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Raw Data: Effort to End E.U. Roaming Fees Gains Momentum

August 5, 2013 by

When she announced in May her desire to ban the unpopular fees, which travelers pay in the 28-nation European Union outside their home countries, Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner responsible for telecommunications, was greeted with skepticism. And with less than 11 months left before the European Parliament’s legislative session ends June 30, some observers in Brussels thought Mrs. Kroes had run out of time.

But while most of official Brussels is on vacation, Mrs. Kroes and her staff appear to be edging closer to a deal that could abolish the fees, which make up an estimated 5 percent of operators’ sales — but a bigger chunk of profits.

According to a copy of the draft regulation Mrs. Kroes has circulated among members of the European Commission and which has been obtained by the International Herald Tribune, operators would get an incentive to lower roaming rates to the level of domestic calling fees.

The incentive would be a big one: an exemption from a law passed last year, also initiated by Mrs. Kroes, that will give E.U. consumers the option of buying roaming service from any operator on the Continent, not just their own, meaning the local operator could lose a customer who is out of the country altogether if it does not lower the rates.

The draft regulation would remove this right for consumers whose operators joined an alliance of carriers offering pan-European mobile phone roaming service at the same prices that consumers would pay if they did not leave home.

Some operators have objected, arguing that they should not be coerced to lower the fees, which are currently capped by retail price controls that expire at the end of June 2017. The current caps limit roaming charges to €0.24, or $0.32, per minute for a voice call, €0.07 per minute to receive a call, €0.08 to send a text message, and €0.45 for every downloaded megabyte of data.

One person with knowledge of the industry’s lobbying position on the issue, who did not want to be identified because negotiations were at a delicate stage, said some operators were concerned that E.U. consumers would be free to buy low-cost roaming service, a form of “arbitrage” that could lead to the elimination of the fees altogether.

But that is precisely the goal of Mrs. Kroes and a growing number of lawmakers in the European Parliament, who view the fees as a hurdle to broad adoption of mobile broadband.

A new study to be released this month by Nielsen on behalf of Syniverse, a seller of roaming software and services to 900 mobile operators, including Telefónica and Vodafone in Europe, confirmed that the fees were still an obstacle — despite price caps and text messages warning consumers that they were racking up charges.

In a survey of 13,000 consumers in 13 European countries obtained by the International Herald Tribune, the study found that on average 56 percent of cellphone users either limited the use of mobile Internet or turned off the roaming function on their devices entirely while traveling within the European Union.

Danielle Jacobs, chairwoman of the International Telecommunications Users Group, an association in Driebergen, the Netherlands, that represents telecommunications user groups in Europe, South America and Asia, said Europe’s system of roaming fees was slowing the adoption of cloud-based mobile services, especially those used by business travelers. “Intug would be very happy with the abolishment of roaming fees in Europe,” Mrs. Jacobs, who is also the chairwoman of the Belgian users’ group, Beltug, said in an interview. “The uncertainty about mobile data roaming prices and the possible bill shocks are putting the brakes on using more mobile applications.”

Mrs. Kroes’s push to eliminate the fees faces hurdles. The European Parliament must support her plan, as must the Council of Ministers, which comprises representatives of each member state and is where telecommunications companies exert greater influence because they are large employers.

Pressure for change is building in Brussels. On July 9, members of the Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy committee voted unanimously to end roaming fees by July 2015. The full Parliament is scheduled to take up the issue in September, when Mrs. Kroes is also expected to present details of her plan to lawmakers.

One lawmaker, Paul Rübig, who was a sponsor of the original roaming price controls that took effect in 2007, said that the momentum to end roaming fees had reached a critical intensity in Brussels.

With elections for the European Parliament scheduled for May, Mr. Rübig, a representative from Wels, Austria, said lawmakers were well aware of the possible political gain from banning the unpopular fees. According to Mr. Rübig, a survey this year of voter attitudes before the E.U. election showed that the top issue for Austrian voters — more important than basic freedoms and other civil rights — was the abolition of roaming fees in the European Union.

The survey conducted by the Austrian government found a level of support for ending fees that Mr. Rübig said was common across the bloc.

“The pressure to end roaming fees in the upcoming session will be enormous,” Mr. Rübig said in an interview. “The days of roaming fees are definitely numbered.”

Mary Clark, a vice president at Syniverse, based in Tampa, Florida, has followed the issue closely in Europe because it is central to her company’s business.

She said that whether lawmakers voted to ban roaming fees outright next year or forced operators to eliminate the fees to retain their customers, change was coming.

“The end result is, we are going to get to an environment where the home pricing is the same as roaming pricing from a retail point of view,” Ms. Clark said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/technology/effort-to-end-eu-roaming-fees-gains-momentum.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Tool Kit: How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away

November 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Within weeks, I set up unique, complex passwords for every Web site, enabled two-step authentication for my e-mail accounts, and even covered up my computer’s Web camera with a piece of masking tape — a precaution that invited ridicule from friends and co-workers who suggested it was time to get my head checked.

But recent episodes offered vindication. I removed the webcam tape — after a friend convinced me that it was a little much — only to see its light turn green a few days later, suggesting someone was in my computer and watching. More recently, I received a text message from Google with the two-step verification code for my Gmail account. That’s the string of numbers Google sends after you correctly enter the password to your Gmail account, and it serves as a second password. (Do sign up for it.) The only problem was that I was not trying to get into my Gmail account. I was nowhere near a computer. Apparently, somebody else was.

It is absurdly easy to get hacked. All it takes is clicking on one malicious link or attachment. Companies’ computer systems are attacked every day by hackers looking for passwords to sell on auctionlike black market sites where a single password can fetch $20. Hackers regularly exploit tools like John the Ripper, a free password-cracking program that use lists of commonly used passwords from breached sites and can test millions of passwords per second.

Chances are, most people will get hacked at some point in their lifetime. The best they can do is delay the inevitable by avoiding suspicious links, even from friends, and manage their passwords. Unfortunately, good password hygiene is like flossing — you know it’s important, but it takes effort. How do you possibly come up with different, hard-to-crack passwords for every single news, social network, e-commerce, banking, corporate and e-mail account and still remember them all?

To answer that question, I called two of the most (justifiably) paranoid people I know, Jeremiah Grossman and Paul Kocher, to find out how they keep their information safe. Mr. Grossman was the first hacker to demonstrate how easily somebody can break into a computer’s webcam and microphone through a Web browser. He is now chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security, an Internet and network security firm, where he is frequently targeted by cybercriminals. Mr. Kocher, a well-known cryptographer, gained notice for clever hacks on security systems. He now runs Cryptography Research, a security firm that specializes in keeping systems hacker-resistant. Here were their tips:

FORGET THE DICTIONARY If your password can be found in a dictionary, you might as well not have one. “The worst passwords are dictionary words or a small number of insertions or changes to words that are in the dictionary,” said Mr. Kocher. Hackers will often test passwords from a dictionary or aggregated from breaches. If your password is not in that set, hackers will typically move on.

NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORD TWICE People tend to use the same password across multiple sites, a fact hackers regularly exploit. While cracking into someone’s professional profile on LinkedIn might not have dire consequences, hackers will use that password to crack into, say, someone’s e-mail, bank, or brokerage account where more valuable financial and personal data is stored.

COME UP WITH A PASSPHRASE The longer your password, the longer it will take to crack. A password should ideally be 14 characters or more in length if you want to make it uncrackable by an attacker in less than 24 hours. Because longer passwords tend to be harder to remember, consider a passphrase, such as a favorite movie quote, song lyric, or poem, and string together only the first one or two letters of each word in the sentence.

OR JUST JAM ON YOUR KEYBOARD For sensitive accounts, Mr. Grossman says that instead of a passphrase, he will randomly jam on his keyboard, intermittently hitting the Shift and Alt keys, and copy the result into a text file which he stores on an encrypted, password-protected USB drive. “That way, if someone puts a gun to my head and demands to know my password, I can honestly say I don’t know it.”

STORE YOUR PASSWORDS SECURELY Do not store your passwords in your in-box or on your desktop. If malware infects your computer, you’re toast. Mr. Grossman stores his password file on an encrypted USB drive for which he has a long, complex password that he has memorized. He copies and pastes those passwords into accounts so that, in the event an attacker installs keystroke logging software on his computer, they cannot record the keystrokes to his password. Mr. Kocher takes a more old-fashioned approach: He keeps password hints, not the actual passwords, on a scrap of paper in his wallet. “I try to keep my most sensitive information off the Internet completely,” Mr. Kocher said.

A PASSWORD MANAGER? MAYBE Password-protection software lets you store all your usernames and passwords in one place. Some programs will even create strong passwords for you and automatically log you in to sites as long as you provide one master password. LastPass, SplashData and AgileBits offer password management software for Windows, Macs and mobile devices. But consider yourself warned: Mr. Kocher said he did not use the software because even with encryption, it still lived on the computer itself. “If someone steals my computer, I’ve lost my passwords.” Mr. Grossman said he did not trust the software because he didn’t write it. Indeed, at a security conference in Amsterdam earlier this year, hackers demonstrated how easily the cryptography used by many popular mobile password managers could be cracked.

IGNORE SECURITY QUESTIONS There is a limited set of answers to questions like “What is your favorite color?” and most answers to questions like “What middle school did you attend?” can be found on the Internet. Hackers use that information to reset your password and take control of your account. Earlier this year, a hacker claimed he was able to crack into Mitt Romney’s Hotmail and Dropbox accounts using the name of his favorite pet. A better approach would be to enter a password hint that has nothing to do with the question itself. For example, if the security question asks for the name of the hospital in which you were born, your answer might be: “Your favorite song lyric.”

USE DIFFERENT BROWSERS Mr. Grossman makes a point of using different Web browsers for different activities. “Pick one browser for ‘promiscuous’ browsing: online forums, news sites, blogs — anything you don’t consider important,” he said. “When you’re online banking or checking e-mail, fire up a secondary Web browser, then shut it down.” That way, if your browser catches an infection when you accidentally stumble on an X-rated site, your bank account is not necessarily compromised. As for which browser to use for which activities, a study last year by Accuvant Labs of Web browsers — including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer — found that Chrome was the least susceptible to attacks.

SHARE CAUTIOUSLY “You are your e-mail address and your password,” Mr. Kocher emphasized. Whenever possible, he will not register for online accounts using his real e-mail address. Instead he will use “throwaway” e-mail addresses, like those offered by 10minutemail.com. Users register and confirm an online account, which self-destructs 10 minutes later. Mr. Grossman said he often warned people to treat anything they typed or shared online as public record.

“At some point, you will get hacked — it’s only a matter of time,” warned Mr. Grossman. “If that’s unacceptable to you, don’t put it online.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/technology/personaltech/how-to-devise-passwords-that-drive-hackers-away.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

New Apps to Post Videos With Ease

May 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Yet almost none of the millions of video clips stored on smartphones end up online.

The reason is simple: it’s easy to pull out your phone, call up the camera, and press record. But sharing your video is harder. How do you put it on Facebook? Some mobile Facebook apps have a video upload feature, but most people haven’t found it.

Phones that have a built-in option to post video to YouTube can force you through a mind-numbing multistep process. First, you upload the clip, which can’t be more than 15 minutes long. Then, you wait up to 20 minutes for YouTube to convert it and make it available. Then, you have to copy and paste the URL into Facebook or e-mail. It sounds easy in theory, but in practice it’s enough to keep most people from bothering.

If you try to send a video directly to a friend via e-mail or text message, you’ll almost certainly be thwarted. Either the clip is too big to send, or it’s too big for them to receive, or when they click it, they’ll only get an unhelpful error message like “the media being played is of an unsupported format.”

That’s why most of us resort to sharing video by holding our phones in front of other people’s faces.

In the last few weeks, though, new mobile apps have begun to make it almost as easy to share a video as it is to shoot. By automating the upload process, tying into Facebook and Twitter and reformatting clips so that they play on multiple types of phones as well as computers, these apps aim to make cellphone video as ubiquitous as still photos.

The most talked-about video app is Socialcam, a free app for iPhone and Android models that, as its name says, incorporates social media into the mix. To get started, download Socialcam from Apple’s App Store for iPhones or Google’s Android Market. The first time you fire it up, it will prompt you to log in using your Facebook account. Once you’re in, shoot-and-share is a lot easier than before.

You can use Socialcam to record video, or import clips from your camera roll. There’s no limit on how long your clip can be. You don’t need to think about uploading, because Socialcam automatically uploads the clip to its own servers in the background, and shares them from there. (The app is made by Justin.tv, a San Francisco start-up that popularized the genre of live video feeds a few years ago.)

Once you’re done recording, you have six options for sharing: Facebook, Twitter, SMS, e-mail, Tumblr and Posterous. You can post to your Facebook feed, or you can enter a Twitter user name and password to tweet a link to your video, which will play in any browser that supports the flash player or HTML5 video standard — that would include most desktop computers these days, and a growing array of mobile gadgets.

If you’d rather not share your clip with the entire Internet, you can e-mail a link to one or more contacts from your smartphone’s address book. Again, if they’re using a computer or phone that plays HTML5 video, it’ll play in the recipients’ browser. Socialcam also has its own social network in which you can tag, like and comment on friends’ Socialcam clips, which the app lets you browse in a gallery. If someone else tags you in a Socialcam video, it will get posted on your wall in Facebook. Yes, you can untag yourself.

Video uploads are good for more than party clips, date-hunting and “I’m at the beach and you’re not” messages. Real estate agents have begun to use them for walk-throughs of homes on the market. Protesters and counterprotesters at Wisconsin’s statehouse used them to document Gov. Scott Walker’s battle with public employee unions. Office workers have captured business meetings with less production quality, but also less awkward formality, than an official videographer.

But in many cases, the intended viewers may be trying to watch on a phone and not at their desks. Not all mobile phones can handle flash or HTML5 yet.

Another free app for iPhones, Thwapr (pronounced “THWAP-er”), solves the unsupported video format problem automatically. Thwapr video clips will play on hundreds of models of phones.

Like Socialcam, you point and shoot with Thwapr. Then you can send it to another phone owner or post to Facebook or Twitter, although Thwapr doesn’t have Socialcam’s tagging features.

Thwapr’s magic trick, though, is that if you send a Thwapr clip via e-mail or text message, you usually need not worry about what kind of phone your recipients are packing. They’ll get a link to click. When they do, their phone will request the video from Thwapr, which figures out what model of phone they have and how best to serve video to that phone. That includes automatically converting the video’s data format, which takes about 5 seconds.

Thwapr has a couple of restrictions. For now, the video recording app works only on iPhones, although the company says it is planning an Android app. Video uploads are limited to 10 minutes in length if you’re sending it over ATT or Verizon, or 45 minutes if you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

A third free app, Qik Video Connect (it’s pronounced quick, and is owned by Skype, makers of the Internet phone and video chat software), offers solutions for two of the shortcomings in Socialcam and Thwapr. First, there are Qik apps for recording video on a wide range of smartphones, not just iPhone and Android. They’re not as slick as Qik’s latest iPhone version, which has an easy-to-figure-out interface, but they’ll do the job.

Second, Qik was originally built for live video streaming. As it turns out, most users almost always prefer not to broadcast live on the Internet, but to record now and post later. Still, Qik makes it easy to create a video post on Facebook that looks and plays like a prerecorded clip, but is actually connected live to your phone’s camera. Qik’s iPhone app includes hooks for bloggers and self-publishers to create live or prerecorded video links on most of the popular blog platforms, or in an R.S.S. feed. Setting these up isn’t as easy as posting to Facebook, but any serious blogger should be able to figure them out in a few minutes.

One more thing you should do: trim your videos to the interesting parts. Qik and Thwapr have editing built in. Socialcam lets you import a clip edited in Apple’s iMovie or VidTrim on Android. Other video start-ups have found that most people won’t pay attention for longer than 10 or 12 seconds.

If you’re going to start posting videos from your phone, think before you shoot. You don’t want to become the Internet version of the older archetype: the guy who bores everyone with his never-ending home movies.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c2edadfb69a025304e1e2e5448bb8a38

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,