Identity theft on the Internet

 

Identity theft is when one person assumes the identity of another by stealing personal information. 

This is a very old problem. One example of typical identity theft is when a pickpocket steals your wallet containing credit cards, and uses the stolen articles to make a fraudulent purchase.

But with the development of the Internet, identity theft has taken pandemic proportions as this way to communicate become more and more commonplace. And identity theft on the Internet is worse than identity theft in the physical world. Indeed, most of the victims aren’t aware that their identity has been stolen. And when they realize it, it’s often too late.

Internet facilitates the identity theft because the computers collect much information about its users in files. These files can be used to reconstruct your online habits, and they can contain very important information like logins, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers…

But identity theft doesn’t only concerns Internet users. It can also concerns companies.  

An incident happened in 2005 : the personally identifiable information of more than a million of Americans was compromised. It involved Choice Point, Bank of America and Lexis Nexis.

You can consult this article from the Consumers Union. It gives you some examples of companies and institutions whose security has been breached, or that didn’t manage to maintain security practices. It’s very important for big companies that own files with detailed information about consumers to reinforce security.  

To conclude, I encourage you to visit Nadia’s Blog. In this interesting article, she gives an example of a recent case of identity theft. A man was arrested on suspicion of online paedophilia (pictures of children were found in his computer). But he wasn’t guilty : cyberhackers used robots to infiltrate his computer and steal personal data. 

Of course, Internet has to be regulated. But the regulation would not match with the values of e-culture… 

 

 

Cyber addiction

 

 

Being a cyber addict means depending on computers, networks, online video games or virtual worlds.

One year ago, in France, a teenager was put in a psychiatric clinic because of his addiction to video games. This young parisian man was playing online video games during twenty hours a day. He didn’t go to school anymore, and he lost seventeen kilos. And this is an article which talk about a similar case in UK.

Cyber addiction doesn’t only have a negative impact on the health, but also on social life. Indeed, it can lead to a break of the social link. Virtuality is more important than the reality for those who spend their days in virtual worlds, like Second life. And the addiction can lead to schizophrenia. In some of their testimonies, gamers say that confuse their own identity with their avatars. They behave, speak, think and act as the avatars they’ve created.

 

 

And even if those cases remain extremely rare, the cyber addiction is considered as a real disease, that must be taken in charge seriously, and that is as important as other addictions, like alcohol or drugs.

And you ? Are you thinking about your last Internet connection and anticipating the next one ? Be careful, maybe you’re an Internet addict 😉

If you want further information about cyber addiction, this is a very serious and complete report about the subject. 

Happy Slapping, or how new technologies can contribute to violence

When I tried to find an example of violence on the Internet, the happpy slapping immediately came to my mind. Indeed, last year, I made my internship in the company SFR, a mobile phone network company based in France. I was in charge of strategic watch, and of the subjects I had to deal with was happy slapping, which is related to new technologies in general (mobile phones and Internet).

 

 

Happy slapping consists in filming a physical attack with a video camera or a mobile phone, and in posting the video on the Internet. It can be different kinds of violence, from verbal violence to sexual one. Internet allows the “happy slappers” (the people who commit those violent acts) to diffuse widely those videos.

This phenomenon began in 2005 in South London, and quickly expanded to other countries, in particular thanks to Internet who made this practice very popular. That’s why the happy slapping is an example of violent practice which has developed with Internet, and which includes this tool in its action.

Many articles have been written and many reports have been done about happy slapping. I invite you to watch this video about happy slapping in the UK :

 

But happy slapping is only one aspect of violence on the Internet. 

Indeed, it exists many websites that celebrate violence and magnifies borderline behaviours. For example, on some websites, deaths are recorded and replayed thousands of times over the Internet. We can also evoke the phenomenon of snuff movies (movies in which people rape other people and kill them, while filming). 

 

To conclude, Internet doesn’t reinforce violence (violence has still existed and will still exist), but it contributes to make it more visible. 

Cybercrime

 

The new technologies permit short-term benefits, free access, easier communication with people all over the world, and immediate information. But some of those who claim the advantages of the Internet forget to take in consideration reliability and caution.

That’s why the development of new technologies and communication networks contributed to the growth of cybercrime, which means commiting crimes using the Internet. It can also be called “computer crime”, “e-crime”, “hi-tech crime” or “electronic crime”.

Cybercrime includes many activties, like illegal access, steamling information from websites, causing damage to a computer, hacking, cyberterrorism… Let’s talk about cybertorrism.

Cyberterrorism is the convergence of terrorism and cyberspace. As the Internet developed and expanded, the cyberspace has appeared as an effective tool to attack, threaten or intimidate a government or its citizens. The advantage of the Internet for cybertorrists is that it offers them anonymity. One of the other advantages is that there isn’t any risk to be captured, injured or killed, because it’s virtual, there are not physically present. Internet permits them to reach many people because of the increasing number of Internet users.

If you’re interested by the subject and if you want to learn more about the ways to fight against cybercrime, you can visit the website of the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property section of the United States. On this website, you will find the latest press releases about cybercrime.

And this is one interesting article written by the BBC’s desk about the subject.

 

But cybercrime can include many other practices, like identity theft for example. I’ve told about identity theft in this article.

How to enter the electronic music world on the Internet ?

My response would be one word : Beatport.

 

 

Beatport is an online music store whose offices are based in Denver, Colorado.

The specificity and originality of Beatport is that this website is specialized in electronic music.

Of course, you can find electronic music tracks in others online music store like iTunes Music Store for example, or in the websites of the shops who commercialize cultural goods like Virgin Megastore or FNAC. But it’s often limited to mainstream electronic music, and the number of tracks proposed isn’t as important as on Beatport.

I like Beatport because it doesn’t consider electronic music as one and only music style, but as a music family which gathers many other styles : Drum & Bass, Techno, Trance, Minimal, House… In total, twenty-four music styles are offered to the visitor.

In this website, you can browse, preview, purchase and download music. The tracks are classified by music styles, artists and labels. Beatport gathers many labels from countries all over the world, which allows the visitors to discover new artists. Indeed, the tool present you a selection of releases according to the tracks you listen and you buy. You can also consult the “top ten charts”, in which DJs and producers provide the lists of their favourite recommendations. 

This is the home page of the website, that I find very “user-friendly” :

 

But Beatport is not only an online music store. It has created other tools for electronic music lovers, and the brand has converted itself in a life-style provider. For example, in February 2007, Beatport launched the Beatport Player, a viral marketing web widget. With this MP3 player, you can create dynamic playlists from Beatport’s catalog of songs. And you can also customize your player. In August 2007, Beatport continued to expand by lauching a community-oriented music site, Beatportal, providing up-to-date information about the world of electronic music. In this website, you can find party reports, event listings, podcasts, forums,… And in March 2008, Beatport introduced the Beatport Music Awards, prizing DJs and producers for their work, in every music style category proposed by the website.

For all those reasons, I consider Beatport as a huge tool for those who want to enter the electronic music world on the Internet.

And for people who don’t appreciate electronic music, Beatport recently launched a news online music store, Beatsource, dedicated to urban music.

 

My presentation

The economic crisis

This is a video where I explain my opinion about the impact of new media like Internet on the economic crisis :

The W.E.I.

Last weekend, I attended the WEI, a very important event in CELSA’s student life.

It’s an integration weekend for those who have just integrated the school, but not only…

Indeed, many students in Master degree – like me – returned to the WEI this year to organize the activities, but also to have fun !

The P.A.V.O., a student organization responsible for producing all the movies about CELSA’s life, was here. I’ll surely put the link on this blog as soon as the video will be available !

The subject of the Saturday night party was “kitsch”. And all the new students played the game very well. Just have a look at those great disguises – and those tipsy people !

 

 

Clue : a guy of the English class is hidden in this photograph…

On Sunday night, I came back with a hoarse voice, a terrible headache, but wonderful memories !

If you want to learn more about CELSA’s student life, click here !

 

 

Open source software VS commercial software

 

 

Many people on the Internet consider that the open source model is better than the commercial one. To understand a little better the debate, we must define what is an open source software. Before writing this article, I didn’t know the difference between those two types of softwares. And I must avoid that this subject is very complicated ! So if you find mistakes in my article, don’t hesitate to tell me about it.

An open source software is developed collaboratively, for free distribution, whereas commercial softwares are developed by programmers employed by a company. But the most important difference is that the OSS (open source software) is a software which source code is available for the users, contrary to commercial software’s whose codes are protected (there’s an intellectual property). And if you have the code, you can modify and improve the software, contrary to the commercial software that you can only use.

The arguments of those who claim that OSS is better than commercial software are :

– OSS encourage innovation because you can modify it

– OSS is cheaper than commercial software’s

– OSS is more secure than commercial software’s

This is an article about benefits of using open source softwares. 

As I’m not a specialist, I can’t answer this question precisely. But I had the idea to take one example of an open source software – Firefox – and one example of commercial software – Internet Explorer – and to compare what is said about each on the Internet.  

The result of this little research is that Firefox enjoys a good image, due to its numerous options and the customization it permits. Indeed, with this software, you can change entirely the appearance of your browser, and put the various elements where you want. All of this is impossible with Internet Explorer that moreover doesn’t works on Windows. 

But I won’t take a stand in this debate because I’m not qualified enough !

 

Google, Android VS Apple, iPhone

 

 

    

 

Google has recently developed Android, a software platform and operating system for mobile devices. The project comes from Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of thirty four companies specialized in software, hardware and telecommunications, like HTC, Motorola, LG or Samsung. Android is an open platform which allows developers to create their own applications, and users to modify the system as they want, adding or suppressing features.

 

By launching Android, Google entered the mobile phone market. Many mobile constructors have already sign with Google to provide this platform with their phones. It was particularly surprising to see that HTC which only sold mobile phones equipped with Windows Mobile, decided to put Android on its mobile phones. All these « smartphones » are competitors for Apple and its iPhone.  

 

Many geeks and bloggers specialized in new technologies try to compare Android and iPhone. As far as I am concerned, I can’t say if it’s better than the iPhone launched this summer by Apple, because I haven’t tested Android nor the iPhone, although some friends of mine told me that some of the applications that you could put on your iPhone were huge and very innovative. For example, there’s an application which recognizes all the music and which gives you the name of a song when you put your iPhone in front of the radio !

 

But after reading some articles on the Internet, I understood that it was difficult to compare Android and iPhone because those products correspond to two different strategies. In an article published in July in the magazine Wired, the journalist said : “Those hoping for a new gadget to rival the iPhone finally understood that Google had something radically different in mind. Apple’s device was an end in itself — a self-contained, jewel-like masterpiece locked in a sleek protective shell. Android was a means, a seed intended to grow an entire new wireless family tree.”

 

If you want to read the whole article, and to learn more about Android, just click here !