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Censorship

Google Stops Ads For "Cougar" Sites 319

teh31337one writes "Google is refusing to advertise CougarLife, a dating site for mature women looking for younger men. However, they continue to accept sites for mature men seeking young women. According to the New York Times, CougarLife.com had been paying Google $100,000 a month since October. The Mountain View company has now cancelled the contract, saying that the dating site is 'nonfamily safe.'"
Image

Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194

An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."
Technology

Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165

angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
Security

Blizzard Authenticators May Become Mandatory 248

An anonymous reader writes "WoW.com is reporting that a trusted source has informed them that Blizzard is giving serious consideration to making authenticators mandatory on all World of Warcraft accounts. The authenticators function the same as ones provided by most banks — in order to log in, you must generate a number on the external device. Blizzard already provides a free iPhone app that functions as an authenticator. The source stated, 'it is a virtually forgone conclusion that it will happen.' This comes after large spates of compromised accounts left Bizzard game masters severely backlogged by restoration requests."
Cellphones

iPhone-Controlled Helicopter With AR Games 51

andylim writes "Parrot has unveiled a remote-controlled helicopter that boasts augmented reality games. The helicopter is controlled using an iPhone or iPod Touch's accelerometer and touchscreen. There's a camera on the front of the helicopter, which you can use to navigate and to play augmented reality games, including a game that involves fighting a gigantic robot."

Submission + - FreeCreditReport.com Wins 1,017 Domains by UDRP (aliasencore.com)

typosquatting writes: The National Arbitration Forum published a historic domain dispute decision late Thursday awarding 1,017 cybersquatting domain names to FreeCreditReport.com. The complaint was filed by ConsumerInfo.com, owner of FreeCreditReport.com, through a process called the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), and is believed to be the largest case in the ten years since the UDRP was first enacted. The disputed domain names were all slight misspellings of FreeCreditReport.com (such as ereecreditreport.com), or they included FreeCreditReport spelled correctly within a longer domain (such as 1-800-freecreditreport.com). The respondent in the case is a firm called Netcorp LLC which had previously lost one other UDRP case in 2005. Further complicating the case was a tussle over the perceived "generic" nature of the brand FreeCreditReport.com. Netcorp argued unsuccessfully that "the disputed domain names are comprised of common, descriptive terms and as such cannot be found to be confusingly similar to Complainant's mark." The full story is available here.

Comment Massive Typosquatting (Score 4, Interesting) 310

I've made the point before, but it's worth pointing out again that this is just typosquatting on a massive scale.

Many people don't realize that there's TONS of traffic going to typo domains (whether registered or not). For instance, youtuve.com (notice the v instead of the b) got 347,852 visitors over the last 31 days. It redirects to another domain for cloaking purposes, but here is the traffic report. This level of traffic provides the financial incentive to implement these DNS schemes.

By the way, there's a new, free typosquatting scan tool at aliasencore.com. It shows you all the registered .COM domain names that are one character misspellings of any Alexa top 100,000 site you enter. It also displays screenshots of those typosquatting sites. It's a nifty way to get a quick idea of the rampant growth of typosquatting. Here's an example that shows the 425 registered .COM domain names that are one character away from google.com.

Full disclosure: I am Graham MacRobie, the CEO of Alias Encore, Inc. We help companies recover cybersquatting domain names, but we focus solely on "slam-dunk" typosquatting cases (obviously only registered domain names). I can speak from personal experience in this field that the very last thing we need is wholesale typosquatting at the DNS level. Bell Canada should turn this "feature" off immediately.
PlayStation (Games)

Sony's New Development Strategy For the PSP 86

An anonymous reader writes "Sony is finally responding to the threat posed by the iPhone, and has started aggressively courting developers around the world to work on digitally distributed games for PSP in a bid to grow the amount of software offered on its handheld. And, Develop has revealed, the firm is planning to introduce a streamlined content pipeline for the platform — which includes abolishing concept approval — plus cheaper devkits, shorter quality assurance processes, and very low price points for new games. It hasn't totally abolished the barriers around the platform for homebrew and indie devs, but it's a start."
Security

German Health Insurance Card CA Loses Secret Key 174

Christiane writes "The SSL Root CA responsible for issuing the German digital health insurance card lost its secret private key during a test enrollment. After their Hardware Security Module (HSM) dutifully deleted its crypto keys during a power outage, it was all 'Oops, why is there no backup?' All issued cards must be replaced: 'Gematik spokesman Daniel Poeschkens poured scorn on the statement that Gematik had insisted on the service provider carrying out a test without backing up the root CA private keys. "We did not decide against a back-up service. The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."'"

Comment Re:Call it what it is (Score 5, Interesting) 362

Totally agreed - it is absolutely typosquatting on a massive scale.

Many people don't realize that there's TONS of traffic going to typo domains (whether registered or not). For instance, youtuve.com (notice the v instead of the b) got 358,751 visitors over the last 31 days. It redirects to another domain for cloaking purposes, but here is the traffic report. This level of traffic provides the financial incentive to implement these DNS schemes.

By the way, there's a new, free typosquatting scan tool at aliasencore.com. It shows you all the registered .COM domain names that are one character misspellings of any Alexa top 100,000 site you enter. It also displays screenshots of those typosquatting sites. It's a nifty way to get a quick idea of the rampant growth of typosquatting. Here's an example that shows the 431 registered .COM domain names that are one character away from google.com.

Full disclosure: I am Graham MacRobie, the CEO of Alias Encore, Inc. We help companies recover cybersquatting domain names, but we focus solely on "slam-dunk" typosquatting cases (obviously only registered domain names). I can speak from personal experience in this field that the very last thing we need is wholesale typosquatting at the DNS level.

Comment Free Typosquatting Scan Tool With Screenshots (Score 5, Interesting) 183

There's a new, free typosquatting scan tool at aliasencore.com. It shows you all the registered .COM domain names that are one character misspellings of any Alexa top 100,000 site you enter. It also displays screenshots of those typosquatting sites. It's a nifty way to get a quick idea of the rampant growth of typosquatting (which is a subset of cybersquatting). Here's an example that shows the 431 registered .COM domain names that are one character away from google.com.

Full disclosure: I am Graham MacRobie, the CEO of Alias Encore, Inc. We help companies recover cybersquatting domain names, but we focus solely on "slam-dunk" typosquatting cases, not questionable cybersquatting cases such as the one mentioned in this article.

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