Tag Archives: public

Shared.com Gives 100 GB of Storage Space

File Sharing, internet, , ,

shared-logoShared Media have announced a new service where you can share files with others instantly – up to 100 GB in the freemium model with 2 GB upload cap.

Shared.com has come out of the gate with a higher storage capacity to hopefully grab early adopters and get some of the Mega and Dropbox clientele. With Shared.com, you can share a file with the public or just have it ready at your fingertips between devices.

Shared.com Pro and Pro Plus models have also been added – For $9.95 a month you can upload 5 GB files with a 2 TB storage area and Pro Plus allows for up to 10 GB files with unlimited capacity.

Coming options will include mobile apps so you can access your files on the go.

There have been legitimate concerns to sites like this after what happened with MegaUpload in 2012. However, a shared file resource is a great way to distribute legal files to the masses. Shared.com says they will be following DMCA rules and resolve any disputes on their service.

In the meantime – its a great way to send photos of the family to loved ones, post a video of you doing something silly or a document that you need shared information on.

Privacy in a Public World

Facebook, Information, Privacy, ,

Facebook rolled out Places late on Aug 18, it allows you to check in where you are through Facebook. In its default mode it also allows your friends to check you in. Lifehacker has a good article on how to adjust your privacy settings for Places to a level you are comfortable with.

This again brought out the issue of privacy. Some of the answers to the issue of privacy by those who believe being public is best ranged from impractical to absurd, such as don’t be on these social sites, to change your name, which is what Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt suggested in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. (if you are unable to get the Wall Street Journal article PC world has a good review of it ) On the other side, privacy evangelist can sound like members of a lunatic fringe group, when they talk about things like RFID tags being the work of the devil.

Both sides are trivializing an issue which can very serious for a lot of people, especially women who have been in an abusive relationship, it is important that their lives remain private. In fact for them it really can be a matter of life or death. However they should be able to participate in social media sites to connect with their friends, like anyone else. If they can’t then the abuser wins. How public or private someone is should be an individual’s choice. They should be able to control that privacy level how ever they see fit. My biggest fear is that the decision making is being taken away from the individual. Just because I make part of my life public doesn’t mean I have given up my right to privacy in other parts of my life.

Anytime an application or website is created or changed in a way that affects a person privacy, that change should be made clear and public. It should not be hidden in the middle of a 65 page software license agreement. Each person should make their own choice on how public or private they want to be and it shouldn’t be a decision made others. I have made a choice to be public in most areas of my life, I however don’t presume that I have the right to make that choice for someone else.


The Big Gorilla Project

Commerce, Crime, Dave's Muse, Information, Security, Services, Software, Technical, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spam is an ever-increasing annoyance for e-mail users. Most people have some form of spam filtering application that reduces the instances of the frequently offensive unsolicited commercial messages. Many of these filters seek to identify spam based on the address from which the message is sent, but spammers are already wise to this trick, and spoofing is now commonplace. By hiding or misdirecting their transmission source, spammers make it exceedingly difficult for most users to determine from where the spam message actually came.

But there’s some hope for spammer identification. An loose alliance formed by large e-mail services (Microsoft, Yahoo, America Online, and Earthlink), the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG), and Intelligent Computer Solutions (ICS) is working on an e-mail sender-authentication system that’s been dubbed the Big Gorilla Project.

Using an identification system based on public key encryption, ISPs who have control over outgoing e-mail can include a piece of encrypted code in header of each outgoing message. The code snippet can be used by receiving ISPs to confirm the identity of the outgoing e-mail server and the authenticity of the e-mail message’s return address.

By confirming the identity of the transmission site, it’s a simple matter to blacklist and block known offenders.

Dave’s Opinion
I use a combination of anti-spam filtering applications, both on our incoming mail servers and our client workstations. So far I’ve been able to drop my daily spam tally from over 600 messages to about a dozen, maybe double that on a bad day. But that’s still not good enough. It’s not just receiving junk mail that bothers me, it’s the offensive content.

I’m all for proposals, both legislative and technical, that help kill off spam.

Call for Comments
What do you think? Leave your comments below.

References
Anti-Spam Research Group
Intelligent Computer Solutions