Stumbling Toward Enlightenment

McAfee released the results of its 2012 Holiday Online & Mobile Shopping Study as well as the 12 most popular scams cyber criminals plan to use to cheat consumers this year.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive among 2,397 adults ages 18 and older, revealed the following trends:

Here’s what McAfee lists as the 12 scams to watch for. A good, comprehensive list, methinks.

1. Social media scams: Cybercriminals know social media networks are a good place to catch you off guard because we’re all “friends,” right? Scammers use channels, like Facebook and Twitter, just like email and websites to scam consumers during the holidays. Be careful when clicking or liking posts, while taking advantage of raffle contests, and fan page deals that you get from your “friends” that advertise the hottest Holiday gifts, installing apps to receive discounts, and your friends’ accounts being hacked and sending out fake alerts. Twitter ads and special discounts utilize blind, shortened links, many of which could easily be malicious.

2. Malicious Mobile Apps: As smartphone users we are app crazy, downloading over 25 billion apps for Android devices alone! But as the popularity of applications has grown, so have the chances that you could download a malicious application designed to steal your information or even send out premium-rate text messages without your knowledge.

3. Travel Scams: Before you book your flight or hotel to head home to see your loved ones for the holidays, keep in mind that the scammers are looking to hook you with too-good-to-be-true deals. Phony travel webpages, sometimes using your preferred company, with beautiful pictures and rock-bottom prices are used to get you to hand over your financial details.

4. Holiday Spam/Phishing: Soon many of these spam emails will take on holiday themes. Cheap Rolex watches and pharmaceuticals may be advertised as the “perfect gift” for that special someone.

5. iPhone 5, iPad Mini and other hot holiday gift scams: The kind of excitement and buzz surrounding Apple’s new iPhone 5 or iPad Mini is just what cybercrooks dream of when they plot their scams. They will mention must-have holiday gifts in dangerous links, phony contests (example: “Free iPad”) and phishing emails as a way to grab computer users’ attention to get you to reveal personal information or click on a dangerous link that could download malware onto your machine.

6. Skype Message Scare: People around the world will use Skype to connect with loved ones this holiday season, but they should be aware of a new Skype message scam that attempts to infect their machine, and even hold their files for ransom.

7. Bogus gift cards: Cybercriminals can’t help but want to get in on the action by offering bogus gift cards online. Be wary of buying gift cards from third parties; just imagine how embarrassing it would be to find out that the gift card you gave your mother-in-law was fraudulent!

8. Holiday SMiShing: “SMiSishing” is phishing via text message. Just like with email phishing, the scammer tries to lure you into revealing information or performing an action you normally wouldn’t do by pretending to be a legitimate organization.

9. Phony E-tailers: Phony e-commerce sites, that appear real, try to lure you into typing in your credit card number and other personal details, often by promoting great deals. But, after obtaining your money and information, you never receive the merchandise, and your personal information is put at risk.

10. Fake charities: This is one of the biggest scams of every holiday season. As we open up our hearts and wallets, the bad guys hope to get in on the giving by sending spam emails advertising fake charities.

11. Dangerous e-cards: E-Cards are a popular way to send a quick “thank you” or holiday greeting, but some are malicious and may contain spyware or viruses that download onto your computer once you click on the link to view the greeting.

12. Phony classifieds: Online classified sites may be a great place to look for holiday gifts and part-time jobs, but beware of phony offers that ask for too much personal information or ask you to wire funds via Western Union, since these are most likely scams.

Let’s be careful out there!

Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data—and at times vast numbers of people—and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the “Wilderness Downtown” video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION
Safety advocates who worry about the dangers of distracted driving have a new concern beyond cellphones and gadget-laden dashboards: digital roadside billboards.

Articles in this series examine the dangers of drivers using cellphones and other electronic devices, and efforts to deal with the problem. Previous articles…

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

A digital billboard along I-75. Some of the signs change their images every six to eight seconds.

These high-tech billboards marry the glow of Times Square with the immediacy of the Internet. Images change every six to eight seconds, so advertisers can flash timely messages—like the latest headlines, coffee deals at dawn, a cheeseburger at lunchtime or even the song playing on a radio station at that moment.

The billboard industry asserts there is no research indicating they cause crashes, and notes that the signs do not use video or animation. But to critics, these ever-changing, bright billboards are “television on a stick” and give drivers, many of them already calling and texting, yet another reason to take their eyes off the road.

Abby Dart, executive director of Scenic Michigan, a nonprofit group trying to block construction of new digital billboards in the state, calls the signs “weapons of mass distraction” and says they can be more dangerous than phones.

“You can turn off your phone,” she said. “The billboard gets your attention whether you want to give it or not.”

Last Thursday, Michigan lawmakers held hearings on legislation, the first of its kind, that would impose a two-year moratorium on the construction of new billboards. Minnesota’s legislature is scheduled to hold hearings this month on a similar moratorium. As digital billboards begin to pop up around the country, questions about whether to regulate the emerging technology are being asked in other states as well, and by federal officials.

The Federal Highway Administration has been conducting a study, which it says will be completed this summer, that uses eye-trackers inside cars to see whether drivers who have volunteered for the study look at the digital billboards, and for how long. The agency also has organized a tour this spring to take researchers to various cities around the world to study how other nations are regulating digital billboards.

In the United States, only about 2,000 of the nation’s 450,000 billboards are digitized, but the industry expects there to be tens of thousands of them, as many as 15 percent of its overall inventory. The signs are typically used in busy traffic areas, where advertisers are willing to pay a premium for them. A digital billboard costs $250,000 to $300,000, roughly half what it did five years ago, but much more than the $5,000 to $50,000 for a traditional billboard.

Space on the digital signs fetches a premium in part because up to six advertisers can share a single location. Traditional billboards fetch a wide range of monthly rents (from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on location and audience) and the digital versions cost the same or a bit more, but the industry benefits by selling that space at that price to more than one advertiser.

Rather than settling the matter, existing research about digital billboards leaves room for debate on the danger. One 2007 study, from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which used in-car cameras to study motorists, found that digital billboards did not change driver behavior more than ordinary billboards.

But critics note that the study was financed by the billboard industry and that it was found to be biased by reviewers who rejected it for publication in 2008 by the Transportation Research Board, a Congressionally chartered agency. Even the researcher who led the Virginia Tech institute project, Suzanne Lee, while defending her science as sound, said that the potential for drivers to be distracted by the new billboards—and digital signs that use video and animation—should be investigated further.

“If we don’t study this, and get on top of it right now while the capabilities are expanding, every roadway will be filled with flashing lights and video,” said Ms. Lee.

For decades, the Federal Highway Administration has provided regulations to states governing free-standing billboards that prohibit them from having “flashing, intermittent or moving light or lights.”

But in 2007, the agency ruled that the free-standing digital billboards did not violate the rule and recommended, among other guidelines, that ads on those billboards stay in place at least four seconds and that they not be “unreasonably bright.”

Last week, the Georgetown Institute for Public Representation, a public interest law group, filed a petition with the highway administration asking it to reverse the earlier decision, which would have the effect of banning new digital billboards that include flashing, intermittent or moving lights, and requiring the dismantling of existing ones. The billboard industry argues that the new signs are part of a larger technological and economic shift to a paperless society (no more crews hoisting and removing ads from billboards) and that they give advertisers more flexibility.

Marketing materials published last year by Clear Channel, one of the nation’s biggest billboard companies, say the digital billboards are, among other things, ideal for posting game scores by advertisers like radio stations and sports bars. News organizations can also use them— “as the Web site headline changes, so does the digital billboard,” the materials say.

”It’s a very flexible, very responsible medium and very impactful,” said Ron Cooper, chief executive of Clear Channel Outdoor, which has 450 digital billboards and plans to add 150 more this year. Big corporations that have used them include ABC, AT&T, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, General Mills, Ford and Verizon. “Consumers report seeing it, remembering the brand, remembering the advertisers.”

He and others in the industry say they have been careful to make the signs memorable but not distracting. They say the “television on a stick” label is an exaggeration.

“It’s a slide projector—it shows one image after the next,” said Bill Ripp, a vice president who oversees digital billboards for Lamar Advertising, another large billboard company. “We were as concerned as anybody. We wouldn’t want to cause danger.”

The industry has found an ally in some crime-fighting groups and agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which use the new signs to broadcast images of fugitives or of abducted children.

“We’ve had moms grab their sons by the ear and drag them right down to the sheriff’s office because they were embarrassed to see the son on the billboard,” said Bart Dexter, coordinator of the Michigan Crime Stoppers organization, who opposes the Michigan moratorium.

Ms. Dart, from Scenic Michigan, said the potential driver distraction outweighs any help the signs may provide in catching fugitives. Rebekah Warren, a Democratic state representative from Ann Arbor, who proposed the moratorium, said the bill reflected broader concerns that legislators around the country had about distracted driving. In December, the Michigan House of Representatives passed legislation banning motorists from texting, something its Senate now is considering.

“We are moving so quickly into this digital age,” said Ms. Warren. “We are being cautious in state legislatures around the country on how we keep drivers focused on the road.”

from Slate.com

A day after the Internet celebrated its 40th birthday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced that it had reached a decision that amounted to one of its biggest changes in history. The body in charge of assigning and overseeing domain names said that Internet addresses will soon be able to be spelled in any of the world’s scripts, not just the Latin alphabet. “This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet,” ICANN’s President and CEO Rod Beckstrom said. The program will be rolled out in stages, beginning Nov. 16. At first it will apply only to addresses with “country code designators,” such as .ru for Russia, but it will eventually expand to all types of names.