CIS 451: Internet Societal Issues

1. CIS 451: Internet Societal Issues Dr. Ralph D. Westfall August, 2011

3. Social Networking Security people post all kinds of information about themseleves on Facebook, etc. some of it could be used to harm them PleaseRobMe.com gets your travel plans and puts them on the Internet so thieves can know you're not home Source: KTLA News

4. Job Search Internet Effects Potential employers Google your name "Would I want my mom � to see this?" Use privacy settings on social sites Untag your name from problem images Consider an alias for some things you do Post positive stuff with your real name e.g., helpful answers in forums Source: Undo � Damage Your Facebook Profile

5. The Dialectical Internet "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's Third Law of Motion the Internet often works the same way if some person or group uses the Internet to promote an agenda, others may use it to work against that agenda or promote a conflicting agenda in other words, self regulation

6. The Internet and Juries Internet use by jurors for research may cause convictions to be overturned Social networking among jurors is trying judges' patience Social Networking Threatens Another Jury Verdict Courts finally catching up to texting jurors (�Twitter instructions� by judges)

7. Phony Degrees get any degree�bachelors, masters or doctorate�for a few $1000 email ad for a phony degree wife's former boss bought BA, MA & EdD based on "life experience," not classes Wired News article Degree Mills book Novelty Degrees at bogusphd.com

8. Phony Degrees - 2 high ranking Federal government employees with phony degrees (CBS) use of phony degrees is illegal in only four states Oregon, North Dakota, New Jersey and Illinois Oregon list of invalid degrees (scroll) California warning (scroll down on right)

9. "Phishing" spam that looks like it's from a bank some people deal with has an image with text on it, rather than text that can be evaluated by spam filters clicking on link leads to a web site that looks like a bank website (but IP address doesn't contain bank name) example (click on link too)

10. Bob, You've Been Phished video by Cal Poly students won $1000 prize in a national contest but had to pay the source of the background music around $200 for unauthorized use transcript

11. Phishing Gets Cleverer recent eBay Phishing email mouseovering the learn more link on right shows a valid eBay URL mouseover Respond Now button (image) to see URL of a non-eBay web site

12. Social Network Hacking Facebook hack service smells fishy $100 charge may be a ripoff �Fusking� PhotoBucket and Other Pictures Sharing Sites viewing private pictures with common filenames

13. Miss Bimbo.com (archived) virtual fashion game/community about a female character "Become the most famous and beautiful bimbo in the world." Controversies option to buy breast implants for Miss B over-emphasis on attractiveness negative impacts on players self esteem?

14. Denial of Service Attacks "attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users" (Wikipedia) "saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests" Cal Poly attacked January 2009 against the law in many countries

15. Spam unsolicited e-mail not SPAM lunchmeat > Home millions of e-mail addresses on CDs anti-spam websites Spam domain blacklist Fight Spam on the Internet Spam Cop spam2congress.com

16. Technological Spam Solutions filters blacklists and whitelists block banned vs. block all except friends challenge/response non-whitelist senders must solve a captcha eStamps increase the resource requirements for sending each email send eStamp charges to charities

17. Spam and DOS Attacks DOS against spammers Spammers targeted with DDoS attack Spam Slayer: Bringing Spammers to Their Knees SpamItBack criticism of DOS attack approach Spammers launch denial of service attacks against antispam sites

18. Anonymity products to prevent invasions of your privacy when surfing website Anonymous Surfing used to have a SCAN YOUR PC NOW button on left side of page that printed a lot of information from your machine as a demonstration

19. Anonymity - 2 web sites for sending anonymous e-mail Advicebox (out of business now) Where to Send Anonymous Email (sites) note warning on top left of page anonymity helps people who want to engage in "sanctioned behavior" not all anonymous use is antisocial e.g., people seeking suicide counseling

20. Location Privacy "Cell phone companies know where you are every time you make a call. GPS devices keep a record of the routes you take around town. Social networking services alert friends when you�re nearby. " Source: Will your cell phone give you away?

21. Location Privacy - 2 "no clear standard for how law enforcement agencies should get access to these records" "combined with � tools like Google Maps, it�s not some vast technical feat to � follow you around on the map.� Source: Will your cell phone give you ...

22. Gambling offshore gambling not subject to US laws implications for: compulsive gamblers? "point shaving" by college athletes? Cal State Fullerton Pay-Pal & credit card companies stopped working with online casinos

23. Pornography laws vary by country, and by US community hard to prosecute offshore vendors make it illegal to receive it? freedom of speech? censorship? market for child and violent pornography leads to exploitation believed to cause harmful behavior

24. Pornography Statistics spending/second = $3,075.64 25% of total search engine requests 20% of men, 13% of women admit accessing pornography at work 28% of porn site visitors are women Source: TopTenREVIEWS

25. Spyware, Adware, Etc. (Malware) in software installed on the computer usually with consent of user (disclosure often hidden in EULA) adware runs ads in exchange for free services spyware tracks surfing to target ads adware and spyware definitions Spybot Search and Destroy freeware

26. More Malware Google searches web's dark side Google found that 10% of sample of 4.5 MM pages could do "drive by downloads" Another 700,000 had other security risks Malware often based on ads on owner's pages rather than owner-created content Bad Bunny! Energizer USB battery charger blamed for "backdoor" Trojan virus

27. Porn Sites and "Malware" 98% of porn sites downloaded spyware or adware [dead link] 15% installed software that dialed "premium rate" porn phone numbers 5% installed browser hijackers e.g., click CWS link can change home page, add porn links to Favorites

28. StopBadware Coalition Operated by Harvard Law School and Oxford University Consumer Reports is an advisor Sponsors include Google, Verisign, Sun Microsystems, AOL Identified RealPlayer as badware because of "inadequate disclosure of advertising behavior"

29. Bounties on Malware Authors Microsoft offers $250,000 for the head of Conficker's author counterattack on people who exploit security flaws in Microsoft software Microsoft has offered rewards before and paid off on one another software company also offered a reward

30. Bomb Making Sites freedom of speech? or yelling "Fire!" in crowded theater? courts have upheld right to sell bomb books such as "Anarchist's Cookbook" author changed his mind later do sites lead to more Unabombers, more violence like bombing of Oklahoma City Federal Building?

31. Hate Groups Internet makes it easier for people at extreme fringes to find like-minded people Internet is a convenient tool for spreading lies and propaganda other sites created to counter lies problem: harder to stop a lie than to spread it

32. Spoofing Email Addresses sending email as from someone else's email address extremely easy for anyone who has a server most spam has spoofed addresses students from class taught by author elsewhere spoofed an email from an attractive woman in the class to him

33. Spoofing Caller ID calling cards and devices make this easy e.g., calls from: traditional fake phone # 555-555-5555 mathematical pi 314-159-2653 "mark of the beast" 666-666-6666 http://artofhacking.com/files/OB-FAQ.HTMhttp://artofhacking.com/files/OB-FAQ.HTM

34. Rumors, Half-Truths, Etc. urban legends About.com Urban Legends computer virus hoaxes Vmyths.com

35. "Truth" Sites Investigate and evaluate things on the Internet and in other media Snopes.com: "Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation" 25 Hottest Urban Legends TruthOrFiction.com FactCheck.org (political issues)

36. Commercial Product Slander "Aspartame causes multiple sclerosis" Nancy Markle letter, another letter, victim? response from Multiple Sclerosis Foundation doctor Harvard Law school paper Internet Hoaxes: Public Regulation and Private Remedies

37. Fraud possible with on-line auction sites (E-Bay) know anybody who has lost money? how much? very low capital requirements to start an e-business, legitimate or otherwise out-of-area fraud hard to deal with not much different from mail order? Internet ScamBusters

38. Bad Business Bureau Sites different from the Better Business Bureaus publicly report complaints and horror stories to force action sample sites Rip-off Report.com concerns about its founder Google search on "bad business bureau"

39. Financial Fraud Internet Fraud (web page from the Securities and Exchange Commission) stock tips publicized by spam, bulletin boards/chat rooms, online newsletters scroll down on above link to see "pump and dump," pyramid, "risk free," off-shore frauds

40. Religious Proselytizing person searching for "religion A," gets an ad about how great "religion B" is actual case search engine stopped selling ads to "religion B" issues: freedom of speech and religion? right of a business to determine its own marketing policies? LycosLycos

41. Domestic Political Issues Yahoo cancelled labor union "cyberpicketing" ads Google refused anti-war ads (subsequently reinstated) guns and ammunition ads other "anti" ads opposing people, organizations or issues

42. More Domestic Political "Google bombing" uses drives traffic to other pages by links and keywords US president examples previous Google search on failure more recent at Google and Yahoo after media attention, search algorithms get changed

43. Election Campaigns A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data

44. International Political Issues Yahoo helped Chinese government prosecute a journalist? Shi Tao sentenced to 10 years in prison information claimed to be a "state secret," but others say it was widely known Yahoo's role in this has not been revealed Chinese government blocked Wikipedia three times

45. International Political - 2 MSN helps censors human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech considered to be profanity? Google censors itself for China news service doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by Chinese authorities Cisco wanted to help 'Great Firewall' of China also sells Policenet to track dissidents

46. "Google Fraud" How The Google AdWords Scam Was Done manipulating results of Google Adwordsmanipulating results of Google Adwords

47. Fake Sites on Search Engines Security researcher Jim Stickley created a phony site for a real credit union redirected visitors to real site phony site got #2 ranking on Yahoo and #1 on Bing ahead of even the credit union's real site

48. Commercial Advertising pharmacists want to ban ads for unlicensed pharmaceutical dealers

49. Intellectual Property material can be copyrighted, but so very easy to steal (1 mouse click) images, text, software Software and Information Industry Association prosecutes owners of servers or BBSs that distribute pirated software also has a CORPORATE ANTI-PIRACY REWARD PROGRAM (up to $50,000)

50. Personal Computer Security DSL and cable connections make personal computers vulnerable Zone Alarm is a free personal computer firewall I used to have it installed at home numerous hits from unrelated addresses unfortunately Zone Alarm itself can cause problems on some computers

51. Web Site or Viewer Hijacking copy site with high search engine rank email from business that hijacked my page use it as a front end to a completely different kind of site often pornographic recycling abandoned domain names for "stealth porn sites"

52. Web Site Vandalism hack in to a commercial website and add different content frequently politically motivated Greatest Hacks of All Time

53. Domain Name Abuses register www.somebigcompany.com demand that somebigcompany pay you for its own name courts usually rule for the companies unofficial websites for politicians (put up by opponents), movie stars, etc. e.g., www.bobdole.com (candidate in '96) pro or con?

54. Internet Sales Taxes? web vendors claim need to be exempt "don't kill goose that is laying golden egg" states are losing revenues national politicians have endorsed temporary tax free status for e-commerce but revenue loss projected at $45 billion by 2006 (another study says $3.2 billion) [dead links]

55. Workaholism with the Internet, can continue working at home, after work and on weekends handling e-mail, writing reports, financial analysis, etc. impacts on family life?

56. Telecommuting Internet makes it possible to work at home instead of driving to work benefits child care? elder care? commuting cost savings disadvantages isolation, reduced chances for promotion

57. The "Digital Divide" Internet offers many benefits, but what about people who: can't afford a computer don't have the skills to use a computer will these people be left behind in the "new economy?" should the government take a more active role in helping these people?

58. Internet Impacts on Users Internet addiction test yourself loneliness increases with Internet use? Internet helps social ties? free greeting cards (increase social activity?)

59. Other Issues? can you think of any other societal issues recently created by the Internet?

60. Exercise outline a debate position on one of the following propositions (pro or con): "The Internet is making this a better world." "Self-regulation is not enough: the government needs to take a more active role in regulating spam.� or some other kind of abuse

61. Exercise - 2 find a web site spreading rumors, lies, half truths, propaganda, or etc. find another site designed to counter the content of this type of site evaluate the effectiveness of the 2nd site in countering sites such as the 1st write a one page outline summarizing findings

62. Exercise 3 whois sometimes shows domain name owners for politicians, celebrities, etc. privacy services now hold most of them check information that is available for barackobama.com write a one page outline summarizing the ethical questions raised by people using other person's names in a domain

63. THE END THE END THE END THE END THE END THE END Privacy Intel planned to have unique ID # on a new CPU chip public outcry led Intel to offer software "patch" to disable the ID NICs on computers hooked to LANs have always had unique IDs "cookies" store personal information can refuse to accept cookies but � More Phishing? World Business University Association I received a spam from them I emailed them, but all 3 of the contact addresses in the email were rejected I phoned the contact number but was just connected to an answering machine entry page had spelling errors and a dead link! form to fill out an attempt at phishing? Anti-Pornography Feminists Catherine MacKinnon is leading proponent of this concept review of her concepts PBS Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg appearance has radical feminist credentials based on her opposition to traditional marriage Privacy Intel planned to have unique ID # on a new CPU chip public outcry led Intel to offer software "patch" to disable the ID NICs on computers hooked to LANs have always had unique IDs "cookies" store personal information can refuse to accept cookies but � More Phishing? World Business University Association I received a spam from them I emailed them, but all 3 of the contact addresses in the email were rejected I phoned the contact number but was just connected to an answering machine entry page had spelling errors and a dead link! form to fill out an attempt at phishing? Anti-Pornography Feminists Catherine MacKinnon is leading proponent of this concept review of her concepts PBS Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg appearance has radical feminist credentials based on her opposition to traditional marriage