Police in Finland are investigating 400 cases of online theft in the virtual world of Habbo Hotel, a chat site popular with children and teenagers.

Habbo Hotel allows its members to use real money to buy virtual goods online, such as furniture. However, members have reported that they have had up to £840 worth of virtual items stolen by cyber criminals.

Sulake, the Finnish company who owns Habbo Hotel, has reported that several hundred users have been targeted. The online thieves targeted members with fake web pages that captured their usernames and passwords.

This is not the first time Habbo Hotel has been targeted. In 2007, a Dutch teenager was also arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture worth thousands of euros on the site.

Unfortunately, it seems that online games and virtual worlds are becoming an increasingly popular target for hackers and cyber criminals. World of Warcraft and Facebook’s Farmville game have also been subject to malware and Trojans that attempt to steal user information.

Anyone using Habbo Hotel or similar sites should be aware of these scams and not enter their log in details to any pages other than the site itself.

Facebook confirmed today it is in discussions with the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to insiall a ‘panic button’ application on the site. Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of public policy for Europe told Sky News, “We have continued talking to CEOP and are working very closely with them on a Facebook application that allows Facebook users, when they have concerns, to connnect with CEOP.”

The social networking site had previously turned down calls by CEOP to add “panic buttons” to its pages, despite public concern following the conviction of serial rapist Peter Chapman who posing as a young boy, used the site to meet 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall and lure her to her death in October last year.

Initially, Facebook claimed it had its own “safety net” to ensure its users were secure online. However, it now appears that the site has backed down. “We have been in dialogue with Facebook for some time,” a spokesperson for CEOP told Sky News Online. “Obviously we cannot confirm progress until we have an agreement in place with Facebook, but we are continuing to work with them.”

Facebook also confirmed its willingness to co-operate with CEOP, stating “We have had a number of constructive meetings and are working on a range of innovative approaches that will help educate and raise awareness of how to keep safe online.”

Read more about CEOP here: http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

The web is a kid’s game and the big boys can’t have Chatroulette

Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17-year-old Russian creator of Chatroulette, is being offered millions by wealthy investors who have seen the site’s potential as the next Facebook. Chatroulette is a site that we have written about a few times here on the parental control blog – it allows users to make random connections with strangers using their webcams, with no rules…people can speak through a video link or click “next” to find a more interesting stranger.

There are alarming stories ; many people appear naked, trying to solicit erotic chats or sexual acts. There have also been reports of scenes of fake suicide. For this reason, Chatroulette has been described as the “wild west” of the web — a return to the unregulated, anonymous chatrooms popular in the early days of the internet.

Since its launch last November with 500 users, Chatroulette has grown at breakneck speed and now has ten million visitors a month. The expansion has caught the eye of investors who want to buy into the web’s next big thing. But Ternovskiy is not selling yet.

Although it could make Mr Ternovskiy a teenage millionaire, he has yet to make any money from the project. He has begun to sell advertisements on the site, but Google said that he could not yet receive the funds as he was under the age of 18.

His first investor was his mother, who gave him €8,000 (£7,240) to buy the servers required to start the site from his bedroom. But Mr Ternovskiy’s parents are said to be concerned about him. The high-school student has not attended classes in weeks and could be expelled for truancy.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article7087526.ece

Crimes ‘involving Facebook up 346 pc’, police force claims

Incidents of abuse or other crimes allegedly involving the social networking site reported to Nottinghamshire Police rose sharply between April 2009 and February this year.

The force recorded 13 such reports between April 2008 and March 2009, it said.  In the following 11-month period, this number leapt to 58. This led to six people being charged with offences, compared with three the previous year.

Harassment was the crime most frequently reported to involve Facebook in the past year, accounting for 36 of the 58 alleged incidents, Detective Sergeant Harry Parsonage said. Users of the site are becoming increasingly careful and making sure they adjust their privacy settings to prevent strangers from seeing their profiles, he said.

However, in the past year it has been cited as a factor in a case of actual bodily harm, four cases of harassment and one other crime in Notts, all of which were prosecuted.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7546238/Crimes-involving-Facebook-up-346-pc-police-force-claims.html

Israel ‘using Facebook to recruit Gaza collaborators’

In a busy internet cafe in the centre of Gaza City, lots of people, mostly young, are typing and clicking away. Some of them are engrossed in the world of Facebook.

But Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, believes the population’s love of social networking websites is making it easier for Israel to recruit spies. Facebook “is a big, big thing that the Israelis use”, says Ehab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry.

“Many people don’t have security sense. They go on the internet and talk about all their personal problems such as with their wives or girlfriends,” he says.

Israel’s intelligence services can then contact people by telephone, e-mail or using existing Israeli agents in Gaza, and use the information to pressure people to become spies.

The internet “allows them to make people feel Israel knows everything about them”, says Mr Hussein. Even he admits he has a Facebook page, “but I’m careful about the information I put on,” he says. “I only say I am a Hamas spokesman.”

He is probably not the only member of Hamas communicating on Facebook and the internet. This is partly because other forms of communication, particularly mobile phones, are easily bugged and can be used to track movements, Mr Bergman says, so the internet has become a more preferable option.

One reason Israeli intelligence is watching the social networking websites to try to identify potential informants is because a historical source of collaborators no longer exists, according to Mr Bergman.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8585775.stm

Apple blocks app that warns users of radiation levels

The inexpensive application for the iPhone tells owners when radiation levels have inched up too high and provides advice on how to counter the potentially damaging effects of phone radiation.

The company which invented the app says that its solution gives users the information and tools to avoid mobile phone radiation as much as possible. It works by “mapping” homes or offices so they’ll know where they’re exposed to significant levels of mobile phone radiation.

Apple has blocked the app by Israeli company Tawkon on the grounds that it’s a diagnostic tool that would create confusion for iPhone owners.

The company said it was disappointed as it claimed there was a lot of concern among the public about reducing mobile phone radiation because of the still unknown long term risks of exposure.

Tawkon supplies simple precautionary measures to minimize radiation, based on a user’s location and phone usage.

Apple said it doesn’t want its customers to install an app that would cause confusion among users The apps inventor said Apple didn’t want an app that appears to advise phone users to talk less – even though its stated aim is to make it safe for them to talk.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7555789/Apple-blocks-app-that-warns-users-of-radiation-levels.html

The latest trend in social networking seems to be centred around users communicating their whereabouts, especially with new ‘location based’ online communities such as FourSquare and Gowalla.

Now even Facebook is talking of adding a similar feature that will enable laptop and mobile users to ‘check-in’ at internet cafes, hotels and other public locations with internet access.

In a recent blog post, Michael Richter, Facebook’s deputy general counsel, provided few details about how the places feature would work, confirming that Facebook is working on features that use people’s locations.

He writes that the addition is “more exciting” than a location feature the company had been planning.”The difference between location and Place is a significant one. Substantial resources are dedicated by location-aware social networks to determine what ‘place’ your location refers to,” he writes.”That might mean neighbourhood, it might mean business name and it might mean recognizing when you are posting from home so that location can be selectively hidden if you so choose.”

However, the growing trend in social networking users letting everyone know where they are and when has its consequences. Sites like PleaseRobMe.com pull together user’s locations from Twitter to show a list of addresses that are empty at that time – a burglar’s dream! Apparently the site wasn’t set up to actually aid thieves, but to raise awareness of the dangers linked to revealing your locational privacy. So bear this in mind if you are already using Twitter and FourSquare – and for when Facebook’s new features are released!

Google offers racist search suggestion after hack

Google offered “Why are black people so ugly?” as a search suggestion after hackers avoided the firm’s filtering process.  The question appeared when internet users typed in the word “why” and Google offered the question in full as one of its suggestions for what you may be about to write.

The firm has extensive filters which are intended to remove offensive suggestions but hackers appear to have got around the controls and web users picked up on it.

Warren Degallerie, 23, said: “I was helping my nine-year-old niece with her homework. Before she knew it that line had appeared. We are both black and I couldn’t believe how something like that could be allowed to happen. “I had to try to explain to a young girl how Google could let it appear.”

He contacted The Sun newspaper which alerted Google and the glitch was fixed.

By Monday morning the automatic suggestion had disappeared. Users typing in “why” were offered options including “why am i tired” and “why do cats purr”. However, there remained the race-related question “why are michael jackson’s kids white”.

A company spokesman said: “Google Suggest is an automated feature that aims to make searching easier by providing suggestions as you type, based on what other people have searched for previously.

“We have filters to eliminate inappropriate suggestions, but very occasionally an offensive suggestion may slip through.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7495909/Google-offers-racist-search-suggestion-after-hack.html

Bing for iPhone now includes parental controls

Microsoft’s Bing search engine app for the iPhone has now been updated to include parental control on search settings. Users can now set a SafeSearch level and create a pass code so children can’t change it. As Bing works independently from the Parental Control feature of the iPhone, this is a benefit for parents who want to make sure the kids are only visiting safe sites on their devices.

Parental controls on Bing's iPhone app

Students to face cyberbullying charges

A California appeals court has ruled that several Los Angeles high school students who made derogatory and threatening comments on a fellow student’s web site can be charged with hate crimes and defamation.

According to court documents, a 15-year-old Harvard-Westlake High School Student created a web site in 2005 to promote his singing and acting career. When fellow students discovered the site, they were reportedly “offended and put off by its ‘I am better than you’ attitude and its blatant bragging and self promotion, and began to post threatening and violent remarks

In response to the comments, the site was taken down and the victim’s father contacted the police. However, a police investigation determined that the remarks did not warrant criminal prosecution. The father then sued six of the posters and their parents, accusing them of hate crimes and defamation. The appellate court determined that the cyberbullying was not free speech and the students were not protected by First Amendment rights.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/22/students-to-face-cyberbullying-charges/

Hacking “fun” for British teens

The BBC reports that one in four young Britons attempts to access the Facebook accounts of their friends, a survey claims. The most common route of access was by working out – or “cracking” – each other’s passwords.

The poll of 1150 under-19s found that nearly half of those who accessed other accounts did so from either their own computer or one at school. The main reason given for doing it was for fun, and a further 21% admitted they hoped to cause disruption.

The young people questioned took part in the online survey anonymously. 78% of them said that they knew that hacking was wrong and 82% said they found it difficult to do in practice.

Reuven Harrison, co-founder of Tufin Technologies which commissioned the survey, told the BBC that young people need better education in order to understand when hacking is unacceptable.

“Playing around with computers and trying to understand the system can be leveraged for good and bad purposes,” he said. “There’s a fine line at which point it becomes something bad. Children don’t always understand where that line is.”

20% of those who admitted to hacking in the survey believed they could make money from the activity and 5% described hacking as a career option.

“Hacking into personal online accounts can be child’s play if users do not protect their own passwords,” said Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde, president of the Society for the Policing of Cyberspace. “Hacking is illegal and we need to ensure everyone understands that.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8574259.stm

New password-stealing virus targets Facebook

The Independent discusses how hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a program that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company’s own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

A Facebook spokesman said the company could not comment on the specific case, but pointed to a status update the company posted on its web site earlier on Wednesday warning users about the spoofed email and advising users to delete the email and to warn their friends.

McAfee estimates that hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the campaign began on Tuesday.

Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of malware research and communications, said that he expects the hackers will succeed in infecting millions of computers. “With Facebook as your lure, you potentially have 400 million people that can click on the attachment. If you get 10 percent success, that’s 40 million,” he said.

The email’s subject line says “Facebook password reset confirmation customer support,” according to Marcus.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/new-passwordstealing-virus-targets-facebook-1923393.html

Google Street view ‘forced to remove murdered teenager’s image’

The Telegraph reports on how Google has been forced to remove from the controversial Street View an image of Ashleigh Hall standing in the doorway of her family home only weeks before she was murdered by Facebook predator Peter Chapman.

The image of the 17-year-old caused distress to her family, who branded the photo an invasion of their privacy. It also led to further criticism of the service and the need for Google to introduce stronger safeguards.

Although the teenager’s face was blurred, the image was still recognisable as Ashleigh, standing outside her home in Warwick Square in Darlington. The photograph is believed to have been taken by a Google street camera car in August last year, just weeks before the teenager was killed by convicted sex offender Peter Chapman on social networking site Facebook. It was displayed on the Google site earlier this month as part of an update to the service.

A short time after Google was notified, the image was removed, with the company apologising.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7465643/Ashleigh-Hall-Google-Street-view-forced-to-remove-murdered-teenagers-image.html

Children increasingly falling victim to internet addiction

More than 14 % of children and adolescents aged between nine and 19 are addicted to the Internet and have difficulties leading a normal life, a survey shows.

According to a survey conducted in 2008 by the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion, 168,000 or 2.3 % of children and adolescents over nine years old are serious Internet addicts and in need of treatment, and a further 12.1 percent or 867,000 are potential addicts who need counselling.

Internet addiction is especially a problem among children who do not receive proper parental care. “In many cases, children from low-income, single-parent, or double-income families don’t receive good parental guidance of their habits,” said Kim Seong-byuk, a Health Ministry official.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/03/15/2010031500272.html

Facebook calls on ex-detective to name social networking site

Facebook has asked Mark Williams-Thomas, author of the Daily Mail article ‘I posed as a 14 year old girl…’, a story which we made reference to on the blog last week, to name the social networking site that he writes about.

However, Williams-Thomas continues to decline to name the site, suggesting that it would not be helpful to the site’s users – and that it might damage its reputation or attract paedophiles to use it more extensively.

A spokesperson for Facebook said that it was important to identify the site so that young users could be protected. “If you really want to protect people online, then you should name sites which allow this. It’s up to the Daily Mail and Mark Williams-Thomas. If they really want to protect their readers, they should give the name.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/12/facebook-daily-mail

Phishing emails from ‘Amazon’ are well out of order

Customers of the online bookseller Amazon are being warned to be wary of a fake “phishing” email asking them to check their accounts.

These emails, addressed “Dear Customer”, say: “Your order has been successfully cancelled [sic]. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order.” They then give an order number and a link to “order information”, which appears to take users to an external website that does not belong to Amazon. The emails have a link to the genuineAmazon.com website at the bottom, making them appear authentic.

“From time to time, customers may receive emails appearing to come from Amazon, which are actually false emails, or ‘phishing emails’,” said a spokeswoman for Amazon. “These can look similar to real Amazon emails but often direct the recipient to a false website, where they might be asked to provide account information such as their email address and password combination.”

She advises customers to send any such emails tospoofing@amazon.com and only check their order status by logging directly into their account from amazon.co.uk.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/mar/14/phishing-emails-amazon-customers

Korean child ’starves as parents raise virtual baby’

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said. The pair fed their own premature baby just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe, the official Yonhap news agency reported.

Police officer Chung Jin-won told Yonhap they “lost their will to live a normal life” after losing their jobs. He said they “indulged themselves online” to escape from reality. The 41-year-old father and his 25-year-old wife were arrested in the city of Suweon, south of Seoul, earlier this week, five months after they reported the death of their baby.

An autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition. The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online, police said on Friday.

The game enables players to interact with Anima and as they do so, help her to recover her lost memory and develop emotions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8551122.stm

Fake drug scam hijacks UK college websites

UK academic institutions have unwittingly become the accomplices of criminals selling fake drugs online as a security firm has discovered many organisations using the .ac domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering the fake pills.

The scam exploits software flaws to piggyback on the computing resources of the colleges and universities. Researchers at security company Imperva believe “thousands” of organisations may have fallen victim.

In most cases, said Mr Shulman, the spammers have exploited vulnerabilities in a widely used technology called PHP. Many organisations use this technology to make websites more interactive.The injected code included search terms associated with drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and many others. Also included was code that spotted when a visitor arrived at a compromised site from Google.

When combined, the code meant that when a person searched for in the drugs online, the universities and colleges web addresses would pop up in the top results. Anyone clicking on the link would then be re-directed to a fake pharmacy peddling counterfeit pills.

At all other times a visitor would get through to the proper site. Typing in a web address would also lead straight to the real site.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8550219.stm

Coming to a screen near you: an online tutor

The Telegraph reports on the world of online tutoring, where teachers can communicate with students on a global basis using webcams and microphones.

“I know that parents throw up their hands at the mention of today’s screen culture,” says Will Orr-Ewing, founder of upmarket Keystone Tutors. “The truth is, though, that children feel it’s far less of a chore to sit down in front of a computer than it is to sit down in front of a pile of books. And if anything, an online teaching session is more structured than a face-to-face situation, because only one person can speak at a time.” That’s because spoken communication comes down the computer phone-line hook-up known as Skype (free of charge). Meanwhile, written communication takes place on the computer screen; both tutor and pupil can write or draw on a computer-screen “whiteboard”, which performs the function of a shared blackboard, suspended in cyberspace.

So what do parents think of online tutoring? “I was very impressed,” says father of four Nicholas Wright, from Bexley, in Kent, who has used Home Tutoring Online for two of his children. “From our point of view, we didn’t have to keep taking the children to and from the tutor’s house,” Wright says. “We also got regular, detailed reports on how the children were progressing. With a real tutor, you only ever get rather vague feedback.

“Results-wise, the tutoring got our son up from a C in maths GCSE to a B, which is what he needed if he was going to achieve his ambition of doing maths at A-level.”

“It’s a matter of quality control,” says Helen Spiegelberg, of Greater London Tutors. “Our tutors are CRB [Criminal Records Bureau} checked, and have all attended our compulsory training seminar.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7361509/Coming-to-a-screen-near-you-an-online-tutor.html

The BBC reports that internet security techniques must adapt to keep up with the rising tide of net attacks. The issue is top of the agenda at the world’s biggest security conference hosted by vendor RSA.

Recent incidents such as the high-profile attacks on Google in China have highlighted the new challenges. “The attacks are getting more malicious, sophisticated, and from different directions,” said the chief executive of Verisign Mark McLaughlin.

Mr McLaughlin’s company manages the .com and .net domains of the internet. “Certainly as more utilisation of the net occurs and more people go online, then the more security concerns have to go up. Throw cloud computing on top of that as well as more people accessing information via their phones, the growth of the smart grid and health records coming online and we have a situation that means people have got to be more forward thinking about security and how to address it.”

Verisign itself is the target of around one to two thousand attacks a day, he added. “They come from all sorts of sources: from the frat kids trying to take down the internet to state-sponsored actors who are just pressing to see where the vulnerabilities are and how you react so they can use the information for the next time.”

Throughout this week a lot of attention will be paid to the recent attacks that Google faced when the Gmail accounts of human rights activists were hacked.

The Chinese government denies involvement but the search giant threatened to pull out of the country following the incident. Google is now involved in talks with senior officials to try to resolve the situation.

While those diplomatic efforts proceed in the background, at RSA this week the Google attack will dominate because it has brought the issue of cyber-espionage out into the open.

“This type of attack has been going on for a while, not necessarily China, not necessarily Google but this situation has now brought it to the forefront of people’s minds,” industry commentator and RSA chair Hugh Thompson told BBC News.

“This is the time when as a nation and security community we need to look at these big threats and work out how we can battle them as a community.”

Access the full article online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8544413.stm