Senator Pressures Visa, MasterCard To Stop Serving File-Sharing Sites

November 27, 2014 at 01:27AM :

(frankieleon)

File-sharing and copyright infringement have been a bugaboo among lawmakers since internet speeds got fast enough to swap music in the late 1990s. No tactic so far has actually yet stopped audiences from swapping music and movies among themselves, and while some sites and services have been shuttered, another two or three are always ready to pop up. So now a lawmaker is trying a new strategy: appealing to the middlemen who actually move the money.

This week, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont (chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) sent letters to the heads of both Visa and Mastercard (PDF) asking them to pull service from a set of 30 “cyberlocker” cites. His list of targeted sites comes from a report (PDF) issued recently from NetNames and the Digital Citizens Alliance, a group that creates and publishes reports about the nature and volume of online crimes.

“Cyberlockers” are just cloud-storage file hosting services. But unlike workplace-friendly names like DropBox, they’re the ones with a less, shall we say, savory reputation.

“Unlike lawful cloud storage services,” Leahy writes, cyberlockers “exist to unlawfully store and disseminate infringing files around the world.” Basically, they’re where you get and store your shared music, movies, TV, and other media of a not-legally-purchased nature.

“The cyberlockers listed in the report bear clear red flags of having no legitimate purpose or activity,” Leahy continues. Although the report doesn’t find that all of the traffic to the sites it cites is illegal, it did find a very high amount to be. Roughly 80% of the files the survey looked at across the 30 named services infringed copyright in some way. (Including, the report mentions as an aside, the 13% of content that was pornographic.)

The 30 services that the NetNames report looked at all provide “premium” subscription-level service, and those services can be paid for with a credit card. This is where Visa and Mastercard come in. The theory goes like this: if file-hosting sites can’t process payments, they don’t make a profit and can’t keep the lights and servers on.

No profit, no motivation. And if they can’t keep the lights and servers on, then they stop being. And when they stop being, sharing of copyrighted material stops. Confetti ensues.

Visa and MasterCard do prohibit their cards being used for unlawful purposes. Leahy, in his letters, reminds executives of both companies that their predecessors testified to as much before the Senate in 2006.

Since the sites exist for unlawful activity, Leahy’s argument goes, and since Visa and MasterCard don’t support unlawful activity, Visa and Mastercard are both therefore strongly urged to “revisit their policies” and to “ensure that payment processing services offered by [Visa and Mastercard] to those sites, or any others dedicated to infringing activity, cease.”

Leahy has a long history of involvement with copyright protection issues. As TorrentFreak notes, he was the lead sponsor of PIPA — one of the two bills that generated an internet-wide protest — back in 2012.

Senator tells Visa and MasterCard to stop serving “cyberlockers” [Ars Technica]

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Ubisoft Admits Assassin’s Creed Is Broken, Offers Free Stuff To Apologize

November 27, 2014 at 01:22AM :

As I argued a couple weeks back in the wake of the botched release of Assassin’s Creed Unity, video game publishers need to stop treating their biggest customers as guinea pigs on which to unleash broken games that will eventually be fixed via multiple patches weeks after release — or at the very least acknowledge this treatment and give these customers an incentive (lower price, free stuff, etc.) that doesn’t make them immediately regret spending $60 on a new game. And while it’s too late to undo all the damage done, Ubisoft is now attempting to make nice with these users by offering them free content as an apology.

In a blog post published earlier today, Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal and Toronto, admits that the anticipation and excitement for the newest title in the popular series was undercut because “the overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues… These problems took away from your enjoyment of the game, and kept many of you from experiencing the game at its fullest potential.”

The publisher has released multiple patches since the initial launch, but many are still angered by the fact that they paid top dollar for an unfinished game. And the irritation is only made worse by Ubisoft’s decision to strong-arm reviewers into holding back reviews of the game until after pre-orders were released, meaning people had no advance warning that they were buying a glitch-filled mess.

So in order to try to make it right, Ubisoft is going to give everyone who bought the game access to the Dead Kings downloadable content for free. If you paid for a Season Pass, which gives you access to all DLC when it’s released, you’ll be able to pick a free game from a slate of other Ubisoft titles, including Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Rayman Legends, Just Dance 2015.

The company has posted more information about the offer here.

Mallat says that the feedback from users — who have not held back from filling in the company on every glitch they discover “has been both humbling and incredibly helpful,” and he says that Ubisoft is “hopeful that with these forthcoming updates, everyone will be able to truly enjoy their Assassin’s Creed Unity experience.”

Please let this be a lesson to the game publishers of the world — if you know in advance that you won’t be releasing a finished product, tell your customers as soon as possible.

Given that it takes months for disc-based games to be made, packaged, shipped and distributed to stores, Ubisoft knew for months that what it would release in November was not going to work properly.

Had the company announced a week or two before launch, “Warning: The game is going to be glitchy at launch, but we’re going to give free DLC to everyone who pre-orders,” I’m betting they would have actually sold even more copies of the game, and people would not have been able to complain when the launch product wasn’t up to snuff.

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Sorry Camel, Fewer People Than Ever Are Smoking Between Every Thanksgiving Course

November 27, 2014 at 12:46AM :

It’s been 78 years since Camel rans its full-page Thanksgiving ad encouraging smokers to enjoy a cigarette after every course of their holiday meal to aid with “good digestion.” Since then, food has apparently gotten a lot easier to digest — and people aren’t so keen about dying of lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease — as a new CDC report finds that fewer Americans than ever are aiding their digestion with cigarettes.

According to the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — which has to be our favorite name for all weekly reports and would make a good name for a hybrid prog rock/smooth jazz band — smoking in the U.S. in 2013 was down to only 42.1 million people, down three million from 2005. So even though the U.S. population grew during those years, the number of smokers dropped.

The rate of smoking in the country is at its lowest since 1965, when the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey first started asking that question, in between puffs of its Lucky Strikes of course.

But while cigarette smoking has decreased overall, the CDC says that it is still prevalent among certain demographic groups.

For example, those with less education are more likely to be smokers. While the overall percentage of American adults who smoke is 17.8%, that rate soars to 41.4% for adults with a GED, and 33.2% for people whose education stopped between ninth and eleventh grade. And these numbers remain virtually unchanged between 2005 and 2013.

Income levels also showed a significant difference between prevalence of smoking. Americans living above the poverty line smoked less frequently than the national average at only 16.2%, while 29.2% of adults living in poverty are smokers. And just as in the education example, while the rate of smoking dropped between 2005 and 2013 among those above the poverty line, it remained constant for the lower-income demographic.

In terms of geographic differences, the CDC says that Americans in the West Census Region (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) had the lowest rate at only 13.6%, in spite of the fact that Native Americans had the highest rate of any single ethnic group at 26.1%.

The region with the highest rate of smoking was the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin), at 20.9%.

All four geographical regions saw declines in smoking between 2005 and 2013.

For the first time, the report looked at smoking prevalence in two other demographic areas — disability and sexual orientation — and found noteworthy differences in each category.

According to the CDC, nearly 1-in-4 of Americans who identified as having a disability were smokers in 2013, compared to only 17% for those who don’t claim to be disabled. An even bigger gab existed between straight adults (17.6% smokers) and the lesbian/gay/bisexual adults (26.6%).

Since these are new stats for the CDC to track, it’s impossible to say whether there has been an increase or decrease in smoking among these populations during the 8-year time period. Guess we’ll just have to wait until 2022.

The CDC is also taking the opportunity of this report to remind Americans not to fall for the “Well, I only smoke a few times a day” trap.

“Though smokers are smoking fewer cigarettes, cutting back by a few cigarettes a day rather than quitting completely does not produce significant health benefits,” said Brian King Ph.D., a senior scientific advisor with CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. “Smokers who quit before they’re 40 years old can get back almost all of the 10 years of life expectancy smoking takes away.”

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Warm Up For Black Friday: Here’s A Pop Quiz On The Best Deals

November 27, 2014 at 12:44AM :

(Rich Renomeron)

You can’t depend on retailers to tell you whether you’re really getting a good deal or not. Is $89 the cheapest that you can find an Apple TV for? Is a $199 Dyson vacuum cleaner too good to pass up? You can make sure that your deal-finding senses are finely tuned and ready for Black Friday with an interactive deal quiz over at CNN. Some deals are exceptional, and others compare unfavorably to other recent sales, sometimes at the same retailer. [CNN]http://ift.tt/11URmbO

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Where Do People Buy The Stuff They Used To Buy At Sears?

November 27, 2014 at 12:31AM :

Pete Kraynak

Many American consumers have sworn off shopping at Sears and Kmart, their local stores have closed, or they have just forgotten that the chains exist. Business that once went to Kmart now goes to discount store competitors Kmart and Walmart, logically enough, but where do Americans go for the things that they once bought at Sears?

The Wall Street Journal explains that the main beneficiaries of Sears closing many stores and driving away existing customers has been Home Depot and Lowe’s. Both chains sell large appliances and tools, items that people once visited Sears for. One analyst determined that if Sears loses about half of its anticipated sales in those sectors in the next few years, just that former Sears business could boost each big box’s total sales in a given store by around 1%. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there is a lot of money at stake.

Sears also once did plenty of business in consumer electronics, like televisions and computers. They’re trying to get out of that sector, which leaves the business wide open for…Best Buy, yet another big-box chain that is staging a successful comeback. Best Buy, incidentally, also sells the major appliances that people used to buy at Sears.

Sears’s Great Holiday Retail Giveaway [Wall Street Journal]

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Is Today Actually The Busiest Air Travel Day Of The Year?

November 26, 2014 at 11:20PM :

(Ryan Keene)

You hear it every year from people — Try to avoid traveling on the day before Thanksgiving because it’s the busiest day of the year. And that very well be true when you factor in all modes of transport. But in terms of air travel, Thanksgiving Eve appears to be nowhere near the most hectic day for flights in the U.S.

This the argument made by David Yanofsky over at QZ.com, where he uses FAA flight data to show that the busiest travel days are actually during the middle of the summer. In fact, of the 15 days in 2013 with the highest numbers of flights operating at U.S. airports, only one (Dec. 20) occurred outside of the summer months. December 19 was the 16th busiest day last year, while Nov. 27 was all the way down at #27 for the year.

Now this comparison only looks at the sheer number of flights and not the actual number of passengers on those flights. In a follow-up on Twitter, Yanofsky makes the case that FAA data for passenger emplanements shows that November is significantly lower than the summer months and December.

This news will be of little to no consolation or concern for the millions of Americans who are packed onto Amtrak trains this weekend (especially in the D.C.-Boston corridor) or stuck in traffic trying to drive to see in-laws they don’t particularly like. And the fact that most of these people will be making their return trips later this weekend doesn’t help.

Meanwhile, I’m currently under about eight feet of snow in upstate New York. If someone wants to hop on their SnoCat and rescue me, please bring some hot chocolate. Oh, and watch out for the hedge animals outside. I think they’re moving.

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Uber’s Latest Privacy Problems: “Ghost Texting” Drivers’ Contacts, Collecting Android Users’ Data

November 26, 2014 at 11:05PM :

Controversial car service Uber, already under fire recently, has a new pair of privacy concerns this morning. One has to do with drivers’ accounts, and the other is for anyone who uses the Android version of the app.

Uber’s like hundreds of other companies in one particular way: they rely on recommendations from current employees to help them find new workers. One Uber driver’s girlfriend recently got a text from him, through Uber’s referral program, urging her to sign up so they could both get a bonus. The problem? He didn’t send that text or choose to refer anyone at all, in fact, let alone his girlfriend. And neither did other Uber drivers whose friends and family have received recruiting messages in their names.

Newsweek calls the problem “ghost texts.” They spoke with a driver, “George,” who showed them the message his girlfriend had received:

UberMSG: “Congratulations! Your friend [George] wants you to be an Uber partner! Both of you can make money when you APPLY HERE: [URL with referral code].

George told Newsweek that he neither gave Uber permission to contact his girlfriend, nor manually referred her. And the referral code in the text wasn’t his, either.

Of course, it’s sadly common for apps to require you to opt out of giving them access to your contacts, rather than requiring you to opt in. So George immediately went to go check his settings. Only… there wasn’t a choice. “Most apps have an option that says, ‘Do you want this app to see your contacts list?’,” George told Newsweek, but “Uber doesn’t have that option.”

Newsweek looked at the way Uber’s referral program is supposed to work, and it’s a very clear set of manual steps a driver needs to take and confirm along the way. Drivers using an Uber-owned company phone first have to select a “refer now” option and then manually enter a contact’s information. Drivers using their own devices have a similar process, but with an extra step.

The wording on the referral message is different depending on if the driver is using their own phone or a company phone. Although George uses his own device, his girlfriend received the “company phone” variant of the message.

Neither George nor any of the other Uber drivers Newsweek spoke with went through that manual referral process. When George contacted Uber to ask about it, he received a reply saying they’d follow up with him… which they still haven’t done.

Uber told Newsweek, “We are looking into how these messages may have been sent. Uber does not ask for or have access to drivers’ contacts stored on their personal phones. To refer friends, drivers have to manually and locally send from their phone. For any drivers whose friends sign up as a result of these messages, we will ensure that they receive the proper referral bonus.”

At least one driver, meanwhile, told Newsweek he’d stick with paying the fee for the Uber-owned phone instead. No contacts, no spam.

Android device owners who use Uber, meanwhile, might need to worry about a whole lot more than spam to their contacts. The app, as it turns out, not only has access to every piece of data about your phone, but also reports that information back to Uber.

Users at Hacker News reverse-engineered the Uber Android app, as BGR reports, and looked at all of the data it collects and systems it has access to.

It’s not a surprise to any Uber user that the app needs the ability to send and receive texts and calls and to access your GPS. Those are foundational to the service: it can’t send a car to your location, and text you updates, if it doesn’t know where you are or how to reach your phone.

However, Uber also accesses a whole bunch of other information about your Android phone. Some of that info includes: what other, non-Uber apps are installed and what and when they’re running; how much data your phone is sending everywhere; what cell towers you’re connected to; what wifi networks you’re connected to; what wifi networks in the area are available that you’re not connected to; whether or not your phone has been rooted; and how much charge is left in your battery, or whether your phone is plugged in.

Uber also checks if your phone has any malware on it, and if your phone is vulnerable to the heartbleed bug. Among other things.

As one Hacker News user points out, most of the things Uber asks are just part of making it work, though not all of them are. Plenty of those settings are just left in, basically, by default.

That doesn’t mean Uber is doing anything nefarious with the data or in fact collecting it at all. But they could be, either now or in the future. And perhaps more importantly: every app that has access to private phone data is yet another app that could be leaving users vulnerable to having their information stolen, hacked, or otherwise used against them.

That’s a lot of risk for basically calling a cab.

Ghost Texts: Uber’s Invasive Practices in Driver Recruitment [Newsweek]

Uber’s Android app is reportedly collecting a huge amount of data without your knowledge [BGR]

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