Be Mindful of Privacy & Security with Shortened URLS- Goo.gl Known Security Flaw Benefits Those who Know How to Use It

Most people have become accustomed to shortened URL's. The purpose is to take some long link, and make it much smaller in the number of characters. More devious usages of shortened URL's is to change a link to a porn website to something like www.bla.gl/sje so the viewer right away doesn't know where the link they are clicking is going to go. 

In the second scenario mentioned this has been a concern for some time, and there is an easy fix http://www.longurl.ORG (*See asterisk below for important longurl info) This website will allow you to enter any shortened URL, and show you where it leads to. Protecting you from accidentally clicking on a shortened URL that you wouldn't have clicked in the previous days of hovering ones mouse over the link to show where it leads.

"OLD" Style of checking destination of a link -

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Google Purposely Scaring Users with Login-Errors (New Spin on Year-Old Tactics)

Google likes to scare users by displaying red, bold text stating the horrible things that will happen "if" they should lose access to your account.

I reported on this issue last summer, in this article, and the practice is still continuing one year later. The image on the top was taken around 6:00P.M. E.S.T on June 16th, 2012 while attempting to login to my Google (Gmail, and Google Drive) account.

This image appeared after entering the same password 3-4 times, on two different Google login platforms, Gmail and Google Drive. The password was entered manually each time, meticulously as I was thinking I may have been hacked since I knew I was entering the correct password, which on the last attempt worked, and prompted the page screen shot below.

Screen shot taken around 6:00 P.M. E.S.T. on June 16, 2012.
Screen shot is of prompt-screen for phone number in between a successful login to a Go
ogle service, and that services main page. This page would appear in between the login page for Gmail, and the user gaining access to then Gmail inbox. 

This image is very similar to one I post in my previous article, which is shown for comparison below.

Screen shot is of a prompt-screen in between a successful login to a Google service, and that services main page. This would appear between the login page for Gmail, and the user gaining access to then Gmail inbox. No time stamp information is currently available for this image. Image Source

Google has multiple variants of this implementation shown in the image below, also from previous article.

Screen Shot Taken: 8/31/11 12:32 AM Screen shot is of a prompt-screen in between a successful login to a Google service, and that services main page. This would appear between the login page for Gmail, and the user gaining access to then Gmail inbox. Image Source

Last year when I originally wrote about this topic it seemed both benign, and an invasion of privacy. Google wanted to gain information, so they attempted to gain phone numbers. Ultimately they want a database of all human knowledge, including all knowledge that exists anywhere about you. They want to know everything.

A year ago I declined to give my phone number, although as many who attempt to fight the good fight we often have to use the tools of the enemy to our advantage. A year after the first report I have an android phone, of which is already synced to my Google account. It didn't matter this time that they wanted it, I entered it, whatever.

The problem was how Google went about it. I believe they crossed a major ethical line. I believe Google is now operating a moderated script of one that was running last summer causing the phone number prompts.

As of now this is speculation, and I have no proof that it exists or that I will be able to find such proof before it disappears. I welcome any, and all to try to support my hypothesis or disprove it. Please pardon any techno-babble below. Below is my hypothesis on the maliciously designed Google script that is operating in the wild across the Google Umbrella Network.

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Watch YouTube Videos "With Your Friends"

No longer do we live in an age of a small spectrum of channels that displayed the news to the society, and where the events of the previous days are not learned until the reports in the various newspapers the next morning.

No longer do we live in a time where the majority of "official" information was trusted simply because of the guise of authority, and knowledge. No longer a time where the information the government provides should be taken second to, and in some cases above, the word of God.



That age has long since passed away, and in it's replacement there is an age of a society that is almost completely different, thanks solely to the age of being able to transmit information almost instantaneously between any locations on Earth, and beyond.

However, it was in those times that people would have to gather in a group to watch the evening radio broadcast, or listen to the important news regarding events to impact their daily life. It would be in a hybird of those times, and the time of the internet that there would be a cause to create a group to watch YouTube videos together.

It seems redundant to make a group to watch videos with others at the same time, and having to use certain platforms to synchronize this action. If a group of people wanted to all watch a YouTube clip, they could simply share the link in one of the many ways already available. From E-Mail to instant message, text message, tweet about it, or share it to Facebook, there really doesn't seem to be any need for Google, and their new Google+ platform to want to create groups for people to watch YouTube videos together.

The following screenshot was taken while attempting to gather the embed code from an Alex Jones video which displayed the feature of watching it with friends present as well.

Who Are These Friends? Big Sis? Barry Sotoro? Goldman Sachs?f

When taken in conjunction that groups such as the Federal Reserve, and the Obama Administrations Rumor Task Force, it would not be surprising to use a platform that openly doesn't care about privacy, according to former C.E.O Eric Schmidt, and can take lists of those who were of a certain political mindset, how close they were to each other, and even potential "hotbeds" or terrorist activities, such as large gatherings of Veterans, Constitutionalists, and Ron Paul supporters.
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Could The Govt. Use Facebook to Track Ron Paul Supporters?

The questions of if the government could, or more likely is, using Facebook to track Ron Paul supporters. On the surface this doesn't seem a difficult task, as a government operative simply needs to join a Facebook.com group, and be provided with a list of names.

The tracking here not only allows those who wish to do so lists of Ron Paul supporters, but be able to track the other trends of those people, in turn being able to track the flow, and identify key common topics among this group in order to provide more effective counter measures, or engage in disinformation.

Facebook was recently found to be tracking their users even after they logged out of their account. With a smaller list of people they can pinpoint their efforts to infiltrate the various movements, and attempt to co-op leading ideas before they become too mainstream and associated with Dr. Paul.

The below image is a screen shot taken of the Facebook.com group "Black This Out" which is a pro Ron Paul group.

The image also contains a question prompt box to enter your e-mail address, and password, so Facebook can go through all your e-mail and find all of your friends.

Facebook is being sued for selling personal information, selling Ron Paul information to the government wouldn't be a stretch.
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Twitter: "Want Your Password, Give Us Your Number"

Twitter.com, a social media outlet allowing "tweets" of up to 140 characters to be sent at a time, allowing friends, and others, to keep up to date with your doings.

While you're keeping tabs on your crush, Twitter is keeping up on you. For example, those who forget their password to their Twitter.com account simply click on the forgotten password option. Years ago if a password was lost, and required a reset then a link was clicked, and a reset link would be sent to
the e-mail account registered with the user name.

Why is it that system is no longer good enough? Has the hacking skills of the infamous men in caves out to get us increased exponentially, to the point they would want to devote massive resources to obtaining access to a tween Twitter account. They could have however simply devoted those resources to obtaining the cell phone number associated with the account. Since most teenagers, actually most people share their phone numbers Twitter's phone number verification doesn't seem a very reliable protection measure for my account.

If it's clearly not meant to be an excellent layer of defense, then what is the purpose of collecting cell phone numbers, and linking them with Twitter.com accounts?

Recently corporations have found a new way to earn a profit. Simply sell the Federal, local, and state governments information on your customers.  As an added bonus if you get caught you can simply start right back up after a small cool down period, such as G.P.S. manufacturer TomTom did.

Some other companies that have been caught in bed with the Fed are Apple, Google, TomTom, and On-Star. This goes without mentioning the Prison-Internet grid being lowered into place by companies such as Google, and Facebook.

More creepy prison internet stories, to name a few:
Cisco, 

Google Aims For Your Identity

Google & YouTube - Pushing Prison Internet

Facebook Collection of Data

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Google Aims to Own Your ID - One Way or Another.

In an article posted earlier, I mentioned how Google was attempting to roll out prison-internet features via it's services such as YouTube, and Gmail. This, however, appears to be part of a much larger scheme.

Google has recently developed and launched a new social networking platform by the name of G+, or Google Plus. Google Chairman, and former C.E.O. Eric Schmidt has referred to G+ as an “identity service”, and taken from an article at buisnessweek.com stated:

G+ was built primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally it depends on people using their real names if they’re going to build future products that leverage that information.

Personal information is quite valuable to Google, as it's able to target specific advertising to specific demographics, and with advertising agencies looking to get the most customers with the least cost, the more information Google has on you, the more money you're likely to make them.

However, not all people will become a member of the new G+ service, and there will be users of other Google services such as YouTube, and Gmail, that will not link personal information, such as age, gender, or location to their accounts.

It appears that Google is attempting to make the most profit off of your internet activity, by coercing users of it's other services to give them more of their personal information. As shown in the following graphic, that is displayed to users of Google services while attempting to log in, without having a phone number linked to that account.

Google attempts to scare users into providing their phone number by warning that they are likely to lose all access to their account if they don't, which is highlighted in red font. Below that they provide a location to put your phone number, and a large, promptly displayed "add phone" button, making users believe they have to provide a phone number to continue to use the service they were attempting to access. It's only below that, it a font size much smaller than the rest of the page, that users are given the option to skip providing Google with that information.

Edit 8/31/11 12:32 AM: This is the latest screen that appeared for myself while attempting to log into Google services such as GMail, YouTube, and Blogger:

This time I'm being warned that I should "wait until it's too late" to give Google my personal information, for tracking, advertising, and of course, security purposes.

End Edit

One has to question what is being done with that information, who see's it, and what other information it's linked to. That question is even more prominent given Google's past reputation regarding privacy.

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Google and YouTube - Pushing Prison-Internet Functions on Users

A newer article has been written, which can be found here.

Instead of directly being logged in, many users of Google.com services, such as Gmail, and YouTube, were greeted with the following page.

Although this page may seem innocuous at first, it's part of a larger roll out of no other than creepy internet protocols being rolled out.

This page uses highlighted red font to attempt to scare users into giving their phone number to be able to restore their accounts or they "could lose all access to [their] account". It's only hidden in tiny font, at the bottom of the page, the option to skip this step.

This is just one piece of the coming prison-internet. It starts with "opt-in" features, then it becomes "opt-out" as many Facebook features are, such as facial recognition, and location tracking, and it's not long before there is an internet id required for U.S. citizens. After all, the Obama administration publicly admits wanting an internet id, and wanting looking forward to "creating an identity ecosystem".

Edit: Newest image received upon attempting to log into Google services:

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Facebooks Collection of Data, and Tracking of Users

Everyday seems more, and more, as though we're living within the pages of 1984. The police state, the tracking, surveillance, all for "security".

One of the ways that internet giant Facebook decided was to implement a function on their website that would make their users feel secure, log access to their account, and alert you if an unauthorized access is made to the account.

Personally I believe that there wouldn't be a need for so much Facebook security if people practiced a bit of internet security themselves, made secure passwords, and didn't post illegal/inappropriate pictures, or videos. Regardless, Facebook is going full steam ahead with protecting their client base.

The system works like this, every time you log onto Facebook it checks your IP against a log of IP's, as well as checks what type of platform you're accessing the site from. If the platform, and the IP don't match, it's going to give you a box that looks like this:

Now, they simply want you to name the device you logged in on, and in you go. This is also an unchangeable feature, you cannot opt-out of this service, and you can't continue into Facebook until you give a name for the device.

The next time someone logs into Facebook using that device, you'll get an e-mail, which will look similar to the one below.

This includes the exact time of the login, the IP address, the device name, and a rough estimate of where that IP is located.

You can then make the decision of if that was authorized or not. Then maybe do something, unless it was unauthorized from your own house, or a prank, in which case this will do you no good.

This security system is nothing but a bunch of bells, and whistles. In reality, there are much more cost effective, and better security systems for this instance. For example, a very difficult password would suffice.

So now Facebook has a huge list of all the devices you've used, all the locations you've been, all the IP addresses used whenever someone accessed the site. You can see what users are occasionally together, who uses what device the most, etc. Bottom line, is nothing good can come from Facebook's cache of information like this.


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It's Always Cloudy on the Internet

Although web giant Amazon.com came under fire due to an infowars.com report showing that there is no privacy at all on Amazons own Cloud service.

“5.2 Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law” - From Amazon, source InfoWars report.

One would like to think that it wouldn't be to hard to figure out what that paragraph meant, although I suppose in today's messed up world it's possible people knowingly read the super fine print, and gave the rights to all their files to Amazon to do what they please. Wedding photos, inappropiate pictures your teenager took, pictures of a whole barrage of things that could make it even easier for cops to forcefully enter your home, and seize your property.


It seems that the once Sunny days of the internet are becomming more, and more gloom. Not supprisingly, the Microsoft Xbox, which already has question voice, and facial recognition features, will now allow cloud storage for their members.



I plan on making this part of a series on the creepy tracking, cloud society we're moving into. With the new trend to stay current is to track as much of your customers data as possible, with as little consent as possible, and do whatever you want with it.

The new tags I'll be using for these type articles are Prison Internet (known as Web2.0, internet restrictions, etc), and Clouds (such as this, and the Amazon cloud)
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Just One of Facebooks Creepy 1984esque Features

Facebook has always come under fire for their privacy policies, who was able to get access to your information without your approval, and making several of their features "opt-out". Those who were unlikely enough to hear about the new feature, are automatically in it, and agree to do whatever it's terms are.

There have been several features on Facebook that are just creepy, and as I go through the back pages of the site, I'll find a few more, and some more, etc.

This one is something I bet FB users are met with everyday:

"Recognized Devices: Just One of FB's 1984esque features"

So users now have a stored list of their trusted devices. How does FB know it's trusted? I'm assuming it has a list that has IP, the name you give it IE: "Home Computer", and the account it's associated with. So now your "Home Computer" is trusted.

This data has numerous implications. Facebook can analyze and better market ways to get more exposure to sponsors in high volume devices, and focus efforts on lower volume areas, thanks to your kind help. Additionally, who has access to this list? How secure is this list? It wouldn't be too hard for someone with a list of IP's, and names of computers, and the owner of the account to cause some serious problems.

This is done under the guise of security. In the event that someone logs in at a site, or computer not designated to be you, FB will alert you on your next sign in, and ask if it was you, someone you know, or unauthorized. If chances are it was you, then you get the opportunity (albeit forced) to now name that location.

If people simple followed simple internet safety guidelines, had a firewall and anti-virus installed, and parents took responsibility by teaching their children how to act on the internet, and how to properly form a password, to look at the url's, etc, then FB wouldn't be developing these features, and this one doesn't make my account information feel any more secure.

O, yea? What happens if it was unauthorized? Federal task force to hunt the offender down? Doubtful. Rob Paul Rally.....certainly. A 1 man person flash-mob at the NYC Fed......absolutely.

Amended August 20:
I received an e-mail from Facebook today alerting me that a device I had signed in on, had signed in, and wasn't on my recognized list. It shows the devices name, which I NEVER name, the exact time, and IP address, and the location.

 That huge list of all the information is a scary thing, I'm more afraid of that than someone using my FB account without my knowing. Not to mention they have a list of every computer/ip/location you've ever been on FB with.


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