Archives

Back in June 2019 I had warned about relying on cloud platforms for your business and for storing your (personal) data, with some examples of what could go wrong. With all the recent online censorship related to the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ more examples are piling up showing what can happen when you rely on the current centralized Software As A Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms. Read more ⟶

A few weeks ago I had noticed for the first time that the Internet Archive started requiring people to login before they are able to view certain content. To be clear, the login is not required for all content but only for specific content. Also, the login requirement is placed on the content after a while — probably when they receive complaints about it. Read more ⟶

The criminal government of China, through one of their working arms called Huawei, are proposing to replace the underlying protocol of the Internet with a new protocol they call “New IP”. And if you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that this is serious cause for concern as neither the criminal Chinese government nor Huawei can be trusted. Read more ⟶

Yesterday I posted about the fact that censorship on the Internet is getting worse and that the criminal governments around the world are increasingly more often trying to censor parts or all of the Internet to stifle dissent. Read more ⟶

Private Internet Access blogged about a recent report by Access Now (February 24th 2020) titled “2019 #KeepItOn – Targeted, Cut Off, and Left in the Dark” (PDF) where they look at Internet shutdowns by criminal governments globally for the year 2019. I highly recommend reading the whole report to get an idea of how bad the situation is in various countries and the world in general. Read more ⟶

A software developer from Russia found out recently that his account on GitHub had been shadow banned. He was the only one still able to see his account and access his repositories; all other users got a 404 message in their web browsers. In an article titled “How GitHub blocked me (and all my libraries)” (March 11th 2020), ironically published on Medium, he details his experience with GitHub. Read more ⟶

For decades the American CIA and German BND spied on governments of at least 120 countries through cryptography products sold through a Swiss company called Crypto AG. None of Crypto AG’s customers knew that the company was secretly owned by the CIA and BND. Read more ⟶

When Microsoft decided to shut down the studio responsible for development of their Flight Simulator game in 2009, I wrote an angry email to then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer complaining about that decision, explaining how wrong I think he was to do so. I wasn’t very kind in that email and to this day I think justifiably so. Read more ⟶

I read the article “Cybercrime in Suriname Increasingly More Aggressive” (January 23rd 2020) by Mr. Sitaram with great interest. I’ve also noticed that it had some effect based on the publications that followed. However, I think that Mr. Sitaram is still too optimistic about the current state of affairs; I can assure you from my own experience that the situation is far worse than many people suspect. Read more ⟶

According to an article on Computerworld Samsung have been spying on their users and selling their data. It appears that the money they make from selling their phones to people was not enough; they decided to make even more money by collecting as much data as possible from their users and selling or otherwise exploiting that data. Read more ⟶

During the last few weeks I’ve done a lot of work on QuantumGate. It’s still in experimental stages right now, but very usable. A lot of the time I spent on working on it went into optimizations. I’ve been using it in the last few days together with the SOCKS 5 test extender (Socks5 Extender) for browsing the Internet and it’s been working quite well. Read more ⟶

The criminal US government likes to tell everyone how bad and untrustworthy the criminal Chinese government is, but are not only doing the exact same things they are blaming the Chinese of, but quite often even much worse. In this case we learn that through their intelligence agency, the CIA (Criminals In Action), they are recruiting spies at various US companies for all kinds of intelligence operations, just like the Chinese government. Read more ⟶

After the recent example of torture and oppression by the criminal government of China, new leaked documents give insight into what the criminal government of China calls “re-education camps.” Here’s from the BBC, “Data leak reveals how China ‘brainwashes’ Uighurs in prison camps” (November 24th 2019): Leaked documents detail for the first time China’s systematic brainwashing of hundreds of ... Read more ⟶

Some of my friends will be able to confirm this, but I said from the very beginning, years ago, that Google’s Android OS, which runs on many phones today, is pure garbage. Especially when it comes to security and privacy. If you have a phone running Android I feel sorry for you. Read more ⟶

A paper published recently by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “ICT Supply Chain Integrity: Principles for Governmental and Corporate Policies” goes into various threats to security and privacy via supply chain vulnerabilities and attacks. Read more ⟶

Boy am I glad I stopped using WhatsApp. The shit seems to have hit the fan in a rather serious way for WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) as recent developments show. WhatsApp is now suing an Israeli company called NSO Group for abusing vulnerabilities in WhatsApp to hack into people’s phones in order to spy on them. Read more ⟶

The criminal Chinese government has made a new law that they claim is to “encourage and support the research and application of the science and technology in cryptography.” The law takes effect on January 1st 2020 and here’s some of what’s coming to the slave population of China: According to the provisions, the country encourages the research, academic exchanges, conversion of academic achievements and application of the ... Read more ⟶