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moynacorp · 7 years

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Time For War Again: Net Neutrality Part 2

It's an unusually cold day in New Orleans, and the skeleton crew operating out of Moynahan Tower is huddled in groups in blankets and around small space heaters. Regular operations for Moynacorp are ceased for the day due to the inclement weather -- when's the last time you tried driving around the Crescent City on ice? -- but several of us have gathered to push an initiative that's largely unrelated to our business but is important enough to merit all the effort we can give it.

We posted a blog article about net neutrality a few months ago, and that article is beginning to feel all the more timely. Having already illustrated the basic concepts of net neutrality, we will only touch on them here and encourage you to read the older article for more details, and then explain why we are calling on you to act now. Right now, in this very moment.

Net neutrality is the idea that internet traffic should not be regulated under any conditions, whether they be related to ownership, competition, or other facets of power. It means that if my cellphone service is with AT&T, I should be able to watch Netflix, a competitor of AT&T and Verizon, without experiencing slower data speeds. Without net neutrality, AT&T would be free to throttle their customers' data whenever they access Netflix or any other service that isn't owned or controlled by them.

You might have seen the statements in which large telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have said, "We support net neutrality! We would never throttle our customers' data just because they used a competing product." But the wording there is very specific. Net neutrality should be fully neutral. Such companies can promise not to throttle competitors' sites, but then offer increased data speeds and improved viewing experiences for customers using services owned by them, like AT&T's DirecTV Now.

This is still dangerous because it prevents small companies and startups from participating in the telecommunications industry. Consider this: if Netflix had not brought positive disruption to TV viewing, we would still be shackled to our cable boxes. We would not have independently-made shows like Netflix's Marvel series, or Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, or Amazon's Mozart In The Jungle, among so many others.

Why is this topic so important today? On Thursday, December 14, the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai (a former lawyer for Verizon), is scheduled to hold a vote to determine whether net neutrality laws will be upheld or revoked. Because this is a vote happening in the FCC, there's little that the public can do to influence it directly. Only Congress can challenge it -- and that's where you come in.

You can contact your representatives in Congress and urge them to stop the FCC from destroying net neutrality. If you prefer not to call, tweeting at them and emailing them works just as well. Let your Congresspeople know that you, their constituent, are against building more barriers to entry among telecoms. Tell them that you are against supporting unfair competitive advantages. Tell them that the Internet is meant to be accessed and enjoyed by all, without the interference of government or corporations.

We've won this battle before and we can win it again. Use your voice and help us send an unequivocal message for the freedom of information and enterprise.

-CM

#net neutrality #digital rights #FCC #call to action

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moynacorp · 7 years

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This behavior on the part of a massive corporation is typical and not nearly surprising.

Hey what the fuck happened to all the net neutrality coverage

This shit is still happening people, and all of the sudden its disappeared from my dash almost entirely over night

#net neutrality #digital rights #fcc

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moynacorp · 7 years

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Words Have Meanings: Net Neutrality

Over the past couple of months, residents of the US have seen vast regressions in the terms of data and privacy. The term “net neutrality” has been on everyone’s lips, including major data-focused companies such as internet service providers. Such companies have come out heavily in favor of keeping net neutrality regulations. These appear to be somewhat altruistic and self-sacrificing stances, considering that these businesses survive on the deregulation of data. Is it possible that these companies rely do stand for the best interests of their customers rather than the best interests of their industries?

The answer is: yes and no.

Real that only a few years ago, many telecom businesses invested in and lobbied hard for the institution of policies that would have deregulated their ability to alter their internet speeds based on what a customer was using their internet connection for. AT&T and Verizon threw large sums of money at this, and T-Mobile bragged about its data-throttling policies. If an internet provider wanted customers to stream movies on its own service rather than a competitor (say Netflix or Sling TV), it would simply decrease the speed and quality of a customer’s data whenever they tried to connect to that competitor’s services.

Today, these companies and other ISPs, such as Comcast, promise not to do that, honest. They’re big proponents of net neutrality, they say. But the definition of “net neutrality” they follow merely applies to throttling speeds—they are pledging not to decrease speeds on competing services. What they are not promising is not to promote and increase speeds for their own services, such as AT&T’s DirecTV Now. This is still harmful to the industry, creating barriers to entry to telecom startups who are still trying to create footholds for their competitive services. In such a climate, startups would have to curry favor with the big names so that their services can be on par, and that just is not something that happens for businesses that intend to disrupt the industry, like Sling TV.

Language is important. Words have meanings. Net neutrality should be exactly what the name says: neutral. Not negative as with throttling, and also not destructive in the reverse.

Don’t let the shallow promises of Big Data lull you into a sense of false security. The internet is still at risk.

#net neutrality #day of action #moynacorp #tech

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moynacorp · 7 years

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Gone Spearphishing

You scroll through your Facebook news feed and spot another quiz, posted by one of those folks you never really knew but added as a friend anyway. The posts they make are great, bringing you back to your high school days.

This quiz is all about favorites. Favorite color, favorite song, favorite artist, favorite animal, and so on. You copy the quiz and fill in your own response, then post it and wait for the comments and the reposts to flow in.

It's a natural inclination. Broadly speaking, people like to talk about themselves. We are socially inclined, and we want to look well-informed. And the subject we know the most about is ourselves. We share personal information, even when we know we shouldn't.

Aside from quizzes like the widespread Facebook posts being fodder for password hints (how often have you used "favorite band" or "favorite sports team" as a security question?), they enable a particularly dangerous form of digital attack known as “spearfishing.”

The name “spearphishing” is an expansion of the term “phishing,” which is a well-known phenomenon on the Internet at this point. Everyone knows not to click on links in spam emails or open attachments from unknown senders. Most, if not all, email providers have functions that sort through users’ emails and quarantine any emails that carry the hallmarks of a phishing attack on sight. Indeed, producers of such scams send out so many emails because they know a small number of people will be fooled by them.

In this way, traditional phishing follows the form of casting a wide net, maximizing the amount of people taken in by the generic emails that carry the malicious files. Spearfishing is a specific, directed attack. The target of a spearphishing attempt is profiled and researched, their social imprint combed through for connections and patterns. The attack is tailor-made to be nearly indistinguishable from a perfectly benign email.

There are no clear guidelines on who is most likely to become a target of such an attack, but the more personal information you share and the more connected your online accounts are, the easier it will be for some bad actor to con you. Public figures, with our decreased sense of privacy, tend to be particularly prone to this. I (the highly visible CEO of a profitable tech company) received an email from my sister some time ago, telling me about a student loan forgiveness plan she’d discovered and wanted me to check out. The email contained a link. My sister does occasionally send me random emails about things I like, and she does know about my debt burden, so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect she had sent the email. (And yes, I’m still paying off my loans for Bucknell and Wharton. Welcome to millennialhood.) But I called my sister and asked her about the email anyway. She hadn’t sent it.

So what happened? Was my sister’s email account hacked? Most likely not; no one else in my sister’s circle received any suspicious emails from her. (She changed all her passwords anyway.) What’s more likely is that someone went through my online interactions and found her. We have the same last name and she is listed as a relative on my Facebook profile. We trade playful barbs on Facebook and on my personal Twitter, and I’m fairly certain there are photos of us as kids on her Instagram. This made her the perfect contact of mine to impersonate.

And the student loan angle? I’ve joked about my student loans a few times. There is probably a video of me remarking on them floating around YouTube. My sister has made similar complaints over social media. This was, then, the perfect choice for a hook, and it was cleverly done. The IT department had far too much fun dissecting the email. It wasn’t until someone spotted a slight misspell in my sister’s email address that the malicious intent became clear. The website the link led to appeared to be false as well.

There is a solid chance that any person with a significant online presence could fall victim to a spearphishing attempt. There’s no true way to defend against them, but the potential effects, from ransomware to identity theft, are brutal. If you receive a spontaneous email from a contact, don’t be lazy. Check with the contact before you open any attachments or click on any links.

Caution is a good rule of thumb on the Internet, with digital attacks growing more sophisticated by the day. When in doubt, double-check everything from the email address to the language used in the email. In the world of cybercrime, vigilance is everything.

(Originally posted April 2017)

#spear phishing #tech #moynacorp #cybersecurity

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