Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

[News] Skype Becomes Spype, Time for Free Software Alternatives

  • Subject: [News] Skype Becomes Spype, Time for Free Software Alternatives
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:33:42 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Beware of Skype

,----[ Quote ]
| The Skype network has been a concern of government intelligence agencies 
| since its inception because it provides a worldwide network of encrypted VoIP 
| calls to potential “terrorists”. So how coincidental is it that 10 days after 
| Bush signs into law a Bill giving the government authority to track foreign 
| calls that go through U.S. networks that Skype, for the first time in its 
| existence, undergoes a massive worldwide outage?     
| 
| [...]
| 
| But there are FOSS alternatives to Skype people really should start 
| considering now. One is the OpenWengo Project. Businesses, and even 
| individuals, should also consider setting up their own Asterisk servers with 
| encryption.   
`----

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/2479


Related:

FBI ducks questions about its remotely installed spyware

,----[ Quote ]
| There are plenty of unanswered questions about the FBI spyware that, as we 
| reported earlier this week, can be delivered over the Internet and implanted  
| in a suspect's computer remotely. 
`----

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9747666-7.html


United States Government Online Watchdogs? Part of the war on terror?

,----[ Quote
| Is there anyone in the abandonia community with a US based connection who is 
| experiencing this watchdog behavior? Are any foreign Vista users experiencing 
| similar attacks from their own countries ministries and governing agencies?"   
`----

http://www.whitedust.net/news/3984/United_States_Government_Online_Watchdogs?_Part_of_the_war_on_terror?.../


Back doors in Windows XP...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGlNTEQ0RzM


Mother of all spyware...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Features-and-Services-Harvest-User-Data-for-Microsoft-58752.shtml


Police eats your CPU cycles and disk space...

,----[ Quote ]
| Vista—Microsoft’s latest operating system—may prove to be most
| appropriately named, especially for those seeking evidence of how a
| computer was used.
`----

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/jy13tkjasn.html


Will Microsoft Put The Colonel in the Kernel?

,----[ Quote ]
| "The kernel meets The Colonel in a just-published Microsoft patent 
| application for an Advertising Services Architecture, which delivers targeted 
| advertising as 'part of the OS.'   
`----

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/14/043200


Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems

,----[ Quote ]
| The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest to 
| sell you stuff. It would inspect "user document files, user e-mail files, 
| user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status 
| messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink)," and more. How could 
| we have been so blind as to not see the marketing value in computer status 
| messages?     
`----

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-microsoft-patents-the-mother-of-all-adware-systems.html


German government admits it is already conducting online searches

,----[ Quote ]
| Piltz called on the German government to block funding for the
| programming of software used in online searches; she also said it
| was urgent that the government "discontinue these searches until
| the German Supreme Court has reached a ruling on the matter."
`----

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/88895/from/rss09


"Trusted" Computing

,----[ Quote ]
| Do you imagine that any US Linux distributor would say no to the
| US government if they were requested (politely, of course) to add
| a back-door to the binary Linux images shipped as part of their
| products ? Who amongst us actually uses the source code so helpfully
| given to us on the extra CDs to compile our own version ? With
| Windows of course there are already so many back-doors known and
| unknown that the US government might not have even bothered to 
| ask Microsoft, they may have just found their own, ready to
| exploit at will. What about Intel or AMD and the microcode on
| the processor itself ?
`----

http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/164


,----[ Quote ]
| In relation to the issue of sharing technical API and protocol
| information used throughout Microsoft products, which the
| states were seeking, Allchin alleged that releasing this
| information would increase the security risk to consumers.
| 
|        "It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is
|        also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into
|        computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows
|        operating systems, are used throughout the United States
|        Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United
|        States in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
`----

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Allchin


How NSA access was built into Windows

,----[ Quote ]
| A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that
| special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency
| have been secretly built into Windows.
| 
| [...]
| 
| The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years
| ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a
| few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access
| system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.
`----

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html


NSA Builds Security Access Into Windows

,----[ Quote ]
| A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has shown that special access
| codes for use by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly
| built into all versions of the Windows operating system.
`----

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990903S0014

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index