Yahoo Collaborates With McAfee To Secure Search Results
It was announced this week that Yahoo! and McAfee are teaming up to help fight malware. Yahoo’s Search team will take McAfee information on malicious sites and use that to filter those sites out of their search results. In addition, McAfee can take some data from Yahoo’s search results to help them identify more malicious domains. (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/07/2008 | Permalink | 
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Filed under: Security, YahooMalware, malware detection, mcafee, online security, spyware, viruses, Yahoo
Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky Button Enabling Spam
Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” functionality is apparently enabling a lot of email spam to bypass filters.
When you use the button by entering a keyword phrase and hitting the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, Google sends you straight to the very first webpage in their results that matches that phrase.
Spammers have apparently found that they can embed links like this one for Natural Search Blog to the Google I’m Feeling Lucky functionality, and their emails will bypass filters that would automatically catch lots of blacklisted and spammy-looking URLs. Email filters allow links to search engine results through because many people may genuinely send such links to one another.
It was just the day before yesterday that I wrote about how a guy was using the I’m Feeling Lucky button to enable some cool linkbait involving Chuck Norris. That was a benign use of the application, whereas using it to obscure links to evil spammy sites would definitely be unethical/black-hat.
So, how will this get fixed? I’d expect that Google may have to lock down their “I’m feeling lucky” functionality so that it only works for users referred directly from the Google homepage, and from the Google Toolbar (if the user has enabled the I’m Feeling Lucky button on the toolbar).
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/30/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, SecurityGoogle, I'm feeling lucky, Security, spam
NebuAd - New Twist on Behavioral Targeting for Online Ads
News stories this week highlighted Silicon Valley startup NebuAd, which recently unveiled their behavioral targeting network at ad:tech.
Behavioral ad targeting is nothing new on the internet, and I easily recall it being offered in one form or another as far back as about 1999. In fact, 24/7 Real Media currently offers behavioral targeting through their ad network as just one case in point. So what’s new with this incarnation is the way in which NebuAd collects data to base the targeting upon. NebuAd’s innovative twist on behavior targeting is based upon monitoring individuals’ internet browsing habits through their ISP, essentially seeing all the sites and pages that a user visits. (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 12/11/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Advertising, Paid Search, Research and Development, Security, technologybehavioral targeting, internet ads, internet advertising, Nebu Ad, NebuAd, online ads, online-advertising
Google Requests Help Fighting Malware
This last week, I whined a bit about Google results containing many links to malware sites, due to them making use of well-known black hat tactics. InternetNews.com is now reporting that Google is asking for assistance from the altruistic public on fighting the malware offenders. Google’s Security blog requests more assistance on fighting the bad guys, noting that they’ve improved in the past year, citing the warnings they pop up when users click on a link where they’ve detected possible malware.
Here’s one suggestion I have: (more…)
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 12/02/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Securityblack hat, black-hat-seo, Google, Malware, online security
Google browser rumors resurrected
According to Ryan Naraine, Google has hired well-known browser hacker Michal Zalewski to help make their products more secure.
Zalewski has an established history of exposing security holes in various software products, particularly the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers…
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/30/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, SecurityBrowser-Security, Google, Google-Browser, Hackers
Misguided Science Fiction Writers Advise U.S. on Homeland Security
USA Today has reported in “Sci-fi writers join war on terror” that a small group of science fiction writers have been contacted by the U.S. government to advise on new and innovative ways that security could be improved. The group, called Sigma, was formed about 15 years ago by writer Arlan Andrews and was specifically intended to advise the government on advanced technology issues.
Their motto seems ominous in context of recent-history political trends and frighteningly nationalistic: “Science Fiction in the National Interest“. I think their involvement is a bit horrifying, misguided, and more than a bit egotistically self-grandiose. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/31/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Futurism, News, Security, technologyArlan-Andrews, Eric-Kotani, Greg-Bear, Homeland-Security, Jerry-Pournelle, Larry-Niven, Sage-Walker, science-fiction, Sigma-Group
Will Google Keep Minority Report from Happening? Eric Schmidt’s Chat with Danny Sullivan
This morning at the Search Engine Strategies Conference 2006 in San Jose, Danny Sullivan interviewed the Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, in the conference’s main keynote session. Others such as the Search Engine Roundtable have reported on most of the content of that session, but one little thing Danny mentioned particularly grabbed my attention. Read on, and I’ll elaborate….
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 08/09/2006 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Conferences, Futurism, General, Google, Security, technologycyberpunk, danny-sullivan, Eric-Schmidt, Google, Philip-K.-Dick, PKD, privacy, SES-Conference
Through the Scanner Darkly
Seems strange, but there are only two degrees of separation between me and the late, famous, science fiction author, Philip K. Dick (”PKD”). If you aren’t familiar, Dick was the author of a number of stories which have since been made into major films such as: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and the recently-released film A Scanner Darkly. I’ve just got two degrees of separation from Philip K. Dick because of my “spare time” work on writing a soon-to-be-published book about two of his friends and protégés, Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock. In the course of writing that book, (A Comprehensive Dual Bibliography of James P. Blaylock & Tim Powers), I asked the authors questions about their old friend, Dick, and I spoke with other friends of his as well. He was apparently a very interesting character — brilliant, and more than a bit mysterious as well. PKD had a few unusual religious visions and appeared to suffer occasionally from paranoia and other schizophrenic bouts.
Last weekend, I got to see the most recent film inspired by a Philip K. Dick story, A Scanner Darkly, directed by Richard Linklater. The film was really great, telling a futuristic story of an undercover cop who becomes addicted to the drug of choice for his surveillance subjects, and then becomes required to spy on himself in the course of his investigation. The undercover cops all wear these camouflage suits which morph together features from millions of individuals to obscure their identies from others and from each other. The film is astoundingly well-made, and is pretty entertaining overall.
I saw that Nelson Minar, one of Google’s engineers, is also apparently a reader of PKD, and he blogged his impressions about A Scanner Darkly, too. He agrees that it’s good, though I disagree with him: he thinks it won’t appeal to people who haven’t read the book, and I think it will. It strikes too many chords with people, even today, and the actor’s humor in the early parts saves it from being too dry/boring.
Dick’s stories still seem relevant, over twenty years after his death. His stories contrasted realistic characters against a twisted reality where commercialism and technology seem to’ve evolved past a reasonable point. He played around with the nature of reality itself, and his work seemed to segue smoothly into the cyberpunk movement, which I previously posted about.
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/18/2006 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Futurism, General, Security, technologyA-Scanner-Darkly, artificial-intelligence, biometrics, camouflage-suit, cyberpunk, flexible-display-screens, Futurism, James-P.-Blaylock, Minority-Report, nanotech, Philip-K.-Dick, PKD, science-fiction, Susumu-Tachi, Tim-Powers, Turing-tests
