tracking, and Facebook wants to do more of both."

The software will be available via Google's Play Store as a download and will work only with phones running Android 4.0 or higher - this accounts for about 50% of all Android phones. Home will be available on 12 April in the US and soon after in other territories.

No information was given about whether home would be redeveloped to work with Apple or Microsoft phones.

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Libraries to store UK web content

5 April 2013 Last updated at 06:04 ET By David Sillito Arts Correspondent

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Richard Gibby from the British Library says there is a common belief that the average web page lasts just 75 days

Millions of tweets, Facebook status updates and even a blog about a bus shelter in Shetland are to be preserved for the nation.

The British Library and four other "legal deposit libraries'" have the right to collect and store everything that is published online in the UK.

It is estimated around a billion pages a year will be available for research.

It follows 10 years of planning and will also offer visitors access to material currently behind paywalls.

The other institutions involved are the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, the University Library, Cambridge and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

The archive will cover 4.8 million websites and will include magazines, books and academic journals as well as alternative sources of literature, news and comment such as Mumsnet, the Beano online, Stephen Hawking's website, and the unofficial armed forces' bulletin board, ARRSE.

Ben Sanderson from the British Library said while people may think information on the web lasts forever, huge amounts of research material has already disappeared.

He added the public had already "lost a lot of the material that was posted by the public during the 7/7 bombings".

MP's blog sites have also been lost following a death or an election defeat.

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Many Facebook comments are public and people don't realise they're publishing to the world"

End Quote Jim Killock Open Rights Group

Top 100 websites

Mr Sanderson explained that with much of public life having migrated to the online world, material that is now published physically gives only a part of the story and debate within modern Britain.

He said: "It will be impossible to tell for instance the story of the 2015 general election without accessing what appears on the web".

The new databases will cover all areas of interest, for example the website Style Scout - a fashion blog documenting London Street Fashion - will give historians a snapshot of what people were wearing in 2013.

As part of the launch of the process, the British Library has commissioned a survey of the top 100 websites that ought to be preserved for historians and researchers.

Among the sites recommended to keep material from are eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Tripadvisor and Rightmove.

Some other lesser known ones include the Anarchist Federation, the Dracula Society and The Dreamcast Junkyard - a blog dedicated to the community of gamers who continue to play Dreamcast games online, despite the fact they were officially discontinued in 2002.

The British Library is also asking for advice from the public as to which websites should be preserved to give an accurate picture to future generations.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told the BBC News website: "The idea of the British Library preserving published content from UK websites is a great one.

"My concern is that a lot of Facebook comments are public and people don't realise they're publishing to the world. That's Facebook's fault, not the British Library's - their user settings need to be changed in line with people's expectations.

"Twitter, on the other hand, is avowedly public - it's very clear you're publishing to the world."

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Smart bracelet protects aid workers

5 April 2013 Last updated at 07:09 ET

A hi-tech bracelet could soon be helping civil rights and aid workers at risk of being kidnapped or killed.

When triggered, the personal alarm uses phone and sat-nav technology to warn that its wearer is in danger.

Warnings are sent in the form of messages to Facebook and Twitter to rally support and ensure people do not disappear without trace.

The first bracelets are being given out this week and funding is being sought to make many more.

The bracelets have been developed by the Civil Rights Defenders campaign group in a bid to help workers in war zones and other areas of conflict.

The chunky bracelet has mobile phone technology buried within it that can send prepared messages when the gadget is triggered.

Alerts can be sent manually by a rights worker if they feel under threat or are triggered automatically if the bracelet is forcefully removed. The alarm sends out information about its owner and where they were when they were attacked. Other staff nearby will also be alerted so they can start to take action to help anyone in distress.

Civil Rights Defenders wants people to sign up to monitor the bracelets of individual rights workers via social media. It hopes the global involvement will act as a deterrent to anyone planning attacks on aid workers.

"Most of us, given the chance, would like to help others in danger," said Civil Rights Defenders' executive director Robert Hardh. "These civil rights defenders are risking their lives for others to have the right to vote, or to practise religion or free speech."

Those who monitor bracelets can also help bring pressure to bear on governments to find or release people abducted or jailed. In total, 55 bracelets will be given out by the end of 2014.

The rights group started work on the gadget in the wake of the kidnapping and murder of Chechen rights worker Natalia Estemirova in 2009. Ms Estemirova had been involved in documenting the alleged abuse of civilians by government-backed militias.

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Film studios seek takedown privacy

5 April 2013 Last updated at 07:22 ET

Two film studios have asked Google to take down links to messages sent by them requesting the removal of links connected to film piracy.

Google receives 20 million "takedown" requests, officially known as DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices, a month. They are all published online.

Recent submissions by Fox and Universal Studios include requests for the removal of previous takedown notices.

Google declined to comment.

The notices are requests for individual web addresses to be removed from Google's search engine results because they contain material uploaded without the permission of the copyright holders.

By making the notices available, Google is unintentionally highlighting the location of allegedly pirated material, say some experts.

"It would only take one skilled coder to index the URLs from the DMCA notices in order to create one of the largest pirate search engines available," wrote Torrent Freak editor Ernesto Van Der Sar on the site.

Similar notices have been received by the Lionsgate studio, makers of the Twilight movies and The Hunger Games, and tech giant Microsoft, according to Torrent Freak.

Mr Van Der Sar added, however, that the requests may well have been a "by-product of the automated tools that are used to find infringing URLs" and not deliberately included.

According to its transparency report, Google complied with 97% of the requests it received for links to material published outside copyright to be removed from its search engine between June and December 2011.

The website Chilling Effects, a collaboration between a number of US law schools and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, publishes the notices, and is still visible via Google Search.

David Petrarca, who directed a couple of episodes of HBO drama Game of Thrones, the most pirated TV series of 2012, was reported to have said at a literary festival in Australia that piracy gave the series a "cultural buzz" but has since denied that he is in favour of the activity.

"I am 100 per cent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I think most people would be willing to pay for a show they love."

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Sky message switch resurrects emails

5 April 2013 Last updated at 10:30 ET

Many UK customers of Sky are being deluged with thousands of old and deleted messages as the company switches email providers.

In recent weeks Sky has stopped using Google to provide email services in favour of Yahoo.

But the change has caused trouble as many customers are reporting that formerly deleted messages have been delivered again and again.

Some have spent hours clearing the messages out of overflowing inboxes.

Discussion forums on Sky's support site have been filling up with messages from disgruntled customers complaining about the switch. The company, which has more than four million UK broadband customers, changed from Google to Yahoo this week.

The switch has seemingly resurrected many messages users formerly deleted with some reporting that they had to go through thousands of messages before deleting them for a second time. Some unlucky customers had to suffer thousands of deleted messages being re-delivered several times.

Many others said the switch had wiped out email settings, deleted aliases and re-set filters. Customers called on Sky to do a better job of responding to complaints and explaining why old messages were turning up.

On its support site, Sky acknowledged the problems the changeover had caused.

It said it was aware of the issue and had "an ongoing investigation and are working to resolve it". It pledged to provide an update late on 5 April about its efforts to fix the problem.

It said the problem emerged during migration as it was copying all customer emails to Yahoo's mail servers. The issue should recede as mail services were synchronised, it said.

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Youth PCC's tweets 'not checked'

8 April 2013 Last updated at 03:49 ET

Recruitment procedures may be reviewed after Britain's first youth police and crime commissioner had to apologise for her comments on Twitter.

Paris Brown, 17, said she was "wildly exaggerating" in "stupid, immoral" tweets posted when she was 14, 15 and 16, before her appointment.

Kent police and crime commissioner (PCC) Ann Barnes said recruiters did not check her tweets or Facebook page.

"Perhaps that is a lesson for the future," she said.

"We went through a perfectly normal recruitment process. We had her vetted by the force and nobody normally looks through anybody's Twitter feed.

"Social networking sites are a no-go area for most of us adults.

"A lot of young people use them and say the most horrible things. They don't even think about what they are saying and I think this is what's happened with Paris."

The Mail on Sunday reported Ms Brown boasted about her sex life, drug taking and drinking on her account @vilulabelle on the social networking website.

The Twitter page has since been removed.

'Better person'

Paris, from Sheerness, has apologised and said the comments, posted between the ages of 14 and 16, had been "misinterpreted".

"All teenagers make mistakes, all teenagers think at one point 'oh I'm annoyed, write something stupid'… it's an age thing," she said on Sunday.

Ms Barnes said she had spoken at length to Ms Brown and would stand by her.

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Ann Barnes received offensive tweets from adults following the row over Ms Brown

"She will be a better person for this," she said.

"I think she will be able to relate more to young people.

"Won't it be good if, from her own experience, she can try to get over to young people that [some things] they say on Twitter or Facebook are unacceptable?"

Ms Barnes said Ms Brown was selected for the £15,000 job from 164 applicants. The youth PCC post is to be funded from Ms Barnes's own £85,000 salary.

Ms Barnes said the tweets were rude, offensive, unpleasant and unacceptable.

"I don't condone them for one single solitary minute," she said

"Now that [Paris] knows and realises just how deeply offensive what she wrote is, she is really distraught about it, and so she should be.

"I have had some tweets myself about this, with people complaining about me in the most rude, offensive, vulgar language.

"I have had to delete them and those are from people who are probably my age."

Ms Brown, who is currently an apprentice at Swale Borough Council, is due to begin the one-year PCC post in July or August.

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Gransnet launches local service

8 April 2013 Last updated at 05:58 ET

The website Gransnet, an online community for the over-50s, is launching a series of local sites.

The new service has received money from the Nominet Trust, a charity which funds technology projects with a social purpose.

So far 20 "local editors", all aged over 50 themselves, have been recruited by the site.

Ofcom figures suggest that 7.5 million UK adults have never been online, and two fifths of those are aged over 75.

"Many older people in the UK are still not online, leaving them potentially isolated and at a disadvantage," said Martha Lane Fox, the UK's Digital Champion.

Baroness Lane-Fox said she hoped the local Gransnet service, which will contain information about events, classes, volunteering opportunities and other activities relevant to specific areas, would offer an incentive for more older people to get online.

The first wave of areas to receive the local service includes Blackburn, Edinburgh, Oxfordshire and Worthing, but "anonymous locals" have already started their own versions in Lancashire, Warwickshire, Exeter, Kent, Leeds and Liverpool, according to Gransnet.

"Our members have already started meeting up of their own accord and local sites will make that much easier," said Gransnet founder Geraldine Bedell.

"Occasionally in the past our members have admitted to sometimes feeling lonely... Gransnet Local will extend the support and friendship we offer online into meet-ups and will provide a forum to discuss everything that's going on locally."

Author Kathy Lette, TV presenter Judy Finnegan and actor Timothy Spall are among the high-profile names who have contributed to the Gransnet website.

Recent popular discussion topics include "does sexual fidelity matter?" and "large families", and some of the responses do highlight generational differences.

"I know of a woman who discovered that her husband was being unfaithful because she realised that someone was darning his socks," is the current "quote of the week".

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Skype trojan forces Bitcoin mining

8 April 2013 Last updated at 06:51 ET

A trojan that can hijack a computer and force it into mining for Bitcoins - the virtual currency - has been spreading via Skype.

Antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs said attackers sent messages in various languages translating to "this my favourite picture of you".

The message included a malicious link which was, at its peak, being accessed more than 2,000 times every hour.

The value of Bitcoin has grown massively in recent weeks.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin exchange website Mt Gox has the currency listed as being worth $186 (£121).

CPU abuse

Unlike other currencies, Bitcoins are not issued by a central bank or other centralised authority.

Instead users are rewarded in a process called "mining", in which coins are issued to a user when they solve a complicated mathematical problem using their computer.

The trojan hijacks a victim's machine and makes it mine for Bitcoins on the attacker's behalf. The greater the number of machines mining, the quicker coins will be harvested.

"Most of the potential victims live in Italy then Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, Ukraine and others," wrote Dmitry Bestuzhev from Kaspersky Labs in a blog post.

The attack "dropper" originates from a server in India, but once installed transmits information back to a control centre in Germany, Mr Bestuzhev wrote.

The trojan is able to carry out many tasks, he added, but taking over computers for Bitcoin mining appears to be its primary function.

"It abuses the CPU of infected machines to mine Bitcoins for the criminal.

"The campaign is quite active. If you see your machine is working hard, using all available CPU resources, you may be infected."

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Wikileaks publishes 1.7m US records

8 April 2013 Last updated at 09:08 ET

Wikileaks has published more than 1.7 million US diplomatic and intelligence reports from the 1970s.

They include allegations that former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi was a middleman in an arms deal and the first impressions of eventual British PM Margaret Thatcher.

The documents have not been leaked and are available to view at the US national archives.

Wikileaks says it is releasing the documents in searchable form.

Much of the work has been carried out by the website's founder Julian Assange while he has been holed up at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Mr Assange took refuge in the embassy last June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two female ex-Wikileaks supporters in 2010.

He denies the allegations, and has said they are politically motivated and part of a smear campaign against him and his whistle-blowing website.

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If anyone had been wondering what Julian Assange was doing inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, we now have at least part of the answer. The new release of 1.7 million documents is larger in size than the 250,000 diplomatic cables he became most famous for publishing. However, it is likely to be much less significant in terms of impact.

The diplomatic cables were recent - covering the handful of years running up to 2010 - and they were supposed to be secret. The newly released documents though cover a much earlier period, from the mid-1970s. They were once also secret but have since been declassified. The innovation is the placing of these documents into one place and in a database which can be searched by the public. That makes them accessible in a way not seen in the past.

Wikileaks made headlines around the world in 2010 after it released more than 250,000 leaked US cables.

'Trifle patronising'

Mr Assange told Britain's Press Association that the latest collection, entitled the Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), reveal the "vast range and scope" of US diplomatic activity around the world.

The data comprises diplomatic cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence running from the beginning of 1973 to the end of 1976.

Much of the correspondence is either written by or sent to Henry Kissinger, who was US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser during that period.

It includes claims, being widely reported by the Indian media, that Rajiv Gandhi - of India's most famous political family - was employed by the Swedish firm Saab-Scandia as it tried to sell its Viggen fighter jet to India.

Mr Gandhi was working as a commercial pilot and not in politics himself at the time.

A US diplomat is quoted in a February 1976 cable as saying: "We would have thought a transport pilot is not the best expert to rely upon in evaluating a fighter plane, but then we are speaking of a transport pilot who has another and perhaps more relevant qualification."

Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister in 1984 and was assassinated in 1991.

Saab-Scandia did not win its bid to sell Viggen fighter jets to India; the contract went to Britain's Jaguar planes.

Another cable, dated February 1975, from London sets out "some first impressions" of new leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday.

The diplomat wrote that "she has a quick, if not profound, mind, and works hard to master the most complicated brief".

She is "crisp and a trifle patronizing" with the media, but "honest and straight-forward" with her colleagues, "if not excessively considerate of their vanities", the diplomat wrote.

"The personification of a British middle class dream come true," she is the "genuine voice of a beleaguered bourgeoise [sic], anxious about its eroding economic power and determined to arrest society's seemingly inexorable trend towards collectivism", the cable said.

The diplomat noted she had "acquired a distinctively upper middle class personal image", which might damage her chances of becoming prime minister, but said she should not be underestimated.

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UK-designed Gamestick device delayed

8 April 2013 Last updated at 12:00 ET

The UK-designed Gamestick handheld console, due to launch this month, has been delayed due to "high demand".

The Android-powered device, which was funded by a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, will now launch in June, manufacturer Playjam said.

In a statement, the company said it was victim "of the success we have created".

The console faces competition from other similar products, including the Ouya which began shipping in March.

Gamestick will be sold exclusively at Game stores in the UK, with other retail partners set up in 26 other countries.

Over $600,000 (£392,000) was raised when Playjam placed the Gamestick on the Kickstarter website.

In a message to its 5,691 backers, the team explained the setback.

"The main production run has gone from a few thousand units to tens of thousands of units. This has meant that we have had to change production methods and move to high-volume tooling."

Angry backers

The company now predicts the first backers will receive their consoles in the last week of June - more than three months later than planned.

Many backers reacted angrily to the update.

"The biggest problem with this update is that there is no apology for the delay to all the Kickstarters who are eagerly waiting for Gamestick to ship," wrote one backer, Sandesh Deshmukh.

"Looks like Gamestick is taking its backers for granted and I do see a hint of arrogance in that attitude."

Others lamented that due to their nature, Kickstarter projects are prone to delays.

"Shame about the news, but I can live with it," wrote Simon Dick.

"It's not as if Kickstarter is like placing an order on Amazon, I'd be way more concerned if they were silent about anything."

Upon its release, the Gamestick will enter a small but rapidly growing market for cheap games consoles.

The Ouya console, also a Kickstarter project, began shipping last month.

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