Category Archives: Noticias

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Digital currency is poised to reinvent how startups are funded, led by Chroma Fund

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Pentagon teams up with Apple and Boeing to develop wearable tech

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Cybercrime and Cybersecurity – The Legal and Regulatory Environment by Colin Renouf

Flipboard and Pulse vs. local RSS = Free online services vs. indipendence -and privacy-

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The first time I noticed Pulse on my friends’ Iphone I was astonished. It as what I was looking for since my first Nokia phone: the possibility of read a personalized selection of my favorite news directly on my mobile.

Moreover, Pulse was able to load images so I had the possibility to directly access graphs or pictures. I was amazed and I spent a lot of time to select the right RSS to feed it.

I was sure that Pulse was the best app for different reasons. The main was its Android version that allowed me to not worry about the next mobile I would have chosen in (the very near) future. The second was its flexibility! I was able to choose feeds from its huge library or directly add my favorite RSS if the specific feed was not available. When Pulse started its website Pulse.me I was sure that I would have been one of its best fans for the life.

The same feeling I had with Flipboard. It was easy to use too. Flipboard had a more attractive look and it was able to suggest many interesting news as soon as I selected the favorite categories in its menu. For my feelings Flipboard was a bit too invasive because I was not able to actively define the precise sort of news it was suggesting me but it was still useful for my purposes.

The first doubt about Pulse emerged when it was acquired by Linkedin… Why I would have to connect my news selection with other Linkedin users? On one hand the selection could represent an extra element to describe, in a more complete way, my professional profile but, on the other hand, my RSS feed selection was also a personal added value that (for my opinion) gave me a plus towards my potential competitors.

Information are money. And RSS news feeds can sometimes represent the main part of the concept of information. When I decide to share my RSS selection I automatically decide to wipe out this difference between me and other “competitors”. And perhaps I am deleting part of my personal better skills.

For this reason I decided to not link Pulse to Linkedin and I loose the trust I had for it.

At the end I decided that I would have preferred to test a simple RSS reader on my notebook. In few words I opted for less mobility to more independence (and privacy).

And the nightmare began….

In fact I was not able to download the RSS feeds I had in Pulse and in Flipboard. Because it is simply not possible. If you decide to use Pulse or Flipboard you are welcome but that is one way path. You are not allowed to easily leave them. If you want, you can always cancel your account but all the RSS you saved on your account cannot be downloaded. If you really want to opt-out you have to manually copy them to your local RSS reader.

I let you image how much time I wasted copying and pasting a five year long RSS feeds history to Akregator but it was the only way that I caused myself for not reading the TOS when I registered to Pulse and Flipboard.

I just want to focus your attention to one point. Beware to similar online free services. They are useful till you decide to use them but, when you change your idea, they can become a real, real problem.

I was a silly user. In fact, accepting the TOS, I gave them the legal authorization to monitor and use my RSS selection as they preferred without any warrant about the possibility of withdrawing in a easily way. I am not a genius nor an Internet evangelist so I really don’t think that my personal RSS feed selection could have a big commercial value for anyone. But when I think that my 2 cents RSS selection could be summed to a virtual infinite number of other 2 cents feed selections I feel myself silly.

The advice I’d like to give you is about TOS. Read them and, before accepting TOS, be sure that the agreement you are signing is enough convenient for you.

Decide if the authorizations you are giving them can compensate what they are offering to you for free. And…. be sure you can easily and freely save and/or re-use the data you have been sharing with them for so many years.

A small collection of Firefox add-ons you can install to improve (a little bit) your privacy – Part 3

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In the past two years the EFF – Electronic Frontier Foundation –  has released a couple of add-ons specifically created to improve your privacy when you are on Internet. Just for a quick information, EFF is a no-profit organization specialized in, but not only, the defense of  privacy and free expression in the contemporary “world of emerging technologies”.

The first interesting EFF add-on is HTTPS Everywhere  that forces websites to provide https webpages also when you (better: your browser) asked for a “common” HTTP connection to their servers. This happens automatically and you don’t usually notice any delay in your navigation speed. HTTPS Everywhere is a precious add-on because it improves the number of “secured” connections when you are on Internet and decreases the risks of information leaking during Internet navigation. Moreover, this add-on is available not only for Firefox but also for Chrome and Opera and, at the moment, could be considered as the most versatile and -simple to use- tool you have to increase the use of HTTPS navigation. HTTPS Everywhere could not be considered as a bullet-proof privacy guarantee but it really does what he promises. Last but not least, it seems that if you adhere to their anonymous data collection about usage, you can really help them to discover false HTTPS certification disseminated through the web and contribute to a safer Internet.

If you want a little bit of security and think that every website should allow to connect through HTTPS, you should try HTTP Nowhere  that blocks all the unencrypted web communications. As for what we described for Flash add-ons (Flash Control and Flash Block) the level of security depends on your choice. HTTP Nowhere is a more “radical” choice but, i any case, it can be widely configured to your needs. For example it allows you to create a whitelist of HTTP websites that will be never blocked. Moreover HTTP Nowhere can be configured to visit .onion websites through TOR.

In  any case don’t forget that HTTPS connections are only relatively more secure than HTTP ones. As someone commented, HTTPS effective privacy depends on Certificate Authorities reliability and seriousness and, in some cases, HTTPS could be easily eluded. 

The other EFF add-on I’d like to focus your attention is the Privacy Badger . This add-on has the same goals of the most famous Ad Block or Disconnect but it works in a different way. In fact its work is not based of previously compiled list the needs to be updated frequently but on an heuristic examination of trackers behaviour. It could be considered “democratic” because it doesn’t automatically ban trackers at all but analyzes if they are looking for your web habits or they are “just” recording your passage in a specific website. In this last case the Privacy Badger will observe their behaviour during your next navigation and, if they persist to track you, it will label them with different colours (green to yellow to red) blocking them when they become too intrusive for your privacy. The PRO is that also a brand new tracker -never reviewed by security advisers- will be promptly discovered and neutralized but the CONS is represented by the fact that also the most known intrusive tracker will be initially allowed to register your habits.

For its intrinsic features, the Privacy Badger could be added to Firefox as an extra barrier to fight trackers and improve your privacy. In the next post we will examine other add-ons that can be matched with it.