Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In what promises to be waay worse than the whole Y2K thingy, hackers have officially notified us that they are planning a massive attack to take over your machine.  Confirmed by privacy and security company, PC Tools (no jokes, please), the threat comes after analyzing more than 500,000 machines this year.  Computer users are warned not to fall trap the basic snares: fraudulent websites, emails from unknown peoples, or the infamous banana in a tailpipe.  (Beverly Hills Cop, anyone?)

Read on to find why Monday, Nov 24 is targeted as “Hacker Day”

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Websites

Oh my, oh my.  Just think of all the not so nice tracking you could do with this little gadget.  The new Zoombak Universal GPS Locator lets you know whenever it enters specific geographical zones.  How very stealthy.  A company spokesperson however, claims that Zoombak “does not condone or recommend that the device be used for those things.“  Ummm…yeah.  I’m sure that will stop its misuse. 

What you do is drop it into whatever you want tracked.  (No…I don’t recommend having someone swallow it).  Your kid’s backpack or car is more what they are envisioning for the device.  You know, to make sure they are actually going to school, or to the library to study like they claim.  Or you’re wondering where your girlfriend is really going when she makes those late night runs to the gym?  Voila.  Yeah…you see where this could go, don’t you?

More after the break.

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Sections: Communications, Accessories, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Transportation, Web, Websites

The night after Obama’s election was a time for celebration for most people (although obviously not John McCain) with parties, drinking and general fun.  However for one British journalist the night became a bit of a nightmare when he became an overnight star on YouTube.

Sitting in a corner on a laptop he is approached by a cameraman, who asks him a few questions about himself and the election.  Adam Smith (the journalist) is obviously quite drunk, but talks fairly coherently about why he is there and who he works for (Birmingham Mail in England), but then it all went wrong.  When asked about an article he is writing at the moment he says that he has copied and pasted it off the BBC website, and then goes on to resign from his job.

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Sections: Video, Communications, Web, Online Music/Video

So, the elections are over and Obama has won, but what does this mean for the world of tech?  In the run up to the election, Obama set out his priorities for what he will do in regards to technology if he got into the white house, but how will this affect the average American? 

This is the first of a three part series about how the election of Obama will affect the tech world, which fit in to three categories: open Internet, connected democracy and infrastructure, and teaching children and adults. 

This year saw technology take a very important place in elections with texts, YouTube and television playing massive parts.  But it was also present in the policies that the two candidates put forward and due to the nature of the massive industry it was a big part.  So what are his policies?  Keep reading.

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Delta says it plans to block websites it deems “inappropriate” when it rolls out its new Wi-Fi service.  The service will be available on selected planes later this year and on all of its flights in 2009.  The airline’s original plan was to let flight attendants handle any issues, but they changed their mind and will now be using a software solution.  Like American Airlines, they will also block VOIP service to avoid customer complaints of passengers making loud phone calls.

The Wi-Fi service will be provided by Aircell’s GoGo service, and they said they have no problem filtering content if requested.  Privacy experts, not surprisingly are critical of the idea, fearing it could open the floodgates for outright censorship.

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Sections: Communications, Mobile, Computers, Wireless, Web, Websites

Researchers in Canada have discovered that Skype’s Chinese venture with Tom Online, called Tom-Skype, is filtering text chats and monitoring them.  Chats are routinely scanned for politically censored keywords.  If any are found, those chats and personal information are stored on insecure and publiclly accessible servers.  They are encrypted, but the key needed to decrypt them is stored right alongside them!

Their report, called “Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s Tom-Skype platform,“ stops short of implicating the Chinese government, but does suggest that Tom-Skype is cooperating with them.  The filter appears to scan for usernames and certain keywords relating to Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and any political opposition of the government.

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Wow, imagine that…privacy issues once again being raised in regard to Google. Shocker. The latest is in reference to issues with the Chrome browser and is addressed in the company’s blog.

The latest word of the day is “anonymize”. That’s apparently what Google plans to do to get rid of user tracks. The Google blog referenced both their Suggest application as well as their sparkly new (cough cough) browser Chrome. Suggest is featured in Google Search, Toolbar, the iPhone…and obviously Chrome. It works like predictive texting.  You start to type in a word…it suggests what you might mean to say. Like….you start to type in “stre”, and it might suggest “street view” or “utter lack of privacy” or “you only need to sign off 3,793 papers to get your face off our program”, or “made by the ultimate rulers of all”. I’m just suggesting anyway.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Software / Applications, Web, Web Browsers, Google

So, we’ve all been seeing the hoopla the past few days surrounding Google’s Chrome browser. First it was how exciting! Google has a new browser! Then that excitement lessened somewhat as time went on. It went from performance benchmarks being less than stellar to the fact that it was discovered that their snazzy new browser was susceptible to a carpet-bombing vulnerability that could expose Windows to malicious hacker attacks.  And now, we’re taking note of Google’s fine print in their end-user license agreement. To put it lightly, it does not look friendly in the least to the user.

Taken from their agreement terms:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.“

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Sections: Computers, Security, Software / Applications, Web, Web Browsers, Google

Think your government is technologically inept?  If you happen to live in England, you’d probably be more correct than the rest of us.  Sometime last week it seems the British government has lost a flash drive containing data on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales and “30,000 people with six or more criminal convictions in the past year.“  Theoretically this wouldn’t be such a horrible thing, you’d think a government would have several layers of security on a flash drive in just such a case.  Apparently, this flash drive had none, it was completely unencrypted.

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It’s a veritable heyday for hackers. A playground for those bent on more nefarious purposes. Those nifty little Google gadgets available for users to download and add to their websites are a big part of the Web 2.0 trend, and a big back door that allows hackers to access information on your system. Uh-oh Google gadgets.

It isn’t only Google that is at risk; and it isn’t a matter of them simply being lax with security measures. Any time you have sharing going on in that type of capacity, you are obviously opening up your system to the chance that someone can get in. It’s just that because people find these little gadgets like photo feeds or calendars on a site that is so well known (and usually trusted) like Google; it is pretty much automatically assumed by average Joe user that it must be “safe”. Not necessarily true.

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Sections: Computers, Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Google