KSL: More people getting fired because of online posts

More people getting fired because of online posts
August 11th, 2009 @ 5:20am

By Paul Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY -- Some people on social-networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn may be a little too social.

The e-mail security vendor Proofpoint recently released its sixth report on Outbound Email Security and Data Loss Prevention.

"Seventeen percent, nearly one-in-five large U.S. companies, actually investigated a leak of confidential information to a social-networking site," the company's director of market development, Keith Crosley, said.

Crosley says 8 percent of companies have fired an employee for something they posted on social sites in the past 12 months, which is up from 4 percent last year.

Even the micro-blogging site Twitter can be problematic. Crosley says people can post links to sensitive information using URL shorteners.

"You could post something somewhere else, use a URL shortener to point to that, and you could actually leak masses of information that way," he said.

E-mail is a bigger problem.

"It's much easier to get fired over e-mail. In fact, it's almost a third of companies [that] terminated an employee for violating an e-mail policy in the last 12 months," Crosley said.

He says 31 percent of companies fired someone because of an e-mail, and 9 percent of companies have fired someone because of a blog.

The Proofpoint survey also found:

•E-mail still the No. 1 threat: 43 percent of U.S. companies surveyed had investigated an E-mail-based leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months. Nearly one-third of them, 31 percent, terminated an employee for violating E-mail policies in the same period (up from 26 percent in 2008).
•Blogs breaches continue: 18 percent of companies had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months. Seventeen percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly 9 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation (both increases from 2008: 11 percent and 6 percent, respectively).
•Video exposure: Given the rapid adoption of video and audio media within the enterprise--and the popularity of media sharing sites like YouTube--it's no surprise that more U.S. companies reported investigating exposure events across these channels (18 percent, up from 12 percent in 2008). As a result, 15 percent have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing/posting policies in the past 12 months while 8 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation.
•Friends or foes?: Concerning social networks, U.S. companies are also experiencing more exposure incidents involving sites like Facebook and LinkedIn as compared to 2008 (17 percent versus 12 percent). U.S. companies are taking a much more forceful approach with offending employees--8 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation as compared to only 4 percent in 2008.

E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7491222

UK Times: India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards

The Times July 15, 2009

India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards


(Zuma/eyevine)
Millions of Indians who live in remote rural areas will finally have proof of their existence thanks to biometric identity cards
Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

It is surely the biggest Big Brother project yet conceived. India is to issue each of its 1.2 billion citizens, millions of whom live in remote villages and possess no documentary proof of existence, with cyber-age biometric identity cards.

The Government in Delhi recently created the Unique Identification Authority, a new state department charged with the task of assigning every living Indian an exclusive number. It will also be responsible for gathering and electronically storing their personal details, at a predicted cost of at least £3 billion.

The task will be led by Nandan Nilekani, the outsourcing sage who coined the phrase “the world is flat”, which became a mantra for supporters of globalisation. “It is a humongous, mind-boggling challenge,” he told The Times. “But we have the opportunity to give every Indian citizen, for the first time, a unique identity. We can transform the country.”

If the cards were piled on top of each other they would be 150 times as high as Mount Everest — 1,200 kilometres.

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India’s legions of local bureaucrats currently issue at least 20 proofs of identity, including birth certificates, driving licences and ration cards. None is accepted universally and moving from one state to the next can easily render a citizen officially invisible — a disastrous predicament for the millions of poor who rely on state handouts to survive.

It is hoped that the ID scheme will close such bureaucratic black holes while also fighting corruption. It may also be put to more controversial ends, such as the identification of illegal immigrants and tackling terrorism. A computer chip in each card will contain personal data and proof of identity, such as fingerprint or iris scans. Criminal records and credit histories may also be included.

Mr Nilekani, who left Infosys, the outsourcing giant that he co-founded, to take up his new job, wants the cards to be linked to a “ubiquitous online database” accessible from anywhere.

The danger, experts say, is that as one of the world’s largest stores of personal information, it will prove an irresistible target for identity thieves. “The database will be one of the largest that ever gets built,” Guru Malladi, a partner at Ernst & Young who was involved in an earlier pilot scheme, said. “It will have to be impregnable.”

Mr Nilekani will also have to mastermind a way of collecting trustworthy data. Only about 75 million people — or less than 7 per cent of the population — are registered to pay income tax. The Electoral Commission’s voter lists are thought to be largely inaccurate, not least because of manipulation by corrupt politicians.

He will also have to persuade as many as 60 government departments to co-operate. The Government has said that the first cards will be issued within 18 months. Analysts feel that it will take at least four years for the project to reach “critical mass”.

Such is the scale of the project that analysts believe India will have to develop a new electronics manufacturing base to supply information-storing servers, computer chips and card readers.

For the time being Mr Nilekani has more mundane matters on his mind. “I’ve only just left my previous job,” he said. “First I have to find a new office.”

Keeping tabs around the world

• Compulsory national identity cards are used in about 100 countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain

• ID cards are not used in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Irish Republic or Nordic countries

• German police can detain people who are not carrying their ID card for up to 24 hours

• The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001

• In Australia street protests in the 1980s forced the Government to abandon its plans for a card

• Plastic cards are favoured over paper documents because they are harder to forge

• Most identity cards contain the name, sex, date of birth and a unique number for the holder

• South Korean, Brazilian, Italian and Malaysian ID cards contain fingerprints. Cards in some countries contain information on any distinguishing marks of the holder

• Objections to card schemes have focused on the cost and invasion of privacy

• Supporters say that they prevent illegal immigration and fraud

• In the European Union some cards can be used instead of a passport for European travel

Sources: Privacy International; Times database


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6710764.ece

NYTimes: Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books

Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: January 4, 2009

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Ben Zimmer, executive producer of a Web site and software package called the Visual Thesaurus, was seeking the earliest use of the phrase “you’re not the boss of me.” Using a newspaper database, he had found a reference from 1953.

Google’s book program makes it possible to read on a computer screen a page scanned from a rare Bible that is centuries old.

But while using Google’s book search recently, he found the phrase in a short story contained in “The Church,” a periodical published in 1883 and scanned from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Ever since Google began scanning printed books four years ago, scholars and others with specialized interests have been able to tap a trove of information that had been locked away on the dusty shelves of libraries and in antiquarian bookstores.

According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers.

Google’s book search “allows you to look for things that would be very difficult to search for otherwise,” said Mr. Zimmer, whose site is visualthesaurus.com.

A settlement in October with authors and publishers who had brought two copyright lawsuits against Google will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection.

The agreement, pending approval by a judge this year, also paved the way for both sides to make profits from digital versions of books. Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line.

“We did not think necessarily we could make money,” said Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, in a brief interview at the company’s headquarters. “We just feel this is part of our core mission. There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.”

Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google’s collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category.

Even if Google had gone to trial and won the suits, said Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at the company, it would have won the right to show only previews of these books’ contents. “What people want to do is read the book,” Mr. Macgillivray said.

Users are already taking advantage of out-of-print books that have been scanned and are available for free download. Mr. Clancy was monitoring search queries recently when one for “concrete fountain molds” caught his attention. The search turned up a digital version of an obscure 1910 book, and the user had spent four hours perusing 350 pages of it.

For scholars and others researching topics not satisfied by a Wikipedia entry, the settlement will provide access to millions of books at the click of a mouse. “More students in small towns around America are going to have a lot more stuff at their fingertips,” said Michael A. Keller, the university librarian at Stanford. “That is really important.”

When the agreement was announced in October, all sides hailed it as a landmark settlement that permitted Google to proceed with its scanning project while protecting the rights and financial interests of authors and publishers. Both sides agreed to disagree on whether the book scanning itself violated authors’ and publishers’ copyrights.

In the months since, all parties to the lawsuits — as well as those, like librarians, who will be affected by it — have had the opportunity to examine the 303-page settlement document and try to digest its likely effects.

Some librarians privately expressed fears that Google might charge high prices for subscriptions to the book database as it grows. Although nonprofit groups like the Open Content Alliance are building their own digital collections, no other significant private-sector competitors are in the business. In May, Microsoft ended its book scanning project, effectively leaving Google as a monopoly corporate player.

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said the company wanted to push the book database to as many libraries as possible. “If the price gets too high,” he said, “we are simply not going to have libraries that can afford to purchase it.”

For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Mr. Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free.

For the average author, “this is not a game changer” in an economic sense, said Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers and president of the digital media investments group at Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

“They will get paid for the use of their book, but whether they will get paid so much that they can start living large — I think that’s just a fantasy,” Mr. Sarnoff said. “I think there will be a few authors who do see significant dollars out of this, but there will be a vast number of authors who see insignificant dollars out of this.”

But, he added, “a few hundred dollars for an individual author can equate to a considerable sum for a publisher with rights to 10,000 books.”

So far, publishers that have permitted Google to offer searchable digital versions of their new in-print books have seen a small payoff. Macmillan, the company that owns publishing houses including Farrar, Straus & Giroux and St. Martin’s Press and represents authors including Jonathan Franzen and Janet Evanovich, offers 11,000 titles for search on Google. In 2007, Macmillan estimated that Google helped sell about 16,400 copies.

Authors view the possibility of readers finding their out-of-print books as a cultural victory more than a financial one.

“Our culture is not just Stephen King’s latest novel or the new Harry Potter book,” said James Gleick, a member of the board of the Authors Guild. “It is also 1,000 completely obscure books that appeal not to the one million people who bought the Harry Potter book but to 100 people at a time.”

Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. “I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way,” said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale.

Others said they thought readers would continue to appreciate long texts and that Google’s book search would simply help readers find them.

“There is no short way to appreciate Jane Austen, and I hope I’m right about that,” said Paul Courant, university librarian at the University of Michigan. “But a lot of reading is going to
happen on screens. One of the important things about this settlement is that it brings the literature of the 20th century back into a form that the students of the 21st century will be able to find it.”

Google’s book search has already entered the popular culture, in the film version of “Twilight,” based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Bella, one of the main characters, uses Google to find information about a local American Indian tribe. When the search leads her to a book, what does she do?

She goes to a bookstore and buys it.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 5, 2009, on page B1 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/technology/internet/05google.html?_r=1

Wired: Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'

Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'
By Noah Shachtman December 18, 2008 4:53:03 PM
Categories: Info War

Online jihadists have already used YouTube, blogs and other social media to spread their propaganda. Now, a group of internet Islamic extremists is putting together a plan for "invading Facebook."

"We can use Facebook to fight the media," notes a recent posting on the extremist al-Faloja forum, translated by Jihadica.com. "We can post media on Facebook that shows the Crusader losses."

"We have already had great success in raiding YouTube," the poster adds. "American politicians have used Facebook to get votes, like the house slave Obama."

Groups like al-Qaida were pioneering users of the internet — to train, share ideas and organize. But some observers, like George Washington University professor Marc Lynch, see a reluctance to embrace Web 2.0 tools like Facebook. "One of the biggest problems for a virtual network like AQ today is that it needs to build connections between its members while protecting itself from its enemies. That's a filtering problem: How do you get your people in, and keep intelligence agents out?" he asks.

But as Jihadica.com author and West Point Combating Terrorism Center fellow William McCants notes, the proposed Facebook invasion "is not an attempt to replicate [existing] social networks." Instead, "the members of the campaign want to exploit existing networks of people who are hostile to them and presumably they will adopt new identities once they have posted their material."

The al-Faloja poster suggests seven "brigades" work together within Facebook. One will distribute videos and writing of so-called "martyrs." Another will spread military training material. Most of them will work in Arabic, presumably. But one of the units will focus just on spread English-language propaganda through Facebook.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/online-jihadist.html

Daily Herald: Eagle Mountain Councilman blogs the good, bad and ugly

Friday, 12 December
Eagle Mountain Councilman blogs the good, bad and ugly
Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD
CRAIG DILGER/Daily Herald Eagle Mountain blogger and city council member David Lifferth - Friday, December 12, 2008.

Looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly in Eagle Mountain? One councilman here has a blog for you. Over the past three years, DavidLifferth.com, owned by the city's namesake councilman, has drawn nearly 300,000 page views from 84 countries by tracking all things Eagle Mountain.

Lifferth is hoping more elected officials will follow his lead into cyberspace.

"People just like someone who is going to be open about government," he said. "If I was not on the council, I would want someone who was in the know to blog and talk about things."

"This blogging that I have done consistently for four years now has forced me to read, understand, and explain the good, the bad, and the ugly here in Eagle Mountain," Lifferth wrote in a recent e-mail to his fans. "I have been praised for my openness and candor while at the same time I have been threatened with a half dozen lawsuits for my openness. This openness and candor caused the readership of my blog to been massive."

Lifferth said his site "has frequently been the most read Web site in all of Eagle Mountain and surrounding areas. My Web site frequently had more page views than Eagle Mountain City's site, the local newspapers sites covering Eagle Mountain, blog and forum sites, and any of the developers' sites."

All this attention is one of the best things that could happen to city government, he said.

"The quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis comes to mind: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'"

Lifferth said one of the highest compliments paid his site came from a friend who said "the bad guys fear your Web site."

Lifferth is not exactly a cyber newbie, so to speak. He runs about 30 online sites, earning money from advertising on most, if not all, though he does not make money from his site dedicated to city politics, he said.

To draw readers, he makes sure his posts are enticing. Take this recent example: "Reagan Caused Global Warming," a post which documents why, in Lifferth's view, a significant cause of the statistical increase in average global temperature has been the reduction in temperature reporting stations in the former Soviet Union" and Reagan's role in that.

Getting 500 hits a day, Lifferth's most lucrative site is surprisingly -- not political at all -- it is a James Bond fan site, 007BondMovies.ning.com. He also runs JunkScience.ning.com and PonyExpress.ning.com, to name a few.

Lifferth said he tries to have fun with his sites. During his interview with the Daily Herald, he surprised this reporter by bringing up a photo on his Web site of this reporter perusing a competitor's weekly newspaper during a slow moment in an Eagle Mountain City Council meeting. Lifferth said he took the photo from the council dais during the meeting using his cellphone. This reporter never even knew the photo existed.

"You've taken some jabs at me and once in a while I want to take some jabs back," he said with a laugh. "... I do think I have fun with my site. I have a playful attitude."

Jokes aside, every elected official should consider blogging as a way to give information directly to the public, he said. At least several Web sites allow anyone to set up their own blog for free, so getting started is easy.

"I think elected officials should talk about what the issues are, and why things are happening," he said, noting some elected officials in Utah Valley are starting to follow suit, including council members from Payson and Saratoga Springs.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/292207/17/

TimesOnline: Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5311241.ece
From Times Online
December 9, 2008
Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.
A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks". Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.
There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.
Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive. The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's CCTV control room.
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The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiber, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.
Ansari was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last month, a senior police officer told The Times.
Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks.
In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists.
Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said.
In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earth – something it had done previously.
South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of air bases was revealed.
The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of nearby sensitive locations, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
The complaint comes just weeks after India said it would launch its own version of Google Earth.
The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), is being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.
It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on USD2 a day or less.
Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, birds-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google.
Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the subcontinent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.
The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which India's cities are growing.
About 2.5 million people used Google Earth in the UK last month, according to Neilsen, the web analysts, making it the web's seventh most popular application behind tools such as Apple's iTunes (fourth with 5.7 million users) and Windows Live Messenger (first with 14.8 million).

Reuters: "Koobface" virus turns up on Facebook

"Koobface" virus turns up on Facebook
Fri Dec 5, 2008 8:32am EST

By Jim

BOSTON (Reuters) - Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed ''Koobface'' that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers. It...";

By Jim Finkle
BOSTON (Reuters) - Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed "Koobface" that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers.

It is the latest attack by hackers increasingly looking to prey on users of social networking sites.
"A few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways to propagate themselves," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. He said a "very small percentage of users" had been affected by these viruses.

"It is on the rise, relative to other threats like e-mails," said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee Inc.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like, "You look just awesome in this new movie," direct recipients to a website where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe Systems Inc's Flash player.

If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according McAfee.

McAfee warned in a blog entry on Wednesday that its researchers had discovered that Koobface was making the rounds on Facebook.

Facebook requires senders of messages within the network to be members and hides user data from people who do not have accounts, said Chris Boyd, a researcher with FaceTime Security Labs. Because of that, users tend to be far less suspicious of messages they receive in the network.

"People tend to let their guard down. They think you've got to log in with an account, so there is no way that worms and other viruses could infect them," Boyd said.

Social network MySpace, owned by News Corp, was hit by a version of Koobface in August and used security technology to eradicate it, according to a company spokeswoman. The virus has not cropped up since then, she said.

Privately held Facebook has told members to delete contaminated e-mails and has posted directions at www.facebook.com/security on how to clean infected computers.
Richard Larmer, chief executive of RLM Public Relations in New York, said he threw out his PC after it became infected by Koobface, which downloaded malicious software onto his PC. It was really bad. It destroyed my computer," he said.

McAfee has not yet identified the perpetrators behind Koobface, who are improving the malicious software behind the virus in a bid to outsmart security at Facebook and MySpace.
"The people behind it are updating it, refining it, adding new functionalities," said McAfee's Schmugar.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, Additional reporting by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE4B37LV20081205

Sun UK: YouTube bans 'suggestive' vids

YOUTUBE is cracking down on sexy videos in a bid to clean itself up.

In a blog posting, the video-sharing website revealed it would be enforcing a "stricter standard for mature content".

The popular site – which already bans porn – said it will be "tightening the standard for what is considered 'sexually suggestive'".

"Videos with sexually suggestive (but not prohibited) content will be age-restricted, which means they'll be available only to viewers who are 18 or older," the Google-owned website said.

"Our goal is to help ensure that you're viewing content that's relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn't."

Provocative

YouTube also said videos which contain sexually suggestive content or profanity would no longer appear on its lists of 'Most Viewed' or 'Top Favorited' videos.

The internet's top video-sharing site also said it would step up enforcement of rules banning misleading descriptions in the tags and titles of a video.

And thumbnails will now be randomly selected to cut down users who manipulate frames within their videos to get a provocative thumbnail to appear with their video listing.

Some YouTube users have been known to give videos misleading titles such as "sexy" in a bid to increase the view counts of a particular video.

YouTube, which receives 13 hours of video from users every minute, said repeat violators of the new rules will have their accounts terminated.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2000335.ece

Ning: The End of the Red Light District

http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3451&p_sid=y1_SUrkj

The End of the Red Light District

As individuals and as a service, we stand for the freedom to create your own social networks for anything. We believe that people should be able to set their own social norms and Ning, as a broad-based service, is designed to respect many different perspectives and enable them to co-exist seamlessly and effortlessly.

We architected Ning so many diverse types of social networks could create their own social space and this is still one of the proudest achievements we have of the service today. It’s from this foundation that we’ve seen Ning grow to hundreds of thousands of social networks and millions of users around the world.

Therefore, the decision we’re announcing today to discontinue our Red Light District is a tough one. However, from a practical perspective, this difficult decision is the right one.

As of January 1, 2009, we’ll no longer support adult social networks on the Ning Platform.

We’re not discontinuing the Red Light District because we no longer believe in the freedom to create your own social network for anything as long as it’s legal. We do. Practically though, supporting adult networks no longer makes sense. Here is what we’ve seen in practice to date with respect to adult social networks on Ning:

Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight. Specifically, they require other social networks to work harder because they don’t generate enough advertising or premium service revenue to cover their costs. Plus, our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue. We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that’s where this is heading.

By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks. We are always going to do the right thing as it pertains to social networks that are illegal or violate our Terms of Service. That’s non-negotiable. However, the time involved in reporting and assisting the authorities on illegal adult social networks is simply too time and cost intensive for the benefits derived by having adult social networks on Ning.

Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team. We respect intellectual property rights and comply with the DMCA. Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here.

Our focus is on creating incredibly simple, beautiful software and rapidly adding new features for the benefit of all. We can’t do that as efficiently as we need to and still support adult networks on Ning. It’s that simple. We’ve discussed and debated various ways to keep adult networks on Ning operating, including requiring them to be private networks or partnering up with someone who can make them self-sustaining. While there are strong cases to be made for either one of these solutions, they don’t enable us to focus our team on the most efficient execution of the Ning Platform possible.

This is important in all circumstances, but in this recession we have to be relentless in providing the most compelling service in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, from a practical perspective, the only practical answer we see is a clear elimination of adult networks from the Ning Platform altogether.

As part of this transition, we are exploring ways for adult networks that will no longer be available on Ning to export their content in addition to their members, which is available today from the Manage Members page. As we make progress on the specifics, we’ll communicate them in the here.

Again, this was not an easy decision and we did not make it on philosophical grounds. We made it on a purely practical one. We’re happy to answer any questions you have on this decision here and sincerely appreciate the hard work that all of you affected have put into your social networks on Ning.

Press Release: Family History 3 named Family History Software of the Year for 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Howard Luxenberg
President, Enteractive Distribution Co.
phone: 860-236-8600; fax: 860-232-7575
hluxenberg@sprynet.com http://familyhistorian3.ning.com

Family History 3 named Family History Software of the Year for 2008

West Hartford, Connecticut, November 25, 2008 ­-- Your Family Tree magazine (UK) named Family Historian 3 the Family History Software of the Year for 2008. Family Historian 3 beat out other popular genealogy software programs such as Roots Magic 3 and Legacy 7.

"I was thrilled that Family Historian 3 won this this prestigious award from one of the U.K.'s leading genealogy magazines," Howard Luxenberg, president of Enteractive, stated.
Due to its easy to use features and product quality, Family Historian 3 has won many major awards and recognition from the top reviewers including Windows XP Magazine, Family Tree Magazine, Which? Computing, Univadis and others.

In recognizing Family Historian 3, the editors of Your Family Tree magazine particularly liked the extensive range of charts, "including the stunning All Relatives [chart]" They went on to add: "Apart from its charts, the program offers a good range of reports ­ all of which you can customize to meet your exact needs - website and family CD creation and a powerful merge and compare feature to import data from other GEDCOM files."

Product Features

According to Luxenberg, "This is a quality product that manages to combine ease of use with a remarkably rich set of features." The following are just a few of the important product features of Family Historian 3:
· 100% compatible with GEDCOM 5.5, the standard for shared genealogical data
· Lets you easily create beautiful family trees, CDs/DVDs & websites
· Family trees can include data, photographs, even video files
· Diagrams are interactive, so you can work visually
· Unique "All relatives" diagram shows all descendants and all ancestors (and their spouses)
· Bonus features: Six month subscription to WorldVitalRecords.com and CD Book "Getting Started in Genealogy Online"

More information about this Family History Software of the Year award from “Your Family Tree” magazine can be found on Enteractive Distribution web site http://FamilyHistorian3.ning.com.

Family Historian 3 runs on Windows Vista, XP Home and XP Professional, 2000, ME and 98.

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