How Not to Pay the Price for Free Wi-Fi

Part of globe-trotting nowadays is flitting from one free Wi-Fi network to the next. From hotel lobby to coffee shop to subway platform to park, each time we join a public network we put our personal information and privacy at risk. Yet few travelers are concerned enough to turn down free Wi-Fi. Rather, many of us hastily give away an email address in exchange for 15 minutes of free airport Internet access. 

So how to feed your addiction while also safeguarding your passwords and privacy? If you’re not going to abstain (and who is these days?), here are four rules for staying connected and (reasonably) safe while traveling. 

1. MAKE SURE THAT ANY SITE YOU VISIT HAS ‘HTTPS’ IN FRONT OF THE URL. Those five letters indicate that the page is encrypted, which prevents others from seeing what you’re doing. If you’re browsing the web in a Starbucks or any place with an open network and you do not see “https,” it’s possible that someone there with nefarious intentions can see the site you’re visiting and the exact pages you request on that site. 

“They can see that you’re connecting to Amazon and that you’re looking for remedial algebra books,” said Nadia Heninger, an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. Indeed, the only part of an e-commerce site that may be encrypted is the page where you access your account information or enter your credit card number.

Sites like Gmail.com and Yahoo.com use “https” by default, but type your password into a web-based email site that does not use it and a third party could see (and steal) that password. This sort of eavesdropping is easier than you might think. There are a number of tools that allow anyone who downloads them to see all the data that flies back and forth between a browser and a web server, said Jason Hong, an associate professor at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Moreover, anyone can set up a Wi-Fi network for criminal purposes and give it a legitimate-sounding name. Say, for example, you’re in the Paris Métro and you join a free network that looks like an official city initiative. “You have no idea what Wi-Fi network that is,” Professor Heninger said. “It could be set up by a hacker.” And if he or she has malicious intentions, when you go to a popular site like Facebook you may actually be logging into a fake page that allows the hacker to steal your password. “It is surprisingly common,” Professor Heninger said.

But surely, using Wi-Fi at a hotel is safe, right? “That’s only marginally better,” Professor Hong said. On the bright side, he said it’s unlikely that a criminal would bother monitoring the hotel’s traffic for a few passwords because the cost-benefit is simply not there. That person would get a bigger payoff from phishing emails, Professor Hong said, in which the sender masquerades as a known source like your bank or credit card company to get sensitive information like your banking passwords.

Even so, protect your computer by ensuring that your web browsers are up-to-date. Turn on your firewall and turn off file sharing.

2. USE A VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK, OR VPN. If you work for a corporation, chances are you either already have one or have a technology department that can give you one. Using a VPN essentially encrypts all your online traffic, ensuring that no one can eavesdrop. It also routes that activity through whoever owns the VPN (your employer). So if, for example, I’m in a hotel in Japan using my VPN, all of my traffic gets sent to The New York Times’s servers and is then redirected again so it appears as if it is coming from The Times rather than from a hotel room in Japan. To access the VPN, users are typically given a name and a password and often also a constantly changing set of numbers on a fob that must be entered to access the network.

Don’t have a VPN? There’s Tor, software that prevents third parties from seeing your location or the sites you visit. “It’s totally free and fairly easy to use,” said Professor Heninger, who uses Tor. The software can be downloaded at Torproject.org.

3. SIGN UP FOR TWO-STEP VERIFICATION. More and more sites — Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, WordPress — allow users to set up their accounts so that signing in requires two ways of proving who they are. The most common method requires a password you create plus a code that is sent to you — via text message or through a special app — each time you wish to sign in.

For instance, let’s say you logged onto a fake Facebook page and hackers captured your user name and password. If that happened without two-step verification (known on Facebook as “login approvals”), the hackers could access your account when you log off. If, however, you had enabled login approvals, even though your user name and password were captured, the hackers would not be able to log into your account because they wouldn’t receive the requisite code. Now, if you’re someone who uses the same password for everything, this is where you still run into trouble. Here’s why: If your user name and password for Facebook are the same as those for another website that does not have two-step verification, hackers might figure that out and break into your other accounts. Yes, I know, you can’t keep all your passwords straight. That’s why there are password managers like 1Password and LastPass, which can create and store long, unique passwords. 

4. BRING ONLY WHAT YOU NEED AND TURN OFF WHAT YOU’RE NOT USING. The latter goes for Wi-Fi and for Bluetooth. “It’s just another way to be compromised,” Professor Heninger said. And don’t give away your email address or download an app in exchange for free Wi-Fi.

“Think about the recipient of that information,” she said. “You have no idea who set up that Wi-Fi network,” she continued, adding “You might have just downloaded an app that will download all your contacts.”  

When it comes to travel booking and organization apps, one security concern is how much of your personal information the app is sharing, and with whom. Professor Hong said that, in general, apps that charge a fee are better because they have a revenue model. Those that do not are more likely to sell your information. He added that whether they are free or not, apps are also a potential security risk because they do not always encrypt your data when communicating to Web servers.If you’re seriously concerned about security, Professor Heninger suggests creating a special travel email address and password. And she recommends buying a “travel laptop” that you load with only the information you need.

Indeed, Professor Hong said he would worry more about the theft of your computer than your various passwords. He cited an incident in 2000 in which the laptop of the Qualcomm chief executive at the time, Irwin Jacobs, disappeared at a conference in Irvine, Calif. “He turned his back and the laptop was gone,” Professor Hong said.

Average travelers, he continued, should be just as mindful, if not more, of having their smartphone plucked from their hand by a thief on the street. 

“Attackers usually go for the easiest thing,” he said. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of snatch and grab.” 

Source: nytimes.com 

Ahmedabad’s rank improved from 4th most polluted city to 84th: CM Anandiben Patel

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel on Thursday said that our efforts should be to free the society from pollution, instead of controlling the pollution. 

Speaking at function to launch a mass tree plantation drive, called "Make Vatva a Vrindavan'' by a dozen industrial groups to mark the World Environment Day in the Vatva Industrial Area here, she said a clean environment has its direct benefit in the form of a healthy, disease-free future. 

Patel said that tertiary sewage treatment plants are proposed to set up in 50 towns in the state. She stressed on the need to synchronize development with environment protection. She said that indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources is a major reason for the problem of global warming. 

There was a time when Gujarat was the 4th most polluted city in the country. With consistent efforts, it has been brought down to 84th position, she said. 

The Chief Minister lauded the industrial houses' initiative to plant 25,000 saplings in the Vatva area as part of a social responsibility. It is not enough to plant saplings; they should be nurtured till they grow to their full height. She released publications of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) on the occasion. 

Forest & Environment Minister Ganpat Vasava said Gujarat is one state which has created a separate Environment Department to deal with the crisis of climate change. He had a word of praise for the industrial houses joining the state government in solving the problem. 

Minister of State for Law Pradeepsinsh Jadeja, who hails from the same Vatva constituency, exuded confidence that Gujarat would march ahead in making Gujarat a Clean Green Environment under the leadership of the first Chief Minister.

Source: TOI

Here is Why TV Apps Are Very Popular Now Days

When it comes to online video, people may not want to cut the cord. Instead, they want to take the cord with them. People are streaming broadcast television on their smartphones in record numbers, according to Adobe’s state-of-the-industry report on digital video viewing. 

 Online video has reached record numbers, according to the report, compiled by Adobe Digital Index, the marketing and research arm of Adobe. Mobile video viewing went up 57 percent over the same time last year, and overall online video was up 43 percent, representing more than 35 billion viewings. 

 Among the report’s more interesting findings are that TV Everywhere — a term for authenticated viewing of broadcast shows from channels you subscribe to on your cable or satellite network — is approaching mainstream use and is growing much faster than other online video sources like YouTube, Hulu or Daily Motion.

 However, Adobe’s numbers do not include Netflix, which has about 48 million subscribers worldwide, so cord-cutting might not be entirely off the table. 

 TV Everywhere apps include the very popular HBO Go, standalone channel apps like Watch ESPN, Cartoon Network, CNBC, Syfy and similar offerings. Cable and satellite providers also offer their own branded apps, like Comcast’s Xfinity TV Go, Time Warner Cable’s TWC TV and Dish Anywhere. Most of these apps were announced within the last two to three years, but have been steadily getting the rights to stream more content and have seen a heavy marketing push over the past year. 

 Authenticated TV viewing is more palatable to content providers than services like Netflix, because it encourages people to keep their ad-rich cable subscriptions, and gives them the benefit of streaming the TV they already pay for. Critics have, in fact, charged that TV Everywhere is little less than collusion between cable companies and rights holders. Nevertheless, as streaming television gets onto mobile devices, people appear to be gobbling it up. TV Everywhere viewing rose 246 percent (you read that right) over last year, said Adobe, driven mainly by interest in sports programming. (To be clear, those numbers do not include streams of the Sochi Olympic Games, which an Adobe analyst said would have skewed the numbers beyond recognition.) “Over one in five households are watching TV Everywhere content,” said Tamara Gaffney, an Adobe Digital Index analyst. “That’s really beyond early adopter.” Of course, the other thing that’s happened to push TV Everywhere growth is that these apps are actually starting to get some channels. Ms. Gaffney said TV Everywhere offerings had increased by 30 channels in just the last six months, as networks start to lower some (not all, but some) of their resistance to digital distribution. 

 The most common way for people to watch TV Everywhere content was with iOS apps. In fact, Adobe said, iOS apps just passed the browser as the most popular portal to streaming TV. Browsers remained the second most popular way, and Android apps were third. In another interesting twist, though, Adobe said viewing on game consoles and so-called OTT (over the top) devices increased by the highest percentage of any platform — 123 percent over last year. Granted, the amount of TV watched on those devices is still tiny: They have just 6 percent of the TV Everywhere streaming market, but that’s up from 1 percent last year.

Gaffney said most of that growth was in game consoles, although the category also included devices like Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast. Adobe said the numbers were too small to break out individual devices, but I’ll be curious to see if they continue to grow and how much add-on gadgets contribute to the numbers, as opposed to consoles.

TV Everywhere is still significantly less than everywhere, as even the industry itself admits, and the authentication process for watching shows is legendarily annoying.

But as that improves — and cable operators extend authentication to devices like Apple TV and Roku — it may be that the best way to cut the cord is to keep the cord.

Source : nytimes.com 

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others automatically encrypting all emails

SAN FRANCISCO: The volume of email cloaked in encryption technology is rapidly rising as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other major internet companies try to shield their users' online communications from government spies and other snoops.

Google and other companies are now automatically encrypting all email, but that doesn't ensure confidentiality unless the recipients' email provider also adopts the technology.

In an analysis released Tuesday, Google said that about 65% of the messages sent by its Gmail users are encrypted while delivered, meaning the recipient's email provider also supports the technology. That's up from 39 percent in December. Incoming communiques to Gmail are less secure. Only 50% of them encrypted while in transit, up from 27% in December.

Encryption reduces the chances that email can be read by interlopers. The technology transforms the text into coding that looks like gibberish until it arrives at its destination.

Google and other internet services rely on a form of encryption known as Transport Layer Security, or TLS. Security experts say that encryption method isn't as secure as other options. But encryption that is tougher to crack is also more complicated to use.

Gmail, with more than 425 million accounts worldwide, was one of the first free email services to embrace TLS. Yahoo, Facebook and AOL also are encrypting their email services. Microsoft, whose stable of email services includes the Outlook, MSN and Hotmail domains, has started encrypting many accounts as part of transition that won't be completed until later this year.

Less than half of the correspondence from Hotmail accounts to Gmail wasn't encrypted as of late May, Google said. Security is even worse at Comcast.net and Verizon.net, where less than 1% of the traffic coming to and from Gmail is encrypted, according to Google.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said the internet service provider plans to start encrypting email to and from Gmail accounts within the next few weeks. Microsoft reiterated that it is still rolling out encryption in its free email services.

Verizon didn't have an immediate comment on Google's statistics.

The Google report comes a year after the first wave of media reports about the US government's intrusive techniques to monitor online communications and other internet activity. The National Security Administration says its online surveillance focused on people living outside the US as the agency tried to defuse threats of terrorism.

After lashing out at the government spying, Google and other internet companies began encrypting email and other online services in an attempt to reassure users worried about their privacy. The internet companies are hoping their efforts to thwart government surveillance will make Web surfers feel comfortable enough to continue to visit their services. The companies make more money from online ads if their audiences keep growing.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked documents revealing the online espionage, is among critics who believe the encryption methods deployed by Google and it peers are inadequate. In a March appearance at a technology conference, Snowden described TSL encryption as "deeply problematic" because US government operatives merely needed to obtain a court order or hack into data centers to obtain users' emails and other information.

Like many privacy activists, Snowden prefers "end-to-end" encryption, a more complicated step that requires a key to decrypt the information contained in emails. Theses encrypted keys are only held by an email recipient, making it virtually impossible for an unauthorized user to know what's in the message. This form of encryption takes more technical expertise to do right and can cause more headaches if passwords are forgotten because they can't be reset. That raises the risk of the email being inaccessible even to the recipient.

Google hopes to make end-to-end encryption easier by releasing an extension for its Chrome browser later this year. The company released the coding for the planned extension to security specialists Tuesday in an effort to detect any weaknesses before making it available to everyone.

Source: TimesofIndia

Taliban Release Video Showing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's Handover to U.S.

Top Things to Know for You Being in New York Today

4th June- Wednesday - Few Big Things and Events Will Take Place Today in New York

Good morning New York

Meet Deborah C. Garner.

As the director of consumer services at the Department of Consumer Affairs, she helps handle 30,000 complaints a year.

Today, Ms. Garner and five other city workers will receive Sloan Public Service Awards, given by the Fund for the City of New York.

Ms. Garner has seen the city’s ups and downs, reflected in consumer complaints.

After Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, despite the hardship it inflicted, complaints actually declined as New Yorkers struggled to get back on their feet.

Then they shot up last year.

“Some consumers lost homes, were flooded, lost cars.”

This year, Ms. Garner has noticed a puzzling surge in complaints against dry cleaners.

No complaint is too small.

Recently, Ms. Garner resolved one about a 55-cent grocery store coupon.

After Ms. Garner successfully negotiated a refund, “You know what the consumer said? ‘It’s only 55 cents.’

“I said, ‘Sir, please go to that store and get your 55 cents.’”

The others honored today are:

• Arnaldo Bernabe, public safety director at Hostos Community College.

• Annie Fine, who detects disease outbreaks for the health department.

• Janice A. Halloran, who oversees the emergency rooms of two Bronx hospitals.

• Assistant Commissioner Kathleen Hughes of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

• April Leong, founder of Liberation Diploma Plus High School in Coney Island.

Here’s what else you need to know.

WEATHER

The fog lifts to reveal another beauty, with a high of 82.

And showers fall after dark, if at all.

COMING UP TODAY

• Mayor de Blasio delivers remarks at the Fire Department’s Medal Day ceremony in Midtown East. 11 a.m. …

• … At the Jennifer Lopez concert at Orchard Beach in the Bronx. 6:40 p.m. …

• … And at the Janelle Monae concert in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. 8 p.m.

• An exhausting lineup of events for National Running Day includes 2,000 children running around Icahn Stadium on Randalls Island. 10 a.m.

• A talk on technologies that could change how we vote, at New York Law School. 5 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P.]

• A talk on the history of anti-Asian imagery with Jack Tchen, author of “Yellow Peril!” at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

• Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is inducted into the National Football Foundation’s leadership hall of fame at the Hilton in Midtown. 7 p.m.

• Fran Lebowitz, “one of the foremost advocates of the Extreme Statement,” speaks at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village. 8 p.m. [$10]

• Yankees host A’s. 7:05 p.m. (YES)

• Mets visit Cubs. 8:05 p.m. (SNY)

• For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

COMMUTE

• Subways

• PATH

• L.I.R.R. and Metro-North

• N.J. Transit

• Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

• Alternate-side parking: is suspended today and Thursday for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

• Air travel: La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark.

IN THE NEWS

• Police arrested dozens of suspected gang members in early-morning raids across Harlem today. [NBC]

• The operation targeted rival gangs linked to the 2011 slaying of an 18-year-old high school basketball star. [Daily News]

• A man was stabbed repeatedly on a subway platform in Chelsea this morning. [DNAinfo]

• City teachers approved a labor contract that raises pay by 18 percent over nine years. [New York Times]

• A teenager from the Bronx drowned herself after she was caught cheating on a math exam. [Daily News]

• The Fire Department has as many female firefighters now as it did in 1982. [Village Voice]

• California Chrome’s chance of winning the Triple Crown at the Belmont on Saturday has people buying $2 betting tickets as souvenirs, not to bet on the race. [New York Times]

• A radio story about a performance artist who married her openly gay friend in order to have children. [WNYC]

• Cubs clamber over Mets, 2-1. A’s beat Yankees, 5-2 in 10 innings.

AND FINALLY …

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a cross-country hockey wager on Tuesday with California Gov. Jerry Brown.

The stakes:

If the Rangers win the Stanley Cup finals — Game 1 is tonight (8 o’clock, NBC) — Governor Brown will send Governor Cuomo a history book about California and some Lundberg organic brown rice cakes, lightly salted.

If the Los Angeles Kings win, Governor Cuomo will send Governor Brown a considerably more delicious gift.

His basket of state-made products will include Dutchess County apples, oysters caught off Long Island and red velvet cupcakes from Harlem.

Mr. Cuomo will also throw in a hockey puck commemorating the “hat trick” of three straight on-time budgets.

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

Source : NYTIMES

Here is Why Apple's New Font Won't Work On Your Desktop

STAR TYPEFACE DESIGNER TOBIAS FRERE-JONES EXPLAINS THE CHALLENGES OF USING HELVETICA NEUE AS AN OPERATING SYSTEM FONT. 

 For the first time ever, Apple is ditching Lucida Grande as the OS X system font in favor of Helvetica Neue, which also happens to be the iOS system font. For an operating system that's used by 80 million people, that's no small thing. Will it make reading on desktop computers easier? Harder?

DESPITE ITS GRAND REPUTATION, HELVETICA CAN’T DO EVERYTHING.

We asked Tobias Frere-Jones, the famed typeface designer who has worked with some of the world's best publications and design shops, to offer his insights on what this change means for consumers. In his view, Apple might have made a mistake. Here, he highlights some of the challenges of deploying 
Helvetica Neue onto an OS abundant with small type and devices where non-Retina displays are still the norm: 


Apple's desktop and mobile operating systems have been gradually converging for some time. So it was inevitable that one typographic palette would displace the other. With OS X 10.10, Mac desktops will sport Helvetica everywhere. But I had really hoped it would be the other way around, with the iPhone taking a lesson from the desktop, and adopt Lucida Grande. Check the lock screen on your iPhone. You’ll see Helvetica there, a half-inch tall or larger, and it looks good. Problem is, there aren't many other places where it looks as good.

Despite its grand reputation, Helvetica can’t do everything. It works well in big sizes, but it can be really weak in small sizes. Shapes like ‘C’ and ‘S’ curl back into themselves, leaving tight “apertures”--the channels of white between a letter’s interior and exterior. So each shape halts the eye again and again, rather than ushering it along the line. The lowercase ‘e,' the most common letter in English and many other languages, takes an especially unobliging form. These and other letters can be a pixel away from being some other letter, and we’re left to deal with flickers of doubt as we read.

Lucida Grande presents open apertures, inviting the eye to move along sideways through the text. It has worked really well--for years, and for good reason. For any text, but particularly in interfaces, our eyes need typefaces that cooperate rather than resist. A super-sharp Retina Display might help, but the real issue is the human eye, and I haven’t heard of any upgrades on the way.

Seeing as Helvetica Neue was not universally well-received on the iPhone, it will be curious to see how Mac users react this fall when OS X Yosemite goes live. Until then, maybe try and get your eyes in peak working order.

Source : fastcodesign

5 Facts About Gopinath Munde's death

No body knows what will happen tomorrow, Union minister Gopinath Munde died in car accident today. It is very sad news for all india. I strongly believe that he was an aspiring leader. Prime minister Narendra extended his condolences and homage. I extend my deeply condolences to family of late union minister Gopinath Munde.

Rural development minister Gopinath Munde died on Tuesday morning in a road accident in Delhi when he was going towards the IGI airport.


Here are five facts about Gopinath Munde's accident and death:


(1) Rural Development Minister Gopinath Munde died today after a head-on road collision in New Delhi.


(2) Munde was injured while driving to the Delhi airport and died later in hospital.


(3) He was taken to the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. Doctors declared him dead at about 8am.


(4) Munde, 64, was conscious and able to talk to his bodyguard after the accident.


(5) He died in hospital from cardiac arrest.

Global Tech Information: Top 5 Factors to Consider Before Choosing Web Host...

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