The Cocoon Blog
The Internet as it should be: private, secure and virus free

Internet threats are huge today. Every time you turn your head it appears that somebody is getting hacked or compromised in some way.

At Virtual World Computing (VWC) we believe that everyone has the right to online privacy and web security. We also believe in sharing vital information with the online community in hopes that our contributions will enhance and assist people in making better Internet security and privacy choices.

It is in this spirit that we’ve selected ten of our best blog posts from 2011 to re-share with the Internet community – Enjoy!

The Top 10 Cocoon Blog Posts From 2011

1. [Video] Why Should Your Privacy Be Important To YOU 

In today’s online world, privacy is not a right that exists; it is an option that you must exercise on your own. Many people believe that they have to give up their privacy to be online and Cocoon wants to change this fallacy.

2. Cocoon’s 2011 List of the Top 10 Internet Privacy Threats

Privacy has become a red-hot issue in 2011. As more privacy organizations, advocates and researchers discover and disclose to the general public what social networks, governments, corporations, data miners/aggregators, advertisers and law enforcement collect;  public awareness of the impact of our digital footprints and  invasive online tracking tactics become exposed.

3.  Protecting Children Online

Whether it is identity theft, online tracking, or profiling, the Internet can be an open door to a child’s personal information. A Wall Street Journal investigation into online privacy last year found that popular children’s websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults.

4.  New Free Software Makes Wi-Fi Safe for Travelers

Free hotspots have become famously easy pickings for hackers setting up fake free Wi-Fi hotspots that look like the real thing (aka an “Evil Twin”). When an unsuspecting user logs on, what they are connecting to isn’t a real hotspot – it’s the hacker’s laptop. Once that happens, the hacker can use free software from the Internet (such as Firesheep, WiFi Pineapple and WiFi Robin) to hijack much of the information sent to and from the victim’s laptop).

5. Facebook and their 90 day tracking cookies…

According to Byron Acohido from USA Today, Facebook has been able to create a running log of visits that each of its 800 million members has visited in the previous 90 days. Once you are logged into Facebook, the site inserts a both a browser cookie and a session cookie into your web browser.

6. Consumer Privacy Should Trump Google’s Profits

Once again, the norm for big business is to place the onus on individuals to opt-out of being tracked and allowing our information to be inventoried. This is routinely done as ad networks sell personal user profiles to advertisers, but this is a new twist. Google is now using your Wi-Fi signal to help them sell location-based advertising.

7. Nine simple steps that you can take to better secure a public Wi-Fi connection

A hacker could easily create a fake Wi-Fi hot spot that looks legitimate. If you connect to the hackers Wi-Fi you will be directly linked to the hacker’s computer.

8. How to protect yourself on social networks

Malicious people are drawn to social networks due to easy access and the amount of personal data available to them. The more information that you place on these sites along with weak privacy settings has the potential to allow targeted social engineering attacks.

9. Does your Internet have malware?

It is obvious that relying on one solution alone to detect all Internet threats is not enough. The digital landscape has changed and the concept of adopting a layered security approach is a good idea. Cocoon, a Firefox plug-in is an awesome addition to add to your Internet toolkit.

10.  Recap on Cocoon Features

Cocoon was created out of the belief that everyone should have access to the Web, have a right to online privacy, and that the act of browsing the Web should not expose your computer to malicious code.

Our business is to protect your privacy and security – if we don’t do that we don’t have a business – so we take Internet security and privacy seriously.

Whether it is identity theft, online tracking, or profiling, the Internet can be an open door to a child’s personal information. A Wall Street Journal investigation into online privacy last year found that popular children’s websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults.

According to recent research by Consumer Reports,one million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on Facebook in the past year — and that’s just one social media site. Furthermore, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says 8 percent of the ID theft complaints in 2010 involved children.

Society has an obligation to protect our children and online safety for children should be a priority. We need a three-pronged approach to address this issue: policy changes; industry self-regulation; and more parental tools, monitoring and education.

Current legislation being considered includes proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by the FTC.  COPPA has not been seriously updated since 1998 — only four years after the first browser was introduced to the marketplace. (That was back when you still needed an antenna on your car for your “car phone” to work.) In May, the Do Not Track Kidsbill (H.R. 1895) was introduced by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas); it proposes barring websites outright from using kids’ data to target ads to them until they are 17.  Debates continue about the appropriate age cut-off and exactly how this legislation would be enforced.

A recent New York Times editorial, “A Push for Online Privacy,” stated that “Despite bipartisan concern about potential abuses, Congress has not acted to protect consumer privacy, and there is little chance legislation will pass anytime soon.”

Okay, well if we cannot count on policies to protect our children online anytime soon, how about self-regulation?

The desire to know who, what and where people are at any given point is driven by advertising revenue. The more companies know about a consumer, the more they can target advertising to their buying habits. Until their revenue model changes, what incentive do these companies have to self-regulate? Unless, of course, there is legislation in place, and you see the circular argument.

So it is up to the parents, and as a parent, I can say we are falling short.  The same Consumer Reports research found that 7.5 million American children under the age of 13 were using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under, and their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents (although Facebook’s policy is not to allow children under 13 to use its site).

So we can wait for politicians to step up to build a regulatory framework to protect our children’s online privacy and hope that the online industry will check its own greed, or we can take control of protecting our kids today by monitoring our their online use, educating them about online safety, and using the tools available to protect them from being tracked.

Follow Vernon Irvin, President & COO of Virtual World Computing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GetCocoon

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced by Congressman, Lamar Smith (R-TX) on October 25, 2011.

In a Nutshell:

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market, including the resultant revenue and jobs, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites. Opponents say it is censorship,that it will “break the internet”, cost jobs, and will threaten whistleblowing and other free speech. –Wikipedia

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

“The solutions are draconian,” Schmidt said during an appearance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. There’s a bill that would require (Internet service providers) to remove URLs from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked. –Eric Schmidt | Reuters

Opponents say it is censorship

But the true threat of the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA is to American innovation, jobs, and the overall health of the U.S. economy.–Gary Shapiro |Huffington Post

How Other Parts of the World View SOPA –TechDirt

The US and the West have long criticized China for stifling dissent and for censorship but now they are not only joining China but they are taking censorship even further and attempting to censor the whole world.

In the year and a half since, the State Department has had limited success promoting online awareness and circumvention tools in foreign countries. But given SOPA’s incredibly broad definitions of which sites are liable under its censorship provisions – merely claiming the site “engages in, enables or facilitates” infringement is enough – it won’t be long until the bill destroys social networks that spread news of protests and the anonymity software that keep activists protected.

Net Coalition

Social media could be killed. Young businesses looking to develop and expand as well as smaller websites wouldn’t have the legal resources to combat the expensive litigation.

SOPA’s Threat to the Internet Ecosystem

Sonic.net

Please join the Free Software Foundation, EFF, Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, Mozilla and Sonic.net in speaking out against SOPA and PROTECT-IP. These bills give too much control of the Internet to the entertainment industry, and threaten to fundamentally change the Internet we all use every day.

Sonic.net advises those who want to take action, to please write congress.

According to Byron Acohido from USA Today, Facebook has been able to create a running log of visits that each of its 800 million members has visited in the previous 90 days. Once you are logged into Facebook, the site inserts a both a browser cookie and a session cookie into your web browser.

“Online tracking involves technologies that tech companies and ad networks have used for more than a decade to help advertisers deliver more relevant ads to each viewer. Until now, Facebook, which makes most of its profits from advertising, has been ambiguous in public statements about the extent to which it collects tracking data.”

In a nutshell: If you are logged into your Facebook account and also surfing the web, it is your session cookie that will log any third-party web pages that you visit. This session cookie works in conjunction with any Facebook plug-in (such as the “Like” button) that is installed at the third-party site and reports back to the FACEBOOKSHIP:  the web address of the page you visited along with pc and browser data including your IP address.

To get out the full scoop on how Facebook tracks you across the web, be sure to visit USA Today and view their flash presentation on how this process works once you are logged in, logged out and how Facebook currently uses this tracking technology.

We are sliding into the home stretch now! We do not have that many entries, so your chance of winning an iPad is EXCELLENT!  So go ahead and share your story in 500 words or less and you could be the next iPad WINNER…

We are looking for stories that feature how your life was affected by a hacked Internet account, a computer virus, a social networking worm or ? Do you remember the Koobface worm on Facebook? That worm tricked many of us into downloading a fake Adobe Flash update and turned our computers into zombies.  Those of us who succumbed to the worm were completely at the mercy of our attackers. It was a very scary time in the world of social networking.

Not that long ago, I had a Gmail account hacked by a Tunisian hacktivist who held my account hostage until I agreed to tweet about political upheaval in his country. It was a very scary time for me because this particular Gmail account held information about some of my domains, had an extensive contact list, and it also had a few passwords to social networking accounts that I used for testing. Though I can’t enter my cyber-scary hactivist story, you can enter yours!

COCOON DEADLINE: We will be reading contest entries until Midnight PST (GMT – 8:00) and one lucky winner will be drawn at 5 PM PST on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.

 To enter our contest just click on this link and tell us your story. If you have a friend who has not entered, be sure to invite them too!

The Cocoon Team!

Cocoon Privacy Policy

We have some great submissions, but we know there are still more great stories to be told. Share your story in 500 words or less and you could win a free iPad!

Your privacy is important to us.  Before you submit your story you  can indicate how you would like your submission to be handled:

• If my story is used, I’m OK being featured (not my contact information).
• If my story is used, I would prefer to remain anonymous.
• If my story is used, I would prefer just my first name be used.

To enter our contest just click on this link and tell us your story and please remember to share this with your friends!

The Cocoon Team!

Cocoon Privacy Policy

Stanford grad student, Johnathan R. Mayer shared a report last month that revealed how web sites share your information with ad networks proving that online tracking is not anonymous.

Sadly most people have no idea how little privacy they have online.

“…not only do many popular web sites wring as much personally identifiable information as possible out of its own users, they funnel that data to other web sites, spreading news of one user’s browsing habits to as many as 22 companies with every visit to a particular site.” –Kevin Fogarty | IT World

In today’s online world, privacy is not a right that exists, it is an option that you must exercise on your own. Just the fact you are reading this means you are more aware of privacy issues than the vast majority of people. Please share your knowledge with others and we hope this video helps.

The Cocoon Team!