New York Post Twitter and Facebook accounts hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

The New York Post is the latest media outlet to be targeted by Syrian Electronic Army, with the hacker group temporarily taking control of the publication's social media accounts.

The online activists successfully took over the New York Post's Facebook account before posting SEA-related material on Tuesday, and also gained access to a number of employees' Twitter accounts, according to a post on the group's website.

A number of journalist's were affected, with a tweet on reporter Mike Puma's account stated "Syrian Electronic Army was here".

The New York Post has not revealed any more details of the hack, though has since regained control over its social media accounts.

The SEA also compromised the Twitter feed and Facebook account of social media management company Social Flow. The firm stated on Tuesday that the hack was the result of a phishing attack which granted the hackers access to its accounts.

A tweet from Social Flow's official account read: "Today an employee's email account was compromised in a phishing attack. As a result, our Twitter and FB accounts were compromised."

Social Flow added that no customer access or data was compromised, and the firm "immediately took our service offline" as part of security controls.



The SEA has succeeded in hacking into the social media accounts of a number of high profile media firms, including the Guardian and Channel 4 in recent weeks, while other media outlets such as BSkyB and Reuters have been on the receiving end of attacks in recent months.

Although the hacks have mostly resulted in the defacing of Twitter or Facebook accounts, in some instances the hacks have had wider repercussions. False information posted on the Associated Press Twitter feed led to financial markets falling sharply, highlighting the danger of social media monitoring tools employed by traders.

Twitter has since made moves to allay security concerns by introducing two step authentication, though questions remain over whether this will stop attacks.

Twitter introduces 'in-tweet' abuse button after complaints

Twitter has revised its guidelines around abusive behavior following bomb and rape threats made against several prominent female users of the service in the U.K.

"We want people to feel safe on Twitter, and we want the Twitter Rules to send a clear message to anyone who thought that such behavior was, or could ever be, acceptable," wrote Del Harvey, Twitter senior director for trust and safety, and U.K. General Manager Tony Wang, in a blog post on Saturday.

The company is also modifying its interface to make reporting threats and abuse easier. Although users could report abusive behavior before, Twitter is streamlining that procedure by creating a button within tweets that allows people to file a direct report, the officials wrote.

Users have been referred to Twitter's Help Center. The button has been introduced in the latest version of Twitter's iOS application and on its mobile site. Next month, the button will appear on its Android application and on Twitter.com, they wrote.

The BBC reported on Sunday that police were investigating eight bomb and rape-related threats made over the social networking service.

On Saturday, Wang wrote "I personally apologize to the women who have experienced abuse on Twitter and for what they have gone through."

"The abuse they've received is simply not acceptable. It's not acceptable in the real world, and it's not acceptable on Twitter," he continued in another tweet.

Twitter also plans to add more staff to its teams that handle abuse reports and is "exploring new ways of using technology to improve everyone's experience on Twitter," Harvey and Wang wrote.

Twitter tosses power users a bone in Windows 8 app update

Windows 8 socialites rejoice! Twitter recently beefed up its Windows 8 app, extending functionality for power users and adding the ability to follow specific people or lists from the Start Screen.

Available now in the Windows Store, the biggest addition to Twitter for Windows 8 is the ability to add multiple accounts. Most Twitter fans won’t have any use for the feature, but power users will welcome the upgrade, as will anyone who needs to maintain separate personal and professional accounts.

To sign-in with multiple accounts, you just swipe down from the top or bottom of your tablet, or right-click on a PC. In the drop-down bar that appears, tap the user icon in the top right corner. This will switch the icon to a plus sign and a second tap brings up an account credentials entry window, allowing you to add another account. You can also sign-up for a new account from this page, but in my tests, adding a new account hung every time I tried to choose a Twitter username.

Switching between accounts is as simple as swiping down or right-clicking again, and then tapping on the account you want to use.

The latest Twitter update also brings Twitter lists to the Windows 8 app, and the ability to pin user profiles or Twitter lists to the Start Screen. Pinning is a great addition if you don’t want to miss any updates from a specific users or set of users. Twitter lists aren’t confined to your own lists either; you can pin any Twitter list you can find to your start screen.

Pinned lists and profiles are relegated to small tile status on the Start screen.
Say, for example, you wanted to pin blogger Robert Scoble’s Tech Pundits list. You’d navigate to Scoble’s list inside the Twitter app, swipe down or right-click, and then select the option to “Pin to Start” in the lower left corner. Pinned profiles and lists appear as small tiles with live updates. The only downside is you don’t have the option to upgrade your pinned tiles to a more reading-conducive larger-sized tile.

Twitter’s new update for Windows 8 also addresses some bugs and overall performance issues, such as faster response times. Many users posting comments on the Windows Blog say the new update has fixed their stability issues that were causing numerous crashes with the previous version of Twitter. Users have also noticed several unannounced features such as user tagging when composing tweets, improve responsiveness to touch, and more frequent feed updates.

It’s good to see Twitter continuing to update its Windows 8 app as it is one of the few truly useful social networking apps available right now in the Windows Store.

Twitter hands French prosecutors identities of anti-Jewish posters

Twitter has handed French prosecutors information enabling the identification of some of those responsible for posts last year apparently contravening French laws on hate speech, according to the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), which had filed suits against the company to compel it to release the data.

One lawsuit, filed in November, went all the way to the Court of Appeal, which on June 12 rejected Twitter’s attempt to shield the identities of those responsible for posts made last year with the hashtag #unbonjuif (a good Jew).

The UEJF and four other French anti-racism organizations asked Twitter to reveal the identities of the posters and to make it easy for its users to flag messages potentially contravening hate speech laws.

In a ruling on Jan. 24, the court gave Twitter 15 days from receipt of the order to reveal the posters’ identities.

In March, faced with Twitter’s continuing reluctance to provide the information, the UEJF filed a criminal complaint against the company and its CEO, Dick Costolo, seeking €38.5 million ($51 million) in damages for their failure to provide the information requested.

Days later, Twitter lodged an appeal against the initial ruling, which the court rejected on June 12, ordering it to pay the UEJF €1,500 in compensation and all costs relating to the appeal.

Following negotiations between the company and the UEJF, Twitter has handed the requested data to the French prosecutor, the UEJF said Friday.

“This communication puts an end to the dispute between the parties who have agreed to continue to work actively together in order to fight racism and anti-Semitism, in compliance with their respective national legislation, especially by taking measures in order to establish an easily accessible and noticeable reporting system to deal with unlawful tweets,” the UEFJ said in a statement.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a statement it gave media outlets including Agence France Presse confirmed it had handed over information enabling the identification of the authors of some posts.

Twitter Yields to Pressure in Hate Case in France

The case shows how challenging it is for Silicon Valley companies to champion the free speech rights of users while complying with the laws of countries where they do business. It also highlights Silicon Valley’s Europe problem: the Continent represents a large and lucrative market, but its lawmakers, regulators and courts have hounded the industry in recent months on issues as varied as privacy and antitrust law.

For months, Twitter had fought a court order obtained by a private French citizens’ group demanding that the company turn over the user information. But on Friday, the company said it had handed over the information to a prosecutor in Paris, in response to a law enforcement request. By turning over the information, Twitter said, it had ended a lawsuit related to the court order brought by the private group.

In a statement Friday, the company said: “in response to a valid legal request, Twitter has provided the prosecutor of Paris, Presse et Libertés Publiques section of the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance, with data that may enable the identification of certain users that the Vice-Prosecutor believes have violated French law.”

The statement took pains to note that Twitter was providing the information to law enforcement through a legal request, not to the private group.

The case has important implications for Twitter users worldwide, as governments increasingly try to extract user information from the service. Legal experts say Twitter could have insisted that the French authorities seek to extract the user data by filing a claim in the United States, where the company is based.

Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said that while Twitter had demonstrated its commitment to protecting free speech on many occasions, it was under pressure to meet nations’ demands for information on their citizens, both in America and abroad. Many companies face this pressure, and Twitter is all the more vulnerable now that it has an office in Paris, making its employees and assets there subject to French law.

“Governments have an unquenchable thirst for more information about their citizens, and Internet companies, as repositories of data, are going to be on the list of targets,” Mr. Goldman said. He added: “We are in no position to criticize another government for demanding data on users. Our government is doing that about us every day.”

The French Union of Jewish Students and SOS Racisme had sought the identities of the users, who had used pseudonyms, and in January a French court ordered Twitter to hand over the data. Twitter appealed, and lost, in June. The French student union filed a $50 million civil suit against the company, saying that it had failed to comply with the court order. On Friday, Jonathan Hayoun, president of the group, said that “Twitter has finally accepted its responsibility for hate prevention as a prominent player on the Web.”

In the second half of 2012, Twitter received over 1,000 requests from government agencies in the United States and abroad, from Australia to Turkey. It complied to varying degrees: 69 percent of the time with respect to requests from American authorities, 33 percent from the Dutch, and never in the case of countries like India, Israel or Turkey. Twitter on Friday said it did not have a uniform policy on how it treated law enforcement requests. “Requests for Twitter user information, whether domestic or international, are evaluated on a case-by-case basis,” the company said in a statement.

“There was more fighting Twitter could have done and chose not to,” said Christopher Wolf, a partner at Hogan Lovells who represents American technology companies, including in Europe. He added: “It is an episode that gives me some pause over the potential breadth of jurisdiction by a European government over a U.S. Internet company.”

Twitter’s legal feuds with foreign governments could muddle its expansion overseas. Running afoul of the law in any country potentially makes it vulnerable to having its assets seized and its employees arrested.

Complicating matters, Twitter, like other similar companies, has a sort of jurisprudence of its own, laid out in its Terms of Service. It does not explicitly address hate speech, but stipulates that “users are allowed to post content, including potentially inflammatory content, provided they do not violate the Twitter Terms of Service and Rules.” Those include a prohibition against “direct, specific threats of violence against others.”

The French case was prompted by a spate of anti-Semitic posts late last year. There were also jokes about the Holocaust and comments denigrating Muslims. Holocaust denial is a crime in France, and the country has strict laws against hate speech. Twitter removed the posts in France after the complaints.

Square's New Online Stores Could Make Twitter Where You Shop

Image: Square

 

 

“Synergy” is one of the most abused clichés in the corporate lexicon. But when you’re both the chairman of Twitter and the CEO of one of the most-watched commerce startups around, synergy isn’t a bad place to aim.

 

Jack Dorsey may have hit the target with the launch today of Square Market, Square’s first big foray into online shopping.

 

Since launching in 2010, Square has mainly been known for its eponymous credit card reader that plugs into the headphone jack of a smartphone or tablet. And Dorsey has often spoken of the business opportunity presented by the 95 percent of commerce that happens offline.

 

Square Market not only acknowledges the reality that small retailers can no longer afford to remain offline-only; it gives them a tool to obliterate the distinction. Now any shopkeeper using Square as a cash register can simply flip a switch in the app to create an instant online store.

 

“Our mission is to make commerce easy,” Dorsey said while demo-ing the new product for Wired at Square’s San Francisco headquarters. “That doesn’t mean ‘make offline commerce easy’ or ‘make online commerce easy.’ It’s commerce in general.”

 

Square’s register works by letting store owners input their inventory—description, price, picture—into the app. When someone comes to the counter to make an offline purchase, the cashier taps the item to add it to the total. In the latest version of the app, a switch to the input screen that lets stores choose the option of selling online. Toggling the switch to “yes” instantly (at least during the demo) posts the product to that business’ Square-hosted online storefront.

 

In keeping with Square’s insistence on design that “gets out of the way,” these storefronts are stripped down to nearly the bare minimum needed to shop online—a picture, a price, a button to buy. But this isn’t just an aesthetic preference. It’s Square making a statement that the online storefront itself isn’t what’s most important. The product for sale is. This is where Twitter enters the picture.

 

You may not know that Twitter has something called a “product card” that turns a link to a product online into what amounts to a catalog listing embedded in a tweet. The product listings on Square Market don’t look much different than these cards, which is no accident. When a store owner—or anyone—tweets a link to a Square Market listing, the product card will include a buy button that flips right back over to Square. In effect, Twitter becomes the storefront.

 

Though not just Twitter. Sharing on Pinterest or Facebook accomplishes much the same thing. Square Market in that context isn’t so much a destination—though Square does hope it will become one—but a platform-agnostic backend for social selling. A product listed in Square Market becomes what Dorsey calls an “atomic unit” of commerce. The point is to highlight what’s being sold, he says, not to emphasize that it’s Square doing the selling.

 

“We don’t have to brand it explicitly. It’s all about the people using it,” Dorsey says. “Both Twitter and Square have been really great at diminishing their brands in favor of the people using them.”

 

Whether Square will need to market itself more for Square Market to catch on is a question the next several months will answer. Though Square says it handles billions of dollars in transactions annually, it’s not a ubiquitous presence on the retail landscape—with one major exception.

 

As the processor of all Starbucks credit and debit transactions in the U.S., Square has shown it can operate on the scale of a national chain, not just a farmer’s market. Dorsey is confident that the digital infrastructure that powers those transactions can handle however many online stores open in Square’s new marketplace.

 

On the front end, meanwhile, Twitter provides a massive digital marketing infrastructure capable of driving not just awareness but also commerce straight to Square, now that Square now has an online destination for that commerce to take place. “Synergy” is a word that might seem better suited to Jack Donaghy. But for Jack Dorsey, it’s looking like an increasingly good fit.

 

 

Twitter founder uses phone during takeoff

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently tweeted a Vine video he recorded while his plane took off from San Francisco.

Wait, what was that last one?

Dorsey appears to have recorded the takeoff from his seat on the airplane -- which would be directly in conflict with what flight attendants always instruct passengers to do: power down anything with an on/off switch during takeoffs and landings.

Dorsey, who know is is the CEO of mobile payments company Square, did not reply to requests for comment. But a possible rule change could mean that passengers no longer need to heed the warning anyway.

Currently the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits the use of most personal electronic devices on airplanes during takeoff and landings, or whenever the plane is flying lower than 10,000 feet. That goes for both commercial and private planes, although a catchall in the regulation says it's ultimately up to the operator of the airplane to decide what devices to prohibit.

The agency has long claimed that using those devices during takeoff poses a safety issue and that radio signals emitted from electronic devices could interfere with an aircraft's communications.

But FAA officials know that it's not only Dorsey who uses mobile devices when the plane is flying at low altitude. Sixty-nine percent of adult passengers reportedly use a portable device during flights and almost one-third of passengers say they have accidentally left their device on, according to a recent study by the Airline Passenger Experience Association and the Consumer Electronics Association.

The agency created a committee last year to test what kind of devices might be OK for passengers to use on board in those situations. A draft of the committee's report, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, recommends the FAA to relax its ban on using some types of personal electronic devices. This could apply to e-readers and MP3 players -- but not cell phones, which travelers still won't be able to use to make calls at any time during flights.

Related story: The FCC wants to make in-flight Wi-Fi less awful

"The FAA recognizes consumers are intensely interested in the use of personal electronics aboard aircraft," said an FAA spokesman in a prepared statement. "That is why we tasked a government-industry group to examine the safety issues and the feasibility of changing the current restrictions."

The committee, which first met in January, was given six months to make its recommendations, but the FAA said it is willing to wait another two months for the safety assessment before moving forward.

This week's news of a possible rule change is not too surprising. The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has publicly advocated for the FAA to relax its rules on electronic device use in the past.

"It shows that people have an insatiable demand to be connected these days," said Michael Small, the CEO of in-flight Wi-Fi provider GoGo (GOGO). "In even those few minutes before takeoff they want to be on their device" he said.