Spammed
Remember how the Australian Government green lighted an Internet filter not too long ago? In retaliation to the proposed filter, a group of hackers, who call themselves Anonymous, took down two government sites: the main website and the Parliament site. Ars Technica tells us “the plan was DDoS government servers first, and then followup with ‘a s***storm’ of porn-related emails, faxes, and prank cell phone calls to government officials.”
An email sent to the media before the attacks declared, “No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be ‘unwanted’.” The email also announced, “No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason.”
Publicized by flyers distributed to recruit participants as “Operation: Titstorm,” the attacks caused intermittent periods of downtime before lunch in addition to about an hour of inaccessibility in the morning. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy frowned upon the attacks, saying they were “totally irresponsible and potentially deny services to the Australian public.” The Sydney Morning Herald has more coverage on the events that occurred last night (well, Wednesday morning Australia time and Tuesday evening through the US).
Dumped
A man in Winnipeg is on a campaign for his innocence after being dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Apparently, his girlfriend found brow-raising text messages on his work phone — “Booty call” and “Be there soon” type texts. But Darren, the dumped, didn’t even know that he had text capabilities on his Samsung Virgin Mobile phone; they were preloaded messages! Mike Ford, a sales associate at Future Shop, a cell phone store, in Winnipeg tells the Huffington Post, “when we looked at a couple of the same phones he bought, and found they all had the same messages… We all felt horrible.” Well, Darren is on a quest, “I’d like to see the phones recalled and the messages taken off, so that others don’t have to go through the hell I’m going through.” Can he win his girl back?
Censored
YouTube now comes in “Safety Mode.” What is it you ask? Well, let’s go to the source. The YouTube Blog tells us, “Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site.” Maybe this video demo will help…
Since you must manually opt in to enable Safety Mode, it may not be the best way to keep tabs on your teenager. But it still creates a nice alternative to avoid unsightful, salacious or embarrassing content while browsing YouTube… at work, let’s say… or at home with the kids… Aside from creating a more family-friendly browsing experience, Safety Mode also hides comments and allows you to filter out curse words. YouTube tells us, “while no filter is 100% accurate, we use community flagging, hide objectionable comments and porn image detection to identify and hide inappropriate content.”
