#Ethical Hacking Classes in Canada | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nimilphilip · 9 days ago

Text

Best MSc in Cybersecurity Programs for BSc Graduates Abroad

From finance and healthcare to government and tech startups, cybersecurity has evolved into a pillar for every sector in a society going more and more digital. Cybersecurity is now among the most sought-after professions worldwide due to the growing need to safeguard private information, fight against cyberattacks, and create strong systems. Pursuing a Master's in Cybersecurity overseas can be a wise and future-proof choice for BSc grads wishing to further specialise. This blog delves deeply into the top MSc in Cyber Security courses available overseas, fit for BSc graduates hoping to start or advance their careers in this explosive field.

Why Consider an MSc in Cyber-Security Abroad?

Along with modern theoretical knowledge, a Master's degree in Cybersecurity from a globally respected university offers practical experience, hands-on lab work, research opportunities, and industry contacts. Studying overseas exposes students to advanced infrastructure, world-class faculty, and a multicultural environment all of which enhance their academic and personal growth.

Furthermore, heavily investing in cybersecurity and digital security infrastructure are many nations including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Canada, and Australia. These nations also grant post-study work visas, thus providing a broad spectrum of employment opportunities for overseas students after graduation.

United Kingdom: A Global Hub for Cybersecurity Education

With several universities named Academic Centres of Excellence in Cybersecurity Research (ACE-CSR) by the UK's National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), the country has always led in developing world-class academic programs in cybersecurity.

With a strong focus on cybersecurity practices, research methods, and pragmatic application, University of Oxford presents a high-ranking MSc in Software and Systems Security. It's meant for working professionals as well as fresh grads.

Ranked among the best cybersecurity courses in the world, University College London (UCL) offers an MSc in Information Security The courses centre on ethics hacking, system security, safe coding, and cryptography. Because of UCL's ties to London's tech scene, it appeals as a location for internships and employment.

Long leader in cybersecurity education, Royal Holloway, University of London, provides a focused MSc in Information Security. Its course draws students from all around the world by striking a mix between theoretical underpinnings and practical skills.

Graduates from these UK courses gain from outstanding job prospects at government agencies, financial institutions, and cybersecurity companies. Additionally, the UK gives plenty of time to find pertinent work after graduation thanks to a 2-year post-study work visa.

Ireland: Europe’s Fastest Growing Tech Hub

With worldwide companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft having their European headquarters in cities like Dublin, Ireland has become a tech and cybersecurity powerhouse. Renowned for providing industry-aligned, research-intensive MSc programs in cybersecurity are its universities.

An MSc in Cyber Security offered by University College Dublin (UCD) spans digital forensics, network security, and safe software development. Working closely with businesses, UCD's School of Computer Science exposes students to current trends and threats in real time.

For a hands-on MSc in Computing (Information and Network Security), Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) It covers project work, labs for penetration testing, and international student intern opportunities.

Through its Cork campus, Munster Technological University (MTU) offers a program stressing industrial cybersecurity, digital forensics, and malware analysis. The course calendar fits working professionals as well as students.

Ireland's 2-year post-study visa and expanding cybersecurity ecosystem combine to make it an interesting place for BSc graduates hoping to work internationally and upskill.

Germany: Combining Quality Education with Affordability

Particularly at public universities, Germany is well-known for its low-cost or tuition-free educational system. The nation's strategic focus on cybersecurity results in the development of robust academic programs in this discipline.

Combining mathematics, system security, data security, and applied cryptography, Technical University of Munich (TUM) grants an MSc in Cybersecurity. For recent computer science, engineering, or math BSc grads, the program is perfect.

Working with Fraunhofer Institutes, University of Bonn runs an MSc in Cybersecurity with an eye towards research. Those looking for a strong academic background and research exposure will find the program ideal and competitive.

With an IT Security concentration, University of Passau presents a well-rounded MSc in Computer Science. Strong academic quality and reasonable cost of the program make it a favourite among overseas students.

Germany offers an 18-month post-study work visa, allowing graduates plenty of time to land job in tech companies, cybersecurity consultancies, and innovation hubs. Public universities in Germany sometimes have low tuition rates.

Canada: A Land of Innovation and Opportunity

One of the best options for overseas students in Canada is its friendly immigration laws, cosmopolitan surroundings, and top-notch educational system.

The MSc in Applied Computing with a Cybersecurity concentration offered by University of Toronto is Through internships in collaborating companies, the program combines industrial experience with academic knowledge.

Developed by University of British Columbia (UBC), a thorough Master of Data Science (MDS) including a cybersecurity module Though not entirely committed to cybersecurity, it combines elements of data privacy, safe data systems, and machine learning—skills very relevant in the cybersecurity field.

Based in Montreal, Concordia University oversees a targeted MSc in Information Systems Security. It gets students ready for leadership in cybersecurity by including specialised courses in digital forensics, threat intelligence, and safe software design.

Strong cybersecurity job market and Canada's post-study work permit (up to three years) make it perfect for BSc graduates intending a long-term job in North America.

Australia: A Growing Leader in Cyber Defense Education

Part of its national security and digital economy development strategies, Australia is heavily funding cybersecurity. International students find its universities appealing because of their applied learning approaches.

Focussing on enterprise-level threat analysis, incident response, and safe architectures, University of New South Wales (UNSW) provides a Master of Cyber Security Operations. It suits technical background BSc graduates.

Working with business professionals, RMIT University offers an MSc in Cybersecurity. Particularly helpful for those interested in compliance-based roles, the program comprises governance modules, ethical hacking, and cloud security.

Renowned for its Master of Cyber Security, Deakin University offers technical courses mixed with policy and management elements of cybersecurity. It also provides access to the first Cybersecurity Research and Innovation Centre in Australia.

Australia's severe shortage of cybersecurity experts guarantees graduates great employability. Australia is a wise place for BSc graduates hoping to have an impact given a two-year post-study visa and strong employment market.

Key Skills You’ll Develop in an MSc Cybersecurity Program

A good Master's program in cybersecurity not only offers domain-specific knowledge but also develops a strong set of skills required to succeed in worldwide employment markets.

Threat Detection & Analysis: Learn to recognise, evaluate, and neutralise cyber threats on many platforms.

Cryptography & Secure Communication: Mastery of encryption and safe data transmission will help you in all spheres.

Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking: Knowing how to ethically hack systems will help you to test and enhance their security.

Cyber Law & Digital Forensics: Learn about forensic investigations, compliance systems, and worldwide cyber laws.

Secure Software Design: Learn to create safe applications straight from the development phase in software design.

Incident Response & Risk Management: Create plans to handle cyber events and evaluate risk among several systems.

Career Opportunities After MSc in Cybersecurity

From banking, healthcare, government, IT, and consulting, graduates of top cybersecurity programs overseas have a broad spectrum of career paths. Among the much sought-after employment positions are:

Cybersecurity Analyst

Ethical Hacker

Security Software Developer

Network Security Engineer

Cybersecurity Consultant

Digital Forensics Expert

Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst

Companies all around are always looking for qualified cybersecurity experts given rising cyberattacks and changing digital threats. Accelerated professional development and competitive pay follow from this demand.

Final Thoughts: Secure Your Future with Clifton Study Abroad

Selecting the appropriate Master's in Cybersecurity is about knowing your objectives, financial situation, career path, and academic strengths—not only about university rankings. From choosing the appropriate country and program to preparing your SOPs, guiding you through the application process, and obtaining your visa, at Clifton Study Abroad we help you to customize the best path.

You know that your dream to study cybersecurity overseas is in good hands with our knowledgeable team at your side. Whether your target is the UK, Ireland, Germany, Canada, Australia, or another country, Clifton Study Abroad guarantees you make wise decisions and enter your future confident and clearly.

Let’s protect the digital world—one graduate at a time.

#study abroad #study in uk #study abroad consultants #study in germany #study in australia #study blog #study in ireland

0 notes

technomaster-uk · 2 years ago

Text

Ethical hacking, also known as "white hat" hacking, is the practice of using hacking techniques for the purpose of identifying security vulnerabilities and weaknesses in computer systems and networks. Ethical hackers are hired by organizations to perform authorized testing and analysis of their systems in order to find vulnerabilities and improve their security. Since 2006, TechnoMaster has provided the best ethical hacking course in Canada. It's the well-rounded practises that set TechnoMaster apart from the rest. join now !!

#ethical hacking #canada #digitalmarketing #technomaster #online class in uk #online training in uk #online courses #seo

0 notes

wolfliving · 6 years ago

Text

Garnet Hertz ponders Making

From: Garnet Hertz

This discussion is great - I just subscribed with Chris's message to me - it's nice to connect with like-minded people around this topic. I've obviously been hanging around the wrong places online (like Facebook).

"maker as a disconnection to class struggle" - I could talk about this for YEARS - or at least thousands of words (see below if you don't believe me):

In my view (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here) is that the maker movement was primarily an attempt to standardize, spread and commercialize what artists and hackers were already doing into a “Martha Stewart for Geeks” by Make magazine. The founders literally used "Martha Stewart for Geeks" as their vision - this isn't a metaphor.

My book project, for example, looks to articulate one of the many strands of this scene that predated making — DIY electronics in art — and it reaches back nearly a hundred years. As many of you know, it has a totally fascinating history.

Other strands include hacker culture since the 1970s, the free software movement since 1983, ubiquitous computing since 1991, open source hardware since 1997, the explosion of craft practices since Y2K, the Arduino platform since 2003, the FabLab movement since 2005, and the material turn of philosophy over the past several decades — all of these are maker movements, and most of them are more of a social movement than what Make has envisioned.

The maker movement as articulated by Make lacks fuel of its own and offers little of unique cultural value beyond giving us the nondisciplinary label of the ‘maker’ in 2005. Make magazine organized, promoted and ‘platformed’ the maker movement as its brand, but the leadership of makers came from other sources (as noted above).

What is most interesting about the idea of making is not the term itself — it is the pieces of hacking, craft, DIY culture and electronic art that were left out of constructing the idea of the "maker" (at least in North America), which was largely carved out by Maker Media to serve its private business needs related to selling magazines and event tickets. Maker Media very clearly sanitized things from the hacker scene (maker = hacker - controversy) and from the art/DIY scene (Dorkbot, especially - which I ran in Los Angeles at the time).

The newer understanding of ‘making’ is not really an all-encompassing term for all, but is focused on a specific subset of ideas, primarily exists in a limited geography of influence, has a limited ecosystem of tools, and follows a specific form for projects that are considerably different and more constrained than the ‘making’ that existed before. The scene envisioned by Maker Media was almost exclusively focused on producing work as a leisure pursuit, which is a total misunderstanding with how many hackers or artists work.

In retrospect, the maker scene rode two major waves: the Arduino and 3D printing. I see its death as partially a result of never being able to find a third wave. Maker Media was also constructed as a relatively financially heavy structure that needed a lot of fuel to survive -- it wasn't an artist collective. In terms of financial waves, the Arduino provided vital technological, social and ethical glue that massively helped Make magazine launch. The Ardunio technical platform provided an accessible and uniform venue for sharing project prototypes, and its open source hardware provided a novel and exciting blueprint for how physical electronic objects could be prototyped and distributed. The Arduino and Make had a symbiotic and intertwined relationship with each other, with Arduino providing the hardware, mindset and seed community for Make, and Make providing media coverage and scores of fresh users for the Arduino hardware platform.

A similarly intertwined relationship formed a few years later between consumer-level 3D printing and Make magazine and its affiliated Maker Faire. In hindsight, the 3D printing movement was synonymous with the maker movement between 2009 to 2013, and this impact is still felt today. Of the many projects and companies involved in the rapid expansion of inexpensive 3D printing after 2009, MakerBot was central — and Make magazine largely served as its promotional sidekick.

The maker movement is somewhat significant in that it highlights how alienated contemporary western culture has become from the manual craft of building your own objects, and how wholly absorbed it has been enveloped in consumer culture. The maker movement works counter this alienation, but does so with considerably broad strokes — almost to the extent that making anything qualifies as being part of the movement.

Instead of looking at the maker movement as a large interdisciplinary endeavour, it can also be interpreted as a re-categorization of all manual fabrication under a single banner. Language typically expands into a rich lexicon of terms when a field grows, and the generality of ‘making’ is the polar opposite. Ceramicists, welders, sculptors, luthiers, amateur radio builders, furniture makers and inventors have been conflated into the singular category of makers, and the acceptance of this shift seems to indicate that any form of making is novel enough in popular culture that it is not worth discerning what is being built.

If looking at what typically constitutes a social movement, Make magazine’s maker movement never fit the bill. For example, Glasberg and Deric define social movements as “organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites.” If we ask what oppressed population Make magazine serves, it clearly doesn't have one.

If looked at from an economic perspective, Make’s readership contains considerably more powerful and advantaged elites than the oppressed: the publication’s own statistics claim that its audience has a median household income of $125,000 USD, over double the national US median of $59,039. Make’s maker movement is primarily a pitch to sell empowerment to the already empowered — in a 2012 Intel-funded research study on makers, “empowerment” is identified as a key motivator for the affluent group, and Make primarily sustained itself by catering to this audience until it realized that 3D printing and the Arduino weren't everything they promised to be. Or maybe people finally realized that they had enough 3D printed Yoda heads and blinking LED Arduino projects -- and that building stuff of cultural or design value was actually quite difficult.

If anybody else is interested in reading a draft of my book, just fill this out:

https://forms.gle/1F8787aJqSSapjPW9

- I'll mail out about a dozen physical hardcopies in exchange for harsh feedback.

I'm also still collecting thoughts about a "Post-Making" type of organization here:

https://forms.gle/JBM6DDFT7436p43G9

Some of the responses are as follows:

* Model it after dorkbot but instead of having meetings it can be geared around smaller regional Faires

* I would run it as a non profit and make sure that there are people from all over the world representing. Not only so US focused.

* Focus on low tech and tech criticism...as much as possible far from western culture...let say the gambiara creative movement in LATAM (brazil) or Cuban style repair culture, guerilla, community envisioned and run publications/workshops/happenings without the 'red tape' so often discussed as part of the Maker Media legacy.

So, no forced branding, no forced commonalities (other than perhaps a shared manifesto), no minimum number of participants or fundraising requirement for it to be a 'real' event of the community, and much less of a focus on attracting, and then satisfying, corporate sponsors.

* Should be about critical making, open source, skill sharing, critical thinking and more...

* I think the most important thing is to help local people meet up with each other in person. This should go far beyond people who already go to a hackerspace - this is something that Make did well by bringing together all sorts of people from children, university students, hackers, artists, etc. I don't think this has to be large scale.

* Member-run co-operative; leadership positions only for women; women-only days; focus on understanding biases built into technologies and imagining ways around this (critical technical practice)

And if anybody has made it this far down the page, I'm interested in talking to people working at universities that are working in this field.

Dr. Garnet Hertz Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts Emily Carr University of Art and Design 520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 0H2

# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission

# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,

# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets

# more info:

http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l

# archive:

http://www.nettime.org

contact:

[email protected]

# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

8 notes · View notes

cadiscreetinvestigation-blog · 5 years ago

Text

All that You Need to Know About Private Investigation Training in Manitoba

Do you actually sit behind your work area at work and wish you could assist individuals with tackling specific issues? In the event that this seems like you, you should consider changing or in any event, beginning another vocation. All the more explicitly, in case you're somebody who likes or needs to assist individuals with taking care of issues, you ought to firmly think about turning into a private investigator!

In the event that you live in Manitoba, beginning a vocation as a private investigator will open up circumstances inside your locale that you never thought were conceivable. The thing is, you probably need to know where and how you can begin. We're here to reveal to you that you've made an extraordinary initial step by perusing this article. We have all that you have to think about private investigation preparing in Manitoba.

What is a Private Investigator?

A private investigator is an individual prepared in analytical law rehearses like reconnaissance, finds, record verifications, resource searches, and the sky is the limit from there. They are like detectives from various perspectives, and in the event that they have the necessary grants, can likewise convey a weapon. Private investigators are regularly committed to introduce case discoveries and exploration in court or to customers as proof.

It's critical to recollect that a private investigator isn't permitted to go about as a cop. For instance, a private investigator isn't lawfully permitted to partake in justified quests or capture anybody.

Why Become a Private Investigator?

An ever increasing number of organizations across Canada are beginning to comprehend the benefit of employing and working with private investigators. With such an extensive amount the world presently working together practically, burglary is changing and getting much harder to find or follow. Indeed, even close to home issues have changed. Individuals have their web-based media accounts hacked, messages bothered, and even conveyance bundles taken from the entryway patio.

Unmistakably private investigation today is totally different from the kind of work that was done only ten years back. The business has improved, which implies that private investigators need to continue teaching themselves on the most recent advancements in insightful strategies and gear. Therefore, the cases a private investigator takes on are rarely exhausting.

What's more, the proof and exploration a private investigator gives to their customers are exceptionally esteemed. Great private investigators help individuals to take care of issues by zeroing in on realities and reality. This is something a few positions don't offer, which is the reason you ought to think about a vocation as a private investigator.

How Do I Become a Private Investigator in Manitoba?

To turn into a private investigator in Manitoba, you will initially need to address a couple of inquiries:

Am I at any rate 18 years of age?

Do I have a spotless criminal record?

Am I qualified to work in Canada?

In the event that you've addressed 'yes' to the entirety of the abovementioned, congrats! You're qualified to win your private investigator's permit in Manitoba. Notwithstanding, before you can apply for your private investigator's permit, you have to take an instructional class.

The private investigator instructional class is roughly 60 hours long. The extraordinary part about the quantity of hours is that you can finish the course in way less time than it would take to finish most school or college degrees. Rather than investing the majority of your energy in a study hall, you can get out into the field and help individuals.

Course material incorporates,

Prologue to Private Investigation

Common and Federal Statutes

Self-Management Skills

Criminal and Civil Law

Standards of Communication and Interaction

Analytical Techniques

Standards of Ethical Reasoning and Decision Making

You may be intrigued to realize that even with COVID-19, you can in any case take the private investigator instructional class. Numerous organizations and private investigation offices like The Smith Investigation Agency offer online private investigator preparing. This implies you can take the preparation from your love seat and still acquire your permit.

The most effective method to Find the Best Private Investigator Training Course

It is truly critical to ensure that you take a private investigation instructional class that will outfit you with the correct aptitudes. All things considered, on the off chance that you need to make a vocation out of private analytical work, you'll need to ensure that you get all the correct preparing! In this way, first of all. A speedy Internet look for private investigation courses in Manitoba will give you a broad rundown of choices. You'll have to experience these alternatives to limit your decision. So as to do this, you should search for things like:

Positive audits from customers

Positive audits from understudies

Better Business Bureau Rating

Grants

Accreditations

Pose a Few Inquiries …

In light of the data above, you can make a rundown of a few private investigator instructional classes that you would need to take. Now, you will need to call the offices or people you've chosen. Calling the office or individual will offer you a chance to approve your exploration. You can pose inquiries about the instructional class and find whether you think the choice is directly for you. Inquiries to pose include:

Do you offer web based preparing?

What accreditations do you have?

Where is your office found?

What amount do you charge for the private investigator instructional class?

How long have you been showing this course?

Would i be able to address a few references?

Doing this sort of legwork won't just assist you with picking the best instructional class yet it will likewise assist you with beginning building up those private investigator abilities. When you locate the correct private investigator instructional class, you can enroll, pay the charges and begin learning. Endless supply of your preparation, you would then be able to compose the test. At the point when you breeze through the test, you will have effectively earned your private investigator permit, and you can begin working in Manitoba.

Train and Work with the Best in the Business

Here at The Smith Investigation Agency, we offer private investigator preparing to occupants of Manitoba. We have won a few honors including the Consumer's Choice Award for Best Private Investigators from 2017 – 2020. You can locate some extraordinary surveys of our organization and instructional classes on the web, notwithstanding the way that we keep up an A+ with the Better Business Bureau.

Discreet Private investigations is currently offering private investigator instructional classes in Manitoba. Need to prepare with us? Connect today!

0 notes

bitsevenenglish-blog · 6 years ago

Photo

Bitcoin Exchange Coinbase Unveils $255 Million ‘Crypto Hot Wallet’ Insurance Policy Through Lloyd’s of London/ bitcoin exchange,poloniex,bitfinex,bitmex,bittrex

Coinbase has confirmed a $255-million insurance policy for its crypto holdings through Lloyd’s of London. The policy is expected to relieve customers, given the industry’s track record of exchange hacks, security breaches and vanishing assets – from Japan’s Coincheck to South Korea’s Bithumb to Canada’s QuadrigaCX debacle. Coinbase’s president of security, Phillip Martin, says the policy is intended to give its users the certainty that “they will be made whole” if Coinbase were to lose customer assets. As the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase was already covered for customers’ fiat deposits. The new policy is an extra layer of insurance for cryptocurrency holdings in hot wallets that are exposed to the internet. Hot wallets are typically targeted by cybercriminals. Martin says, “We currently hold a hot wallet policy with a $255 million limit placed by Lloyd’s registered broker Aon and sourced from a global group of US and UK insurance companies, including certain Lloyd’s of London syndicates.” Lloyd’s of London, which is an insurance and reinsurance market, has the power to pool multiple financial backers and spread risk. The 333-year-old company’s affiliation with Coinbase adds another stamp of legitimacy and layer of maturity to the emerging asset class. Coinbase secured its first policy in 2013, working with insurance company Aon which acts as its brokerage representative. The multiple sources of insurance allow Coinbase to reduce the risk of investing in cryptocurrencies. “Significant programs like ours, especially in emerging areas of risk, are generally put together using a large number of insurance companies who each take positions of loss in a ‘tower’. If a loss occurs, insurers at the lower layers of the tower would pay first, followed by those in higher layers.” Coinbase’s strategy is designed to protect its customers, and follows a major backlash against the exchange that unfolded last month when revelations surfaced that the company’s recent acquisition, the blockchain analytics company Neutrino, had links to Hacking Team, an organization with a controversial human rights record. In protest, disgruntled customers launched a #DeleteCoinbase campaign on Twitter. Coinbase responded by letting go of ex-Hacking Team Neutrino staffers. CEO Brian Armstrong says the company strives to uphold its mission of creating an open financial system for the world that can connect to the unbanked. According to Armstrong, the company has aligned its bold ambitions with ethical business practices and consumer protections. “Coinbase seeks to be the most secure, trusted, and legally compliant bridge to cryptocurrency.”

Bitcoin leveraged trade at 100x leverage maximum, 100% profit at 1% price raise Make a profit whether the bitcoin price rises or falls BITSEVEN BITCOIN LEVERAGE TRADING YOU CAN TRUST

https://www.bitseven.com/en

CoinDesk,Coinbase,Ethereum,Ripple,Bitcoin Cash,EOS,Stellar Lumens,Litecoin,Cardano,IOTA,Tether,TRON,Monero,NEO,Dash,alpari,Binance,Bitcoin Gold,btc usd,eth usd,bitcoin mining

#bitcoin miner #Sistemkoin #surbitcoin #bit2c #kickstarter #china a50 #bitcoin merchant services #coincorner #Bitcoin Forum #crude oil price

0 notes

allthecanadianpolitics · 8 years ago

Link

Does BC Premier Christy Clark have a sketchy reputation?

The Victoria Times-Colonist's editorial board recently suggested Clark's "ethical standards" do not reflect "the values British Columbians should expect from political parties."

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail's editorial board said Clark's BC Liberal government is "addicted to money" and added that "the perception that corporate money is influencing government decisions is impossible to avoid."

From sketchy donations to dodgy expenses to unethical conduct to straight-up scandals, here are 41 times Clark's BC Liberal government showed that after all these years in power, they might not have a lot of integrity:

1) Alleging her rivals hacked her party's website with no evidence

Without any evidence whatsoever, Clark claimed the opposition NDP had launched a cyber attack against the BC Liberal website. While that might sound like the dictionary definition of "lying" to you, Clark later clarified she had merely "jumped to conclusions."

2) Making tens of thousands with disabilities pay $579 more for bus passes

Showing their compassionate side, the Clark government clawed back discounted bus passes for 55,000 disabled British Columbians – a group already more likely to face unemployment and poverty.

3) Picking an ex-Fraser Institute director to implement BC's climate change plan

Nothing screams serious about climate change like tapping a former director from a right-wing think tank that doubts the science behind climate change, right?

4) Getting her climate change ripped apart by her own experts

Late on a Friday afternoon in August, the Premier quietly released her so-called "climate leadership plan" – a plan so ineffective at dealing with climate change it was dismissed by one expert as "pathetic and cowardly".

5) Getting lobbied more than 10,000 times by her own oil and gas donors

An investigation by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives identified nearly ten thousand contacts between officials at BC government ministries and agencies between 2010 and 2016.

6) Skipping an important vote on transgender rights to attend a partisan fundraiser

Of course Clark somehow found time to go to the photo op.

7) All the donations from other provinces

If all the donations from oil lobbyists wasn't bad enough, it turns out only a small percentage even comes from BC in the first place – most comes from companies headquartered next door in Alberta.

8) All the donations from other countries

It's illegal most places in Canada, but not in Christy Clark's BC – a recent investigation by the Globe and Mail showed Clark's BC Liberals are taking "cash from offshore oil and gas companies, European pharmaceutical companies and Beijing investment firms."

9) All the donors getting public sector contracts

As of October 2016, three-quarters of companies awarded with plumb, sole-sourced contracts by Clark's government are also Liberal party donors. But that's just a coincidence, surely?

10) Selling public land to BC Liberal donors for a cheap price

Of course that actually happened too.

11) Spending millions on partisan ads

Spending $15 million on cynical partisan ads while cutting public services and asking everyone to tighten their belts?

12) Hiring a staffer facing criminal charges

In 2013, the BC Liberals hired former Ontario Liberal staffer Laura Miller as its Executive Director. Not long after, Miller was charged with breach of trust, mischief and misuse of a computer system to commit mischief alongside Dalton McGuinty’s former chief of staff David Livingston.

13) Rehiring the same staffer facing criminal charges

Despite briefly stepping out of the picture, Miller was subsequently rehired as the BC Liberal Party Executive Director. She has since been appointed the party's campaign chief.

14) Spending more than $500,000 on private flights

Why take a commercial flight when a private one will do?

15) Billing taxpayers for a private flight to a fundraising dinner

In April 2016, Clark billed the public $6,054 for a Learjet to fly to Prince George. The reason? A photo op and a visit to the BC Liberals' annual northern fundraising dinner.

16) Triple-deleting all those emails

Back in 2015, BC's Information Commissioner found that the practice of triple deleting e-mails – shielding the government from Freedom of Information requests – was a "routine practice" among Clark government staffers.

17) Billing taxpayers $3,000 for dinner

Oysters: $3,267.66.

18) Leaking a "secret strategy document"

The BC Liberals claimed they obtained the NDP's "secret strategy document" which actually turned out to be a Microsoft Word document highlighting the party's plan to boost living standards for working and middle class families as fight climate change – very sinister sounding stuff!

19) Taking salary top ups from the BC Liberal Party

Clark is already earns a six figure salary as the Premier of BC. So a lot of people were surprised to learn Clark was also paid between $30,000 and $50,000 each year by her own party for fundraising work.

20) Yogagate

In one of BC's weirdest scandals, Clark's government decided to celebrate International Yoga Day instead of National Aboriginal Day and shut down a major Vancouver bridge at a cost of $150,000 for a yoga event.

21) Spending nearly $1 million on government photos

It turns out all those smiling photos of Christy Clark and her cabinet ministers don't come cheap!

22) That time a Liberal MLA claimed the LGBT community is 'dominating' Christians

During debate on Bill 27, legislation to add "gender identity or expression" to the human rights code BC Liberal MLA Laurie Throness argued that recognizing gender identity as a human right is akin to discrimination against those whose views on gender are "rooted in Christian faith." Seriously.

23) Sending a staffer to spy on an NDP meeting with youth

Well, that's pretty desperate.

24) Insulting whistle-blowers

When a former staffer blew the whistle on the "widespread" and "most likely systemic" destruction of e-mail records by Clark's government to avoid FOI requests, Clark's government responded by painting him as a bad employee.

25) Spending $1 million to upgrade the church Clark goes to

The BC government gave a downtown Vancouver church a massive upgrade worth $1 million. By some coincidence, it also happened to be the same one Clark says she regularly attends.

26) Promoting a company Clark once chaired

According to leaked documents, Clark once served as chairwoman of a company she has regularly touted on official government business since becoming Premier.

27) Allegedly interfering in a local election to help her brother

After announcing a $150,000 community grant, Clark faced accusation she was helping a candidate in a local band election who supported her brother's $10 million wind farm project.

28) Not telling the truth about BC's job creation numbers

In 2012, Clark claimed BC was number one in job creation. That was not true.

29) Getting investigated by Elections BC over donations from lobbyists

Last week, Elections BC announced it had launched an investigation into reports that some lobbyists may have had their personal donations to the BC Liberal party reimbursed by third parties.

30) Also, getting investigated by the RCMP for those same reimbursements

Only five days after Elections BC announced its investigation, the RCMP announced its Sensitive Investigations Unit – a unit often tasked with fighting organized crime – is now looking into the alleged "cleansing" of political donations.

31) Giving a $39 million mortgage to a condo developer

Why did BC Housing lend $39 million to the developer of condo project that had nothing to do with social housing?

32) Releasing a jobs ad full of false claims

The ad's claims completely fell apart.

33) Declaring victory after losing a Supreme Court battle to avoid investing in schools

The Supreme Court dealt a monumental defeat to Clark and her government ending their 14 year battle with BC's teachers. But despite having fought against the teachers and their demands in court, the Premier suddenly started singing the praises of the court-ordered investments as if they were her own idea.

34) Apologizing to "ethnic" voters

Widespread outrage followed a leaked document showed the Clark government planned to apologize for historic injustices as a "quick win" designed to "improve our chances of winning swing ridings by better engaging supporters from ethnic communities."

35) Mysteriously firing health researchers

Eight researchers and contractors at the BC Ministry of Health were unceremoniously fired in 2012. The government claims they breached the privacy of patient files and the police are investigating. The dismissed researchers suggest the real reason they were fired had to do with the influence of phramaceutical companies, who also happen to be big BC Liberal donors. In the mean time, the researchers are unable to work and one commits suicide.

It later turns out there's a problem with the BC government's claims about a police investigation – the investigation never actually existed.

36) Making stuff up about the government's record

During a 2013 radio interview, Clark made a series of claims about her government's record on deficits, debt, and the province's credit rating. None of Clark's claims were true.

37) Getting sued because of partisan advertising

The Clark government's partisan ads are so over-the-top, two Vancouver criminal lawyers are now suing the government of BC in an attempt to stop the government's pre-election advertising.

38) Universities hiring Liberal lobbyists to lobby the BC Liberal government

In 2009, Kwantlen Polytechnic University spent $177,000 to hire a Liberal insider to lobby provincial cabinet ministers and MLAs. At the time Amrik Virk, who was then the minister of technology, innovation and citizen's services, also sat on KPU's board.

39) Approving a polluted-soil dump upstream from 12,000 people

Heavy metals, petroleum, and nitrite contaminated soil and groundwater relied upon by a Vancouver Island community of 12,000 residents.

40) Taking millions from developers

In 2016 most of the BC Liberal Party's top donors came from either developers or the construction industry. Just eight donors contributed nearly $1.5 million of the $12.5 million total collected by the Liberals that year. Maybe that has something to do with Clark's awful record on housing affordability?

41) All those cash-for-access scandals

Can't forget all those BC Liberal donors who are also doing business with the BC government.

As the Globe and Mail's editorial board recently described this "world-class conflict-of-interest":

It's "a situation where companies seeking government contracts, approvals or tax breaks can give unlimited sums of money to the governing party. Lobbyists in the province have told The Globe and Mail they feel they need to donate, or their entreaties on behalf of their clients will be ignored."

Mind you, most of this stuff wouldn't fly in virtually any other Canadian province – only in Christy Clark's British Columbia.

Reminder: The BC election is on May 9th, 2017. Please vote.

#BC Liberals #British Columbia #Christy Clark #Canada #cdnpoli #canadian politics #canadian #canadian news #Corruption

147 notes · View notes

fycanadianpolitics · 8 years ago

Link

With their recent actions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government risk creating the conditions for right-wing populism to flourish in Canada.

The trend is becoming clear in the West: if the choice is between out of touch, elitist, neoliberal corporatists, or right-wing populists, the right-wing populists have a good shot.

The defense against nationalist populism is not to mock and scoff at its adherents or call them a "basket of deplorables." It is, as the Liberals promised, introducing an honest, transparent and ethical government that shows enough respect for the electorate to make an earnest attempt at fulfilling its promises. However, the Liberals are beginning to demonstrate the type of arrogance and hypocrisy that led to the rejection of Clinton in the U.S. and delivered the Brexit vote in the U.K.

Across Europe and the U.S., establishment politicians have their backs against the wall because of their inability to defend free-trade and globalization, because of their links to shady financing and crony capitalism, but mostly because of their doublespeak. The electorate can handle a questionable policy here and there or a few contradictions in words and action -- what they are in no mood for is the kind of hypocrisy that takes them for dummies.

Surely the Liberals have taken stock of Brexit, Trump and the rise of the so-called "alt-right." There are some international journalists who frame Trudeau and Canada as the last bulwark in the West against the fascist mobs overturning the global liberal order. Yet we all heard the "Lock her up" chant in Alberta last month -- and we know the political ideology behind it.

Canada is not there yet, but we are nearing the precipice. It is not insignificant that we see the boundaries of our political discourse pushed to the far right by certain Conservative leadership candidates. Nor is it insignificant that Rob Ford held the mayorship of the largest city in Canada. If the general slide of western democracies toward cultural and economic nationalism hasn't served as a warning, the Liberals might be more disconnected from the changing political tides than any of us can imagine.

Our prime minister trumpeted his own party's "Open and Accountable Government" guide. He then proceeded to make a mockery of it with ongoing cash-for-access fundraising. Overall donations (and foreign donations) to the Trudeau Foundation have skyrocketed in the past two years, from $172,211 in 2014 to $731,753 last year. The electorate is right to be suspicious of why all this new money is flowing into the Trudeau Foundation.

Justin Trudeau lectures Canadians about women's rights and calls himself a feminist. He then sells $15 billion of weapons to the Saudi Arabian internal security force and delivers a press release from a gender-segregated place of worship. He says we are not at war with ISIS, yet we get reports that our special forces are regularly engaged in ground combat alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq.

The Liberals said 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post election, then they did everything they could to make sure it couldn't happen. Critics were right to point out the whole process was a charade.

The electorate turned on Hillary Clinton for her influence peddling, arrogance and disconnection from the masses -- and it is fair to say that in many circles, the same general narrative is fortifying around Trudeau. It's as if Trudeau is taking cues from one of Clinton's unreleased speeches to Wall Street, unearthed in her hacked emails: "So, you need both a public and a private position."

Both Trudeau and Clinton engaged in cash-for-access fundraising, leading to personal donations to their family foundations. Both seem hopelessly out of touch with the electorate -- Trudeau with his celebrity persona, and Clinton with her millions received for giving speeches to Wall Street. Both may not have entered the public theatre, or have had success there, without a recognizable family name. Both talk a lot about the middle class, but neither seems to have much understanding of the sensibilities and struggles of those without university degrees.

Trudeau deserves credit for making some bold headway on certain files, such as the legalization of pot, and striking a climate deal with the provinces. However, Trudeau's political instincts are drifting so far out of touch these days that it seems he is either unaware of the pressure western democracies are facing, or he is arrogant enough to believe that his image-over-substance approach is enough to stem the tides of right-wing populism in Canada. Wishful thinking.

The antidote to right-wing populism lies not in labelling its adherents racist, xenophobic or sexist, but rather in providing a clear alternative in a transparent and ethical government that shows enough respect for its electorate to not speak from one side of its mouth and govern from the other. Trudeau still has time to redirect the story, but for now, an undeniable narrative is taking root around him -- and the result could be dangerously close to an upswing in nationalist populism.

361 notes · View notes

loadingba595 · 4 years ago

Text

Deep Web Tor Browser Iphone

Start NordVPN Software, Connect Tor Over VPN Server and wait until connection is established. Now launch Tor Browser and disable JavaScript by clicking on S! (If Tor is new to you, you can check depth guide on Tor) All is done, now you can access deep web/dark web safely. You can use this VPN browser for free and it comes in 39.2 MB in size. The app is compatible with all devices running iOS 8.0 or later. Red Onion comes next into our list. It is one of the popular dark web browsers that lets you access the Internet anonymously. Red Onion is not a free one, you have to pay a $1.99 for the license.

Deep Web Tor Browser Iphone X

Tor Browser For Ipad

Free Tor Browser For Iphone

Can I Access Deep Web Without Tor

What Is The Best Tor Browser For Iphone

TorHiddenwiki.com provides a deep web links collection in a hidden wiki format. It shows how to enter the deep web by providing you with all the recent dark web links you will need to browse the darknet.

Deep web sites are tor hidden services for which you will need the Tor Browser to access them. Have fun browsing our list of deeb web/ Dark web Links on this dark web wiki.

Introduction Points

TORLINKS Directory for .onion sites, moderated.

TorSearch Search engine for Tor Hidden Services.

DuckDuckGo – A Hidden Service that searches the clearnet.

TORCH – Tor Search Engine. Claims to index around 1.1 Million pages.

TorFind – The .onion Search Engine.

Hidden Wiki 2020 – The Hidden Wiki.

Grams – Search Darknet Markets and more.

Onion Hound – A search engine for hidden .onion sites on the Tor network. – DOWN 2014-07-13

Financial Services

Currencies, banks, money markets, clearing houses, exchangers.

EasyCoin – Bitcoin Wallet with free Bitcoin Mixer.

WeBuyBitcoins – Sell your Bitcoins for Cash (USD), ACH, WU/MG, LR, PayPal and more.

EUR & USD Counterfeits 100, 50 and 20 bills. secure vendor.

PayPal Accounts for sale with socks5 proxy.

CardOnline Online credit cards for sale

OnionWallet – Anonymous Bitcoin Wallet and Bitcoin Laundry.

Cheap Euros – 20€ Counterfeit bills. Unbeatable prices!!

PayPal Express – Hacked PayPal accounts. Clearnet Escrow Accepted

Commercial Services

Kamagra for Bitcoin – Same as Viagra but cheaper!

Mobile Store – Factory unlocked iphones and other smartphones.

UK Guns and Ammo – Selling Guns and Ammo from the UK for Bitcoins.

Rent-A-Hacker – Hacking, DDOS, Social Engeneering, Espionage, Ruining people.

Onion Identity Services – Selling Passports and ID-Cards for Bitcoins.

HQER – High quality euro bills replicas / counterfeits.

Double your Bitcoins – Service that doubles your bitcoins. No risk. Clean coins.

Bitcoin Doubler – Bitcoin Malleability Exploit! We use it to double Your funds.

Social Hack – Social Media password retrieval. Escrow (clearnet) accepted!

iPhone Tor – Your one-stop-shop for all iPhones. Clearnet Escrow Accepted. Down | 2014-07-25

Hidden BetCoin – Proven fair bitcoin game, bet and win, double your coins! Proven fair trusted game. Down | 2014-07-29

Executive Outcomes – The largest website selling weapons in TOR network.

Onix Electronics iPhone 5s Superstore. SALE! Escrow accepted. Down | 2014-07-25

USA/EU Fake Documents store – The best place for buy UK,US,EU,JP,AU passports online. FREE express delivery.

Hackintosh – Apple Products discount from regular prices.The old “Apple’s TOR” from 2K10 is back with more products

USD Counterfeits – High quality USD counterfeits.

EuroGuns – Your #1 european arms dealer.

UK Passports – Original UK Passports. Down | 2014-07-25

TorWeb The largest hosting company on TOR. Offering webhosting and VPS packages

USfakeIDs – High quality USA Fake Drivers Licenses.

United States Citizenship Become a True US Citizen – Selling Citizenship.

RealCard The most trusted CC vendor on TOR

Old Man Fixer’s Fixing Services The internet’s one-stop-shop for all things illicit and devious

USA Citizenship – Become a citizen of the USA, real USA passport.

Hitman Network – Group of contract killers from the US/Canada and EU.

cnet.com hacked – full source + database download

Apples4Bitcoin – Cheap Apple products for Bitcoin.

ccPal – CCs, CVV2s, Ebay, Paypals and more.

EuroGuns – Your #1 european arms dealer.

Deep Fruit – Apple products for a fraction of the price.

Chloroform – Discretion is vital.

Working Bitcoin Exploit Buy the exploit to a working bitcoin exploit + shellcode

Global Guns – Buy Guns with Bitcoins Worldwide delivery.

Tor web developer – Anonymous web developer for hire.

Buy Twitter Followers – Twitter followers being sold for Bitcoins.

Golden Nugget – Transform your bitcoins in Gold bars. The best stolen gold supplier on deepweb.

PayPal to Bitcoins We sell PayPal accounts and send Bitcoins directly to You.

TorGameDepot – Playstation 4, Xbox One, Wii U Consoles & Bundles.

Help Guy – Work in your interests, business partner, friend or whatever else.

The Discount Store – Electronics at big discounts, check out our latest stock.

New Identity – Fake documents service online. 3-5 days express delivery worldwide.

Unfriendlysolution Contract Killer, Assassination service with no limits.

Clone CC Crew – No.1 Trusted onion site for Cloned Credit Card. $2000/$5000 balance available.

Samsungstore Samsung tablets, smartphones, notebooks.Escrow accepted.

TelAvivService – Professional anonymous global goods partners.

Tor Technology – We’re Back! All Items at 25-30+% discounted price. All products in stock! Limited pieces available.

/IBusiness | Offshore, Offline Managed Investment Account

Passport Central – Deep web seller for worldwide passport, ID’s and driver’s licenses. Express shipping.

Drugs

Agora – Marketplace with escrow. Drugs, guns and more…

Lion Pharma — Lion Pharma store! EU vendor for Steroids! English support in our Forum!

NLGrowers – Coffee Shop grade Cannabis from the netherlands.

Peoples Drug Store – The Darkweb’s Best Online Drug Supplier!

Smokeables – Finest Organic Cannabis shipped from the USA.

EuCanna – ‘First Class Cannabis Healthcare’ – Medical Grade Cannabis Buds, Rick Simpson Oil, Ointments and Creams.

EU DRUGSTORE – Best EU Store Ever.

CannabisUK – UK Wholesale Cannabis Supplier.

DeDope – German Weed and Hash shop. (Bitcoin)

BitPharma – EU vendor for cocaine, speed, mdma, psychedelics and subscriptions.

Brainmagic – Best psychedelics on the darknet.

Green Dragon UK – Cannabis tincture, prompt delivery, low prices.

TOM Tor Onion Market – Advanced secure bitcoin market for drugs.

OnionShop – New anonymous and secure marketplace selling drugs, weapons…

Topina – Marketplace with bitcoin multi-sig escrow. Drugs, weapons,credit card and more.

Hosting / Web / File / Image

TorWeb The largest hosting company on TOR. Offering webhosting and VPS packages

Tor Host – Hidden Service Hosting with SSH login. Down | 2014-07-29

Web Hosting — Web Hosting – PHP5, MySQL, SFTP Access, .onion Domain. 24 hours free hosting.

TorShops – Get your own .onion store with full bitcoin integration.

bittit, clearnet – Host and sell your original pictures for Bitcoins.

Liberty’s Hackers Service and Hosting Provider in onionland – php5/mysql support – request considered on a case by case. Down | 2014-06-20

Liberty’s Hackers – new address for the liberty’s hackers hidden service, same conditions that above. Down | 2014-06-20

CYRUSERV – Hosting service with an emphasis on security, open for business again.

Onionweb filehosting – Filehosting service. 100MB upload limit, no illegal files allowed.

TorVPS Shells — Free torified shell accounts, can be used for .onion hosting, IRC, etc.

img.bi — open source image hosting with AES-256 in-browser encryption. Down | 2014-06-20

Password Recovery – Need access to a account fast? We can get access to anything! No questions asked.

Onion Service – Looking presence in the onion word? – Web Design and hosting for your deep projects

Blogs / Essays / Wikis

AYPSELA newson/ OnionSphere) – Personal site by nachash for sharing tor tips and other silliness.

(http://newsiiwanaduqpre. — A private minecraft server blog. Down | 2014-06-20

Beneath VT – Information on the steam tunnels at Virginia Tech.

KavkazCenter — A Middle East news provider, multiple languages.

OnionNews — Biggest deep web news website, daily updates. Down | 2014-06-20

Green Star Station — Very small personal page with links to Tor, Duck Duck Go, and The Hidden Wiki. Quoting: Given the nature of the site, you may not reach it. Remember to take advantage when you find it online! Down | 2014-06-20

Jiskopedia – A multilingual wikipedia for Tor and I2P networks.

Forums / Boards / Chans

Wall Street – Paypal accounts, credit cards, we have everything!!

The Hub – The Hub Forum.

All You’re – “All You’re” Portal.

Evolution Forums Evolution Community Forums. Redirect link http://evolution.to

Torbook – The Tor Social Network, get in Contact with other

TORFORUM – Multilingual forum. Down | 2014-07-29

Tor.info – Forums on all topics.

CODE:GREEN Hacktivist Forum – Ethical hacktivism for a better world Down | 2014-07-29

Onionforum 3.0 New Onionforum replacement since 1.0 and 2.0 are down now. Down | 2014-07-29

Tor Banking Forum Tor’s only banking dedicated forum and marketplace. Down | 2014-07-29

TCF – Tor Carding Forums + Market.

Agora Forum Agora Marketplace official forum.

Pandora Forum Pandora Marketplace official forum.

Underground Market Board 3.0 Project contribution and marketplace.

Torchan – /b/, /i/, programming, revolution, tons of other boards.

The Intel Exchange – Know or need to know something? Ask and share at this underground intelligence gathering network. (New Board. Much Better) (2013-08-11 UTC Appears that admins have ditched?)

Torduckin0 #1st – Citadel BBS with chat and IM to support Torduckin. Down | 2014-07-29

Torduckin0 #2nd – Citadel BBS with chat and IM to support Torduckin. Down | 2014-07-29

Torduckin0 #3rd – Citadel BBS with chat and IM to support Torduckin. Down | 2014-07-29

Torduckin0 #4th – Citadel BBS with chat and IM to support Torduckin. Down | 2014-07-29

Anonymous BBS, gopher interface, telnet interface – Another variation of the talks style of board.

HackBB – Forums for hacking, carding, cracking, programming, anti-forensics, and other tech topics. Also a marketplace with escrow.

DOXBIN – DOX go here. A pastebin for personally identifiable information. All information is allowed.

Hack The Planet – Archive of Hack The Planet’s past work.

Exposed: The Secret Files – Tor mirror of exposed.su/exposed.re.

Thunder’s Place – Thunder’s Place Penis Enlargement and Male Sexual Health Forum.

Deep Web Radio – Up for several months now. Quite a variety of music 24/7.

Hell Online – The anti-social network lel. Down | 2014-07-29

Dark Nexus – Deep chat Down | 2014-07-29

Galaxy Social Network – Very active Deep chat Down | 2014-07-29

TriPh0rce’s Parlor This TriPh0rce’s personal page (former admin of TriChan). Several interesting links up. Down | 2014-07-29

nekrotown Nekro’s personal page (former admin of TorChan) with links.

The Secret Story Archive — (TORified Version 2.0. of yiff/clop/etc user-contrib short stories)

Email / Messaging

See also: The compendium of clearnet Email providers.

Torbook Torbook – The Tor Social Network, get in Contact with others

MailTor – Free @mailtor.net account (webmail, smtp, pop3 and imap access).

Mail2Tor – New Tor Mail Server to clear web.

URSSMail – Anonymous free email service, current substitute for TorMail. (Hosted on 3 servers around globe.) Down | 2014-06-20

TorBox – TOR only secure and private email service.

AnonMail – Anonymous premium email service like lavabit. (Not free).

Onion Mail – SMTP/IMAP/POP3. ***@onionmail.in address. Registration is paid from 1702.(10$).

SIGAINT – Free @sigaint.org email accounts, Squirrelmail web mail. It does not require javascript.

Political Advocacy

Assassination Market – Anonymous, safe, secure, crowdfunded assassinations.

CODE:GREEN – Ethical hacktivism for a better world

BuggedPlanet.Info – Information on Telecommunication Interception Companies & Installations

paraZite #1st, clearnet 301 redirector – Illicit activities advocacy and censored information archive.

paraZite #2nd, clearnet 301 redirector – Illicit activities advocacy and censored information archive.

FREEFOR – USA-based FREEdom FORces developing a turnkey distributed Temporary Autonomous Zone. FAQ

Fund the Islamic Struggle Anonymously – Fund the Islamic Struggle Anonymous via Bitcoin.

Whistleblowing

WikiLeaks

Other

Indymedia Keyserver Secure PGP Keyserver in Onionland

Zyprexa Kills, mirror – The Zyprexa Memos. Internal documents that Eli Lilly tried to expose.

Cat out of the Bag (Tor | Internet) – Neven Lovrics’ disclosure.

Mysterious – … can you visit?

Illuminati – New World Order

Strategic Intelligence Network – The Strategic Intelligence Network goal is to provide intelligences, ressources and tools to be prepared and to respond to crisis situations anywhere you are in the world.

The Anarchism Library Mirror – Mirror content from September 2012.

H/P/A/W/V/C

Hack, Phreak, Anarchy (internet), Warez, Virus, Crack.

Creative Hack – Not open, in German, wrong section. Everyone has duty to share yet you lock up forum tighter than nuns virginity? Are you fucking stupid? lol Down | 2014-06-20

HackBB – Forums for hacking, carding, cracking, programming, anti-forensics, and other tech topics. Includes a marketplace with escrow. Down | 2014-06-20

TCF – Tor Carding Forums + Market.

Requiem – Software for removing iTunes DRM Down | 2014-06-20

keys open doors – Mirror of geohot’s PS3 hacking tools (censored on the clearnet by a Sony lawsuit) Down | 2014-06-20

CardersPlanet – First carding service from russian community. Credit cards, bank accounts, DDoS service. Down | 2014-06-20

Audio – Music / Streams

Deepweb Radio — RadioService operating over TOR

lol 20th Century Western Music Recordings and Scores – high quality music notations and lossless recording that people can get. these are distributed on oneswarm –

Lossless Audio Files – Mostly WavPack, some FLAC, Ape, ogg, etc. Has index generating links. Down | 2014-07-29

Video – Movies / TV

Books

The Tor Library – 47 GB. pdf, chm, djvu. Design by Russebertene

Example rendezvous points page – Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The Federalist papers

Traum library mirror – 60GB of Russian and English books. A mirror of the latest Traum ISO. Covers, search and downloads in FB2, HTML and plain TXT

ParaZite – Collection of forbidden files and howto’s (pdf, txt, etc.).

Imperial Library of Trantor – A library that offers over 50,000 free ebooks.

Jotunbane’s Reading Club “All your ebooks are belong to us!”

Erotica

Noncommercial (E)

Pink Meth – Tor mirror of pinkmeth.com.

(Y)APE – Down – Yet Another Porn Exchange.

Darkscandals Site with Real Rape, Blackmail and Forced videos! (Pack 3 is out now – August)

Fly On The Wall – Real Hacked Pics, Videos & Webcam Recordings from Girl’s Computers

Commercial (E)

bittit NSFW, clearnet – Buy or sell original NSFW pictures for Bitcoins.

Lisa Hidden Cam – Watch 18 year old, Lisa on a hidden cam.

The Voyeur Underground – Voyeur photos as well as wife/gf pics.

Meet my Sisters – Two gorgeous girls at your service

Under Age

Animal Related

The Secret Story Archive #1st – Big cat zoophile stories, artwork, links and forum.

The Secret Story Archive #2nd – Mirror of #1st.

Other

TelAvivService – Professional anonymous global goods partners.

VOR-COM Archive – Archive of the VOR-COM. Contains vore!

Uncategorized

Services that defy categorization, or that have not yet been sorted.

noreason – Info and pdf files on weapons, locks, survival, poisons, protesters, how to kill. Hidden Wiki, TorDir, Steal this wiki, Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau mirrors. Guro, dofantasy / Fansadox Collection.

Non-English

Belarussian / Белорусский

Bazarix – Белорусский скрытый свободный рынок BAZARiX Down | 2014-07-30

Finnish / Suomi

Thorlauta – Thorlauta

Sipulikanava – Sipulikanava

Silkkitie – Silkkitie

French / Français

L’Abysse – Les portes de l’Abysse sont prêtes à s’ouvrir. L’Abysse sur le clearweb

French Deep Web – an administered and moderate French board Down | 2014-07-30

Liberty’s Hackers – No CP, No racism – because Knowledge has value only if it is shared by all – hosting in progress. Down | 2014-07-30

Liberty’s Hackers Board – Liberty’s Hackers Board Down | 2014-07-30

Le Tesseract – Centre de formation ésotérique. (Lien réparé)

FDP – Forum Débats/Ventes. Down | 2014-07-30

The Pirate Market – Marketplace on French language. – DOWN 2014-09-26

German / Deutsch

Lion Pharma — Support forums for Steroids and the Lion Pharma store! — Deutsches Forum zum Thema Steroide und Bodybuilding!

Deutschland im Deep Web – German darknet community with forum and chat

Das ist DEUTSCHLAND hier! 2.0 Das ist DEUTSCHLAND hier! Nachfolger.

konkret – Eine monatlich erscheinende Zeitschrift für Politik und Kultur (vertritt weit links angesiedelte Positionen). Archiv

The Pirate Market – Marketplace on German language. – DOWN 2014-09-26

Greek / ελληνικά

Italian / Italiano

Babylon – Babylon, forum per la comunità italiana

Cipolla – Comunita’ italiana

Italian Darknet Community – Italian Darknet Community

Japanese / 日本語

OnionChannel – Onion Channel, a system similar to 2channel.

Korean / 한국어

Korean Hidden Wiki – 한국어 히든 위키 페이지

지스코피디아 – 한국어 등을 지원하는 다국어 위키백과입니다. Jiskopedia is a multilingual wikipedia.

하이 코리아 – 커뮤니티 사이트이며 비트코인으로 마약 거래�� 할 수 있습니다. HiGH KOREA is a Korean SNS and drug trading site.

Polish / Polski

Teczkohen – imageboard

Polska Ukryta Wiki – polski odpowiednik THW, linki do stron w sieci TOR, oraz artykuły i poradniki.

Zdzich Forum Sukcesor i następca ToRepublic. Znajdziecie tutaj poradniki odnośnie konstruowania bomb, zabójstw bez zostawiania dowodów, produkcji i dystrybucji narkotyków i broni chemicznej, kupicie broń, narkotyki, konta na słupa, kradzione i haczone konta Allegro i bazy polskich serwisów (w tym bazy danych Netii, Google i UPC).

Portuguese / Português

DarkTuga – Fórum português.

Russian / Русский

Runion – Runion

MALINA – RU Торговая площадка и форум.

Зеркало библиотеки Траума – 60GB русских и английских книг. Обложки, поиск и возможность скачива��ь в форматах FB2, HTML и TXT

Флибуста – Библиотека.

RUForum – Русскоязычный форум по продаже оружия, наркотиков, средств безопасности, а также решения политических проблем. И того, что не найти в обычных интернетах. С недавнего времени регистрация платная – 10$.

Amberoad – Торговая площадка в виде форума.

R2D2 – Форум.

Храбрый Зайчик – Анонимный электронный кошелёк для системы денежных переводов bitcoin. Перемешивает BTC разных пользователей, что дел��ет невозможным отслеживание денежных переводов. Низкая комиссия! Есть генератор ключей для мультиподписи. Работает без JavaScript. Русский, английский и испанский языки интерфейса. Есть партнёрская программа (вы получите 40% комиссии привлечённых вами пользователей). tinyurl.com/BraveBunny

Веб Хостинг в сети TOR – Apache, PHP5, MySQL, SFTP Access, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.onion Domain, Bitcoin server

Russian Road – Торговая площадка для русскоязычных пользователей

Spanish / Español

Agora – Mejor mercado para la compra y la venta de drogas y armas.

CebollaChan – CebollaChan, el tor-chan en Castellano.

FreeFire – Nuevo board sin censura, sin reglas, sin ban. – DOWN 2014-08-06

BraveConejito – EWallet.

Deep Web Tor Browser Iphone X

Swedish / Svenska

KognitionsKyrkan, clearnet – Spiritual stuff.

Moral.Nu, clearnet – Vad r moral?

Turkish

Turkish Deep Web – Turkish forum.

Volunteers last verified that all services in this section were up, or marked as DOWN, on: 2011-06-08 For configuration and service/uptime testing, all services in this section MUST list the active port in their address. Exception: HTTP on 80, HTTPS on 443. For help with configuration, see the TorifyHOWTO and End-to-end connectivity issues.

Running P2P protocols within Tor requires OnionCat. Therefore, see the OnionCat section for those P2P services. IMPORTANT: It is possible to use Tor for P2P. However, if you do, the right thing must also be done by giving back the bandwidth used. Otherwise, if this is not done, Tor will be crushed taking everyone along with it.

Sea Kitten Palace – Torrent site and tracker for extreme content (real gore, animal torture, shockumentaries/mondo cinema, and Disney movies)

The Pirate Bay – The Pirate Bay.

Chat centric services

Some people and their usual server hangouts may be found in the Contact Directory.

IRC

Below is a list of DEAD irc servers from Anonet:

AnoNet – Each server is on its own network and connects to a chat cloud

irc1.srn.ano, clearnet

elef7kcrczguvamt.onion:15783 – Direct access to the AnoNet chat cloud. Use an IRC server to connect.

irc2.srn.ano, clearnet – Still connects to the old AnoNet chat cloud; that will soon change.

irc.cananon.ano Web Chat Version join #Anonet

OFTC IRC – OFTC – IRC server

running on: (various).oftc.net, ports:: plaintext: 6667 ssl: 6697

Federation: OnionNet – IRC network comprised of:

Circle IRC – Circle IRC server.

FTW IRC – FTW IRC server.

Nissehult IRC – Nissehult IRC server.

Renko IRC – Renko IRC Server.

OpenSource, info – Drug chat

Dark Tunnel Irc2p gateway – Gateway to the Irc2p IRC network on I2P.

running on: unknown, ports:: plaintext: 6668, ssl: none

Chi’s Tunnel to Irc2p – New Gateway to the Irc2p IRC network (old one was down)

WANNABE: Federation OnionNet :

New Ngircd – Yep this is a new ircd in OnionLands looking for peering in OnionNet

freenode IRC – freenode IRC server

running on: (various).freenode.net, ports:: plaintext: 6667 ssl: 6697/7070

NeoturbineNET IRC – NeoturbineNET IRC server

running on: kropotkin.computersforpeace.net, ports:: plaintext: none ssl: 6697

FREEFOR – FREEdom FORces – see “Political Advocacy”

running on: unknown, ports:: plaintext: 6667 ssl: 9999

hackint – hackint is a communication network for the hacker community.

Tor Browser For Ipad

running on: lechuck.darmstadt.ccc.de, ports:: plaintext: none ssl: 6697

Agora Anonymous – Agorist IRC server

HeavyCrypto – HeavyCrypto IRC

running on: unknown, ports:: ssl: 6697

Anonimowy IRC – Anonimowy IRC (Polish anonymous IRC server)

running on: unknown, ports:: plaintext: 6667, ssl: 6697

prooops.eu IRC – prooops.eu IRC (Clearnet http://irc.prooops.eu/)

running on: unknown, ports:: plaintext: 6667, ssl: 6697

Team Mondial IRC – Port: 6667 SSL: 6697 New onion anonymous webmail service (URSSMail) / Escrow Expertz

KeratNet – Kerat – Ports 6667, ssl:6697

SILC

fxb4654tpptq255w.onion:706 – SILCroad, public server. (discuss/support)

kissonmbczqxgebw.onion:10000 – KISS.onion – Keep It Simple and Safe – ditch the web browser, use SILC to communicate securely (using Pidgin with OTR)

XMPP (formerly Jabber)

xmpp:tortureregex47xf.onion:5222 – Public XMPP with MUC (multi user chat) enabled. No Child Porn and racism here, any breach will result in a ban. Maintained by Creative Hack

xmpp:okj7xc6j2szr2y75.onion:5222 – xmpp:jabber.ccc.de:5222 as a hidden service

xmpp:3vnjj7h6c6vw2yh5.onion:5222 – instant messager for Liberty’s Hackers – chat room for Liberty’s Hackers and french users – chat room for international sharing – No CP and no Racism please.

xmpp:cyjabr4pfzupo7pg.onion:5222 – CYRUSERV Community Jabber, a public server ran by CYRUSERV.

TorChat Addresses

Humans are listed in the above contact directory. Bots are listed below.

7oj5u53estwg2pvu.onion:11009 – TorChat InfoServ #2nd, by ACS.

gfxvz7ff3bzrtmu4.onion:11009 – TorChat InfoServ #1st, by ACS.

These SFTP clients work with Tor: WinScp, FileZilla. Rf pager rust. Set proxy to SOCKS5, host 127.0.0.1, port 9150 (Windows,Mac) or 9050 (Linux). Encrypt your sensitive files using GnuPG before uploading them to any server.

kissonmbczqxgebw.onion:10001 – KISS.onion – SFTP file exchange service (username “sftp.anon”, password “anon”)

OnionCat Addresses

List of only the Tor-backed fd87:d87e:eb43::/48 address space, sorted by onion. There are instructions for using OnionCat, Gnutella, BitTorrent Client, and BitTorrent Tracker.

62bwjldt7fq2zgqa.onion:8060

fd87:d87e:eb43:f683:64ac:73f9:61ac:9a00 – ICMPv6 Echo Reply

a5ccbdkubbr2jlcp.onion:8060 – mail.onion.aio

fd87:d87e:eb43:0744:208d:5408:63a4:ac4f – ICMPv6 Echo Reply

ce2irrcozpei33e6.onion:8060 – bank-killah

fd87:d87e:eb43:1134:88c4:4ecb:c88d:ec9e – ICMPv6 Echo Reply

(fd87:d87e:eb43:1134:88c4:4ecb:c88d:ec9e):8333 – Bitcoin Seed Node

taswebqlseworuhc.onion:8060 – TasWeb – DOWN 2011-09-08

fd87:d87e:eb43:9825:6206:0b91:2ce8:d0e2 – ICMPv6 Echo Reply

http://(fd87:d87e:eb43:9825:6206:0b91:2ce8:d0e2)/

gopher://(fd87:d87e:eb43:9825:6206:0b91:2ce8:d0e2):70/

vso3r6cmjoomhhgg.onion:8060 – echelon

fd87:d87e:eb43:ac9d:b8f8:4c4b:9cc3:9cc6 – ICMPv6 Echo Reply

Bitcoin Seeding

xqzfakpeuvrobvpj.onion:8333

z6ouhybzcv4zg7q3.onion:8333

Deep web browsers are programs or applications that allow access to non-indexed websites. Each browser interprets information from different types of files and onion sites on the deep web. These browsers allow viewing of text documents and embedded files. In addition, it allows you to visit onion websites and do activities within the deep web. In other words, link one site to another, print, send and receive mail, among other functionalities.

Getting into the deep web is not difficult, but finding links to 'onion' domains on the internet is different. Surely you have heard of Tor Browser as a 'gateway', but there are other options as well. Web browsers like Safari or Chrome are not an option as they will not work. However, there are other browsers besides the Tor browser that serve to enter the deep web or dark web.

It is recommended to use a VPN before you start surfing the deep web. Thus, in this way, you remain anonymous and guarantee the privacy of your personal information. Furthermore, this ensures that you hide the trail of all your activity on the dark web. Although, obviously, this will have a significant impact on browsing speed.

Download the best deep web browsers

Free Tor Browser For Iphone

Tor Browser

Tor Browser, this browser is the best known to enter the deep web. It is based on Firefox, but with the pre-installation of the Tor proxy, as well as modified versions of the HTTPS Everywhere and NoScript extensions. It is available for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and has a 'special' design for deep web browsing. Also, there is no need to delete browsing or history data as closing the Tor browser will erase everything.

Tor's main objective is to ensure that the internet can provide and protect the identity of users. That is, it aims to prevent the information that a user sends to get to him (his IP address) from being tracked. However, Tor's most common use is to take advantage of its features to achieve a certain degree of privacy in web browsing on the internet. Without being specially designed for it.

Invisible Internet Project

Invisible Internet Project is a deep web browser that is available for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, just like Tor Browser. In addition to being able to access the deep web, we can also use it as a normal web browser. In this case, it is not based on the Tor network, which can also be used, but instead uses its own network so that we can surf anonymously.

All connections are encrypted, including public and private keys, and traffic is 'routed', like in the Tor browser, to avoid tracking. On the other hand, it offers as a peculiarity the storage of files in a decentralized way. But it is much more complicated to configure.

Firefox

Mozilla's web browser, Firefox, is usually the favorite alternative to Google Chrome. And it is very similar, yes, but it goes beyond the Google option, offering us possibilities to enter the deep web. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, like the previous ones, but it can also be used on iOS devices, and it is certainly easier to use than those mentioned above.

Now, to access the deep web with this Firefox browser, you must change a configuration: we access configurations within the address bar, and we will have to locate the option network.dns.blockDotOnion to mark it as 'False' for, in the last place, restart. https://loadingba595.tumblr.com/post/653141996649824256/browser-onion-tor.

Whonix

This deep web browser has slightly more limited availability. Because we can only download and install it on Windows, macOS and Linux, not available for mobile devices. However, it is based on the same source code as the Tor browser. So if you are a TOR browser user it will be easy to use. However, there are important changes to highlight, such as a system to protect the user's IP address in any type of activity.

Not even sophisticated malware could discover the computer's IP address. This according to its developers, even having administrator privileges on the system. But it is not a conventional web browser, but part of the Whonix operating system, which runs inside a virtual machine and has more useful tools.

Subgraph OS

This last option, again, is not a conventional web browser, but it is a complete operating system. So again, we can use it on any computer. Like Whonix, the source code on which the operating system is based is that of Tor Browser, but it also has a sophisticated multi-layer system to protect the user's security and identity. Meta-proxy encryption, for example, or file system encryption among many others, and sandbox isolation for applications.

If you are thinking of accessing the deep web, remember to use one of these deep web browsers.

Remember to do it with caution, safely and anonymously using the TOR browser.

Bitcoin - new links (2021)

'Hidden Answers' is a community in Darknet, where any user can ask about the use and the investment when buying BITCOIN.

The hidden wiki - New link (2021)

The hidden wiki is an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, which is in the deep web, is one of the most complete guides to access the pages with onion links.

How to access the deep web? (2021)

Do you really want to enter? Warning: the content of this publication is merely informative, you are solely responsible for what you do with that information.

Can I Access Deep Web Without Tor

Anna is sad - Do you want a gift?

What Is The Best Tor Browser For Iphone

Anna needs your help, she is still in danger, she could be in a very disturbing place (listen well to the song, you can have a solution to help her, but if you make a mistake).

Remember to access the Deep web links in a safe and anonymous way. Take the opportunity to visit those links with caution.

How to access the deep web?

1 note · View note

technomaster-uk · 2 years ago

Text

UI/UX design, or user interface/user experience design, involves creating the visual and interactive elements of a digital product or service that users interact with. This can include things like layout, typography, colour scheme, and the overall look and feel of the product or service. The goal of UI/UX design is to create a seamless and enjoyable user experience that meets the needs and expectations of the user. I recommend TechnoMaster in canada. You can join UI/UX design training after attending a trial class. Then you can understand the training provided by industry experts.

Our Unique Features are:- 1, Convenient sessions at your choice of time 2, Individual (1:1) live online sessions 3, Get training from industry experts and not from full time faculties. 4, You can download the recorded live sessions. 5, You can control the course fee by customised syllabus 6, Placement assistance through our job portal (jobsNEAR.in) 7, Arranging internships/jobs in top rated IT companies 8, Chance to choose trainers based on trail classes 9, Training/Internship/Course Certificate will be provided 10, You can download/execute the projects on your device Our List of Courses are:- Angular JS, Artificial Intelligence, ASP NET MVC, Big Data, Codeigniter, CSS, Data Science, Deep Learning, Express JSs, Flutter, Full Stack Development, Python/Django, HTML5, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap, HTML, iOS, IoT (Internet of Things), Java J2EE, JQuery, Laravel, Machine Learning, Mean Stack Development, Mern Stack Development, MongoDB, Node JS, Odoo, Php/MySQL, Python/Django, R Programming, React JS, Tableau, SEO (Full Course), Email Marketing, Google Adwords (PPC), On-Page SEO, Canva, Content/Technical Writing, CSS, Social Media Marketing, Web Hosting (FTP), Wordpress, YouTube Marketing, AWS,CCNA, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Ethical Hacking, Fortinet Firewall, Google Cloud Platform, MCSA, MCSE, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat, Server Administration, Software Testing, Software Testing (Automation), Software Testing (Manual), System Administration, Vmware, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premier Pro CC, Adobe XD, Autodesk 3Ds Max, Autodesk Maya, Canva, CorelDRAW, Final Cut Pro X, UI/UX Design.

#online training in uk #online class in uk #online course creation #online courses #seo tools #digitalmarketing #web design in canada

0 notes

biofunmy · 6 years ago

Text

Hackers Are Breaking Into Websites And Adding Links To Game Google

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News

This August, Molly Stillman logged on to her lifestyle blog to update a few popular old posts, freshening them up so they would continue to attract traffic from Pinterest and search engines. She was horrified at what she discovered.

“There were [links] for, you know, anal bleaching, which is apparently a thing. I mean, just truly, incredibly inappropriate things. And there was even some links to Russian pornography sites. I mean, we’re talking about horrible, horrible things. And it was written into my content.”

Stillman, who lives in North Carolina, has been blogging about family, faith, and fashion since 2007. Her site is an important source of income, and someone hacking into her blog to add text and links left her reeling. All the more so given the subject matter.

Stillman hired a security company to clean up the posts and identify the source of the intrusion. It determined someone hacked her site, which runs on the open source version of WordPress, by finding a way in through the administrator login. The culprit inserted content and links into 500 of the roughly 2,000 posts Stillman published over the past 12 years.

“I’ll be honest. It’s been a nightmare,” she said. “It’s been an absolute nightmare.”

What happened to Stillman was not an isolated incident. Websites of all types and sizes, and especially those that use the open-source version of WordPress, are hacked to inject links to manipulate search engine results. A BuzzFeed News investigation reveals how injected links are sold by global networks of online marketplaces and black hat SEO consultants who offer customers the ability to have links placed on compromised websites.

Among those affected are journalists, celebrities, churches, charities, veterans organizations, and the managing director of Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm. Injected backlinks on these compromised sites quickly improve the search engine rankings of customers’ web properties by exploiting Google’s preference for sites that receive a high quantity of links from authoritative sites. That in turn helps the customer sites attract more traffic, and in some cases, increase sales.

BuzzFeed News obtained lists of more than 20,000 websites where backlinks can allegedly be added for a fee, and confirmed multiple cases where links were added to these and other sites without the owner’s knowledge. The award-winning Canadian urban magazine Spacing is one site affected by injected links. After being contacted by BuzzFeed News, it identified several articles where unauthorized links had been added long after publication. One post was even hacked during the course of the magazine’s email conversations with BuzzFeed News.

In one example, an article about drug policy from 2009 had links and text injected for rehab centers and a cannabis vaporizer product. And in the few days between the site discovering the compromised post and cleaning it up, someone added text and a link to an online gun store.

“I can see the allure of going after well-trafficked media sites — there are usually so many points of entry from contributors that all it takes is one good account to give wide access to the editorial content of a media outlet,” Matthew Blackett, the publisher of Spacing, told BuzzFeed News.

It’s yet another example of how search engines like Google are being manipulated at scale by a global industry of shady digital marketers and hackers who take over expired domains, acquire once-credible websites and fill them with junk content, hijack dead links on major news sites, place undisclosed sponsored content, and launch extensive manipulation campaigns using fake online personas to make their content appear higher in search results.

Google’s quality guidelines forbid “link schemes” and cite “exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links” as one example of banned behavior. But that doesn’t deter the global trade in links.

BuzzFeed News / Via Spacing.ca

An injected link and text promoting a gun store appeared recently in an old story on Spacing.ca.

A major source of injected links is Sape.ru, an online marketplace once partly owned by Mail.ru, a leading Russian technology company. On Sape, black hat marketers and webmasters post search-ranking data for websites they control or have access to. Over 8,000 English-language websites are listed on Sape, covering everything from American political organizations to international children’s charities. BuzzFeed News confirmed multiple instances where sites advertised on Sape contained injected links.

“We do not welcome the addition of hacked sites, nor the hackers themselves. If such cases are identified, we stop working with the webmaster,” a Sape spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

The company said it blocks the accounts of any confirmed hackers or anyone who is not able to verify their ownership of a site listed in the marketplace when requested. In a statement to BuzzFeed News after this article was published, Sape CEO Sergey Pankov emphasized that the company works to prevent bad actors from using its system.

“Sape is continuously vigilant and expends a considerable amount of effort and expense on monitoring and addressing the problem of injected links and constantly working on improving anti-hacking algorithms. Each time a hack is identified, Sape has no choice but to immediately assign a team to remedy the situation, providing support to hacked websites and refunding significant amounts to customers, who purchased links on sites, which turn out to be compromised by hackers,” he said.

One site affected by injected links sold on Sape is DaveWinfieldHof.com, the official site of National Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield. In 2016, the site was hacked and injected with links to sites promoting flea tablets for dogs, “MILF porn videos,” an Italian escort service, and JT Foxx, a motivational speaker and self-proclaimed “World’s #1 wealth coach.” (Foxx’s attorney denied that his client had knowingly or intentionally used Sape links and said he would work to have the links removed from the offending sites.)

Reached by email, Winfield’s attorney and agent, Randy M. Grossman, said that Winfield “had no knowledge of the hacking.” The links were subsequently removed.

Sape is one of the largest players in injected links. An Ouroboros-like serpent of sites point back to other companies that specialize in selling paid backlink services, which are sometimes referred to as “niche edits.”

The practice of placing injected links is not new, but it was brought into the open when an SEO consultant based in the Philippines posted a series of messages on BlackHatWorld, an online forum where people buy and sell black hat SEO services and discuss the latest techniques. The consultant, who did not use their real name on the forum and declined to comment to BuzzFeed News, largely focused on one person and their company, and posted a cache of documents, including emails and a spreadsheet of allegedly compromised websites. BuzzFeed News emailed a sample of the most-linked sites listed in the spreadsheet, and more than 20% of those contacted said they had been hacked.

The thread focused on Vadim Kevin Zyabkin, who runs the SEO company SERPninja from Vancouver, Canada. On its website, the company boasts it can secure links on thousands of websites and that “the sites in our inventory are ethically obtained using our decade long experience in outreach and guest posting.”

But links to SERPninja have been placed on multiple websites without the knowledge or permission of the owners of those sites. BuzzFeed News found a link to SERPninja was recently added to a 2010 blog post on the site of Chris Brogan, a New York Times bestselling author and marketing consultant.

“Well, that’s kind of nuts,” Brogan told BuzzFeed News, adding that he had not updated his blog since September.

Among the documents posted on BlackHatWorld are images of Skype chats where Zyabkin discussed hacking into websites and placing links for SEO. Zyabkin told BuzzFeed News that he was just trying to impress someone he wanted to do business with.

“Sales is [about telling a] good story, and I’d tell them I was a serial killer if that point sold the vendor to try the product,” Zyabkin said via Facebook Messenger.

After being sent a list of sites with injected links pointing to his company’s site, Zyabkin blamed it on employees buying links through online marketplaces. Zyabkin said his company uses Sape and two other marketplaces like it to fulfill some of its link orders, and the rest are executed by a team of people in India. These staffers reach out to websites to see if they will add links in return for payment, he said. Zyabkin said that hacked links are a consequence of doing business on Sape.

“I assume the same as everyone else in the community, that many of these links are somehow hacked,” he said.

“We’re a volume business that a lot of marketers use — so if the network has bad inventory, it’ll occasionally get through in the process. We don’t claim to be perfect or have a perfect process — since it’s not really our responsibility.”

“I’d tell them I was a serial killer if that point sold the vendor to try the product.”

Another SEO company that has benefitted from injected links is DFY Links. It’s run by Charles Floate, who as a 19-year-old pleaded guilty in 2015 to hacking the UK Home Office websites and temporarily shutting down the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center’s website, as well as to two counts of “possessing prohibited images of children.” (He said they were photos of his then–teenage girlfriend.)

Floate, now a 23-year-old who lives in Thailand, has referred to himself as “the God of SEO.” In addition to running DFY Links, he makes YouTube videos where he talks about black hat SEO techniques.

A backlink to DFY Links was present in a post on Stillman’s lifestyle blog as of roughly May of this year, according to data from SEMrush. It was removed in September, around the time she was engaged in a cleanup effort to rid her site of injected links.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Floate was adamant he’d never hacked into websites to add links, nor ever knowingly bought or sold hacked links. He said the injected links pointing to his site must have been placed by consultants he hired to fulfill link orders for his business and help his company rise in search results. Floate said Zyabkin was one of the people he hired to provide backlinks for him.

Floate provided BuzzFeed News with chat and financial records that showed he paid Zyabkin for backlinks. Floate said he ended the relationship earlier this year when he learned about the accusations made against Zyabkin on BlackHatWorld.

“We’ve been trying over 50 different suppliers for various different links and stuff. I just don’t have the time and neither does my team to do the research that you did [to identify hacked/injected links],” Floate told BuzzFeed News. “But anyone that seemed to be supplying hacked links, anyone that I confirmed was, and anyone that I was suspicious of, we just immediately removed. It’s just unfortunate that some have genuinely slipped through the cracks.”

Zyabkin denied he sold links to Floate and declined to comment on the screenshots that appear to show otherwise.

Floate said the conditions of his sentence enable UK authorities to inspect his computer devices at any time. “They would have probably arrested me like two years ago,” he said, if he had been hacking into sites to inject links or selling these kinds of links.

Google declined to comment on the selling of injected links, or how it combats the practice.

One post was even hacked during the course of the magazine’s email conversations with BuzzFeed News.

“We don’t have anything to share on this. We don’t share specific details of our spam fighting tactics and actions as to not empower bad actors to work around our guidelines,” a company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

Brendon McAlpine, business development manager at Australian takedown service Internet Removals, told BuzzFeed News that people who pay for links are “looking for a shortcut, no matter the cost to others (or themselves) in the long term.”

WordPress — which powers more than 30% of all sites on the web — is a common denominator across many of the hacked sites, which use it for their content management system. WordPress plug-ins are a frequent target of hackers because they can provide backdoor access into websites. In other instances, attackers target outdated WordPress installations or find new exploits. In multiple cases identified by BuzzFeed News, the hackers gained access by compromising individual user accounts.

Dan Walmsley, development lead for Jetpack, a security and backup service for WordPress, told BuzzFeed News that the popularity of the platform combined with its built-in search optimization make it an attractive target for black hat SEO schemes.

“WordPress has world-class SEO built in to the platform and [is] extensible via plugins, which of course is one reason that it’s so successful, but also makes it an attractive target for link farming and other forms of SEO arbitrage,” he said.

Sape.ru was founded in 2007 by Russian entrepreneurs Grigory Firsov, Evgeny Poshibalov, and Alexey Zemlyanoy. Boasting a cheap and easy-to-use SEO service, the site quickly became popular in its home country, attracting sizable investments from Mail.ru and other big companies. (A Sape spokesperson originally said Kirill Belov was also a co-founder, but after this article published, Belov and Sape’s CEO contacted BuzzFeed News to say he is not a founder of Sape.)

In March 2013, search industry websites reported that Google penalized Sape after the head of Google’s webspam team at the time, Matt Cutts, tweeted that he was investigating “naughty Russian link selling software.” (Cutts, now with the US Digital Service, declined to comment.) Word quickly spread on black hat forums, where users of the network said they had experienced a “huge drop in rankings.”

“Sape penalties and sanctions are just speculations and unconfirmed information, including that of Google,” a Sape spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

Months after those reports, Russian media reported that Mail.ru sold its 30% share in the company to Millhouse Capital, a British investment firm founded by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

“We are pleased with this investment,” a Millhouse spokesperson was quoted as saying at the time. “The company brings stable dividends.”

A Sape spokesperson initially confirmed that investment, but Pankov, Sape’s CEO, subsequently said was Millhouse was never a shareholder, and that Mail.ru maintains an ownership stake in the company.

Since the reports of being penalized by Google first circulated, Sape has grown and expanded, recently adding a new roster of SEO services, including an option to buy links from popular Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube accounts.

The site also offers free plug-ins that allegedly facilitate the placement of links on hacked sites and “make them look as natural as possible to fool search engines,” according to internet security company Sucuri, which is owned by GoDaddy. On programming forums like Switch-case.ru, some webmasters have reported finding Sape code on their sites after getting hacked.

Sape said its plug-ins are designed to make “link exchanges” more convenient and are not built to enable hackers.

In some instances, inserted links and associated code contained direct references to Sape. In 2015, for example, someone hacked into JeffConnaughton.com, the site of the former White House lawyer and author of The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a memoir about working as an adviser to former US senator and vice president Joe Biden. Before long, the site was riddled with malicious links to sites promoting Spanish fitness classes, a New Jersey Little League academy, a DIY chlamydia test, and Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Washington. (Otaiba, whose name also popped up on the Winfield site, did not return a request for comment.)

Connaughton told BuzzFeed News his site “was a sitting duck because I’ve never done the [software] updates.” He eventually took the site offline.

BuzzFeed News uncovered at least 12 references to “sape” and “sape.ru” embedded within the site, including images and GIFs. A search for the site in Sape’s database confirmed that an unknown black hat marketer had been offering to sell backlinks on the site.

Sape / Via sape.ru

The listing for Jeff Connaughton’s site on Sape.ru.

Julian Young, director of WordPress support and maintenance company Jellyhound, said sites with outdated WordPress installations, like Connaughton’s, are especially vulnerable to hackers.

“It’s very easy to check what version of WordPress a site is using as well as detect a particular outdated plugin,” Young told BuzzFeed News in an email. “[There] are scripts hackers can run that simply trawl the internet looking for particular vulnerabilities in every WordPress website they can find. [Some are] so advanced now that they have user interfaces and full automation, you can just set them off and even automate the hacking process itself.”

People looking to purchase backlinks on Sape are able to select sites according to criteria such as topic, country, language, and domain rank. Clients pay for the service on a weekly or monthly basis, with prices ranging from less than 1 cent to approximately $17.70, depending on the search ranking of the site.

Elsewhere, on freelancer sites like SEOClerks, third-party services charge as much as $329 to navigate the Sape network for anyone who wants to avoid getting directly involved. This is similar to what Zyabkin of SERPninja said he does for clients. Ads for these services boast “crazy metrics we can source for you from the SAPE network” and dubiously claim that Sape links are “totally safe from Google penalties.”

Sape link marketers unethically manipulate Google’s search rankings, according to Charles Leveillee, a digital marketing consultant at SEO company NewApps Agency, based in Colorado.

“We don’t hack websites or have employees do it — we’re an SEO company that sells SEO.”

“[Sape] links are almost always placed on the homepage (header, footer or sidebar), where the placement value is the most effective in the ranking,” Leveillee told BuzzFeed News. “Because of these link placements, it allows users to achieve rankings very quickly, more quickly than white hat SEO where it happens organically, with time.”

The unobtrusive placement of the links within a website’s header code or images also helps ensure site owners remain unaware that their site has been hacked, allowing the hacker to quietly leech the site over the course of several years.

Notable sites found on the Sape network include AlysonStoner.com — the since-deleted blog of the actor, singer, dancer, and viral sensation of the same name — and Eric-Weinstein.net, the personal site of the managing director of Thiel Capital, a major venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel. Weinstein is a leading member of the intellectual dark web, a term he coined on Joe Rogan’s podcast to describe a loosely connected group of public figures who reject identity politics and political correctness.

A review of Stoner’s site found at least 19 links to sites including a Vietnamese diploma mill, a Swiss plastic surgery clinic, and a Forbes article about a newly marketed drug for female sexual dysfunction. Stoner did not return requests for comment.

Weinstein’s site was also badly hit, with at least 15 links to sites advertising shapewear garments, vaping paraphernalia, and “free massage porn,” among others. Domain records indicate that Weinstein’s site was acquired by a Russian online marketer in 2015 after the domain was dropped. It’s unclear who owns it today, though the site looks exactly the same as it did when Weinstein was listed in ownership records. Weinstein declined to answer questions about the site.

One egregious aspect of the Sape network is the rife exploitation of websites belonging to nonprofit organizations and historically marginalized groups. BuzzFeed News identified Sape link offerings for the websites of churches, charities, veterans organizations, Native American tribes, as well as a rape crisis center, a hospice, and Outrage.org.uk, the website for what was once one of Britain’s most prominent LGBTQ rights organizations. Around 2014, Outrage.org.uk was hacked and quietly injected with links to sites for Norwegian credit cards and online product reviews. The hack went unnoticed until last month, when BuzzFeed News contacted the organization.

“[The] OutRage! Website has been a constant target for attacks, moreso in previous years when we were more active,” said Brett Houston-Lock, an LGBTQ rights campaigner who currently maintains the site. “In those days the cyberattacks were politically motivated, but these days the enemy is spammers and scammers.”

Pankov, the Sape CEO, emphasized that his company offers an online marketplace and that it’s primarily focused on the Russian market.

“A majority of our users are bona fide owners of the sites and domains utilizing our services. We do everything within our power to block accounts of any confirmed hackers or any sites and domains, whose ownership cannot be verified,” he said.

In fall 2017, an SEO consultant in the Philippines with the username OnniChan decided to call out injected link sellers on BlackHatWorld.

They said they had made a deal with someone who they later discovered was selling hacked links that originated with Vadim Kevin Zyabkin. OnniChan provided screenshots of Skype chats with Zyabkin in which he talked about compromising sites to inject links.

In one exchange, Zyabkin shared a link to a 2012 news report about WordPress sites being hacked and said, “this is the kind of stuff I’m good at. SEO is not my forte.” When asked if he was the one who hacked those sites in 2012, he replied with a blushing emoji and said, “its how all this started.”

Zyabkin said he claimed to hack into sites because he was “trying to impress” OnniChan and get them to be a reseller of his links service.

“Exclusivity such as ‘hacked’ links was an easy way to get people to resell since they thought they had a unique angle in the marketplaces on the forums,” he said. “I guess it was silly to try to relate to them in that sense, but that was ages ago and as I’ve said, we were convincing people to resell the product where we could back then.”

He said the Skype chat released by OnniChan “looks bad out of context.”

“I can’t really help how people take things though — the context is what it is, and the vendor [OnniChan] was plenty happy to sell the links after we convinced her — until she felt wronged and posted selectively edited Skype logs,” he said.

The Dropbox folder OnniChan shared contained screenshots of emails that show the links she allegedly bought via Zyabkin’s network of niche edits sites were added without knowledge of the site owners. This aligns with BuzzFeed News’ recent finding that SERPninja, Zyabkin’s company, is benefitting from injected links on sites, including the blog of bestselling author Chris Brogan, real estate blog GreekEstate, and travel blog Dangerous Business.

The hacked post on Brogan’s blog was even changed to make it seem as though he had a personal connection to SERPninja.

“Oh, do you need to worry about your search engine optimization? I’m not especially versed in that, so I just use the Scribe SEO plugin (affiliate link) recommended to me by my friends at Serpninja.io,” reads the recent version of a post he first published in 2010.

An archived version of that same post from August 2017 shows the shoutout to SERPninja wasn’t in the original.

Similarly, at some point since fall 2018, someone hacked into the personal website of journalism professor and author Dan Kennedy and inserted a reference and link to DFY Links, Floate’s company. Kennedy’s original post, a book review, included the sentence “Everything looks the same in your news feed.”

But when BuzzFeed News recently accessed the page, the text was changed to “As my friend from DFY Links says, everything looks the same in your news feed.”

BuzzFeed News / Via chrisbrogan.com

The injected link and text of Chris Brogan’s website.

“I’m shocked to find out that hackers were able to add text to one of my blog posts without my knowing anything about it,” Kennedy told BuzzFeed News. “The damage could have been much worse — a completely fake post, deleted content, you name it.”

Floate said he paid Zyabkin and others to insert links for his company, but said he had no idea any of them were hacked until BuzzFeed News contacted him. He also provided a screenshot of chats to show that he only learned of OnniChan’s BlackHatWorld post about Zyabkin earlier this year. He said he cut off contact with Zyabkin shortly after.

The Dropbox folder also included a spreadsheet of roughly 13,000 sites where links could be placed. Zyabkin created the list, and he told BuzzFeed News it was primarily made up of sites his team had sourced from Sape at the time.

Zyabkin said neither he nor his employees do any hacking to place links.

“We don’t hack websites or have employees do it — we’re an SEO company that sells SEO,” he said. “If bad batches get through, we deal with it just like everyone else. But we can’t help it — and we’re not going to shut down our business over it.”

Stillman, the lifestyle blogger, said her site’s search engine ranking was affected by the hundreds of spammy links that were added without her knowledge. As Google and other search engines identified the links leading to low-quality, porn, or scam sites, they could have penalized her domain, causing it to receive less referral traffic. That would mean less income for Stillman.

“Not only are the companies making money off people’s sites [by adding injected links], but the other people’s sites are then being penalized,” she said.

She’s still haunted by the idea that people came to her site expecting family-friendly, positive content only to encounter links to porn and other unrelated sites.

“I’ve spent the better part of 13 years building trust with people. And if they came across my site, and then all of a sudden discover links to Russian porn and anal bleaching — I feel like that can jeopardize that,” she said.

Zyabkin said it’s not his responsibility if a percentage of the links he sells are hacked. In the end, what matters to him is that the links work and clients are happy. “If our SEO was something to be concerned about — people wouldn’t buy it. And therefore, we wouldn’t sell it,” he said.

For Floate’s part, after speaking to a reporter for more than an hour via Skype from Thailand, he had one final question: “Do I get a backlink out of this?” ●

UPDATE

Dec. 19, 2019, at 22:01 PM

Added information from Kirill Belov disputing that he is a cofounder of Sape.

UPDATE

Dec. 20, 2019, at 14:50 PM

Added comments from Sape CEO Sergey Pankov.

UPDATE

Dec. 23, 2019, at 02:28 AM

Added additional information from Sape CEO Sergey Pankov about company shareholders.

Sahred From Source link Technology

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2MomEBb via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

hvilleicehockey-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Affiliate marketing

If you use this image in any way, shape or form, please give credit to: joshmacdonald.net

Tags: internet marketing strategies jobs inc company salary association services definition degree consultant agency forum course bar blog manager tips training los angeles articles analyst affiliate atlanta program ads advertising awards and design an hour a day associates academy advice acronyms assistant technology africa business books basics plan boise blueprint benefits boca raton 2015 models budget best practices for beginners ideas bsg cards topics by roberts zahay certificate channels refer to classes conferences careers campaign coach programs online 2016 quizlet coordinator costs chicago director denver dallas data directory documentary daily tasks job description demographics degrees dictionary dubai dojo direct diploma definicija essentials expert events examples ebooks orlando education group entrepreneur pdf ethics quiz experience issues larson email swipes ezine solo explained dummies firms small lawyers fort lauderdale funnel fiduciaries real estate facts fundamentals franchise florida contractors facebook attorneys newbies from home system gurus guide glossary goals genius growth buy google groups on guyz graphics getting started ranking guru list gold coast guest post guidance houston help how history tx get headlines handbook hashtags make money helpline hub halifax hacks highway headline generator hospitality industry it works hall of fame integrating offline infographic images glassdoor in wellsboro pa internships income information interview questions institute reviews intern statistics icons las vegas the 1990s jacksonville titles outlook journal tampa jokes jargon kenya jakarta pune keywords kings kansas city knjiga kurs kaskus kursus kotler knowledge kent kpi kampanja beograd kongress kursevi kerala kolkata leads lancaster laws lead generation leaders law leadership series lifestyle launches lingo building launch calendar là gì logos learning ltd miami minneapolis magazine michigan mastermind alliance master’s mentor mba metrics masters mlm magicians meetup made easy major methods music ninjas news nj new york newsletter niche near me nashville pricing naics code seo tools nederland notes optimization opportunities courses orange county offers options ca objectives outsourcing ottawa line srl overview herbal products oakville party podcast packages template product sample proposal plr pros professional portland paradigm pittsburgh cons quotes questionnaire question paper research answers qualifications quotations quizzes ask q&a quora quick query resume review resources reddit rich agents report rss feeds roi rochester retirement rates card example specialist software solutions san diego scams seminar systems school designation success secrets seattle sites terms trends tree techniques tutorial tactics textbook trade shows center typically is one-way impersonal university utah uae unimelb uk unit 12 untuk pemula upstart udemy u turizmu updates upwork test canada usa uses using usf twitter uci video vs traditional vocabulary social media virtual network digital e vancouver physical vector tutorials va vikipedija web webinars websites wiki west palm beach wordpress theme work warsaw indiana workshop website what words washington dc without templates ways with warriors xl xmg xiaomi xeo india x xib xing youtube yang efektif yahoo videos your yorkshire bagus you tourism gej yu ve yogyakarta strategy privat enter yourname@yourkeywords done zoom password zaključak zarada zealand zimbabwe zero hero z a-z ebook zaddle zichron zappos zara zion zenergy llc complaints ppt improvement approaches hotels 2012 2013 ebay ecommerce 2014 musicians powerpoint among ghana apple amazon analysis axe implementation practice b2b strategic bristol dell excel effective free startups retailers hotel store games 4th edition download dave chaffey fourth 3rd 5th practise book nonprofit organizations nike & presentation retail restaurants sales travel used agencies australia commerce universities voice actors various viral explain webranx xls singapore chandigarh chennai mumbai hyderabad gurgaon toronto at albany ny austin available amsterdam abroad auckland abu dhabi asia associate bangalore boston buffalo bournemouth birmingham barcelona brisbane belgium brussels bangkok berkshire brighton buckinghamshire bath baltimore calgary charlotte nc cape town cleveland ohio columbus ct cardiff charleston sc cambridge cork california delhi detroit dublin deutschland devon derby ireland durban donegal ncr dehradun edmonton edinburgh egypt europe exeter east midlands essex executive entry level london freshers students freelance college fashion france 17 year olds finance glasgow germany gauteng galway greece gibraltar guildford gloucestershire graduate goa sandton gujarat ga hong kong based hertfordshire hampshire hawaii hull harrogate hiring humberside bhopal indore ahmedabad jaipur nairobi fl johannesburg jeddah japan noida pakistan knoxville tn karachi kelowna kettering wichita ks milton keynes kuwait köln karlsruhe kiel konstanz liverpool leicester leeds loughborough lancashire luxembourg lincolnshire lebanon legit limerick lucknow montreal manchester malaysia milwaukee mn malta melbourne mississauga maryland memphis naukri nyc nottingham no orleans norwich newcastle northampton north northern ontario omaha ne oxford overseas odisha oman timisoara philadelphia philippines phoenix part time pay perth paris portsmouth peterborough plymouth preston prague professor qatar

Posted by JoshMacDonald on 2016-01-17 17:39:56

Tagged: , internet , marketing , business , blogging , seo , affiliate , strategies , jobs , inc , company , salary , association , services , definition , degree , consultant , agency , forum , course , bar , blog , manager , tips , training , los , angeles , articles , analyst , atlanta , program , ads , advertising , awards , design , an , hour , day , associates , academy , advice , acronyms , assistant , technology , africa , books , basics , plan , boise , blueprint , benefits , boca , raton , 2015 , models , budget , best , practices , for , beginners , ideas , bsg , cards , topics , by , roberts , zahay , certificate , channels , refer , classes , conferences , careers

The post Affiliate marketing appeared first on Good Info.

0 notes

mikemortgage · 6 years ago

Text

Why Canada’s diamond miners are in trouble

The story of how two prospectors, down to their last nickels, discovered diamonds in Canada’s frozen north is the stuff of legend.

Back in 1982, Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson laid low in a pup tent by day while their competitor De Beers hauled 45-gallon drums of rock samples to a nearby outpost for transport to South Africa. Using the long hours of summer sunlight north of the 65th parallel, the two searched for indicator minerals — bits of garnet, chromite or zircon often found with diamonds — while their opponent slept. Nine years later their treasure hunt culminated with the discovery of a carrot-shaped funnel of blue-grey kimberlite rock that would become Ekati — the first great diamond mine outside Southern Africa or Russia.

For all the drama associated with the discovery in Canada’s Northwest Territories — hacking through snow and ice taller than the average person, battling Arctic winds and temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius — what came next is proof that diamond mining in Canada is not for the faint of heart.

Miners unearth chicken-egg sized diamond in Canada — the biggest ever found in North America

De Beers makes rare acquisition, buys Canadian diamond mine in $81-million deal

Canadian miner’s tennis ball-sized ‘diamond in the rough’ proves too big to sell

Whether a diamond mine makes money or not comes down to three variables: production costs, the grade and size of the deposit, and the price the diamonds fetch on global markets. In recent years, all of these have conspired to bring the Canadian industry to its knees.

“It’s disconcerting, given the way it started,” said Blusson, an active octogenarian who helms diamond exploration company Archon Minerals Ltd. and still flies his own helicopter. “Twenty years is only all we’ve been mining now. Is there going to be another 20 years? I don’t know.”

De Beers

Ekati and sister mine Diavik, located 210 kilometres (130 miles) south of the Arctic Circle, are now old, tired and running out of diamonds; they will likely both close soon. So far, the mines that were designed to replace them aren’t faring well either.

Diamonds from the Diavik mine in 2003.

De Beers, the London-based diamond giant, has already flooded one of its huge Canadian mines; the other, Gahcho Kue, took 21 years to reach production and is now turning out stones worth far less than it hoped. It’s a similar story for a scattering of newer mines that have sprung up across the country: low quality stones, management mistakes and falling prices for their stones put a terrible squeeze on their businesses.

Every operating mine in Canada produces stones that fall below the global average, with all but one mine producing diamonds that fetch less than US$100 a carat. By contrast, both De Beers and Alrosa, which mine more than half the world’s diamonds, average more than US$160 a carat. For smaller miners in Southern Africa, the gap is even more extreme. Gem Diamonds Ltd. and Lucara Diamond Corp. had average selling prices of US$2,131 and US$502 per carat respectively last year.

While Canada is now the world’s third-biggest diamond producer, behind Russia and Botwsana, its average selling price is the cheapest of the major diamond mining countries.

The question for Canadian producers is whether it makes sense to change strategy and focus on bigger, more valuable stones.

“Can you save considerable amounts of money by upping your cut-off size and just recovering those goods?” asks Eira Thomas, who co-founded Stornoway Diamond Corp., and served as its president and chairwoman for years. Now chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Lucara Diamond, which produces high-end diamonds in Botswana, Thomas is more optimistic about Canadian production than Blusson.

“They’re not in jeopardy of failing, they’re just not making as much money as we had hoped,” Thomas said. “And that, of course, is translating to discontented shareholders more than anything else.”

Shares Plunge

That may be an understatement. Shares of Longueuil, Quebec-based Stornoway trade near a record low of just 10 US cents a piece, even after opening the US$750 million Renard mine in 2017, the province’s first. It’s a similar story for Toronto-based Mountain Province Diamonds Inc., which owns Gahcho Kue with De Beers. Its shares are close to the lowest since the financial crisis, cutting its market value to below $250 million (US$187 million).

Canada’s flagship miner, Dominion Diamond Mines, the owner of Ekati and a stake in Diavik with Rio Tinto Group, has also had a rough ride. After being bought for US$1.2 billion more than a year ago, the company has been hit by an exodus of top management, with at least five executives leaving, including its CEO and CFO.

The new owner, billionaire Dennis Washington, has also sought to sell the company, according to people familiar with the situation. Washington denied this is the case. Dominion is currently studying two potential expansions, though both projects produce even lower-quality stones, making them a tough sell in the current environment.

Maturing Sector

“You have a maturing sector in Canada: Ekati and Diavik were good mines. When you have good mines, others follow even if the economics are a bit more of a close call,” said Anish Aggarwal, a partner at consultant Gemdax, based in the diamond trading city of Antwerp. “That’s becoming a problem in many mining jurisdictions, not just Canada.”

There are other problems facing the sector. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fight in 2016 against so-called black money caused producers such as De Beers to hold back supply, which has now been sold back into the market. A weaker rupee is also making diamonds more expensive for Indian manufacturers, who cut or polish about 90 per cent of the world’s stones.

There is also increasing pressure from synthetic diamonds. While still a very small part of the industry, the potential threat they pose risks further hurting sentiment in an already fragile market.

A synthetic diamond ring.

Still, there are reasons why Canadian diamond mines keep getting built — and in some cases it has little to do with economics. For De Beers, which has developed three mines there, Canada reduces its dependence on Botswana, where most of its diamonds are mined.

Aggarwal, who was involved in developing what became known as the “CanadaMark” brand to capitalize on the country’s clean image, says there’s potential for more to be done with that.

Canada Brand

“Consumers in the U.S. and Canada have positive associations with Canadian diamonds,” he said. “There’s an opportunity with origin. It’s a tool that the miners can use to enhance the value of their diamonds.”

But the track record there hasn’t been good either. Canada tried to create a polishing industry in the Northwest Territories, capitalizing on the backlash against “conflict” diamonds. “Made in Canada” diamonds seemed an easy sell: ethically produced, mined from ice, cut, polished, and laser-etched with a tiny polar bear. Today, the polishing industry is all but gone and attempts by Dominion to revive the CanadaMark have met with mixed success.

There’s no getting around the higher costs of operating in Canada’s frozen tundra. Everything — labour, fuel and construction — costs more in the remote north.

“You look at these diamond mines, you’ve got your own road, your own airstrip, your own power grids,” said Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. “That may be okay if you’ve got a world class deposit, but not everybody is mining world class assets.”

Bloomberg.com

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2WIk4bW via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

0 notes

ellahmacdermott · 7 years ago

Text

Kraken: An Overview of One of Europe's Top Bitcoin Exchanges

In this overview, we explore Kraken and its journey from a Mt. Gox alternative to soften the blow of bitcoin’s dependence on just one exchange to becoming one of the most respected cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. We’ll also look at the various features of its platform, chiefly trading and acquiring cryptocurrency.

Snapshot

Operating since: May 2013 (beta) / September 2013

Location: Canada, EU, Japan, U.S.

Fiat pairs supported: USD, EUR, CAD, JPY

Notable cryptocurrencies supported: BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, XRP, XMR, DASH, XLM, DOGE, EOS, ICN, GNO, MLN, REP, USDT, ZEC

Countries served: Worldwide, with restrictions in New York and some other areas.

Account verification: Full name, date of birth, mobile number, country of residence (Tier 1), + physical address (Tier 2), + proof of identity and proof of address (Tier 3), + know-your-customer (KYC) documents and application form (Tier 4)

Funding options: SEPA bank transfer, SWIFT, U.S. domestic wire transfers, Japanese domestic wire transfers, Canadian domestic wire transfers, cryptocurrency

Withdrawal options: SEPA bank transfer, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfer (EFT) for CAD, SWIFT, U.S. domestic wire transfers, Japanese domestic wire transfers, Canadian domestic wire transfers

Fee structure: 0.36 percent sliding down to 0 percent depending on 30-day volume, asset traded, trade size and whether your order is “maker” or “taker”

A Brief History of the World’s Largest Euro-to-Bitcoin Exchange

While Kraken was founded in July 2011, it eventually emerged as a platform to reduce the bitcoin market’s dependency on a single exchange. Kraken’s founder and CEO, Jesse Powell, offered assistance to Mt. Gox, which accounted for around 70 percent of all bitcoin trades over the period of April 2013 until early 2014, following two hacks in 2013.

After surveying the poor management of Mt. Gox during May 2013, Powell launched the beta version of Kraken and the startup began to thrive in one of the technological centers of the world, San Francisco’s Bay Area. Powell is quoted as saying in 2014, “I wanted there to be another [exchange] to take its place, if Mt. Gox failed.” And indeed, Kraken delivered.

In the same year, Payward, Kraken’s parent company, raised $5 million in a Series A funding round that was led by Hummingbird Ventures and included Digital Currency Group and Blockchain Capital. These funds were secured for the exchange’s security and legal compliance. In February 2016, SBI Ventures led a multimillion-dollar Series B funding round to widen the exchange’s reach; that round also included support from Money Partners Group, a leading foreign exchange broker in Japan.

The company started by offering bitcoin and litecoin, and gradually expanded to include dogecoin in April 2014 and Ethereum’s ether in August 2015. The exchange now offers nine out of ten of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

A Rocky Relationship with the U.S.

Kraken has also been a strong supporter of sensible regulation. Along with Bitfinex, Kraken pulled out of New York following the BitLicense proposals in 2015, which were seen as stifling innovation. Due to troubles with U.S. regulators, Kraken shifted focus to other markets, such as Canada in July 2015.

More recently, Powell came out against regulatory measures from New York, which for some has added more credibility among crypto enthusiasts to the exchange as one business at the forefront of the crypto revolution, striving for sensible regulation. When asked about details on operations, internal controls and measures for market manipulation and fraud in early 2018, Kraken declined to participate.

In 2017, the exchange explained that while its competitors may have some sort of insurance schemes in place, they looked into different insurance policies and determined that none offered significant protection for their clients. They also mentioned FDIC insurance does not cover losses due to hacks or the loss of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

Instead, they think having world-class security in pace is the best protection, adding, “But if some form of insurance becomes available that really offers a significant level of protection without being prohibitively expensive, we will certainly consider adopting it.”

The exchange claimed to have pulled out of New York in August 2015 but it has come under fire in September 2018, with New York’s legal chief accusing Kraken of operating illegally in the state, referring the supposed violation to the New York Department for Financial Services (NYFDS). The uncertainty as to what will happen going forward could turn into a regulatory risk for Kraken and its US customers.

Kraken is one of the longest-, continuously running Bitcoin exchanges and one of the most respected due to its security practices, ethics and “agnostic support” for the cryptocurrency sector. Powell has previously stated, “We are an agnostic exchange which means that we do not prefer a certain digital asset over another,” when judging the investment case study competition in conjunction with The Economist.

Kraken never delayed the introduction of contentious forks, like Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum Classic, or sided with a particular cryptocurrency project. At the same time, Kraken has not hastily added new cryptocurrencies, like Bitfinex has done in the past (e.g., Bitcoin Interest), suggesting their restraint is down to the company wanting the cryptocurrency space as a whole to succeed rather than risk promoting scams. One comical tweet from Kraken pokes fun at Coinbase for its announcement of potential additions to its platform in July 2018.

Compared to how Coinbase handled Bitcoin Cash, with accusations of market manipulation and insider trading when BCH-USD soared above $3,500 in January 2018, Kraken added BCH with no controversy, shortly after the fork took place. Moreover, Powell has never publicly stated what his cryptocurrency holdings are, which again contrasts to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who has stated previously that he holds more ether than bitcoin.

Security First

Kraken undergoes a regular audit to prove that it has the full reserves of cryptocurrency to back up its operations and was the first to provide a cryptographically verified proof of reserves following the Mt. Gox implosion. The auditor checks the balances of Kraken’s holdings, with the exchange providing the addresses by signing them. The addresses’ public signatures are then summed to check the total bitcoin balance at a certain point in time.

Then the exchange provides the balances of each customer’s account, and the auditor ensures that this figure matches up with the balance held. A Merkle tree is used, where the auditor publishes the root node hash so it is publicly available to confirm that the balances held are approximately the same as the sum of customer balances, using the Bitcoin blockchain.

Finally, users can independently verify that their data was used in the audit, enabling customers to conform to the motto “Don’t trust, verify.”

As usual, two-factor authentication is suggested so that individuals’ personal data cannot be leaked. Kraken also recommends setting up a Master Key so that you can still recover your account if you lose access to your login details or if a hacker gains access to your account. By using the Master Key, you can prevent a password reset.

If you are planning on holding your cryptoassets on the Kraken exchange for a long period of time (for example, if you are performing a margin trade that you expect to last around a month), then enabling the Global Setting Lock (GSL) is also advised. This security feature ensures that no changes can be made to your account setting and hides sensitive information. If a hacker gains access to your account while GSL is enabled, they will be unable to add new withdrawal addresses or change the email address associated with the account.

Finally, you can set up PGP within your email to ensure that all communications from Kraken are genuine and are not phishing links or tampered emails. Having your emails coming from Kraken to you encrypted adds an extra layer of security as, from time to time, you may have sensitive information contained within correspondences from the exchange. All correspondence is done via email, and the business does not have a phone number for support.

The platform itself has never been hacked, but its users have due to poor OpSec, so it is best to take advantage of all the features outlined above. Another key point to make is to use a fresh email address, one that is not publicly known, for each exchange to thwart potential hacking attempts. To encourage white hat hackers to disclose and help patch vulnerabilities in the site, Kraken offers a bug bounty with a discretionary reward based on the severity of the issue.

Liquidity

At the time of writing, the majority of the volume on the Kraken exchange is geared toward Ethereum’s ether (ETH), followed by bitcoin (BTC), ripple (XRP), EOS, Tether (USDT) and monero (XMR). While Kraken offers both USD and EUR pairs for all cryptocurrencies, the EUR pairs are generally more liquid, and if you are margin trading, you may want to take advantage of this.

Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kraken/

If you are using an arbitrage strategy, it may be worth considering including Kraken’s XBT-USD pair, as it often deviates significantly from other exchange’s prices due to the difference in liquidity. The chart below shows that Kraken’s XBT-USD pair can differ significantly from Bitstamp’s BTC-USD pair, with an arbitrage trader making a risk-free return from buying on the exchange with the lower price and selling on the exchange with the higher price.

The difference between Kraken’s XBT-USD and Bitstamp’s BTC-USD

Kraken also offers dark pools, which allow you to make an order that is hidden from public view. Dark pools are offered for both bitcoin and ether, allowing traders to place large order sizes that may otherwise move the market and be matched with similar orders at potentially better prices; it is important to note, however, that dark pools incur an additional fee. You can execute these orders in the intermediate and advanced tabs in the trading subsection.

You can select orders using the dark pool in the intermediate or advanced tabs on the new order page.

As with Bitstamp, wash trading and the faking of volume are not suggested to be problems for Kraken, highlighted in a report from the Blockchain Transparency Institute. The researchers found no evidence of wash trading, as reported volumes closely matched the volumes uncovered by the report. However, this ranking is subject to change, and updated figures will be released sometime in September 2018.

Kraken is one of a handful of Bitcoin exchanges where evidence of wash trading was not uncovered.

Reputation

Kraken made its mark in the cryptocurrency scene early on, with the discovery of a flaw in the Namecoin protocol in October 2013, leading to the developers fixing the fault. While the altcoin was listed on the platform after the vulnerability was addressed, namecoin (NMC) was removed later on due to a downward spiral in trading volumes.

Kraken’s reputation has also benefited from its foresight and commitment to the long term, as highlighted by the 2014 scare around transaction malleability, where users could change the transaction ID (TXID) within a short window of opportunity and under certain conditions.

Fortunately for Kraken customers, the exchange was unaffected by this “bug” as it had foreseen the troubles that would come with relying solely on transaction IDs to track bitcoin transfers, and had developed a more robust accounting system.

Around the same time, Mt. Gox was dealing with this issue of mutated TXIDs and had no other way of tracking its customers’ incoming bitcoin transactions. By tracking bitcoin transfers with a variety of information, such as transaction size, time and recipient data, Kraken solidified its reputation among Bitcoiners by demonstrating an intimate understanding of the Bitcoin protocol.

Moreover, the exchange was also enlisted to help recover the stolen bitcoins from Mt. Gox, and claims can still be made through Kraken’s platform. The trustee in charge of Mt. Gox’s case chose Kraken because of its proven operating history and resistance to hacks.

Kraken was also instrumental in forming the Japan Authority of Digital Assets (JADA), the first Bitcoin regulatory body with government backing. Similarly, in the U.S., Kraken was an important player in the formation of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority (DATA), a self-regulatory authority for the cryptocurrency industry. Furthermore, as a testament to its position as an industry-leading exchange, Kraken was one of the first exchanges to be added to the Bloomberg terminal to track the price of bitcoin.

Over the years, Kraken has also been active in the area of mergers and acquisitions, with the exchange acquiring four crypto-focused businesses in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, Kraken took over American exchanges Coinsetter and Glidera, Canadian exchange Cavirtex, as well as Dutch exchange CleverCoin. Following this, during March 2017, the charting site Cryptowatch also fell under the ownership of the exchange.

The exchange’s reputation is boosted by recognition from leading business journals. The exchange was nominated as one of the 10 most promising blockchain startups by Great Wall of Numbers author Tim Swanson in 2014, appearing in Business Insider. Also, before its launch, Kraken was named as one of the most important Bitcoin companies by Upstart Business Journal.

Fiat-to-Crypto

Fidor Bank, a financial institution regulated by the German financial regulator BaFin, is Kraken’s partner bank; the cooperation started in October 2013. Kraken can be thought of as a eurocentric exchange, but the platform has gradually widened its reach, later adding USD, CAD and JPY as supported fiat currencies.

U.S. customers have not always had it easy using Kraken. The exchange withdrew from the American market in 2014 but later returned by partnering with PayCash to offer USD deposits. GBP deposits and withdrawals were available previously, but this feature has been withdrawn and may be added again at a later date.

Kraken is one of the biggest exchanges that list Tether, and you can trade this U.S. dollar–pegged cryptocurrency using the exchange, which could prove useful if the fears surrounding the stablecoin ever boil to the surface.

In the event of a Tether breakdown, you could margin short USDT-USD as its peg breaks. Alternatively, if you believe that Tether is bona fide, you could provide market liquidity by buying below the peg when Tether’s value drifts below $1.00. However, in the case that Tether does implode, Kraken might be affected severely in the short term, but since it is not dependant on Tether entirely, it should be well placed to survive any “cryptopocalypse” related to the stablecoin.

Trading Interface

Kraken’s interface is quite basic but does show the spread between bids and asks as well as the order depth. You cannot trade directly from the charts page on Kraken, though, and you cannot apply technical analysis within the site’s interface. Unlike some other exchanges, there is no SMS functionality for price alerts.

The spread and order book depth can be shown within Kraken’s trading interface, but no technical analysis.

You can also link your Kraken account with Cryptowatch to trade directly from the charting website and apply technical indicators such as MACD and the Parabolic SAR.

To apply technical analysis to Kraken pairs and trade from your account, you can use Cryptowatch, shown above.

Those trading with bots can take advantage of Kraken’s APIs, with Thrasher as one example of a trading bot that you can utilize in conjunction with Kraken.

Fee Structure

The fees on Kraken depend on a variety of factors, including the total cost of your order, the currency pair you are trading, your 30-day trading volume and whether your order is maker or taker. Moreover, if you are margin trading, two further fees are applicable — opening fee and rollover fee.

If you want to place a maker order, which provides liquidity, you can use the Post Limit Order checkbox on the New Order page, and the fees range from 0 to 0.16 percent. On the other hand, taker orders take liquidity from the market as your order will be matched immediately with another in the order book. The fees for taker orders range from as low as 0.10 percent to 0.26 percent.

It is important to note that Tether trades do no count toward your 30-day trading volume. The home screen indicates what fee you will pay and what fee you can expect if your trading volume rises to a specific amount.

Unlike Bitstamp, withdrawing cryptocurrency comes with a fee that is dependant on which cryptocurrency you want to withdraw; for instance, the fee is 0.0005 BTC for bitcoin, 0.005 ETH for ether and 0.001 LTC for litecoin.

Altcoin Support

Kraken has regularly added new coins to its platform, with the most recent being bitcoin cash in August 2017. The platform supports many ERC20 tokens, like REP, ICN and MLN, along with privacy-focused coins like monero and zcash. Favorites of seasoned crypto-traders, like dogecoin, bitcoin and Stellar, are also available. Two coins that were traded on Kraken but are no longer available are Namecoin and VEN, a centralized digital currency founded in 2007 and backed by a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures.

Newer altcoins like Cardano, Nano and Tron are not yet supported by Kraken, and bitcoin cash was the last Bitcoin fork that was added; it is not surprising that this established exchange is not trying to cash in off of the fork mania over the past year. Customers and developer teams can request new additions to Kraken’s platform on the support subpage and then click on Request a Feature; its team has stated many times that it will not announce new additions before they are listed in order to prevent market manipulation.

Powell recently highlighted that the exchange does not have any listing fees, which helps to reduce the problems of moral hazard frequently associated with the cryptocurrency exchange market, and also suggests the company adds coins based on merit, not on the depth of their founders’ pockets.

Kraken is somewhere in the middle of the scale of coverage of the crypto market amongst the largest exchanges; while more altcoins are on offer as compared to platforms like Bitstamp and Coinbase, it does not offer as many altcoins as Bittrex, Binance, Poloniex or Huobi.

KYC Verification Processes

There are five tiers of verification on the Kraken platform, named Tier 0 to 4 respectively. Tier 0 permits you to only get a feel for the platform and does not allow any trades, deposits or withdrawals. It is only necessary to submit an email address for Tier 0 accounts.

Next, Tier 1 permits you to trade solely in digital currencies, restricting the use of fiat currencies for deposits or withdrawals, but you can withdraw up to $2,500 per day and $20,000 per month. For Tier 1, you have to submit your full name, date of birth, country and telephone number.

Tier 2 eases the restrictions on fiat currencies, allowing you to withdraw $2,000 per day and $10,000 per month, depending on which country you are located in. You must provide your address to be accepted at this tier. Both Tier 1 and 2 can be verified within an hour, with the latter increasing the daily withdrawal limit for cryptocurrencies ($5,000) but halving the monthly withdrawal limit for cryptocurrencies ($10,000) to account for the introduction of fiat currencies.

Tier 3 is the same as Tier 2, except that funding limits are much higher and you must provide proof of identification and proof of your address.

Finally, Tier 4 is probably only useful to you if you are a high-net-worth individual, as the funding limits for Tier 3 are already pretty high (withdrawals allowed up to $25,000 per day and $200,000 per month, for instance). In this case, you must complete and sign an application form as well as KYC documents, which will enable you to raise your deposit/withdrawal limits to an even higher level. Verification for Tiers 3 and 4 may take anywhere between one to five days, as it is not automated like for the lower tiers.

Trading

Powell has previously indicated that the exchange exists to “first and foremost … provide a market for spot, deliverable bitcoin” and that “advanced features for traders, like margin, are secondary” and could be removed if the market becomes too volatile.

Nevertheless, Kraken is one of the best places to margin trade and has offered this feature since May 2015. Margin trading allows you to amplify your gains (as well as losses), with Kraken offering 5:1 leverage for pairs like BTC-EUR and ETH-XBT, while other pairs such as XMR-EUR and USDT-USD offer a lower leverage of 2:1.

The margin feature is useful for advanced traders, who can borrow funds to open a position bigger than their account balance and potentially increase their profits if the market moves in their favor. The table below displays the pairs that support margin trading and the leverages you can use with these tickers. EUR margin pairs are not available to residents of the U.S. states of NH, TX, and WA.

While Kraken does not offer extremely high leveraged trades, like BitMEX, which allows you to use a margin of 100:1, it serves as an ideal place to start margin trading if you haven’t done so before, providing an opportunity to get to grips with leveraged trading.

A variety of orders is available, allowing you to be flexible with your trades and how much attention you place on the crypto market. For instance, advanced orders such as stop losses and take profits are available. The more-vanilla orders like market and limit orders are also present for the novice trader. These various order types can be used to adjust to the market, allowing you to be more productive with your trading.

Trading with margin on Kraken. Select your desired leverage on the right-hand side.

We cannot talk about Kraken and its history without talking about the trading engine. There was a time when getting an order filled while margin trading on Kraken was a very frustrating exercise. Many have complained about the lack of effectiveness of the trading engine and how, in its worst performing times, it has caused traders to lose money through no fault of their own, where orders were not executed when they were supposed to be.

Some customers were refunded partially with Kraken Fee Credits, so traders can be assured somewhat that if such losses are made due to the fault of the trading engine, they will get some compensation; however, the easier choice many sought was to switch to a platform with a better trading engine.

The problem became exacerbated during the crypto mania toward the end of 2017. Kraken had to revamp its trading engine to keep up with demand. In a post from January 2018, the company announced that a new, more scalable trading engine had been put into place. The engine does work much better now, and a recent blog post explained that the trading engine will be updated and maintained frequently.

Verdict

Kraken is an all-rounder: it has margin trading, a variety of security features and fairly wide support for different cryptocurrencies, providing most traders with enough markets to keep them entertained.

Furthermore, its reputation is excellent, emerging initially as an alternative to Mt. Gox to assuming the role of a leader in the cryptocurrency exchange sector. Kraken’s hand in discovering and correcting a fault in Namecoin’s protocol and its reluctance to add the myriad of Bitcoin forks mean that customers can be confident the exchange will do their due diligence before adding more cryptocurrencies.

The platform has a few minor drawbacks. U.S. customers may not be served well by a company that gives the middle finger to certain regulatory bodies in the States, such as the NYFDS, which could prompt further action by American regulators in the near future. The trading interface is quite bland, but the integration with Cryptowatch more than makes up for this. SMS price alerts would also be a welcome addition. Providing a higher leverage for margin trading could also be beneficial for the platform to take a bite out of BitMEX’s market share. Also, for beginner traders, the site may be a bit complicated to use to its full extent.

Luckily, when making a new order, you can choose from beginner, intermediate or advanced setups and put in a relevant order. For intermediate or advanced traders, you won’t get much better than Kraken, and if so, it will only be a marginal improvement, i.e., higher margins (BitMEX) or lower withdrawal fees for bitcoin (Bitstamp).

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

from InvestmentOpportunityInCryptocurrencies via Ella Macdermott on Inoreader https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/kraken-overview-one-europes-top-bitcoin-exchanges/

0 notes

dragnews · 7 years ago

Text

Rukmini Callimachi on Audio’s Power to Reveal the Truth of the ‘Caliphate’

Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times.

“Who are they?” This seemingly simple question drives “Caliphate,” The Times’s first documentary audio series, as Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent, searches for a deeper understanding of the Islamic State.

“Caliphate” debuted in April, with Ms. Callimachi, who has covered Al Qaeda and ISIS for The Times since 2014, serving as its guide, deftly aided by the producer Andy Mills. Their 10-part series centers on the story of “Abu Huzayfah,” a former ISIS member living in Canada who, like many jihadists, uses a nom de guerre.

The podcast complements “The ISIS Files,” Ms. Callimachi’s investigation into thousands of internal Islamic State documents that her team recovered from Iraq. New chapters of “Caliphate” are released every Thursday afternoon, and subscribers can listen a week early.

I recently interviewed Ms. Callimachi about the challenges posed by reporting on ISIS for audio, the first episodes of the podcast and the ethical dilemmas of her beat. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

How has working with audio made you approach reporting differently?

The big difference for me is that it’s very unusual and somewhat uncomfortable to write in the first person. This is something you do in exceptional circumstances when the reporter’s story is important as a vehicle for telling the larger story. When you’re doing audio, the fact that you’re the vehicle telling the story is built in. That makes it much easier to inform listeners about the reporting process.

For example, last year, Andy and I were in Iraq for “The Daily” to report the story of young women who had just been released after three years of ISIS captivity and, in some instances, had been raped almost every day. In the middle of the day, we walked into the tent of two of the women and saw them collapsed, lying on mattresses. There were people wailing and crying over them. As soon as I saw that, I turned to Andy and said: “We’ve got to leave. We have no business being here. These people are really sick.” A lot of listeners commented on how powerful it was to hear that because they probably hadn’t thought about the ethical considerations that go into interviewing rape victims.

In a text story, I might have described that there were two women who were collapsed, but the fact that I had to leave because it would have been obscene for me to try to interview them would not have gotten in.

My beat is among the more unusual ones we have at The Times. It’s intense, and you’re dealing with these ethical quandaries all the time. My editors and I have many long discussions about how we do this and how we approach that. With audio you have the ability to be transparent about those considerations and walk listeners through how we struggle with and try to make our way through them.

What do you see as the main advantages of audio over the written word?

One of the subjects of the podcast is a young Canadian recruit to ISIS. If I were to pitch a text story based entirely on somebody identified by essentially his made-up name, that would be a hard sell. But with audio, you understand implicitly that this is his story.

I don’t want to give away what happens later in the podcast, but there are some really emotional moments. You can hear the trauma in his voice and the emotion of him recalling what happened. There’s a point where he’s describing something particularly awful and we have the microphone very close to his face. You hear him rubbing his hand on his beard back and forth, and you understand that this is somebody who feels really distressed, really nervous. I could write that — “he rubbed his beard” — but it doesn’t come across the same way.

I don’t want to diminish text in any way. That will always be my medium. But audio is a different form, so it has power in a different register.

Many of the most popular serialized podcasts revolve around a single host who becomes part of the narrative. What went into the decision to feature both you and Andy?

From the beginning we wanted to experiment with new ways of telling stories with this podcast. We got rid of the “host” role to provoke more spontaneity in our dialogue and hopefully more intimacy with our listeners.

I loved working with Andy from the start. He comes from an evangelical background and grew up in a religious family, but later left the faith. He remains very curious about religion, and so much with ISIS involves faith and belief. We hit it off right away. It was really nice to have him as this sort of co-detective and be able to bounce things off him.

Shortly after “Caliphate” debuted, it reached the top of the Apple Podcast chart. What elements do you think have made it resonate so strongly with listeners?

One of the things is that Andy, in a way, gave me permission to really be myself and to be honest about what it’s like to be on this beat. I’ve always been worried about showing my vulnerabilities and telling people when I feel scared because, in the end, I’m a woman covering terrorism, and I just assume that there are people who think I can’t hack it. For example, when I was first telling Andy about the 911 call, I asked him to turn off the recorder. Later, he convinced me to put it on the record in Chapter 1. I really wrestled with it: Do I want people to know this insane thing I did — that I called 911 in the middle of the night because I thought ISIS might be ringing my doorbell?

But I think Andy was right. Allowing myself to be human and to explain what it’s really like as a woman on this beat works, and is interesting for listeners.

You frequently correspond with readers on Twitter and have invited listeners of “Caliphate” to direct message you. Based on their responses to the series, do you think you’ve reached a new audience?

I really do, and that’s the exciting thing about audio. In journalism, at a certain point, you get into a lane and you get comments from people who are generally of that universe. I often get comments, for example, from journalism students, women, people who are interested in national security. Suddenly, I’m getting messages from people in Germany and in Finland who listened to the podcast, people whom I don’t normally hear from. That’s really cool.

[Read this recent Twitter thread to see Ms. Callimachi’s responses to readers’ questions about her work covering ISIS.]

In “Caliphate” you mention how previous interviews with ISIS members left you frustrated and made you question whether they were being truthful. Have you had similar feelings with Abu Huzayfah?

I would have to spoil a lot of things if I answered that question. In general on this beat, though, that’s the puzzle you’re always dealing with. First of all, you’re spending so much effort just trying to get even one ISIS member to talk to you. It’s so hard to find them. You can somewhat get access to them in prisons in Iraq, but you don’t get much time with them. It’s also very hard to do these interviews in 20 minutes, 30 minutes because you’re just scratching the surface.

And then you have a source’s story. Imagine how hard it has been to confirm the reporting on Harvey Weinstein, and that’s happening in Hollywood, a place with a paper trail and American citizens and people who speak the same language we do. It’s so hard with ISIS because you’re dealing with a place I cannot go: the caliphate, when it was around. So half the work is just getting the interview and the other half is figuring out if there’s any way to corroborate it.

Have you been contacted by any law enforcement officials who are concerned that you’re communicating with a former ISIS member in Canada?

A retired Canadian intelligence analyst started tweeting at me, basically asking if I had a moral responsibility to flag this person to authorities. Obviously, as journalists, we can’t act as an extension of law enforcement. That would be the end of me on this beat if I started turning in my sources. At the same time, we are dealing with members of a terrorist group — a group that has called for attacks in North America. You’ll see later in the podcast that we found a way to keep our journalistic integrity but also answer some of these questions.

What are some of the other ethical dilemmas you’ve discussed?

My goal in telling the story of Abu Huzayfah is to try to explain, in a way, the unexplainable: How does a normal-seeming person, who grew up in a middle-class family, with no abuse that I know of, loving parents and a comfortable lifestyle — how does that person, because there are so many of them, end up joining this murderous group? There’s a rut in the reporting on ISIS, where it’s so easy to write about the salacious, awful things they do. Very quickly, we go into this boogeyman narrative about these savage, brutal criminals. We forget that human beings are doing this, and 40,000 people have joined from overseas. Yes, you can find the psychopaths among them. But, in my experience, there are a lot more Huzayfahs than the others.

I saw part of my job as trying to explain this story and trying to do so as humanely as I could. The line that we tread there is that we come very close to this big chasm on the other side, of justifying ISIS’ acts, which we don’t want to do, of course. There was a big balancing act on that front.

On the podcast you talk about how ISIS members follow you and your work on social media. Do you know if they’re listening to “Caliphate”?

So far I have not seen them talking about “Caliphate.” They did message each other about the “ISIS Files” story. There was a very long post in Arabic where they said that even The New York Times basically acknowledges their statehood, which was a little funny and a little worrying.

Have you finished all the episodes?

We’re still working on the back end, and I think we’re going to be working up to the wire.

Do you know how “Caliphate” will end?

I actually don’t, to be perfectly honest. I have an idea, but there are a couple of things that might happen in the middle of the podcast that I still haven’t gotten a handle on.

Will the documents that you collected for “The ISIS Files” play a role in the series?

They do. They’re featured heavily in episodes seven and eight.

As one of the world’s foremost experts on the Islamic State and terrorism, have you learned anything unexpected in making “Caliphate”?

I have interviewed many victims who have seen beheadings and have been on the receiving end of the brutality of the Islamic State. To hear it told from the other side — in a really detailed, naked way — was revelatory. In the videos that ISIS has put out and in the reporting that we’ve done, you see the group as bloodthirsty and hateful, and that is one reality. But there are also other realities, including people who do these acts and who have enormous remorse.

What would people be surprised to find out about your reporting process?

When Andy was coming with me to Iraq, I was really worried because he thought he was joining this high-flying correspondent doing something really interesting. And I was thinking to myself: “He has no idea how many hours we’re going to be sitting at a checkpoint. He has no idea how many times we’re going to start the day thinking that we’ll get X, only to get to the destination and be told that the source has left.”

There’s a lot of waiting around and trying to have tea with this official to get access to this one thing, trying to schmooze with that one person to see if, even though there’s a media blackout in Mosul, you could be the only journalist who’s let in.

What comes next after “Caliphate”?

I adore my little team. We’re already kind of nostalgic thinking about when this is over because we won’t see each other every day anymore. But we need to finish the podcast first, and afterward I think we all need to go on a really long vacation and then come back and think about it.

To hear more from Rukmini Callimachi and learn about new episodes, sign up here. If you’ve already tuned in to “Caliphate,” tell us what you think in the comments section.

Keep up with Times Insider stories on Twitter, via the Reader Center: @ReaderCenter.

The post Rukmini Callimachi on Audio’s Power to Reveal the Truth of the ‘Caliphate’ appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2FErzYo via Today News

#Daily News #Daily World News #Daily Business News #Daily Sports News #World The News

0 notes

party-hard-or-die · 7 years ago