Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Facebook removes 'intifada' page

Facebook has removed a page calling for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel after more than 350,000 people signed up to it.

The page which appeared on the social networking site was called Third Palestinian Intifada after two previous uprisings against Israeli occupation.

It was removed for featuring calls for violence, a company spokesman said.

Israel had raised concerns about the page. Facebook has helped spread calls for protests in Arab states.

The Third Palestinian Intifada page had called for an uprising after Muslim prayers on Friday 15 May.

"Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews," a quote from the page read.

According to AFP news agency, three new copycat pages have appeared, with more than 7,000 Palestinians signing up to them.

'Red lines'

Facebook said the page had begun as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used the term "intifada" with its connotation of violent revolt.

"Start Quote

It seems that [Israeli] Minister Yuli Edelstein needs lessons in human rights and freedom of expression as he is not aware of the world's respect for individual opinion"

End Quote Demtri Deliani Fatah official

"However, after the publicity of the page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence," said Andrew Noyes, Facebook's public policy communications manager.

The creators of the page eventually made calls for violence as well, he added.

"We monitor pages that are reported to us, and when they degrade to direct calls for violence or expressions of hate - as occurred in this case - we have and will continue to take them down," Mr Noyes said.

In a letter last week to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein said the page featured "wild incitement" with calls to kill Jews and talk of "liberating" Jerusalem through violence.

"I asked Mr Zuckerberg that the red lines of freedom of expression and incitement and violence should not be crossed," he said.

"I welcome that decision even though I am sure that more cat-and-mouse games await us and there will be attempts by our enemies and those who hate us to enter Facebook in other ways."

Demetri Deliani, a leading member of the Palestinian party Fatah, mocked Israel's request to remove the page.

"It seems that Minister Yuli Edelstein needs lessons in human rights and freedom of expression as he is not aware of the world's respect for individual opinion," he told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.



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Spotify ads hit by malware attack

Spotify has apologised to users after an advertisement containing a virus was displayed to some users of the music-streaming service.

The advertisement, which appeared within Spotify's Windows desktop software, did not need to be clicked on in order to infect a user's machine.

The exploit would install a bogus 'Windows Recovery' anti-virus program.

"Users with anti-virus software will have been protected," Spotify said in a statement.

"We quickly removed all third party display ads in order to protect users and ensure Spotify was safe to use.

"We sincerely apologise to any users affected. We'll continue working hard to ensure this does not happen again and that our users enjoy Spotify securely and in confidence."

The vulnerability only affects users with free subscriptions.

Security research specialists Websense said it received the first report of "malvertising" on the service at 11:30GMT on 24 March, noting that it used the Blackhole Exploit Kit - a tool for hackers - to carry out the attack.

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If you had Spotify open but running in the background, listening to your favorite tunes, you could still get infected"

End Quote Patrik Runald Websense

Malvertising is usually confined to content viewed through web browsers, but this instance was displayed within the Spotify software itself for people with a free membership.

"The application will render the ad code and run it as if it were run inside a browser," explained Websense's Patrik Runald in a blog post.

"This means that the Blackhole Exploit Kit works perfectly fine and it's enough that the ad is just displayed to you in Spotify to get infected, you don't even have to click on the ad itself.

"So if you had Spotify open but running in the background, listening to your favorite tunes, you could still get infected."

Avast! anti-virus said the majority of their users reporting infections were from Sweden (59%), while 40% of virus reports relating to the vulnerability came from the UK. The rest were from other countries.

Spotify, which is based in Sweden, has around seven million users, six million of which use the free service affected.



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Amazon unveils cloud music player

Amazon has unveiled an online music service that lets users to upload songs and play them from a range of devices.

The internet retailer launched its Cloud Player in the US, ahead of rivals Apple and Google which are rumoured to be developing similar systems.

Users are given 5Gb of storage space, roughly equivalent to 1,200 tracks, but can opt to pay for additional capacity.

Cloud Player works with Blackberry, Palm and Android mobiles, although there is no support for Apple's iOS.



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