Up Tweets, Widget Creep, and You

From time to time, we here at Chimp add new features to the blog.  On the top of the column to your right, you can see a new button for 'Up Tweeting.'

If you:

A.  Use Twitter. 

and

2.  Enjoy one of the posts you read here at Chimpwithpencil

then

c.  Please hit the Up Tweet button and share it with your friends on Twitter.

This will help spread the post and soon everyone will be talking about Miller's Grizzled Langur.  Or Electronic Privacy.  Or Neutrinos.

When the demands made on an army during a war keep expanding, they call it 'mission creep.'  And when management keeps adding features to a piece of software, the programmers call it 'feature creep.' 

At the risk of widget creep, I added this button because I think people like to share stuff that interests them with their friends.  So why not make it easy to do that?

Stun your friends with your new knowledge and help a brother out with an Up Tweet. 

Thank you.

Search Engine Privacy

Google emailed me today about their new privacy policy.  I clicked on the links and did some reading.  On the one hand, I'm happy that instead of having a separate privacy policy for each of their different products, they've written one policy to cover them all.  On the other hand, reading the list of data they collect when you use their products is scary.

I use Google's Gmail for email, Blogger for this blog, and YouTube.  Plus I just started using their AdWords product to advertise my novels.  I also use their search engine, but I don't use it exclusively.  It's particularly helpful for finding the images I use on Chimpwithpencil.

But I also believe in each individual's right to privacy, whether it concerns their treatment from corporations, governments or other people.

This is a very broad issue and there are entire books about Internet privacy, so as an experiment I narrowed it down to search engines and privacy.  But this is also a big topic, and one I do not have a full understanding of.  So I narrowed it down to one question:  Does the search engine you use collect your IP address?

Why is this important? Every device that connects to the Internet has a unique number to identify it.  So whether your connection is through a router or direct from your computer, that device has an IP address.  A static IP is one that doesn't change.  Some Internet service providers assign dynamic IP addresses that change each time you use the Internet.

A search engine company collects information about you when you use their service.  And one of the useful pieces of data is your IP address.  If it's static, their work is easy.  If it's dynamic, they can still combine the IP with user ID cookies to track your behavior.  Most of the time, this information will be used to market products to you. 

However, for privacy advocates, the realization that companies are building a profile of your interests, buying habits, medical issues, political and religious beliefs, and more is very disturbing.  This information can be sold to other companies, and governments can force search engines companies to reveal your search history.

So let's get back to our question:  Does the search engine you use collect your IP address?

I visited several search engines and read their privacy policies, which are alternately dull then frightening.  Google collects your IP.  Bing does too, but they get rid of the IPs after 6 months, and delete the cookies after 18 months.  Bing provides the search results for Yahoo, but states they do "full deletion of the IP Address from most log files" in 3 months.

Gigablast doesn't list a privacy policy, just a 'coming soon' page.  Lycos and Ask record your IP.  As an example, here's what Ask gathers:

* * *

Information we collect about your computer or mobile device when you use the Ask service

•IP address of computer

•Browser type (Internet Explorer 8, etc.)

•Browser language setting

•Other browser information (e.g. size, connection speed)

•Operating system or platform (Mac, Windows XP, etc.)

•ID number of mobile device

Information we collect about your use of the Ask service

•The URL of the last webpage you visited before visiting Ask.com

•All of your activity on the Ask.com website and Ask mobile applications (your queries, questions, answers, comments, search results selected, clicks, pages viewed, etc.)

We use cookies, pixel tags and mobile device IDs to collect and store this information.

* * *

This is just for random people who open a search page to look for stuff.  If you're a registered user, they collect even more.  Reading the long list above may alarm you, but it's fairly typical of what the search engine providers collect.

There are other search engines out there.  I use Duckduckgo and recently found Startpage.  Both these sites take privacy seriously.  With Duckduckgo I don't always get the search results I'd hoped for, though.  I haven't used Startpage enough yet to have an opinion on its results.  You might also consider Ixquick and Scroogle. 

I am not trying to bash Google or Bing or any other service.  These are businesses and they are in business to make money.  So profiling people to better target them for advertisements makes sense.  But I do worry about the amount of data they control, and if this data might be shared with governments or other corporations.

So while I continue to use Google products as well as services and software from other companies, I urge Internet users to be aware of how data is collected about them.  Read some of the privacy policies and use caution.  Big Brother is most definitely watching.

(The links above should take you to the privacy policies for the individual search engines, or to their start pages.)

Rare Monkeys Found in Borneo!

Here at Chimpwithpencil, we like monkeys.  So imagine how excited I was when an alert reader sent a link about how scientists found a monkey thought to be extinct.  (Thanks, Olaf!)

Scientists, working in Indonesia in the forests of eastern Borneo, planted motion-sensor triggered cameras at salt licks where animals gather.  They hoped to get pictures of big cats like leopards and large primates such as orangutans, but instead caught pictures of Miller's grizzled langur (Presbytis hosei canicrus), a type of monkey thought to be extinct.  (In general, langurs are lanky-shaped monkeys with long tails.)

Initially, the scientists weren't sure they could positively identify the monkeys because there are few photographs available, so they resorted to descriptions of museum specimens. 

As mining and agriculture have expanded in Indonesia, there is less forest to support langurs and other creatures.  While rare today, these monkeys were once found throughout Indonesia and up into the Malaysian peninsula.

Beyond loss of habitat, humans pose another type of danger to these monkeys.  People once hunted the grizzled langur because of the bezoar stones in their stomachs or intestines.  These bezoar stones were mistakenly thought to cure poison.   This is similar to the case of rhino horns or tiger organs, whose use in traditional Asian medicine threatens these animals' existence.

By working together, scientists and students from Canada, Indonesia and the United States have re-discovered a creature thought to be dead.  This opens up the real possibility of saving Miller's grizzled langur.

(Here are articles from The Guardian and Science Daily.  The pic is from Eric Fell/AP.)   

The Business of Electronic Spam

Last September, I wrote a post titled "Referrer Spam."  It was in response to a flood of spam this blog received, and an explanation of what referrer spam is.

If you haven't encountered it before, referrer spam works like this: 

A spammer in Country X controls a computer in Country Y.  The computer in Country Y runs a program that automatically visits sites around the Internet,  like your business website (or this blog).  Google Statistics notes the pageview from Country Y and the URL address is listed as a referring URL.  When you read the statistics for your blog, you notice the odd traffic, click on one of the mysterious referring URLs, and find a site full of Cyrillic letters and pornography.  And maybe your computer picks up a new virus. 

Essentially, spammers have tricked you into visiting their site.  But it only works if you click on that referring URL and go to that site.  Eventually, Google (or whoever your service provider is) will figure out what's going on and block these sites, forcing the spammers to try somewhere else.

On this site, the spamming went away for a while.  But lately it's started up again, and chimpwithpencil has received hundreds of mysterious pageviews from the Ukraine.  Due to Google's detailed tools, you can even see which blog post the spam bots are hitting.

Guess which post my new spam friends are reading?

Yup.  "Referrer Spam."  That single post has gotten over 100 hits in the last week.  I admit these guys have a sense of humor.  In fact, I hope that instead of using bots to visit my site, they'll come take a look themselves and actually read some of the posts.  They may enjoy them.

However, setting this hacker humor aside, why does spamming persist?

An article by Gene Marks in Forbes back in October 2011 is titled "How Spam Was Solved."  It points out that due to cooperation between companies, increased awareness among users, and better technology, email spam is much more likely to be blocked.  Marks made the interesting point that a lot of spam is now caught at the server level before it ever reaches individual users. 

Marks also wrote about the benefits of cloud-based, web browser email:  "Google and Microsoft alone are hosting email services for millions of companies. Cloud based computing has centralized e-mail data onto the servers of companies who are well positioned to deal with spam. They have their own security built into these servers in the cloud, deleting and quarantining risky messages before they’re even viewed by users."

Yet spam continues to evolve.  In an articleabout the top five malware threats he predicts for 2012, Andrew Brandt wrote, "If the spam we’ve seen is any indication, malicious spam we receive in 2012 will come in every available delivery method — email, social networks, IM — and continue to take every conceivable form: shipping confirmations, missed deliveries, reversed credit warnings, utility bills, credit card statements, complaints about you to the Better Business Bureau (whether or not you operate a business), online order confirmations from small boutique etailers, bank statements, electronic funds transfer rejection notices, poorly-spelled ‘friend notification’ emails from a wide variety of social networking sites."

This sounds more like a fresh barrage than the feeble struggles of a defeated enterprise.  Brandt also writes about the threat of zipped malware attached to messages, as well as links to hostile pages and driveby downloads. 

While I think Marks is right that we've gotten much better in dealing with email-centered spam, the spammers have figured out other ways to reach us.  Like referrer spam.  And I think the increased use of cellular telephones to access online banking and shopping makes them the current big target for hackers. 

If spam didn't work, why would hackers keep using it? I think the answer is that it must work well enough to encourage them to keep trying.  Which means the constant struggle will continue.

In the meanwhile, my new Ukrainian guests can read this post and laugh.  I just wish they'd quit spamming me.

(The pic is of a coastal town in the Ukraine that looks very nice.  It's from hotstudy.com, which is hopefully about studying abroad and not something else.)

Rise of the Super Ants!

(Regular ant on left. Super soldier ant on right.)

If you read comic books or watched the Captain America movie, you're familiar with the term 'super soldier.'  A super soldier is designed to be stronger and faster than regular soldiers, and is usually brought about in fiction through some formula or scientific process.

But in the ant kingdom, ants have the potential to build super soldiers built right into their genetic structure.

There are 12,000 species of ants, and at least 1,000 of these have the DNA necessary to produce super soldiers, yet scientists have only found 8 species that actually do.

Rajee Rajakumar of Montreal's McGill University found a colony of ants on Long Island, New York, containing super soldiers.  Normally, the supers are only found in northern Mexico and the neighboring American southwest.  Naturally, this made Rajakumar wonder how the ants created super soldiers and why?

Further research revealed that many species of ants possess the potential for super soldiers, not just the few that actually produce them.  This genetic code goes back to ants living 35 to 65 million years ago--ants that are the predecessors of modern ants.

Ming Huang of the University of Arizona believes environment plays a key role in whether an ant colony produces super soldiers.  Ants that are able to sufficiently defend their colony wouldn't need supers, and some ants have learned to simply move their colony farther from rival ants and avoid warfare.  But colonies that are hard pressed may still be able to call up that ancient genetic code for super soldiers.

In the lab, Rajakumar applied a specific hormone to ants still developing in their larvae stage.  This hormone spurred a growth spurt in the ants that produced giant warriors with massive heads useful for plugging a tunnel entrance against attack by other ants or insects.

Of course you wouldn't want one of these super ants to sting you.  In fact, the Schmidt Pain Scale of Insect Stings may need to be adjusted for these creatures.  While the Bullet Ant currently occupies the top of the 0 to 4 scale with a rating of 4.0+ and a duration of 12 to 24 hours of pain, I wonder how a Super Bullet Ant bite would feel?

I also wonder, if ants have this potential locked in their genes, what might humans and other animals carry in their DNA?

(The main source was this article from Popular Mechanics.  The Weird Animal Report taught me about the Schmidt index, along with the hilariousdescriptions found here.  The pic is from Gizmodo.)

What is the SOPA Act and how will it affect you?

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, which is House Bill #3261.  This is a very controversial piece of legislation.  In the introduction to the bill, its stated purpose is, "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."

This sounds reasonable, although the vague, "...and for other purposes" part is worrisome.  But to members of Congress, this one line summary may seem positive and helpful.  If you scroll down to Section 101 you'll find a list of 24 definitions of various terms like 'domain name system server' and 'internet protocol allocation entity.'  Actually, the terms aren't that complicated when you read them, but I have my doubts about our legislators taking the time and interest to do so.

In theory, SOPA is supposed to protect companies and individuals whose copyrighted material is stolen and used by someone else on the Internet.  The problem is that it deals with 'accusing,' where someone who is accused of copyright violations can have their web site shut down before they have their day in court to plead their case.  Instead of 'considered innocent until proven guilty,' it is 'guilty until proven innocent.'

Furthermore, the Attorney General could not only shut down the site, they could order its listing removed from search engines, and force its payment partners not to do business with the site.  The government could also order domain service providers to block designated sites.

This has the potential for a great deal of abuse, especially in the area of censorship. 

In addition, it's not known whether SOPA would really do much to stop dedicated, organized online piracy.  It's interesting to note that while many companies in Hollywood and the music industry are for the bill, organizations like the ALA (American Library Association) and Library Copyright Alliance are against it. 

One section of the bill deals with making it illegal to link to pirated or copyrighted material.  However, what happens if your blog has a link to another blog that is accused of a violation? Will your site be shut down, too?

The bill is too complex for many of the legislators voting on it, and too broad and powerful for the agencies who may be tasked with enforcing it.  The potential for abuse is large.

One alternative is the OPEN legislation introduced by Representative Darrell Issa of California and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.  OPEN is the Online Enforcement and Protection of Digital Trade Act, and it targets the money flow to sites AFTER they are found to be illegal.

Another alternative is to enforce existing laws, instead of coming up with a whole new set. 

If you feel strongly about SOPA and you're a United States citizen, you may consider emailing your Congress member or Senator.  If you live outside the US, you might investigate and see if similar legislation is on its way to a vote in your country.

The Internet is one of the few places where the flow of information is less regulated and the possibility of free speech exists.  Let's keep it that way.

(Here is the link to the House bill.  An EFF article about how SOPA affects students, educators and libraries, and a one-page fact sheet.  A Fox Business News article about Reddit'sresponse to the bill, and an article about OPEN.  The pic is from:tumblr and its a prison in Cuba based on Bentham's panopticon model)

Examining the Present, Blogging the Future, and a clever slice of bologna.

A lot happening here at Chimpwithpencil.  You may have noticed Bruce Schneier's blog listed in my Links on the right hand side of this page.  Schneier is a well-known security technologist and best-selling author who examines the human side of security.  Thanks to Lori Ames at The PRFreelancer, I received an advance copy of Schneier's new book LIARS & OUTLIERS:  Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive.

Here at Chimp we often discuss technology and its impact on the people who use it, whether its law enforcement cameras or social networking or cloud data storage.  So naturally I'm excited to read and review this book.  The back cover states, "In today's hyper-connected society, understanding the mechanisms of trust is as important as understanding electricity was a century ago."  LIARS & OUTLIERS will be out in late February, so in the weeks leading up to then, we'll have fuel for some interesting discussions.

Thanks to you, readership and pageviews are up here at Chimp.  Over 1,000 hits in the last month, including the first time where we broke 100 hits in a single day.  Readership in the US and Europe remain strong, and we're happy to see new readers from Africa and Asia.  Still haven't made any progress into South America, but we did pick up a reader in Nepal!

This is a good opportunity to recommend a few sites I've stumbled across in my Internet travels.  And if you've found something cool you'd like to share, please leave a link in the Comments.

If you enjoy quick, hard-hitting writing, check out 50 to 1.  It features 50-word stories and the opening lines of novels.  I have an opening line in the current 7 January issue, but honestly, it's not nearly as clever as the first line from Harry Pauff.  Trust me, hit the site and scroll down until you see his line.

Also, if you're wandering the Internet on a quest for scifi pop culture goodness, check out Hard Core Nerdity.  I found this site through the witty ramblings of a random Twitter acquaintance and it looks cool. 

If your tastes trend more toward science fiction and fantasy novels, visit Sword&Laser.  I'm not sure how I found this place, but my best guess is that I somehow crawled my way there from watching Tekzilla with Veronica Belmont, Robert Heron and Patrick Norton.  Sword & Laser is a Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt project, so that's probably the connection.  Or it could have been Twitter.  Veronica has 5 or 6 followers on there.

Okay, you've got places to go and stuff to read--so get going!

(The awesome pic of Mothra rocking Godzilla with the Wing Flap Attack is from The Film League.)

Are you living in the right age?

Two nights ago I watched the movie Midnight in Paris, where a writer on vacation in Paris travels back in time to the 1920s and meets his literary and artistic heroes. 

Throughout the movie Gil, the writer, encounters all sorts of interesting and crazy characters, and it was tough for me to catch all the references, especially since the actors flow from English to French to Spanish and back.  But the main point of the movie was Gil felt he was born in the wrong time.  Talking with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway and listening to Cole Porter led Gil to the idea that he would have been happier in the 1920s than with his current life in 2011.

Have you ever met anyone that felt this way? That they were better suited to live in another age? Or have you met someone and thought to yourself that they would have happier in a different time?

It's interesting that some people seem to embody or even define their age, while others never seem to fit.  For example, Jane Austen so closely examined the manners and social habits of her era that she not only recorded them, she seemed to define them.  F. Scott Fitzgerald didn't just write about the Roaring 20s, he lived them and is an ideal yet sad representative of the Lost Generation.  Whereas Fitzgerald's contemporary, Hemingway, wrote through many decades without really getting locked into one time period.

On the other hand, you have people like Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and other fantasy characters.  Howard wrote of distant lands, ancient kingdoms and violent hand-to-hand combat with energy and realism.  And yet he grew up in rural Texas and never travelled outside that state.  For the people that knew him, he was a man out of his proper time, better suited for an age of swords and horses than trains and typewriters.

Or consider Patrick O'Brian, who wrote nautical adventures set during the Napoleonic Wars.  O'Brian's work evokes the period in amazing detail, and the author so immerses himself in the past that you wonder if he might have been happier sailing on a three-masted ship with the wind at his back rather than sitting at a writing desk in a cottage in France.

I won't spoil the end of the movie, in case you decide to watch it.  It is well worth your time, but the questions it raises may bring a sense of sadness.  For if you feel you were born into the wrong age, there's nothing you can do about it other than escape into the pages of good book.

My suggestion? When Midnight in Paris ends, immediately watch another movie.  I watched Fast Five--two hours of beautiful women, exotic cars and insane stunts--and went to bed smiling.

The alternative, as my friend Tony would say, is ennui.

(The Internet MovieDatabase provided a helpful list of the characters from Midnight in Paris, as well as the movie poster.)