Written By Unknown on Senin, 23 Maret 2015 | 09.10
Brenda Leyland was said to use the handle @sweepyface on Twitter
A woman who "trolled" Madeleine McCann's family on Twitter killed herself days after she was challenged by reporters, an inquest concluded.
Brenda Leyland, 63, from Leicestershire, was found dead after she was confronted by Martin Brunt from Sky News over the abuse.
Mr Brunt told the inquest in Leicester he had been "devastated" by her death.
Coroner Catherine Mason concluded she had killed herself and called for sales of helium to be regulated.
Confronted at home
The inquest heard that divorcee Mrs Leyland, of Burton Overy, posted 400 tweets about the McCann family between November 2013 and September 2014.
Madeleine went missing while on a family holiday in Portugal in 2007.
Mr Brunt told the inquest he and a cameraman confronted Mrs Leyland after Sky News obtained a dossier of alleged Twitter "trolls" handed to police.
She initially told him she was "entitled" to send the messages, later inviting him into her home for an interview.
Gerry McCann, with his wife Kate, previously told the BBC more needed to be done about online abuse
He told the hearing he kept her informed of his plans - which included picturing but not naming her - because he was aware it could have an impact.
Asked by the coroner if there was anything which indicated a concern for her life, Mr Brunt said: "No, but when I asked her how she was, she said 'oh I have thought about ending it all but I am feeling better - I have had a drink and spoken to my son'".
He said he thought her comments were a throwaway remark and had no idea about her history of depression or a previous attempt at suicide.
She was found dead in a Leicester hotel after an overdose on 4 October.
"I was devastated, I still am and the enormity of what's happened will always be with me," Mr Brunt added.
'Panic and fear'
The court also heard evidence from her son Ben, who said he believed the confrontation had been the final straw.
In a statement, he said he believed she was "completely destroyed" by what had occurred.
He said he heard "panic and fear" in her voice when he spoke to her after the Sky interview.
A Sky News spokesman said the news team had followed its editorial guidelines "in a responsible manner", adding the story was "firmly in the public interest".
"Brenda Leyland's tragic death highlights the unforeseeable human impact that the stories we pursue can have, and Sky News would like to extend its sincere condolences to her family," the Sky statement said.
None of the messages sent by Mrs Leyland were directed personally at the McCanns, who have "no significant presence" on social media.
The FTC probe ended with Google changing the way it handled some search parameters
Google narrowly escaped being prosecuted by the US government in 2012, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had been investigating complaints from Google's rivals about its dominance of the internet search industry.
An internal report obtained by the paper showed that some FTC officials had wanted to prosecute.
Instead, the regulator persuaded Google to change the way its software worked.
Google said the "exhaustive" review showed there was no harm to competitors or consumers.
The FTC began its probe of the search market in 2011 following complaints from Google's competitors.
During the investigation the regulator's officials gathered nine million documents and obtained evidence from firms such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Amazon, who had accused Google of taking content from their web pages.
The information Google gleaned was allegedly used by the firm to improve its own search ranking system.
The evidence gathered was enough to convince some FTC investigators that legal action should be taken, said the paper.
However when the regulator's investigation ended, the agency concluded that the company had not abused its market position to hurt rivals.
Even so, the FTC arranged a deal with the company to end some of the practices that its rivals had complained about.
The report was inadvertently sent to the Wall Street Journal when it asked for details of a separate FTC investigation.
The agency has not commented on the accidental release of the report.
In a statement Google said: "After an exhaustive 19-month review, covering nine million pages of documents and many hours of testimony, the FTC staff and all five commissioners agreed that there was no need to take action on how we rank and display search results."
It added: "Speculation about potential consumer and competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong."
The website said it was under attack and needed help
A campaign organisation that circumvents Chinese website blocks has said it has come under distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).
Greatfire called the attack, which aimed to take sites offline, an attempt to enforce censorship.
It said it did not know who was behind it, but pointed out that it coincided with pressure from Chinese authorities.
One expert called the attack "censorship by brute force", saying it could put Greatfire out of business.
Greatfire has tracked which sites are blocked in China and recently began offering a mirroring service to try to restore them for Chinese users.
Protection
Similar to the campaign started by Reporters Without Borders last week, it set up content distribution networks (CDNs) using the same hosting services as many entities on which China relies.
Those networks created copies of banned websites and made them available to Chinese users.
In theory, the method provided protection to Greatfire because, to be sure that the blocked websites remained inaccessible, attackers would have to take down the whole hosting service - including many sites that China wanted to remain live.
However, in practice, the attackers managed to find the individual URLs of the sites the authorities sought to block - which are normally masked - and bombarded them, in a more targeted attack, said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.
'Attack'
"It is difficult not to conclude that someone, most likely a government annoyed that Greatfire has enabled previously censored websites to neuter their censoring technology, has decided to fight back," he told the BBC.
He added that keeping the sites online would require the purchase of more bandwidth, adding that he consequently believed the Chinese authorities wanted to put financial pressure on Greatfire.
"The big question will be whether the big companies that run the CDNs... will actually key the charges Greatfire is being forced to incur, or whether they believe the censorship avoiding method should be supported when under attack in this way."
'Help'
In a statement published on its website, Greatfire said the attacks started on 17 March and "we are receiving up to 2.6 billion requests per hour which is about 2,500 times more than normal levels".
It said: "We are under attack and we need help.
"Likely in response to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), we've experienced our first ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
"This tactic is used to bring down web pages by flooding them with lots of requests - at the time of writing they number 2.6 billion requests per hour. Websites are not equipped to handle that kind of volume so they usually 'break' and go offline."
'Anti-China'
"We don't know who is behind this attack. However, the attack coincides with increased pressure on our organisation over the last few months.
"The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) publicly called us 'an anti-China website set up by an overseas anti-China organisation'."
The BBC was not able to verify the identity of the alleged attacker.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.
Monica Lewnisky's speech at the Ted conference was given a standing ovation
Monica Lewinsky has taken to the stage at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference to call for a more compassionate internet.
The former White House intern's love affair with President Bill Clinton made headlines around the world in 1998.
Describing herself as one of the first victims of cyberbullying, she said the internet had created a culture where people enjoyed viewing other's shame online.
Her speech received a standing ovation.
It is only the second time she has spoken publicly since disappearing from the public eye in 2005. In October she spoke at Forbes' Under 30 Summit.
She began her speech by joking she was the only 40-something who did not wish to be 22 again.
"At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss. At the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences."
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was one of the first major stories to break online
The internet, she said, had made her own personal humiliation far worse.
"In 1998, after having been swept up in an improbable romance, I was then swept up into the eye of a political, legal and media maelstrom like we had never seen before."
And this particular scandal was, she said, "brought to you by the digital revolution".
"When the story broke it broke online. It was one of the first times that the traditional news had been usurped by the internet for a major news story," she told the Ted audience.
Although there was no social media in 1998 as we know it today, images of Ms Lewinsky famously wearing a black beret quickly went viral online as did comments posted in response to online articles while jokes based on the details of her affair were emailed around the world.
"I went from being a private figure to being a publicly humiliated one worldwide. There were mobs of virtual stone-throwers."
"I was branded a tart, a slut, a whore, a bimbo. I lost my reputation and my dignity and I almost lost my life."
"Seventeen years ago there was no name for it but now we call it cyberbullying or online harassment," she said.
UK charity Childline reported a 87% increase in calls related to cyberbullying last year and, according the children's charity NSPCC, one in five children is now bullied online.
Last year, a study conducted in the Netherlands found that cyberbullying was more likely to lead young people to suicide than its offline equivalent.
Cyberbullying is a growing problem and can have devastating consequences
What is cyberbullying?
It can include:
Texting scary or rude messages by mobile phone
Sending unpleasant photos by mobile phone
Using online message boards, chatrooms or social networks to post cruel messages
Deleting the victim's name or ignoring their messages on groups or social networks
What to do about cyberbullying
Tell someone, be it a family member, teacher or other trusted adult, if something upsets you
Don't respond to messages but save evidence
Don't take everything to heart; know yourself
Don't give out your own or friends' personal information
Be careful about what you write and post online
Know how to block or report people
Don't add to the problem by liking or sharing an unkind image or comment
Ms Lewinsky told the story of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, who was a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey when his roommate set up a webcam and captured video of him in bed with another man.
The resulting online harassment led Mr Clementi to suicide, jumping from the George Washington Bridge.
"Tyler's tragic, senseless death was a turning point for me," said Ms Lewinsky.
"It served to re-contextualise my experiences. I began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different … every day online, people -especially young people who are not developmentally equipped to handle this - are so abused and humiliated that they can't imagine living to the next day. And some don't."
That, she said, was unacceptable. She urged people to approach their online communications with more compassion.
"Post a positive comment, imagine walking a mile in someone else's headline," she said.
Culture of shame
Youngsters are increasingly falling victim to cyberbullies
Technology, she said, had extended the "echo of embarrassment".
"It used to only extend as far as your family, your school, your village, but now it is to the whole online community.
"The more shame, the more clicks and the more clicks the more advertising dollars. We are making money off the back of suffering."
She pointed to recent cases such as the leaking of nude photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence.
"One gossip website had five million hits for this one," she said.
And when Sony Pictures was hacked, the private emails between executives and actors were the ones that garnered the most interest because they were ones that would lead to "the most public humiliation" she said.
The internet had made people numb to the suffering and humiliation of others, she concluded.
Ms Lewinsky ended her talk on a personal note, explaining why she had decided to speak out after a decade of silence.
"It was time to stop tip-toeing around my past, it was time to take back my narrative and let others know that you can survive it."
Facebook extended its suicide prevention programme in February
A man who posted a hoax suicide threat on Facebook ending up being arrested and put in a psychiatric institution for nearly three days.
Shane Tusch, 48, a part-time electrician from San Mateo, California, said he wanted to test Facebook's revamped suicide prevention programme.
But after threatening to hang himself from the Golden Gate Bridge, a reader alerted police who then arrested him.
Mr Tusch says he was denied "any humane care" and subjected to medical tests.
Facebook locked his account as well.
Facebook extended its suicide prevention programme in February, enabling concerned readers to flag up posts that indicate someone may be suicidal and get help from trained professionals.
Once alerted, Facebook contacts the potentially suicidal person the next time he or she logs on and offers ways to get help.
Or if Facebook thinks there is an "imminent threat" it may contact local police and ask them to carry out a "welfare check".
But Mr Tusch, who is married with two children, said that his experience illustrates the dangers of the social media platform's approach.
"Facebook needs to leave suicide prevention to family and friends," he wrote on his Facebook page.
"There are no checks and balances! I was only proving a point that Facebook should not be involved in this. . . "
The person who flagged up his "suicidal" post was almost "a complete stranger", he maintained.
US lobby group Consumer Watchdog agreed with Mr Tusch's concerns and wrote a letter to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg asking him to "suspend the suicide prevention program until it is fully protective of the rights of all individuals and contains safeguards against abuse".
Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court wrote: "Facebook facilitated this man's loss of freedom for 70 hours and other innocent victims will be caught in Facebook's web if you do not improve the suicide prevention program's procedures."
Mr Tusch says that prior to his fake suicide threat, which used protracted disagreements with his lender Bank of America as a pretext, he had not used Facebook for two years.
Facebook was not immediately available for comment.
Teachers, civil servants and police staff are among 264 people who have been charged in a probe targeting child abuse images online.
A total of 745 suspected paedophiles have been arrested in the National Crime Agency's Operation Notarise, launched just over a year ago.
The agency said 518 children had been protected as a result.
Of those charged, 47 were employed in positions of trust or voluntary roles with access to children, the NCA said.
Those facing charges include:
16 teachers, school or college staff
Six government workers, including three civil servants
One retired magistrate
One person working in the office of a police and crime commissioner
One person retired from "police service" work
One former UK Border Agency officer
The charges range from taking indecent images of children to committing sexual offences.
In addition 16 other people have been cautioned by police.
Operation Notarise is the largest UK inquiry into people sharing child abuse images online since Operation Ore in 2002.
NCA director general Keith Bristow said the organisation's response to the problem was "improving significantly", but warned "further difficult lessons" may lay ahead.
He said the volume of work related to online paedophile cases had placed a strain on investigators and said the criminal justice system may need to adapt to cope with the scale of offending.
Mr Bristow expressed concerns about the ability to identify suspects quickly enough by "resolving" their internet protocol (IP) addresses, and establishing evidence to bring perpetrators to justice.
He added: "We are going to need to think differently about what the criminal justice process might look like for some of these people.
"We absolutely don't subscribe to the view that people who have accessed images should be offered an outcome that falls short of criminal justice outcomes.
"But our judgment is that criminal justice intervention will potentially need to offer some sort of support to prevent people from reoffending."
He said investigations increasingly took into account the risk posed by individuals who access images of abuse.
The Pentagon said the threat was unverified and would be investigated
The US military has called for "vigilance" after an online threat was allegedly made by Islamic State (IS) to about 100 of its personnel.
A list of names and addresses was posted on a website linked to the group alongside a call for them to be killed.
The Pentagon said the threat was unverified and would be investigated.
The IS-linked group said it obtained the information by hacking servers and databases, but US officials said most of the data was in the public domain.
A US security source told the BBC that those on the list were being contacted.
The group, which called itself the Islamic State Hacking Division, said the personnel named had participated in US missions against IS.
It urged its supporters in the US to "take the final step" and "deal with" those named.
A US defence official told US media: "I can't confirm the validity of the information, but we are looking into it."
Where key countries stand on IS
Why IS seeks to expand
A US-led coalition is training local forces in Iraq
US Marine Corps spokesman Lt Col John Caldwell said: "Vigilance and force protection considerations remain a priority for commanders and their personnel."
He recommended that marines "check their online/social footprint, ensuring privacy settings are adjusted to limit the amount of available personal information".
The US and its allies have been conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq since last September.
IS has seized large swathes of territory in both countries. Its brutal tactics, including mass killings and abductions of members of religious and ethnic minorities, have sparked outrage across the world.
Insurance can help firms assess risks and pay for clean-up, said the report
About 98% of large UK firms lack insurance that could help them recover from a serious cyber-attack, says a UK government report.
They lack cover even though 81% suffered a security breach in the last 12 months, it said.
The report aims to convince firms to buy insurance to help them manage escalating cyber-threats
Insurance can show companies how to cope better with attacks and understand the risks they face, it said.
The report revealed that a tiny fraction of large UK firms have taken out insurance that could help pay the cost of recovering from a serious security breach. In smaller firms, insurance was almost unknown, it found.
A separate security survey, released in 2014, suggests that the average cost of the most serious security breach large firms face every year is between £600,000 and £1.15m to clean up and remedy. For small firms, costs are £65,000-£115,000.
"The cyber-threat remains one of the most significant - and growing - risks facing UK business," said Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude in a statement.
About half of the chief executives interviewed for the report did not even know it was possible to buy cyber-insurance, found the report. Insurance firm Marsh helped write the report which emerged from work the government carried out in late 2014 on risks facing UK business.
Mr Maude added that over the last few years, UK industry had improved its understanding of the dangers it faced from cyber-thieves but more still needed to be done.
That understanding could be helped by insurance, he said, because it could help highlight where firms were weakest and pass on information about the most serious threats.
In a bid to help companies improve their awareness of the risks they face, the report said that insurers were now being encouraged to apply government advice on safe computing when they assess a firm as they draw up an insurance policy or contract.
"Insurers can help guide and incentivise significant improvements in cybersecurity practice across industry by asking the right questions of their customers on how they handle cyber-threats," said Mr Maude.
Taylor Swift has bought the web domain names TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult.
The addresses are part of a public sale by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The web domain names go on sale to the public on 1 June but some stars and companies are being given the opportunity to buy them ahead of then.
Microsoft Office has registered Office.porn and Office.adult. Domains can cost up to $2,500 (£1,674).
However, .porn and .adult are $99 (£66).
Richard Branson and Stringfellows are other names to have bought .adult and .porn domains, according to ICANN.
The American non-profit group expanded the number of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, such as .com and .net in 2011.
There were 22 four years ago but now there are nearly 550 with new ones released every month.
The group says different endings to web addresses can help users arrive at their destination quicker because they know what they're getting.
It also says websites ending in .porn or .adult are easier for parents to monitor and block.
Another domain name being released in June is .sucks.
In January Taylor Swift applied to trademark five phrases from her latest album 1989 with the US government.
"Party like it's 1989", "this sick beat", "cause we never go out of style", "could show you incredible things" and "nice to meet you, where you been?" were all apparently registered by the singer with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
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Users are now being taken automatically to the new website
The desktop version of the BBC News website has been switched off, and all visitors are now being directed to a newer, responsive design.
The new site adapts its layout depending on what type of device it is being used on, be it a desktop PC, tablet or mobile.
The BBC said the move reflected the change in how the majority of visitors were consuming their news.
However, some users said the design felt "empty" and "too bright".
Desktop visitors to the BBC News site have been prompted to try out the new responsive design for the past few weeks - but now the desktop-only site has been switched off for good.
Users are being automatically taken to the new-look site.
"We now see 65% of our visitors to the website are on mobile or tablet devices," said Robin Pembrooke, the BBC's head of product for the News and Weather sites.
The new design adapts to different types of devices
"The old site that we had, which is now four-plus years old, was really designed with PCs in mind. Moving to a fully responsive solution which works across mobile, tablets and desktops is the way to go. It means that we can have one solution that is a web solution for all of our users."
The new layout gives higher priority to video content as well as analytical articles by BBC reporters.
Mr Pembrooke said that while the like-for-like running costs of the BBC News website will be lower, the amount the corporation spends on online will not be reduced.
"We can now start to introduce new features such as personalisation with the same size of development team," he said.
Starting point
A post on the BBC Internet Blog gives more detail on the changes and invites feedback from the public.
Initial reactions to the new design were mixed.
User almamatters on the BBC Internet Blog described the new design as "an unmitigated disaster" while another, Josh Tumath, said, "It's great to use and so quick to load."
The move to responsive follows the launch of the new app earlier this year
User JoJo wrote: "Please don't do this."
Common among the complaints was that the site is too bright. Mr Pembrooke said Monday's launch was a starting point.
"I think we'll see that evolve over time. What this opens up is the possibility to start experimenting with different types of colour palettes as well - for different types of content.
"This first release we feel we've got it to the point where we've got parity with the existing site, but what it opens up is now the ability to start adding in a whole range of new features such as being able to introduce topic pages and the ability for us to start introducing more personalised features on the website."
'Big bang'
Online news veteran Martin Belam, currently editor of new formats at the Daily Mirror, told the BBC that redesigns of major websites are often met with shock and anger among some regular users.
"Having gone through several big redesigns at the BBC, Guardian and the Mirror over the years I have a mental checklist of the feedback I'm expecting to get each time: "If it ain't broke don't fix it", "It looks like something Fisher-Price built", "Did you let the work experience kid design this".
"Very vocal criticism online often reflects a real hardcore minority view though.
"A site will judge whether a redesign has been a success on metrics like speed, availability, cost of maintaining code, ease of making changes and of course audience growth. Those things won't always be apparent to the general user."
BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann said lessons have been learnt since previous relaunches of the BBC News site.
"The last relaunch was very much a big bang, all in one go.
"At the time we didn't give people a way of previewing or getting a sense of what it was going to be like. With this, first of all, the new site itself is actually the mobile site that we've had for some time.
"We created a promotional banner to bring it to people's attention on desktop to say have a look - with the aim of inviting people to see what we were working on.
"For me that's a critical difference."
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC
"If it ain't broke": BBC News website through the ages
1998 2000 2003 2006 2008 The current design, in place since 2010 The new responsive design
