Just in case you don’t think that using the same, easy to guess password for all of your online accounts won’t come back to haunt you, think again.

Last week, the website TechCrunch.com, reported that a Twitter account containing confidential Twitter documents had been hacked into, and the documents had been published online. Now, the hacker himself, known as Hacker Croll, has revealed to Tech Crunch that he used “Hotmail’s inactive account feature.” to accomplish the hack.

According to Hacker Croll, he was able to access the Twitter account of an employee of Twitter by researching the employee online in order to gain information that would help him to guess their Gmail account password. This helped the hacker to ascertain that the Twitter account was also associated with a Hotmail account, which was currently inactive, but he was able to reset the account and specify a password of his own.

ComputerWorld.Com reports that Twitter is now threatening legal action against some of the sites, including TechCrunch, that have published the stolen documents, but that legal experts were not sure if this would actually succeed.

With so much personal information being stored online nowadays, it only makes sense to take extra security measures when it comes to passwords. So if your password for everything is something that is easy to guess, i.e. your birthday, middle name, or child’s name, you owe it to yourself to consider changing it to something more secure.

What some are calling the “great Aussie Firewall” may make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries if the measure is approved, reports Yahoo! Tech News.

The mandatory filter would block access to some 1,300 government prohibited sites, including sites that feature or advocate drug use, terrorism, child pornography, graphically excessive violence and other controversial issues/topics. Critics insist that this measure, if approved is nothing less than censorship and that the money would be better spent on raising awareness about the prohibited topics.

“The filter may not be able to in fact protect children from the core elements of the Internet that they are actually experiencing danger in, “ Holly Doel-Mackaway, an adviser with Save The Children, one of the world’s largest child advocacy groups, told Yahoo recently.

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who proposed the filter, told the Associated Press via email that “this is not an argument about free speech.”

“We have laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and the Internet is no different. Currently, some material is banned and we are simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working.”

This proposed filter announcement comes in the wake of a recent historic ruling by Australian officials, which allowed a lawyer to serve a lien on behalf of his client via FaceBook.

In what one industry trade group is calling a
“stupid” idea, New York Gov. David Patterson
recently announced this tax, dubbed “the iPod tax”
or iTax” by the media, as one of 137 proposed tax
increases in an attempt to allow the state to recover from a
$15.4 billion short fall.

According to the state budget website, “with the passage
of this bill, a book, song, album, or movie would be subject to
sales tax no matter if it was bought at a brick and mortar store
or downloaded online.” This also includes downloaded
photos, games, software, and movies.

Several consumer advocacy groups have spoken out against this
proposed tax, citing, among other complaints, the fact that
consumers who download media rather than purchase it are
reducing the overall carbon footprint and should not be
penalized for doing so.

If this tax is passed, New York will join several other states,
including Louisiana, New Jersey, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Washington, and Hawaii, where similar taxes are imposed on
electronic downloads.

According to a recent study, film trailers, and radio and TV ads are no longer the primary way that movie studios advertise their newest releases. Since so many people utilize the Internet, social networks, mobile phones, and other electronic means of communication, studios and marketing agencies are turning to them to get the word out.

“Radio and television are passive,” Chris Gomersall, creative director at Moxie Interactive, a digital marketing agency, told DMNews. “This kind of stuff has real audiences who are really purchasing things.”

Moxie Interactive was responsible for helping 20th Century Fox create a Facebook application for the movie Jumper. Agencies like Moxie are creating social networking site pages, applications, and interactive features for users, including games and contests.

With everything being marketed online today, from movies to baby products and more, The Internet is becoming a more important resource than ever before. I personally use the Internet to shop, pay bills, bank, read the news, and yes, watch movie trailers and read about the latest movies. Think about how often you use the Internet on a daily basis I’m sure that it is a bigger part of your life than your realize.

This means that if you have something to promote, the Internet is definitely the place to do it. Forget the newspaper, the TV, and the radio. The most effective marketing tools may just be a mouse click away.

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Image by andywalker via Flickr

Four years ago, Julie Aronson, Connecticut substitute teacher, faced up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of endangering minors. Why? Apparently, her computer became infected with spyware that started displaying pornographic images, which were inadvertently viewed by the students in her class.

Computer security professionals, including Sunbelt Software Inc, CEO Alex Eckelberry, argued that Aronson was an innocent victim of the spyware program.

“The stress of this thing, it just totally freaked her out, “Eckelberry, who led the team of computer investigators responsible for analyzing the school computer used by Aronson, told ComputerWorld. “For four years, she’s been sitting there with this thing hanging over her.”

So are we responsible for the spyware, adware, and viruses that infect our computers? Are we responsible for the content that these programs may display? If the prosecutors in this case had been able to make the charges stick, we might be facing a brave new world in which virus creators have much, much more control over our lives than anyone deserves to have.

A guilty verdict would have opened the floodgates for similar cases, and made us all question the motives of our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and the computers that use.

As it is, Aronson will pay a fine of $100 and have her Connecticut teaching credentials revoked. For Aronson, who was pregnant at the time of the 2004 incident, this is undoubtedly a small price to pay.

Image via Wikipedia

As more businesses realize the value of interactive website
features and social media techniques, DelMonte, makers of Meow Mix cat food, has recently debuted a new interactive website and a game show to promote its new Wholesome Goodness line of cat food.

The website features interactive games called Cat Capades, which allows players to use their “house cat” instincts to overcome household obstacles and challenges.

“We know that cat parents feel a kinship with their cats,
and it’s not uncommon for them to ‘know”
what’s going on their heads—what they think and
feel,” Alison Olsson, account executive for Agency.com,
said in a recent email to DMNews. “We knew this would be
especially fun for cat lovers, because they are familiar with
many of the cat behaviors highlighted in the games.”

Social media strategies are being employed by many companies in
the hopes to reach an increasingly Internet savvy and Internet
based audience. Cereal companies, like General Mills, have
offerings similar to the Meow Mix Site, including an interactive
avatar-based town called Millsbury, which is designed to provide
a place for children to share avatars and items with other
Internet users in their demographics.

Based on trends in Internet usage and social media prevalence
and popularity, it isn’t a stretch to imagine the
websites of the future as increasingly more interactive and
geared toward specific interests and demographics.

Image via CrunchBase

Yahoo Inc recently added new social features to its Yahoo buzz social news site, currently in beta version. Among the new features are the ability for users to incorporate information from their Yahoo profile onto the site, and an updates section which allows users to find content that their friends have voted for, as well as a comments section.

These updates are part of Yahoo’s Yahoo Open Strategy, which the company first announced in April of this year. The purpose of this strategy, according to Yahoo, Inc, is to allow users to replicate the social experience of social networks like MySpace and Facebook via their Yahoo profiles.

“It is reviewing Yahoo from the inside out, across all of our properties, to fundamentally open up those Web services and provide a consistent development model, a consistent deployment and consumer experience as well, “ Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer, said during a keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in April.

The Yahoo Buzz expansion updates come less than a week after a proposed advertising deal with Google Inc failed to come to fruition.

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