HOUSTON: Google has allegedly violated users' privacy on Apple's Safari Web browser, adding to mounting criticism from consumer groups over how the internet search giant tracks people online. Using its DoubleClick ad network, Google has been dodging a privacy setting in Safari, the primary Web browser on the iPhone and iPad, a report by Stanford University's Security Lab and the Centre for Internet and Society claimed. The study named three other companies -- Vibrant Media, Media Innovation Group and PointRoll -- that also allegedly evaded privacy settings. "Apple's Safari Web browser is configured to block third-party cookies by default," Stanford graduate student Jonathan Mayer said in the report. "Google and Vibrant Media intentionally circumvent Safari's privacy feature." Google, the world's biggest internet search company, has drawn regulatory scrutiny and pressure from consumer advocates for the way it handles personal information. Last year it agreed to settle claims with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that Google used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy policies when it introduced its Buzz social-networking service in 2010. In the Stanford study, Mayer said Google's software employed cookies, or small pieces of code, that can be used to follow users' activities on the Web. Blocking them is supposed to prevent the cookies from tracking behavior. The actions potentially affected millions of users, Mayer said. Safari is the top browser for mobile devices, with 55 per cent of the market, according to January data from Net Applications. The findings of the Stanford study were reported by the Wall Street Journal. Reacting to the report, three lawmakers asked the FTC whether Google has violated its settlement with the agency. "Google's practices could have a wide sweeping impact because Safari is a major web browser used by millions of Americans," said the letter by Edward Markey, Joe Barton and Cliff Stearns. "As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are interested in any actions the FTC has taken or plans to take to investigate whether Google has violated the terms of its consent agreement." Google's actions also prompted Consumer Watchdog to send a letter to the FTC and demand action against Google.

KOCHI: For those who party often and find it difficult to send out invitations, Leap Software Solutions Private Limited has begun providing a free online invitation tool called Yoovite.com. Yoovite.com, developed by Kochi-based Leap Software Solutions with its US subsidiary, has been designed to create and manage online invitations for parties and events such as weddings, birthdays and other occasions. Incidentally, this mode of invitation is quite popular in the western world, and is now coming to India for the first time. Leap Software's Chief Operating Officer and Technology head Boby Thomas said, "This is one of the major internet tools they have developed for Indian customers." "This tool has features such as login with your Facebook account, send SMS messages to guests, import contacts from your email account such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Rediff mail. It also offers features to manage RSVPs of all your guests," said Thomas. Once registered in Yoovite.com, you can choose from hundreds of available designs or templates. There is a robust event management section where the user can manage their past and future events, manage their contacts, create groups and much more. Yoovite Mobile App for both iPhone and the Android market are currently under development and will be available soon to download.

MUNICH: After the first four "real'' battlefields of land, air, sea and now increasingly space, India needs to get very serious about the virtual front as well. The country should begin planning a full-fledged military cyber command, instead of the current piecemeal and disjointed steps to bolster cyber-security, grappling as it already is with incessant online espionage and other attacks from China, Pakistan and others. This was the clear takeaway from the deliberations on cyber-security and cyber-warfare in the high-profile Munich Security Conference on Sunday, even though India hardly figured in the discussions. Experts said the emergence of "cyber-weapons'' like the Stuxnet software 'worm' that was used to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme over a year ago, had changed the entire security ballgame, almost on par with the use of nuclear bombs for the first time in 1945. "Someone used a cyber-weapon in peacetime to physically destroy what the nation (Iran) would describe as its critical infrastructure. It was a new class of weapon that caused a thousand centrifuges in Iran to self-destruct,'' said General (retd) Michael V Hayden, former director of the American CIA and National Security Agency. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt expressed fear that the risk of terrorists or others getting hold of cyber-weapons was possibly much higher than nuclear weapons. "Stealing and using Stuxnet might be more easy and dangerous than nuclear weapons,'' he said. Russian cyber expert Eugene Kaspersky, in turn, warned developed countries would be the "main victims'' of cyber-warfare since they were the most inter-connected in terms of information technology. Well-executed cyber-attacks, after all, can cripple a nation's military assets and strategic networks, energy grids and banking, communication and "infostructure''. Moreover, unlike missiles or nuclear bombs, which can be traced back to an adversary for retaliatory strikes, here the enemy remains largely unknown. Stuxnet is a case in point. Though a few fingers were pointed at Israel, as also the US, the exact origin of the 'worm' still remains unknown. But it's clear it was the handiwork of a resource-rich state agency, not some non-state hackers or fringe elements. So, it's no wonder several countries like the US and the UK have set up cyber military forces to thwart deadly attacks that can come from anywhere, at any time. The US, for instance, has created a Cyber Command, under a four-star general, tasked with launching a "full spectrum'' war in the boundary-less cyberspace, when directed to do so, apart from protecting the around 15,000 American military networks from attacks round-the-clock. India has reason to worry. China-watchers in the Indian security establishment say Beijing already has two to three "hacker brigades'' and 30,000 computer professionals in its militia. China, in fact, has made cyber-warfare one of its topmost military priorities, with its hackers regularly breaking into sensitive computer networks of countries like the US, the UK, Germany and India. China-based online espionage gangs have been regularly accessing classified documents from several Indian security and diplomatic establishments, as was also brought out in the "Shadows in the Cloud'' report by a group of Canadian and American cyber-security researchers a couple of years ago. India, therefore, has to be on the guard in the virtual world as well.

WELLINGTON: Data from MegaUpload could be erased as early as this Thursday, a report says - a disturbing prospect for those who might have used the recently shut-down cyberlocker for legitimate purposes such as backing up business files. The Associated Press reports that in a letter filed last Friday in the MegaUpload piracy case, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group - companies MegaUpload hired to store data - may begin deleting that data come Thursday. MegaUpload's assets have been seized by the government, and its bank accounts have been frozen, Hence, MegaUpload can no longer pay companies like Carpathia and Cogent for their services, the AP reports. The government said law enforcement officials had copied some data from servers but hadn't physically taken the servers - and that now that the original search warrants have been executed, the remaining data cannot be legally accessed. In what some have called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the US, MegaUpload was yanked offline January 19 and its founder and several of his associates were arrested and charged with crimes related to online piracy. Many millions of people worldwide have allegedly used MegaUpload's cyberlocker service to store and access unauthorised copies of TV shows, feature films, songs, porn, and software. But some customers used MegaUpload for above-board practices like sharing large (and legal) files and backing up legitimate files. Some of those users have been expressing outrage over the government's takedown. A CNET.com reader with the screen name humanssssss, for example, had the following to say in response to an article about a MegaUpload lawyer's statements regarding the case: "Millions of people have their work and personal files on MegaUpload and depend on MegaUpload to provide service for them to make money to feed their family. One or two people in government decide the faith and livelihood of millions of families. This is immoral, unethical, and downright barbaric." MegaUpload attorney told the AP that at least 50 million MegaUpload users have data that could be deleted, and that the company is working with prosecutors to try to prevent the data from being vaporised.

NEW DELHI: Western Digital's foray into the HD media player segment has been a successful one. The latest device from their stables is an upgrade to the existing WD TV Live (the existing device is being phased out - this one comes in at a similar price point). It's thinner and smarter-looking than the outgoing WD TV Live, plus it has built in Wi-Fi to instantly connect to your home network for internet access or multimedia streaming. As you would expect, it has two USB ports, HDMI, optical audio and standard composite video/ stereo audio. But because it's slimmer, it loses the ability to stand upright (the older WD TV Live could be placed either flat on a table, or vertically, to save space). Like the previous edition, it uses an external universal voltage adapter so that you can use it anywhere. The interface has been upgraded to the 'Mochi' customisable interface, also found on the WD TV Live Hub. The user interface is a lot livelier than before, with customisable backgrounds, more features (like movie info display) and more online services (games, online videos, internet radio and so on). You can set it to automatically download movie information when connected to the internet, although the file names have to be correct and concise for this to happen. Thankfully, it also gets the larger infrared remote from the WD TV Live Hub (although the older WD TV Live remote works too). Another nice feature is RSS feeds - you can add your own feeds by entering a URL , but we think that a list of popular RSS feeds (in various categories) should have been included for simplicity. As we expected, this too is a media player par excellence. Whether you're playing back any standard video files and upscaling them or playing full HD video files, the performance can't be faulted. A few of the other nice things that have been carried over - it supports all the formats you can think of, stored in any sort of hard drive or flash drive. The front USB can be used to connect a USB keyboard - in case you don't like typing on an on-screen keyboard. You can also connect most still cameras and camcorders to an available USB ports to playback content on your big screen. There was one immediate problem we detected : After powering off the device using the remote, the connected hard drive remained in the powered on state. This means that the WD doesn't shut off power to the USB ports automatically - a problem also seen in the WD TV Live Hub. This means that it will draw a fair bit of power, even when you think it's been shut down. The other (continuing) problem with WD is that the player automatically moves to a powered on state when the mains power is supplied - the most efficient way to use it is to have a dedicated power switch for it. These two issues aside, the WD TV Live really is the best way to playback any sort of digital content on a larger screen. Sure, many newer TVs now come with built in USB ports for media playback, but none can match the performance and format support of the WD. WD TV Live Specifications 2 x USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, composite A/V, Wi-Fi , optical audio out, 1920 x 1080p output streaming audio/video, programmable remote, keyboard support, Mochi interface, 190 grams Flawless upscaling & playback, supports all formats, customisable & intuitive interface Keeps connected USB devices powered on, even in standby mode.

NEW DELHI: The government has decided to take future tendering and procurement for Aakash2 tablets from IIT Rajasthan, and hand it over to public sector undertakings. The decision comes in the wake of a spat between IIT-Rajasthan, current procurement agency for Aakash and the tablet's current maker Datawind, which has led to a stoppage of supplies. "We have realised that educational institutes are not capable of handling tenders as it involves large sums of money and handling vendors. Public sector undertakings are much better equipped to handle it," said a government official, involved with the billion-dollar fund for National Mission for Education through ICT, under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. As per sources, PSUs such as ITI Ltd or Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd (TCIL) might be considered for procurement of Aakash 2 tablets. The drafting of specifications and features of Aakash 2 tablets has also been taken away from IIT Rajasthan and given over to the Department of IT, Ministry of Communications and IT. The IT Ministry is chairing a committee over future specifications of Aakash 2, which is likely to include a capacitive touchscreen and 1GHz processor, at the same price of $35. Success of India's low-cost computing initiative has made governments such as Thailand, Panama, Italy express interest to the Ministry of External Affairs for procurement of tablets for their countries. The mandate for Aakash 2 lies with the National Mission for Education through ICT, under the Ministry of HRD. Over 70% of the billion-dollar fund sanctioned for NME-ICT is spent, and the expiry of the five-year fund. is nearing by March 31. This has led MHRD minister Kapil Sibal to announce that the government is planning to bring the second version of the tablet Aakash 2 by April this year. The new tender for Aakash 2 is likely to be of over one million units, and divided between two to three vendors. The spat between Datawind and IIT Rajasthan reached its climax last month, when Datawind declined to accept IIT's military level specifications for Aakash. IIT-Rajsthan had prescribed a rain and shockproof Aakash tablet while Datawind declined the features saying it is impossible to make such rugged tablets for $35. The vendor also complained to IIT-Rajasthan of non-payment for the supplied 10,000 units. IIT-Rajasthan declined to comment to ET on the story. The Ministry of HRD has declined to intervene in their spat, citing it as a 'commercial dispute' between vendor and procurer. The dispute has led to a delay. Students have still not received the tablets, even a year after the tender was out for the world's cheapest tablet.

NEW DELHI: The government plans to ask email service providers such as Yahoo, Gmail, Microsoft and others to route all emails accessed in India, through servers based here, even if the mail account was registered or made in a foreign land. It also plans to establish an India-centric Skype service. According to documents seen by ET, the Department of IT has been asked to inform email service providers on it, at the earliest. During a high-level meeting held in the office of Union Home Secretary RK Singh, the Department of Information Technology was asked to take up the matter with providers of services such as Gmail, Windows Mobile Active Email, Nokia Intellisync Email, Yahoo mail and others. According to the action note of the meeting, which took place on December 29, 2011, it was decided that Yahoo, Gmail and others will be asked to route all emails from India through servers based in the country. The government officials have also decided to set up an 'India-centric Skype' to address national security concerns. The 'Indian Skype' may be used by government officials to communicate with each other. During the meeting, director general from CERT-in Gulshan Rai informed that content provider Yahoo automatically locates all email accounts registered in India to the server in India, minutes of the meeting said. The meeting was attended by members of intelligence, and telecom department. However, Yahoo accounts registered outside India and subsequently accessed from India are routed through servers outside India, it said. Yahoo and Google denied to comment on the issue. The move comes as email accounts of suspected terrorists have been out of surveillance for Indian security agencies, if they are made outside India. The access becomes even harder if the communication takes place in the form of draft mails, instead of sent mails, as no routing takes place. According to an agency report, an Indian security agency recently failed to gain access to the email account of a suspected terrorist of Indian Mujahideen during its surveillance period. When an email service provider was approached, the security agency was told that in order to see the mails, a request to the European nation where the server was based, was required.

To say that the world has become a small place doesn't even begin to cover the way IT and telecom advancement has impacted our lives. From bringing the extreme ends of the planet together to influencing socioeconomic conditions, social behaviour and even the way we communicate in our day-to-day life, the instances are too many. And that is precisely why the decision to include telecommunication in the nation's infrastructure sector as per the government's National Telecom Policy, 2011, only seemed fitting. If the Mobile Internet in India Report, 2011, published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, is to be believed, the number of mobile internet users would have touched a magnanimous 46 million in December 2011. The report also suggests that there is a 15% quarter-on-quarter growth in the usage of internet on mobile phones. The fact that the number of broadband connections on March 31, 2010, were 8.77 million from 6.22 million on March 31, 2009, is evident of the phenomenal growth that this sector has seen. And the figures will be more whopping after the declaration of the Telecom Policy, 2011. After all, policy promises a dedicated focus on high-end telecom equipment, simplification of licensing for operators, improved broadband speeds and penetration in the country. What it is also aiming at is a fibre network that will support internet connectivity for all the village panchayats by 2014. To ensure that the plans turn into reality, the National IT Policy, 2011, will initiate intensive research and development and engineering. Quite clearly, these aren't just talks but well-supported plans that will change the way people communicate, particularly in places where the change hasn't already happened. Even if the merit in the above-mentioned figures is to be ignored, all it takes to establish the impact of telecommunication and IT is just a glance at the world around us. It's impossible to come across a person without a mobile phone. It's almost blasphemous to not have a Facebook account. Social networking is an unsaid mandate. And what substantiates it is a report by Nielsen Informate Mobile Insights that reveals that smartphone users spend more than 2.5 hours a day on their phones. More than 72% of the time spent is on activities such as gaming, socialising and entertainment. For the same reason, data usage for 3G users is nearly 44% more than 2G users.

LONDON:They trade jokes, chuckle and talk shop about a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem." But at the heart of the conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard was a strategy aimed at bringing down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, which has launched a series of embarrassing attacks across the Internet. Unfortunately for the cyber sleuths, the hackers were listening, too _ and now so is the rest of the world. Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call to the Internet early on Friday, gloating in a Twitter message that "the FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now." The FBI said the information "was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained" but that no FBI systems were breached. It added that "a criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible." It's not entirely clear how the hackers got their hands on the recording, which appears to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed. Amid the material published by Anonymous was an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent to international law enforcement agencies. It invites his foreign counterparts to join the call to "discuss the ongoing investigations related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups" on Jan 17 at 4pm. The message _ addressed to law enforcement officials in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and France _ contained a phone number and password for accessing the call. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation, said that authorities were looking at the possibility that the message was intercepted after a private email account of one of the invited participants was compromised. Graham Cluley, an expert with data security company Sophos, said that knowing the time, telephone number and passcode for the call meant it was all too easy to spy on the investigators. "Even my ironing lady could have rung in and silently listened to the call just like Anonymous did," Cluley said in an email, calling the fiasco "highly embarrassing for the cops." Scotland Yard said that they had seen no immediate information that their operations had been compromised _ but the discussions appear to be sensitive. Amid jokes about a teenage hacking suspect and light-hearted banter about McDonalds, the investigators seem to discuss whether to delay the arrest of two hacking suspects in order to give the FBI more time to pursue its side of the investigation. Updates are given on the status of inquiries stretching from Los Angeles to Baltimore to England's West Midlands and Ireland, with one member of Scotland Yard's central e-crime unit telling the FBI that British police had recently arrested a 15-year-old they might be interested in with relation to a recent breach at U.S. videogame company Valve Corp. "Yeah that's fantastic," an FBI official says in response. "We actually do have a pending investigation looking into that compromise." An email to the FBI official leading the call was not immediately returned, while the e-Crime investigator referred questions to Scotland Yard's press office. The press office confirmed that it had someone on the call but said it would be making no further comment. Most sensitive appears to be discussion of what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis _ two British suspects linked to Anonymous. The UK police official on the call said that prosecutors were secretly going to court to delay procedures in order to give FBI more time to do more work on a related case. When the FBI official thanks his UK counterpart for the favor, the Briton says cheerily: "We're here to help!" Karen Todner, a lawyer for Cleary, said that the recording could be "incredibly sensitive" and warned that such data breaches had the potential to derail the police's work. "If they haven't secured their email it could potentially prejudice the investigation," she said. The breach is likely to act as a wakeup call to law enforcement agencies globally, said Marcus Carey, who spent years securing communications for the NSA before joining security-risk assessment firm Rapid7. "A law enforcement agency using unencrypted, unsecure communications is a major fumble," Carey said. "What if this event was talking about some terrorist plot to blow up something and 'they' were listening in? It could've been much worse if it was related to an al-Qaida plot or something ... So this is a lesson learned." In Paris, a French police official who was briefed on the interception said that it could prompt international law enforcement bodies to be more circumspect about sharing information in conference calls. He spoke on condition that his name be withheld, saying he wasn't authorized to speak on the record. Anonymous appears to have had a busy Friday. The group also claimed credit for defacing the Boston Police Department's website, saying it was retaliating for police brutality at against Occupy Wall Street protesters. Anonymous, an amorphous collection of Internet enthusiasts, pranksters and activists, has increasingly focused its attention on law enforcement agencies in general and the FBI in particular. The hackers' traditional targets include the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard but has since expanded to include government, police, and military targets.

NEW DELHI: Software giant Microsoft has launched its annual DreamSpark Yatra to to share knowledge and spread awareness about innovations in technology that aims at targeting 60,000 students in 100 cities across the country. "The DreamSpark Yatra is our annual initiative aimed at driving wide-spread enthusiasm for, and awareness of the latest technology innovations," Microsoft India's Pratima Amonkar said at its launch at the Indian Institute of Technology here Wednesday. It will cover 99 other cities before concluding May 18. "We were delighted with the response that we have received for last year's Yatra and are hopeful that this unique platform will enable thousands more students across the country get to experience the latest in technology, inspiring new ideas and innovation," she added. According to Rob Sinclair, Microsoft Corporation's chief accessibility officer,"The focus for this year's Yatra is to raise awareness of accessibility solutions which help people to see, hear and use computers to their full potential". "Accessibility makes it easier for anyone to see, hear, and use a computer and to personalize it to meet their own needs and preferences. For instance, if someone is dyslexic, they can use the screen magnifier in Windows 7 while working on a computer," he said. The yatra will also help students gain access to Microsoft's other academic initiatives like Imagine Cup and the Student-to-Business programme. While Imagine Cup helps address societal problems like education, poverty and health, the latter prepares students to get technical jobs. The launch ceremony was followed by sessions on the latest Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Kinect, Windows Phone and a sneak preview of the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.