The Telegraph reports that Playboy, the adult magazine run by Hugh Heffner, has agreed to remove all risqué content from its iPad app in order to avoid breaching Apple’s strict anti-obscenity rules.

Anyone forking out £3.20 for the digital version of the magazine will have to do without the explicit photo spreads that titillated generations of teenage boys.

The Playmate of the Month, one of the magazine’s most popular photo features, will only appear on the iPad as a tasteful headshot.

Playboy agreed to censor its content in order to secure a place in the App Store, from which any software which Apple considers “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory” is banned.

Apps which have fallen foul of Apple’s strict taste standards in the past include a dictionary which contained swear words, and a programme called “Me So Holy” which allowed users to replace Jesus’ face with their own.

While Playboy has long trumpeted the strength of its journalism – “I only read it for the articles” is the standard response of men caught with a copy of the magazine by their partners – many iPad users have expressed frustration at the self-censorship.

MinOnline, the US media news website, wrote: “The problem for Playboy is that the missing pieces are so obvious because they are so well known.”

Apple is almost unique in the technology industry for taking an active stance against pornography. In April Steve Jobs, the chief executive, wrote to a customer who complained about Apple’s self-appointed role as moral arbiter to insist that “we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

Android Market, the Google-run App Store rival, does not ban adult content.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7942340/Playboy-censors-iPad-app-to-pass-Apples-morality-test.html

The Guardian reports that the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre today claimed its new Facebook application has prompted 211 new reports of suspicious online behaviour.

Facebook, which has 26 million UK monthly unique users, proposed the app after it refused to introduce Ceop’s reporting button to every profile on the site, and it has now been downloaded 55,000 times since it was launched on 12 July.

But online safety campaigners are concerned that the spat between Ceop and Facebook, and the preoccupation with the so-called “panic button”, is distracting the agency from more wide-ranging efforts to tackle online grooming and abuse.

A spokeswoman for Ceop said the agency is keen to move the debate on and emphasise its work in other areas, including discussing a browser plug-in with Microsoft, Mozilla and Google.

She added that the 211 reports through the Facebook app would all be classified as very serious offences, such as sexual grooming. Of Ceop’s cases for the 12 months up to February this year, 38% or 2,391 reports came through the ClickCeop button.

Alex Nagle, Ceop’s head of harm reduction, said there is no single solution to online safety. “The UK has adopted a holistic and multi-sector approach which combines education and awareness with a child-victim focus,” he added.

“Many of these were because young people had the ability to easily report directly – from the online environment they inhabit – those who are behaving inappropriately towards them. We cannot prevent all instances of harm to our children in the real or the virtual world, but because of the efforts of many stakeholders the UK is an inherently safer place for them to be online.”

Facebook’s European director of policy, Richard Allan, said the social networking website is looking at other ways to support online safety, including the “site integrity” project which aims to identify suspicious activity and fake profiles at its multilingual support centres.

“There is a lot more to explore in the use of social media platforms not only in the distribution of centralised safety messages,” he said. “We are keen to share expertise with Ceop, recognising their expertise with child safety issues, but also our huge expertise in managing websites and enabling users to seek help when they need it, and in developing a platform which people can use to share information and help each other.”

The home secretary, Theresa May, has proposed folding Ceop into a new National Crime Agency. Staff have since been concerned the move could mean job cuts and less power, while the government has been evaluating the performance of the agency.

Mark Williams Thomas, an independent expert in child safety, praised Ceop for raising the profile of online safety but raised fresh concerns about the priorities of the agency.

“Ceop has done an incredibly good job in online policing by raising awareness of grooming and predatory paedophiles online,” he said. “But this recent spat with Facebook about the report button has lost the focus on what really makes the internet safer for children. One of our biggest concerns is that parents have been put off using Facebook, which is actually one of the safest sites on the internet, and driven onto more dangerous sites.”

Williams-Thomas criticised the Ceop reporting system which, rather than being a panic button with an immediate response, is an 11-stage process that requires children to submit their full name, address and contact information and agree to be contacted by a policeman at their home.

“The idea of a reporting button is vital but the current button is inefficient and puts children off,” he said.

Analysis by another independent safety expert, who did not wish to be named, reinforced those concerns, saying children had needed to ask teachers to help them report problems. “This is not a problem where this type of relationship exists, but for an individual without the necessary support networks it could be a real issue,” this source said.

Access the original article online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/12/ceop-facebook-child-protection

The Telegraph reports that Facebook is preparing to allow its members to share their location with each other by launching ‘check-in’ tool, which would pit it against services like Foursquare, according to a report.

The new feature, which has been rumoured to have been in the pipeline for months, will make its debut “within weeks”.

Larry Yu, Facebook’s spokesman told the publication: “We are working on location features and product integrations, which we’ll be launching in the coming months, and we’ll share more details when appropriate.”

So far, Facebook has yet to launch any geo-location tools, despite it seeming a logical next step. However, when it does launch the new feature, it will present a major threat to location-based social networks, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which are just beginning to take off and allow their users to share their location with friends by ‘checking-in’ at bars, restaurants, clubs and even offices and railway stations.

Foursquare, and services like it, are aware that they are running the risk of established digital players, namely Twitter and Facebook, starting to prioritise location and developing a whole host of tools to encourage their huge userbases and commercial partners to take advantage of geo opportunities.

However, Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s co-founder, remained relaxed when presented with this potential spanner in the works, during an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, last month, saying: “Twitter already turned on its location capabilities – but regardless of others starting to play on location more, Foursquare remains unique as people are using it for different reasons. They are using it to play the game, discover offers, tell friends where they are and find new places.

“On Twitter, people are telling each other their thoughts, whereas on Foursquare we are building an incentive and reward program to encourage people to try new places.”

CNET’s ‘sources’ say that Facebook has also partnered with Localeze, the company which Twitter uses to allow its users attach a location to their tweets, when posting from a mobile device.

Speculation was rife that Facebook, as well as Yahoo! and Microsoft were all interested in buying Foursquare back in April. However, the site resisted a buy-out with a price tag of more than $100 million, in favour of a $20 million cash investment led the major Silicon Valley venture capital company, Andreessen Horowitz. The VC is headed up by high profile technology investors Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Ning, Twitter investor and Facebook board member) and Ben Horowitz (Fluther investor and a former HP vice president).

Yesterday Gowalla, Foursquare’s largest rival, up its ante, by finally opening up its API, allowing developers the ability to build spin-off services.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7939532/Facebook-takes-on-Foursquare.html

The Telegraph reports that Facebook has pledged to develop new security measures to combat a growing surge in cyber bullying and abuse of strangers.

Engineers at Facebook are reportedly working on new systems to fight the trend of “trolling”, where anonymous online users “bombard” victims with offensive messages or abuse.

Reports have claimed a growing number of “tribute” pages had been targeted including those in memory of the Cumbria shootings victims and soldiers who died in Afghanistan.

In other extreme cases such abuse has led to some teenagers committing suicide. At present users can only manually delete abusive messages. But in efforts to combat the growing trend, Facebook officials said they were working on new systems that automatically delete abuse.

Administrators of such sites will also be given new advice on how to cope with “trolls” and be given access to the new tools.

It comes just weeks after the announcement that children using Facebook could now report bullying and suspicious behaviour directly to the authorities after the launch of a new application.

Officials figures from Ofcom show that children as young as eight were using Facebook despite age restrictions.

A Facebook spokesman said that while the company already employed “robust” systems, engineers were developing new programmes to combat the threat.

“Because ‘trolls’ tend to set up fake accounts, we employ robust systems to flag and block them based on name and anomalous site activity,” he said. “Users who send lots of messages to non-friends, for example, or whose friend requests are rejected at a high rate, are marked as suspect. We’ve built extensive grey lists that prevent users from signing up with names commonly associated with fake accounts.”

He added: “Through the reporting process our team is also able to identify additional accounts using the same IP address so it is possible in certain situations to proactively remove multiple fake accounts.

“There’s always room for improvement, which is why we have a team of security experts and site integrity engineers working on these systems and developing new ones.”

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7939721/Facebook-vows-new-security-measures-to-combat-alarming-trolling-abuse-trend.html

The Daily Mail reports that international cyber criminals are targeting online banking customers with a new trojan virus rated as the most sophisticated and dangerous malware program ever created.

About 3,000 online banking customers are said to have been victims of a computer virus attack that empties their accounts while showing them fake statements to prevent being detected.

In total, £675,000 is said to have been stolen from one unnamed British bank, according to internet security firm M86 Security. The latest virus is a variant of the Zeus trojan banking virus which first emerged three years ago and is called Zeus v3.

M86 Security said: ‘We’ve never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat. Always check your balance and have a good idea of what it is.’

The scam was discovered after M86 gained access to the command-and-control server in Eastern Europe running the thefts. It collects data such as passwords and even transfers money out of accounts automatically, but only after checking if there is at least £800 available.

Bradley Anstis, M86 vice-president of technology strategy, told the newspaper: ‘This is an extremely sophisticated version of the virus and it cannot be detected by traditional security software.’

The company said it was the most-sophisticated and dangerous virus yet seen and advised online banking users to check their balances regularly and have a good idea of what it should be. British high street banks do not believe they have become victims of the cyber criminals.

A spokesman for HSBC said: ‘There are millions of viruses and other malicious software. We urge people to take basic measure to protect themselves from virus attacks. Any customer who is a victim of fraud will be reimbursed by HSBC.’

However, M86 said it believed one high street bank was breached and failed to act quickly after warnings last month. More than 100,000 PCs in Britain have been infected with other forms of the trojan virus.

McAfee Inc, the security software maker, said production of software code known as malware, which can harm computers and steal user passwords, reached a new high in the first six months of 2010. McAfee said total malware production continued to soar and 10 million new pieces of malicious code were catalogued.

It also warned users of Apple’s Mac computers, considered relatively safe from virus attacks, that they may also be subjected to malware attacks in the future.

‘For a variety of reasons, malware has rarely been a problem for Mac users. But those days might end soon,’ a spokesman said.

‘Our latest threat report depicts that malware has been on a steady incline in the first half of 2010,’ Mike Gallagher, chief technology officer of Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee, said in the report that was obtained by Reuters.

Last year £59.7 million was lost to online banking fraud, according to Financial Fraud Action UK. Another £440 million was lost to credit card fraud.

And the problem is said to be on the rise, with criminals attacking banks’ customers rather than the banks themselves as they are seen as softer targets.

A Financial Fraud Action UK spokeswoman said: ‘The idea that criminals are targeting people by using malicious software or Trojans is nothing new.

‘Bank systems are hard to attack so they’re having to go through the easier link in the chain, which is the customers.

‘They’re hoping customers aren’t taking security precautions. We’ve been seeing this for the last few years and we’re constantly urging people to protect their computers to try to mitigate the risk of becoming a victim.’

Victims of online banking fraud are generally refunded the money.

Access the original article online at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1302062/New-trojan-virus-Zeus-v3-empties-online-bank-accounts.html#ixzz0wI4TijFj

The Telegraph reports that Facebook’s growth in the UK has waned over the last six months, suggesting that the social network is nearing saturation point, according to new statistics.

Despite signing up its 500 millionth member last month, the average amount of time spent on Facebook by a Briton has decreased from 30 minutes in December 2009, to 27.36 minutes during June and July 2010.

The figures, collated by web-analytics firm Hitwise, show that Facebook is still the second most visited site in the UK, after Google, and that it accounts for one in every six web pages accessed in Britain. However, Robin Goad, Hitwise’s research director, believes that the figures show that Facebook is nearing saturation point in the UK.

“Facebook’s market share of UK page views has trebled over the last five years, but growth has slowed significantly over the last six months. Last month there was a slight decline in share, but this may well be down to seasonality – the August to September back-to-school/college/university period is significant for Facebook,” he explained.

Goad added: “Facebook has a very high average session time – almost half an hour – but this has also stabilised over the last six months after increasing rapidly during the site’s ascendancy,”

Around 25 million Britons, more than a third of the entire population, now have Facebook accounts. After the US, Britain has the second-largest membership of Facebook in the world, according to InsideFacebook, followed by Indonesia and Turkey.

Although the 18-25 age group is Britain’s largest, well over half of British users of the site are over 25 and 38.2 per cent are over 35.

Along with the United States, Britain also has a thriving number of older users with 7.36 per cent being over 55 – almost double the proportion in France and 12 times the level in Indonesia.

British users are also fairly evenly split according to gender, with women outnumbering men by just 2.2 per cent overall.

Women outnumber men in all the older age groups (above 35) while men outnumber women at ages 34 and below.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7936738/Facebook-nears-saturation-point-in-UK.html

We recently published a news article regarding Saudi Arabia threatening to ban Blackberry devices, due to security concerns from the government.

However, the Guardian reports that the ban has received a temporary reprieve after the manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) now meets requirements imposed by the country.

Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) said BlackBerry manufacturer RIM had successfully completed “part of the regulatory requirements” over the weekend, allowing a temporary reprieve to the ongoing threat of a blockage to services including email and web browsing on the company’s handsets.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia had said some BlackBerry Messenger services would be blocked from Friday, 6 August, citing security fears about the way the Canadian technology firm encrypts personal data on its devices. RIM transmits data through servers based outside of the Middle East, making government monitoring of customer content difficult.

“In light of the positive developments toward addressing some of the organisational requirements by the providers, the commission decided to allow BlackBerry Messenger service to continue,” the Saudi regulator said in a statement, adding that it would “continue working with the service providers to complete the rest of the regulatory requirements”.

A CITC official said on Sunday that RIM and other Saudi mobile firms were testing domestic servers transmitting data in addition to RIM’s server in Canada. Mobile phone service providers in the country – including RIM – had been given a 48-hour extension ending Monday night to address security concerns, according to Reuters.

US State Department officials reportedly met with RIM officials yesterday to discuss the deal with the Saudi authorities.

An RIM spokeswoman declined to comment. The manufacturer had earlier said that “any claims we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded”.

Negotiations are thought to be underway with a number of governments in the Middle East – including the United Arab Emirates, India and Saudi Arabia – with a view to coming to a compromise that would suit the authorities and RIM.

The UAE has said BlackBerry services will be switched off from 11 October in the country if negotiations break down.

Access the original article online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/10/blackberry-saudi-arabia-ban-lifted

The Telegraph reports that internet giant Google is proposing new “net neutrality” legislation in America that would force web providers to treat all traffic equally – but not on wireless connections.

Google has proposed a legal framework that would allow American regulators to fine internet service providers up to $2million if they allowed one kind of internet traffic priority over another on the fixed-line internet.

Writing on the company’s public policy blog, Alan Davidson, Google director of public policy and Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president of public affairs, policy, and communications, said that the proposal would “protect the future openness of the internet and encourage the rapid deployment of broadband”.

Over the previous week, rumours have circulated that Google and American wireless provider Verizon were on the verge of a commercial deal that might, for instance, have allowed YouTube video priority over other traffic. The proposals revealed today make clear that no such commercial deal has been done.

Critics, however, said that the companies planned to exempt wireless internet, which they have themselves previously said will form the future basis on the majority of innovative services, and that there was an exemption for so-called “differentiated services”.

Although they were not defined, the aim is for these to be identifiably different from commercial ideas. “Examples might include health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options,” the blog says.

“Our proposal also includes safeguards to ensure that such online services must be distinguishable from traditional broadband internet access services and are not designed to circumvent the rules.”

The companies also said that wireless services should be excluded from the framework for now, because they are still “nascent”. Annual reports would reassess the situation under the companies’ proposal.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7935945/Google-all-web-traffic-should-be-treated-equally.html

The Guardian’s technology correspondent, Jemima Kiss, has written an interesting article about internet safety…

“For a while, it seemed as if the ongoing debate about online safety, and all the expertise engaged with that, was obscured by simplified ‘panic button’ coverage in the spat between Facebook and Ceop, the Child Explotation and Online Protection centre.

In the meantime, the Family Online Safety Institute had been collaborating on something far more worthwhile – an international directory of online safety initiatives. Grid features profiles, an outline of projects and initiatives and details of research and legislation in 150 countires.

It has been an enormous undertaking, taking two years to develop and with eight specialists. Fosi raised around $200,000 in sponsorship from its members including MySpace. Corporations and government organisations will pay a subscription to access the site, which will summarise updates and major developments in quarterly reviews from an expert panel and guest contributors.

Consumer version planned

“We think it’s a hugely significant portal because 10-15% of this content has never been seen in English,” said Fosi’s European development director David Miles, who led the project. “There’s a cornucopia of stuff in Indonesia, for example, around ICT and education.

“If you look at the challenges for parents in South Korea, Venezuela or London, they are facing similar issues – cyberbullying, learning to be web confident and in the differences between parents and kids. What is different is how the parents respond, the way an Arab parents responds to a parent going onto Facebook for the first time compared to a parent in Asia.”

This professional edition is the first incarnation – a consumer version, as well as expansion to cover a total of 200 countries, is in the works. It should combine the best practice of all the online safety agencies worldwide, as well as what doesn’t work, and generally make online campaigns more informed, coherent and centralised.

But it will be a significant challenge to keep the directory updated, just as it will be a challenge to adapt online safety mechanisms to cope with the growth of video which, Fosi, says, will account for half of all online content within two to three years.

The problem with the panic button

As for that panic button episode, Fosi chief executive Stephen Balkam said it was largely a label invented by the press. “Ceop has done a good job raising awareness of the potential dangers on social networking sites,” he said. “The problem is that in cases like that of Ashleigh Hall, she never panicked at all. She never thought of herself as in imminent danger – she was actively cooperating and communicating with this guy and actually went off Facebook onto MSN Messenger, which does have a panic button.” For Ceop to put so much emphasis on the panic button – or what Ceop internally actually calls a ‘don’t panic button’ – as an essential solution was therefore rather disingenuous, he argues.

Using that button as a reporting tool is far from a one-button process, and it is also not an anonymous process as it requires the child to enter their name and address to make a report. That’s not the case for Childline and even 999.

Cyberbullying is 99% of the problem

Facebook handles 2m reports through its site every week, and 80% of those are false. But of those cases that are genuine, by far the biggest issues are cyberbullying, addiction, oversharing and ’sexting’ – when girls are bullied into sending photos of themselves to ‘boyfriends’. Balkam cites research by Ncmec, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US, which found that 1% of child victimisation cases involved the internet. “Those cases are shocking and disturbing and they make the nightly news, but therefore they seen a greater problem than they are.”

The future of online safety is also about far more than just Facebook, which bears the brunt of the publicity because it is the most visible site. But it does have the opportunity to set a standard.

“Ceop has done a good job in companies like Facebook,” said Balkam. “It has awakened the sense of responsibility inside companies not just to improve, but to to innovate more in areas to do with reporting abusive behaviour or abusive content. It’s not bad at all to force the entire industry to raise its level and raise the bar. It has also forced Facebook to communicate a bit more about what it is facing. No company in the world has ever attracted 500m users or two million complaints per week. It’s extraordinary.”

Balkam said he’d asked Facebook, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if it had a philosopher on the staff because it is having to deal, at a very fast pace with what is good and what is abhorrent behaviour.

“Aristotle and Plato struggled with that – and the average age at Facebook is 28.”

Access the original article online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/aug/09/fosi-grid-facebook-ceop

Further to yesterday’s news regarding how the online marketplace Craigslist helps to promote prostitution, the site has responded by asking if the crimes had been reported to the police, adding it was “combating trafficking”.

The firm’s chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, replied to the letter from 17 year old ‘MC’, by asking if the “perpetrators are behind bars” and if the advocacy groups who placed the adverts could “let us know where the police reports were filed”.

“We have been unable thus far to identify police reports matching the crimes you describe,” the statement read. “If anyone committing such crimes has not yet been apprehended and prosecuted, we want to do everything in our power to assist the police in making that happen,” the statement added.

Last year, the site bowed to sustained pressure to shut down its “erotic services” section, replacing the nude images and explicit descriptions with a monitored section and a $10 (£6) charge to make a listing. Critics said this did not go far enough.

Connecticut’s attorney general Richard Blumenthal – who is heading up a group of 39 US states examining Craigslist’s adult services section – called on the section to be closed.

Earlier this year, the US lawmaker subpoenaed Craigslist, and asked whether it “is actually profiting from prostitution ads that it promised the states and public that it would try to block.”

Mr Buckmaster said that Craigslist had now implemented manual screening of each adult service ad, adding that it thought that the “events described [in the advert in the Washington Post may have occurred before manual screening was implemented”.

Andrea Powell, head of Fair Fund – a group that works with women who have been sold for sex and one of the groups which paid for the advert in the Washington Post – described Craigslist as “the Wal-Mart of online sex trafficking”.

“Most of the young people we work with who have been exploited online, they talk about Craigslist. They don’t talk about other sites.”

The advert in The Washington Post echoes another letter published earlier this year.

Access the original article online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10914334