OCTOBER 20, 2007

UPDATE: Even though TV-Links was taken down it is still accessible. How? The Internet Archive Wayback Machine was made to spider the web to build a Internet library. Meaning TV-Link has a mirror to it's pages in the Wayback Machine which can be accessed at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.tv-links.co.uk. The only thing about this is on latest version of TV-Links the URL to videos are blocked which was an option put in by the creater of TV-Links when the site started increasing with popularity. The ealier versions of TV-Links does not have this option so you can still access pretty much of the same content. Also to note; the Wayback Machine does load a bit slow till you get to the actual content that was not hosted on TV-Links. - - -


It was one of the world's most used website with an Alexa ranking that proves it. TV-Links.co.uk provided links to illegal versions of major feature films that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and TV shows that came out within days of their initial release.

A man twenty six year of age from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet. Though not hosting the actual content himself, and rather merely providing links to where particular titles can be found, he was nonetheless apparently charged for the facilitation of copyright infringement.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for Fact (Federation Against Copyright Theft).

Further information is still unavailable at the moment on whether TV Links will be down permanently. Fact's campaign to crack down on web privacy and mark TV-Links as its first major target could backfire due to the end result of The Pirate Bay raided that occurred over a year ago. The Federation Against Copyright Theft stands firmly against their allegations that the theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy. The users are potentially evading license fees, subscription fees to digital services or the cost of purchase or admittance to cinemas to view the films.

OCTOBER 18, 2007

How voice mail works is a cellular providers has access number and each access number applies to a selective number of voice mail boxes. This is done is for security purposes and if someone tries to gain access to a voice mail box with the wrong access number it will automatically lock the voice mail. Some cellular providers even go as far as requiring you to setup a password for your voice mail to be activated. T-Mobile on the other hand only has one access number for the whole United States and does not require you to setup a password for your voice mail.

It's a much simpler task to hack into someone’s voice mail box with a T-Mobile provider compared to other cellular providers. To do this you will first need to spoof your number to the voice mail you are trying to gain access into. What spoofing does is make the telephone network think the number you want to display is the number of the actual originating station. There are a few ways to spoof. One way is very time consuming but cheaper if you plan on doing this more then a few times. The other way is quick and easy but a bit more expensive. For the first method you need to install any type of Linux OS on your computer. Once that is done go ahead and install Asterisk which is an open source telephone platform. The last part is to find a SIP service provider which allows spoofing and is also in your price range. The other method would be to purchase spoofing services from a website that charges by the minute. Spooftel is one type of spoofing service but I suggest you Google a bit and see what else is out on the market to compare the rates. Once you have everything setup what you would do is dial (805) 637 7243 which is the T-Mobile voice mail access number with a spoofed number of the voice mail that you are trying to get into and you shall gain access. The only problem you may receive would be if the person had setup a password but since T-Mobile doesn’t require you to setup up a password by default it just makes things easier.

Another thing that the T-Mobile access number could come in handy for is when you were supposed to call someone but it just slipped your mind. You could always dial (805) 637 7243, punch in the number you want to call and leave them a voice mail. The purpose of this is the person will not know that you called because you’re not really calling them you’re calling their voice mail box. Once they get your voice mail they will not understand why they did not see a missed call from the recipient. You could always say you called a while ago and left a message and that there must be something wrong with their phone or they could of not has service when the call was placed. The voice mail message will be tagged with the date and time it was received meaning it was the time the message was receive to their voice mail box and not the time the message was placed.

OCTOBER 16, 2007

I was drinking my coffee as I do ever morning while watching the local news when a guest was introduced who made a few statements I was very unpleased with. The comments that were made were toward the social networking website MySpace. I wouldn't call myself a MySpace fanatic or that I am against what they are trying to accomplish, but if statements are made about technology make sure you know what you are talking about. The discussion implied is that MySpace lacks privacy for it's users. The fact remains that if you do not know how to manipulate the setting in the profile, MySpace should not be held responsible. A common assumption made by users is that setting your profile to private is enough to protect yourself. A more in depth look on how MySpace operates is needed to understand the proper actions that should be taken.

A very powerful feature on MySpace is the search field. The search field is broken down into three parts; name, display name, and email. There is a way to disable the name feature and this could be simply done by going into edit profile and then into the name section where MySpace allows you to leave the first and last name empty which makes it impossible for someone to find you by your full name. Now for the display name part of the search field. MySpace used to allow this part to be empty but later on disabled that option. So since we can not disable the display name feature in the search field there is a way to make it harder for people to find you. How this could be done is by putting in special characters in the display name to make it unique from other accounts. For example say your name is John and you are using it as a display name. During a search for a display name John over 500 results will come up and using a search filter you are able to narrow down the searches to particular people. Now if you put *John_ as a display name you will see no searches come up. The purpose of this is to suggest using more of a unique display name so that random person will not stumble upon your profile. The last part of the search field is the email search which also can not be disabled. What could be done about this is to make an email account that no one knows about and use it only for your MySpace account since MySpace requires you to have a valid email address under the account. If you do not create a new email address there are plenty of free services offering forwarding email address such as CJB. With a forwarding email address you are masking your email account and if the forwarding email address is used as your email on MySpace you have just setup another level of protection.

Crippling the search menu on MySpace is a key point in privacy for your profile. More things can be done to furthermore protect your identity such as your location which can be found in edit profile under basic info. If you select United States Minor Outlying Islands under country you will not have to fill out the other fields such as state and zip code. Account settings also have a few interesting sections such as privacy and spam which can be adjusted to your satisfaction.

The last step to securing your MySpace account is to use a browser such as Firefox or Opera that have phishing protection. What this does is protect you from websites that looks like a MySpace from stealing your login information. Let's pick a worst case scenario that somehow the phishing protection did not detection the threat or that you just do not want to switch to a new browser. If you are using a forwarding email and of course you did not to use the same password for the forwarding email account and your MySpace account the intruder can not possibly take over the account since they do not know your real email address which gives you the option to do a password request and lock out the intruder from your account.