Globe & Mail Should Understand Issues Before Editorializing

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locked file cabinet key (cc by laurelrusswurm)Most of us are in a position of having to trust others with our private data.

If we send our kids to college, we expect the institution to protect their private data like SIN numbers and other identifiers, to keep them safe from identity theft. Most of us don’t have the technical expertise to know if this private information is being kept safe. If this information is not maintained securely, and the institution does not fix the problem, we need to know about it.

This is why the Globe and Mail editorial When did it become wrong to punish hackers? is so disturbing.

First, there is misinformation about the Aaron Swartz case, which the editorial writer seems somehow to be using to bolster its position. It doesn’t fit with the article content, but it was certainly sensational.

Fact: Aaron Swartz did not steal anything. He was legally entitled to access, download and copy the documents. It wasn’t even copyright infringement. His only actual legal transgressions were his breach of JSTOR’s terms of service (the agreements we all click “I agree” to without reading) by downloading in bulk and using an unlocked MIT closet. This excesssive prosecutorial overkill is why people like Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig characterized the charges and prosecution of Aaron as prosecutorial bullying.

Funny, they could have used Canada’s own Byronn Sonne case, which was also famously misunderstood. Not so long ago Canadian Byron Sonne lost a couple of years of his life to a similar combination of prosecutorial overkill and technical ignorance. He was truly fortunate to have his trial before a judge capable of learning enough about the technology to understand the issues. I would have hoped that the Globe might have learned a little something from that.

More information (actual facts, even) can be found about the incident in the earlier GEEKOsystem article about the expulsion of student Ahmed Al-Khabaz Canadian College Student Points Out Major Security Flaw, Obviously Gets Expelled for Doing So

What it boils down to in this instance, is that, when the students pointed out the security hole to Dawson College, it was the school’s job to fix it. Telling students not to do that anymore might stop them, but does not fix the problem.

Years ago a friend of mine noticed an inadvertently open vault door after the mall’s bank branch was closed for the night. She was a little concerned (her money was in that branch) so she notified the bank the next day. Should she have been charged for pointing out the problem? The bank thanked her and fixed the problem. The Dawson College response outlined here would be the equivalent of telling my friend to pretend she didn’t see the open vault rather than fixing the problem.

I’m totally lost as to where copyright comes into this at all. And the only privacy issue appears to be the Dawson College failure to fix the security hole pointed out by the students. This is an institutional failure to secure the private data on its system ~ entrusted to Dawson College ~ and thus a failure to protect the privacy of the students.

The Globe would do well to ensure its editorial writers understand the issues they write about.

emotional blackmail on facebook

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Not a week goes by without one of these messages appearing in my Facebook timeline.

Amelia's Facebook Avatar

“Posting for those who have to deal with health issues everyday: I’m posting this because recently I have been mocked and laughed at for things beyond my control. I CARE…I have one of these illnesses as does others in my family…. Not one of my Facebook friends will copy and paste (but I am counting on a true family member or friend to do it). If you would be there for me no matter what then copy and paste this. I’m doing this to prove a friend wrong that someone is always listening. I care. Hard to explain to someone who has no clue. It’s a daily struggle being in pain or feeling sick on the inside while you look fine on the outside. Please put this as your status for at least 1 hour if you or someone you know has an invisible illness (Crohn’s, PTSD, Anxiety, Arthritis, Cancer, Heart Disease, Bipolar, Depression, Diabetes, Lupus, fibromyalgia, MS, AS, ME, , Epilepsy, Autism, M.D.,D.D.D., CFS, Histiocytosis, RSD, PBC, SOD etc.) Never judge what you don’t understand!

Even though the message is often some cause or sentiment I would support otherwise, the fact that it’s couched in terms of emotional blackmail.  That just makes me angry.  So I never repost the status message, although sometimes I tell the person posting it why.”

“Not one of my Facebook friends will copy and paste (but I am counting on a true family member or friend to do it”

This type of implied social coercion makes these messages into the digital equivalent of a chain letter. Yes, it will often browbeat someone into doing what you ask, but I’m sure it leaves a sour taste in their mouth. The resentment that this subtle form of bullying causes is probably far worse for the cause the poster is trying to rally support for.

So where do these messages actually come from?

Because users are asked to cut and paste them, there’s no way of tracing them back to the point of origin.  So we can’t ever know for sure.  But I’m guessing that this is actually a campaign begun by Facebook.  After all, the people we can emotionally blackmail are those closest to us in our social strata.

And that data is worth money to Facebook.

Image Credit
I created the phony avatar above for my character Amelia’s character page on the “Inconstant Moon” serialization site.

DIY Resources

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Raspberry Pi

Free software exists because people create it, and want to share. Why do people create their own software? Quite often, its to “scratch an itch”… if the software you need doesn’t exist, sometimes you have to make it yourself.

One of the cool things is that the free software community is really community. People who know are almost always willing to help people who are just learning.

In my geographic locality of Waterloo Region there is a monthly Ubuntu Hour in both Kitchener and Waterloo. These meetings, held in a local coffee shop or restaurant, help form free software communities, and allowing new free software users to connect with more experienced users.

The local Linux User Group has monthly presentation meetings to explain various software/hardware (I am actually writing this at the Kitchener Waterloo Linux User Group (or KWLUG) meeting where someone from the local KWARTZlab makerspace is showing off a Raspberry Pi computer.)

It’s also possible to find like minded groups throughout the world with the MeetUp web site.

Not everyone is equipped to write their own software.
I myself am nowhere near writing my own software, but I have been learning to fiddle with things so that I can get closer to achieving what I want to achieve. Before being brave enough to even contemplate such a thing, most of us might set up our own Facebook page.

You may have spent some time finding the right blog theme (or template) that most closely sets up your blog so it is laid out the way you want it to be.

When I first started making my first web page, the most amazing tool for me was the online HTMLdog online tutorials, which is still my main resource for XHTML and CSS.

For JavaScript there is something called Code Academy.

If there is software that you want to learn to use, or even just how to do a tiny fix, particularly for open source or free software, chances are there is some online tutorial, perhaps even video tutorials, to show you how.

If you’re on a social network, like Identi.ca, Friendica, Diaspora, Twitter, reddit, or even google+, you can often find the answers you need. Addressing a query to “lazyweb” on Twitter will often turn up the answer you need.

And of course, you can always try typing your question into the search bar of your favourite Search Engine (my favourites are DuckDuckGo and ixQuick

KWLUG meeting

Online Accessibility

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When we talk about accessibility issues, it usually means accessibility for people with disabilities. The internet has tools like speech readers, that can make it accessible for the blind.  Subtitles or closed captioning can make online video accessible for the deaf.   I learned early in my blogging career that typing a description in the alt=”” field,  allows speech readers to tell visually impaired users what images I use.  It’s a little more work, but it’s worth it if I can make my contect accessible.

But there are other accessibility issues that have nothing to do with disability.

standards

Internet standards are still evolving, but the internet works, because at its heart, every web page uses a programming language called HTML.  Just as every email we receive should be readable, every website we visit should work, no matter what browser we are using, because the data is in HTML.

making html inaccessible

I just went to check out a website called C.A.C.P./A.C.C.P. Official website. Although I am using this particular site as an example, this is certainly not the first time I have been annoyed by a website that wants me to remake my computer to accommodate it.

I’m pleased to see this official Canadian Website is bilingual. But this is what I see:

Screen Capture of the CACP Intro Page with No-Script blocked video

security

A blue letter S with eyes and teeth of a snake is confined in the red circle with a diagonal line through that has come to symbolize the word “No”The large yellow square in the middle of the webpage indicates this is something NoScript has blocked. NoScript is a browser plug-in that prevents Javascript and Flash from running unless I grant it permission. Javascript allows files to execute, or run, on your computer. That’s one way people get viruses and spyware. NoScript blocks such “active” content, but if I choose to trust the source, I can decide to allow it with a mouse click.  The other thing I tend to avoid is Flash for a couple of reasons.

cost

Flash video consumes a fair bit of bandwidth; so if your internet use is capped, as many are these days, NoScript allows you to decide whether to display the flash ads or video on your computer.

freedom

For me the more compelling reason is that Flash is proprietary software, and as a free culture advocate I prefer my web content in free or open formats.

my choice

If I do want to see this video, I can choose to click on the letter f in the centre of the page and grant it permission. But this is my first time here. Why would I do that? I don’t know this site, or who runs it personally.  Is it really run by CACP?  Why should I trust it? Do I have a compelling reason to gamble my computer security?

Not hardly.

Then I look at the text displayed under the blocked video.

Our site is best viewed with Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7.0. To view and use this page and aspects on other pages Macromedia Flash Player is required.
To download this plugin visit www.macromedia.com.
© 2008 CACP/Ribbet Inc. If you have difficulty with the website contact the Webmaster

I should not have to use a particular browser to see a web page display properly.

Or worse, download specialty software to use it.

Instead of telling me that I have to use a particular browser, if the web designer was doing her job, the page should display properly on any browser.

If it’s a mess, I’m certainly not going to switch browsers to something one website tells me I must have.  If I had to do that for every website I visited, I might not have room for my own files on my computer.   Besides, I prefer to learn from those who know what they are doing, and try to avoid taking direction from those who don’t.

And of course, Macromedia Flash Player is proprietary software owned by www.macromedia.com, so that is hardly in keeping with my free software leanings.  The webmaster might have chosen an open format like OGG Theora or the new HTML5 instead.  But even if they choose to make their video available in such a closed format, if they want to make the site accessible, the web page shouldn’t be  broken, as this page is.

To make it work, at minimum there needs to be text providing a synopsis of what is in the video.  The best case scenario would also include the full text of the script along with any necessary written description of the visual content.

If they want to make it accessible, that is.

If they don’t want to make it accessible, if the sense of entitlement is such they believe they have the  right to dictate such things to vistors,  they can tell us that we must conform to their demands if we want to see the content.  Their way or the highway.

Of course, this is a little nicer than some, because there is a small “skip this intro” link in the top left corner of the screen.  This way I can skip over the content they can’t be bothered to make accessible.

Personally, I’d rather just skip it.

Images You Can Use

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Because of the changes to copyright law over the last few decades, it has become increasingly dangerous to make use of the media that we find on the Internet. Copyright infringement is against the law in Canada and most, if not all, of the world.

So even though a wealth of music is available for download, and great photographs can be easily cut and pasted online  — doing so may well result in allegations of copyright infringement — which could result in having your booth at the local fair raided by the RCMP. or your blog or website might be taken down.

The only sure way to avoid risking such a terrible fate is to only use only those images that you have permission to use.

Copyright

A maple leaf within the copyright symbol

In Canada by default, all creative work is automatically covered by copyright. Creators don’t have to register their work, or even mark it © Copyright.

When you are looking for an image to use in your blog, or to add to your bake sale flyer, even if the photograph you select is not marked © Copyright “All Rights Reserved,” it probably is.

Fair Dealing

Canadian law provides specific “fair dealing” exceptions to copyright that are supposed to allow us to make use of copyright works in certain circumstances. These exceptions are not clearly defined, and may leave the user open to allegations of copyright infringement.  Even if you believe your use falls under fair dealing, a court may not agree.

New Law

Worse, in Canada, our government recently passed Bill C-11, which will radically change Canadian copyright law.  Once in force it will be some time before the courts, copyright scholars and IP lawyers hammer out what it really means and how it actually applies. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not wind up as a “test case” in court.

Getting Permission

We don’t need permission to use any of our own original creations, whether it is original artwork we make, any original  photographs we take, or any original music or video we record.

But if we are to  use any © Copyright “All Rights Reserved” work, we are now required to have explicit permission.

Assuming you can figure out a way to get in touch, you can try to get permission from that record label to use their hit song as the sound track to your home movie.  And maybe they’ll give it to you.    But then you would probably need additional permissions  to upload it to YouTube, and maybe they won’t give it to you.

A much easier way to get permission is through a license from the creator/copyright owner.  Since I am not a lawyer, I find that this is the safest course, to use only works released under a license that allows people to use, share or modify the work.   Although there are other licenses available, Creative Commons licenses are popular, widely recognized and relatively easy to find.

Finding Licensed Images

Internet search terms:
or, what to type in the search bar

In any search engine, and on any site that has its own search bar, you can probably search for “creativecommons” or “Creative Commons” “by” or “by-sa”

You can usually type more than one word, separated by spaces or by +
You can usually search for a phrase by enclosing it within quotation marks.

Google

  1. On the Google Search Page choose “Images” from the tab along the top.
  2. Then type the words that best describe the image you want in the search bar then click the little blue magnifying glass symbol beside the search bar.

Now there are new choices offered at the top right hand side of the page, including a tab which allows you to change the “Safe Search” parameter, and beside that is the tab we want, which is marked with a circular graphic (that I believe is supposed to represent a gear).

Click the gear icon, then choose “Advanced search” from the drop down menu, and scroll down to “usage rights”. To the right you’ll find a tab with Google’s default “not filtered by license.” Clicking that gives you the choices:

  • not filtered by license ~ result will include everything, including © “All Rights Reserved” work you can not legally use
  • free to use or share
  • free to use or share, even commercially
  • free to use, share or modify
  • free to use, share or modify, even commercially

Select the use that best describes your requirements, then click the “advanced search” button.

Flickr

Although many of the image results returned by Google are from the popular Flickr photo sharing site, you will find even more if you look there directly there yourself.

On the the Flickr search page choose “advanced search” then scroll down to check off “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” where you can choose:

  • Find content to use commercially, or
  • Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon

Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s Wikimedia Commons has a vast repository of both creative commons licensed and public domain material.

Jamendo ♫

If you’re looking for music specifically, all the music available on the Jamendo website carries a Creative Commons license.   I’m not sure what the percentages are today, but a year or so ago fully 25% of the music available on Jamendo was released under the freest Creative Commons attribution only license.  (CC by).

Internet Archive

A final place that hosts an incredible amount of  material you can share freely would be the Internet Archive.

Further Reading: License To Share

Post Script

As I stumble across free culture resources online, I add them my my free culture page. If you know of any online free culture resources or repositories that I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll add them.

Happy SysAdminDay

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SysAdmin means “System Administrator” which is the fancy name for your “computer guy” (who may actually be a computer gal).

Most of us are computer “users” who rely on SysAdmins to keep our computers running, our email flowing, and everything connected to the Internet. These unsung heroes have their own appreciation day, which is today’s SysAdminDay.

Tell your SysAdmin “thanks!”

To learn more about these unsung professionals, watch “The I.T. Crowd“

the SPAMbucket #1

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When I receive email like this from a total stranger:

“Sorry to disturb you ,
I have a question- have you seen this picture of yours in attachment??
Three facebook friends sent it to me today… why did you put it online? wouldn’t it harm your job? what if parents see it? you must be way cooler than I thought about you man :))))”

. . . the stranger’s intent is clearly to get me to open the attachment. Doing this is guaranteed to be good for the spammer, and bad for me.

I don’t want malware, spyware, viruses etc on my computer.

Don’t do it.

DELETE IT

Rule of thumb:

NEVER open an attachment

in an unsolicited email from a stranger.

Also: I’ve just turned off comments on this blog due to absurd quantities of comment spam. For reasons I don’t understand, the WordPress blacklist isn’t working, so I can’t even train it to filter.

If you want to post a real comment, send me an email, and I’ll post it.

2012 International Day Against DRM

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That’s today.

DRM

  • Digital Rights Management
  • Digital Restrictions Management

TPM

  • Technological Protection Measures per Bill C-11
  • Technological Measures per DMCA
  • Technical Protection Measures common parlance

Digital Locks

  • All Of The Above

DRM = TPM = Digital Locks

The Day Against DRM article I wrote in 2010 explains my problem with DRM:

DRM stands for digital rights management.

“Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses of digital content not desired or intended by the content provider. The term does not generally refer to other forms of copy protection which can be circumvented without modifying the file or device, such as serial numbers or keyfiles. It can also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. Digital rights management is used by companies such as Sony, Apple Inc., Microsoft, AOL and the BBC.

The use of digital rights management is controversial. Proponents argue it is needed by copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work, either to maintain artistic integrity[1] or to ensure continued revenue streams.[2] Some opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation, maintain that the use of the word “rights” is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term digital restrictions management. Their position is essentially that copyright holders are restricting the use of material in ways that are beyond the scope of existing copyright laws, and should not be covered by future laws.[3] The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other opponents, also consider DRM systems to be anti-competitive practices.[4]”

— Wikipedia

ownership

Clearly, there is a failure to communicate. When we buy something, we believe we own it. The person or company we paid should no longer have any right to the product. They certainly should not have the right to come into our homes and take back the product we have purchased.

But DRM exists to allow the seller to control the product, and how we use the product, even after we have paid for it.

No one actually comes out and tells us in the store that we are buying goods that have been deliberately crippled with DRM.

If they did, customers might not buy them. But there is no ambiguity with retailers– they tell us they are selling us things, and we believe we are buying them.

But apparently the concepts of property ownership that have been prevalent in our society for centuries have suddenly changed. Yet people, customers, consumers have not been told about this. But we need to know about it. We need to understand it. And we need to give our informed consent.

But manufacturers, retailers and governments are not discussing it with us.

Over the past decade or so, instead of explaining to consumers that the rules of buying and selling have changed manufacturers have just been quietly putting DRM on products that we purchase. It is easier for them to cripple the technology than try to explain that they’ve changed the rules. After all, if customers know that the rules have changed, the very natural question is: what do we get out of it? The unfortunate answer to that is “shafted”.

[Note: the Wikipedia quote is as it was in 2010. The text on the Wikipedia DRM page has been expanded in the years since, but this quote is simple and easier to understand, and is as true today as it was then. To see the “new improved” article, click the link]

my reimaging of Nina Paley's Sita

image credit: “No DRM for Me!” is a remix of part of this image from Nina Paley’s wonderful animated film “Sita Sings the Blues”.

For more links about Day Against DRM blogs posts and activities from all over the world, visit:
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:DefectiveByDesign/Day_Against_DRM_2012#Events

I’ve been building a Pinterest Against DRM/TPMs board as my 2012 Day Against DRM project.

Posted in DRM

Decentralized Social Networks Do Exist

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The other day I happened across The Global Square: a call for coders to build the platform and wondered, not for the first time, why do people want to re-invent the wheel each time? These folks are looking to build a new social network.

Facebook is the monster social network.

You sign up, and post content there, but you don’t own it, Facebook does. (Ditto Twitter.)  The thing people don’t realize is that these are proprietary platforms.  The people who spend time there, posting the photographs and words they choose to share from their lives feel like they own it, but they don’t. Mark Zuckerberg’s company does.

The company is in control of everything people post there, and it can — and will — make changes as it chooses. It is next to impossible to actually talk to a human being to get problems resolved on Facebook. Then there’s copyright. Facebook assumes the right to reproduce any image uploaded to facebook, for whatever it wants, including advertising. Forever.

And privacy issues? Whoosh. Facebook Privacy issues are legend. The Canadian Privacy Commissioner went after Facebook for changing user privacy settings without permission. And she won, sort of. Oh, Facebook still gets to change the rules whenever it chooses to, but it made the concession that it would inform users when it did.

Every now any again an issue comes up that makes people leave Facebook in droves, but so far Facebook is still alive and kicking. I assume everything I post there is not private at all. Recently I made my birthdate public, only because now, as a published novelist, it is public record info that’s easy to find. Anything I put on Facebook I’ve put somewhere else first.

People like the services offered, but those of us with privacy issues are uncomfortable with the fact these Internet companies are collecting our personal information and selling it. So there have been various attempts to start new social networks intended to replace Facebook.

And Facebook is centralized, so any information put there is all in one place, on Facebook equipment. That makes it easy for Facebook to hand over records of user activity to the government, and easy for the government (yours, mine or ours) to censor the Internet.

Facebook is, after all, supporting CISPA. Remember that big Internet Censorship hooha over SOPA? You know, when Wikipedia went dark? That was to protest a law that would allow all kinds of civil rights erosion. And the Internet fought back. The law was withdrawn But now CISPA is a law almost like SOPA, but the American government took the things that corporations found objectionable and only left in the bits harmful to people.

So there are good reasons to find or make another social network. The one that has gotten all the press is called “Diaspora” … supposed to be the open source Facebook,
and tons of tech folk have embraced it.

The young coders who started Diaspora got a pile of money through Kickstarter, and now they are looking for more, apparently. And it isn’t free software; the code is proprietary. That means they own the software and you don’t. As far as I can tell, its just Facebook with a different owner.

Fact correction, amended 4 May, 2012:
Apologies to Diaspora, which is in fact Open Source and Free Software licensed under the GPL… I misunderstood what I’d heard, which was that the Diaspora developers were doing it all themselves, and not accepting contributions, improvements and changes from the community. In the general scheme of business, that is SOP, but in the free software world it leans into the proprietary side of things. There are shades of “free” I am trying to understand. Mea culpa; I am very much an egg. And again, apologies for mis-characterizing the Diaspora project, which is FaiF (which means Free as in Freedom).
[Thanks to @expatpaul for pointing this out!]

The ironic thing is that Diaspora is still far behind the most well developed social network I know of, that’s Friendika. It hasn’t had vast amounts of publicity or funding; somebody just wanted a version of Facebook that didn’t threaten user privacy. There isn’t a central place owned by a giant faceless company that hosts Friendika, anyone can get the software and set up their own.

Decentralised architecture with no central authority or ownership …We are a handful of part-time developers linking/federating disparate social web platforms and giving people the tools they need to thrive in a post-Facebook world. Join us.

— Friendika

At this point, although I have a growing wack of friends on Friendika, and a nominal presence there, I just don’t have time right now. (Too many blogs are already eating into my self publishing time.)

The one social network that I am active on is Identi.ca. To the casual eye, it looks a lot like Twitter. It has a native 140 character limit (specifically to allow seamless twitter integration).  When I signed up for both services a few years ago, I was looking for a place to announce new blog posts. By joining my Identi.ca account with my Twitter account, I could post on Identi.ca and have it rebroadcast on Twitter.

Identi.ca is the free service hosted by StatusNet. This is the social network that I am partial to, and it is a like Twitter in some ways, but better in others. Identi.ca is a micro-blogging network and real-world community ~ and the point is federation.

Facebook wants to lock everything within it’s own walls; centralization forces people to stay within Facebook and strengthens the company’s control over its users. When people follow links elsewhere they might not come back.

Lately Twitter has taken to transforming every link, shortened or otherwise into its new format, which, like every other version of Twitter formatted links, only opens properly from Twitter. Cutting and pasting it makes it break. This may be to make people stay within Twitter, and it’s supposed to allow Twitter to track links.

Instead of trying to lock everyone into one place, Identi.ca exists to connect all the places together. I talk to people who are posting from Friendika, and others upload from Tumblr. Some people post from Google+ (Apparently Diaspora is too proprietary to federate.) The whole point is that anyone can federate anything. [Correction: you can’t connect proprietary services like Facebook.]

Identica a decentralized social network ~ that uses the ostatus software. Anyone can download this Free-As-In-Freedom (FaiF) software free from Statusnet. You can load the software in your own computer and then use that to set up your own “instance” (separate nodes) which can then “federate” with the rest of the network. Or just the parts of the network you want to federate with.

At this point many (most?) of the people I talk to host their own instances. Some people host their own instance and allow others to join. There are all kinds of advantages. From Identi.ca my posts can be rebroadcast to Twitter, but people with their own instances can broadcast both ways. With your own instance you can have a character limit as long as you want. You can style your words with font size, bold, italic or colours. You can delete.

I am not a tech person, although I’m a free software/free culture supporter.  If you’re looking for a decentralized network, check out Ident.ca, Friendika or both. Talk to @evan on Identica, visit the !feds group, or just pop by and check it out.

StatusNet has set up the Identica service as a hub for the decentralised network that has grown up and out in all directions. It exists. And the point of decentralisation? Well, that’s easy; you don’t need the hub. If StatusNet o changed Identica in ways that annoyed the users, (like Facebook does every so often) the users can set up their own instance (if they haven’t already).

The point of federation is that you decide.

Synchronicity UPDATE:

I just happened on Escaping-Social-Media, a nice authoritative list of alternatives [via Identi.ca] This is a wiki, adnd so will presumably be kept up to date. Cool.

[I am *not* a tech person, so if I’ve got anything wrong, let me know!]

It’s no Error

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When I land on a website that says something like this:

sandersch

… chances are *very* good that I leave and don’t come back.

I’m not a real techie, I’m a pseudo techie. But I talk to real ones, and one of the first things I learned when I began mucking about on the Internet was to utilize a various bits of software to protect myself. As great as the Internet is, there are some less than great websites that can cause problems.

Javascript is a perfectly good software program. It allows a great many bells and whistles online. Javascript can allow a web designer to employ lots of flashy qlitzy stuff that makes a wensite look very cool. The problem is that javascript can contain executable software — in other words software that can do stuff to our computers.

Sometimes bad stuff. Malware, spyware, viruses.

The best way to defend against this is to use a program called No Script:

NoScript is a free and open-source extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, and other Mozilla-based web browsers, created and actively maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group.

I don’t know if it works on web browsers besides Firefox.

NoScript does not allow Javascript to run.

One of the coolest things about it, though, is that you can change your mind.

Any time.

So if you are visiting a website you trust, you can give it permission to run the bells and whistles for you, either temporarily, or all the time. Or not.

If you don’t use NoScript, when you visit a website that has viruses, malware or spyware hiding behind all the dazzling web tchotchkes, you can wind up with spyware, malware and viruses on your computer. Personally, I’d rather run No Script.

But what happens when you land on a webpage that tells you you must run javascript?

Personally, that kind of page annoys me. I have not made an error, but rather a valid security decision.

In fact, any website that takes this attitude strikes me as suspect. And worse, the site has just demonstrated that the site owners don’t really care about my security.

A good website works even without bells and whistles.

It might not be as glitzy, but you should be able to access the content anyway. If you can’t, it is a badly designed site. Maybe you want to go there anyway.

Either way, it should be *your choice*