Prince William’s wedding is more dangerous than porn

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

It is bad enough, for someone with no great interest in the monarchy, that the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton has now dominated TV, print and online news outlets for the past 24 hours solid. I know I risk being verbally scolded by the twin-pronged pro-Royalty army that is the combined forces of the blue-rinsed brigade and readers of Heat magazine, but I think I can safely say that the forthcoming Royal wedding is now officially bad news. I can also say that you would be safer searching for porn than searching for news about the Royal nuptials.

Security researchers at the Websense labs have uncovered the first wave of poisoned search engine results to wash onto Google and Yahoo alike, using everything from promises of ‘Prince William Wedding Photos’ through to the much more generic, and likely all the more successful as a result, ‘Prince William Wedding’ as lures to sites which will hit the unsuspecting and unprotected visitor with the latest drive-by download attacks.

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Apple iBooks and the top-shelf chart toppers

Friday, September 10th, 2010

“We view apps different [sic] than books or songs, which we do not curate,” said the new iPhone App Store submission guidelines issued by Apple yesterday. “If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song.”

It seems several “publishers” have taken Apple at its word. At the top of the iBooks paid-for chart right now is Hot and Steamy: Sizzling Sex Stories, with Hot and Steamy: Sexual Fantasies at number 12 and Erotic Threesomes at number 27.

The free books chart, meanwhile, has the none-too-subtle A Taste Of Things To Cum at number two, nestled rather conspicuously between Winnie-the-Pooh and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

It seems, therefore, that Apple iPads and iPhones are people’s preferred medium for a titillating read. Certainly if you look at the Amazon bestsellers or the Waterstones chart, there’s nothing in the top ten you’d be embarrassed about reading on the bus (with the possible exception of Tony Blair’s autobiography).

It was Steve Jobs, remember, who once defended the Apple walled garden by claiming that the iPad delivered “freedom from porn”. How much longer, I wonder, is he going to put up with A Taste Of Things To Cum sullying his charts?

Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Mozilla’s Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, ahem, private collection of websites.

In May, the company decided to have one last attempt at persuading the people on Firefox 2 to move up to Firefox 3, by hitting users of the old version with a pop-up that prompted them to upgrade. Those who declined were invited to fill out a questionnaire, asking them to reveal why they didn’t want the latest software.

The number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people’s bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. No fewer than 25% of Firefox 3 refuseniks cited this as the reason they wouldn’t upgrade. In fact, almost all of the people who provided feedback had tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and headed back to Firefox 2.

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Life at Cuil: strawberries, muffins and porn

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

A new search engine launched this week, prompting a surprisingly huge response online. To be honest, I was just as guilty of getting excited as anyone else.

Whether it was the David-versus-Goliath appeal of a tiny startup going up against a company that can boast to be both a household name and a verb, or whether it was the pure controversy – several Cuil engineers have come directly from Google, after all – I don’t know. But one thing looks certain; we want the search monopoly to be toppled.

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