Posted 09/16/09 at 07:29:32 PM by Pulkit Chandna

The most defining feature of Web 2.0 is arguably its enhanced level of interactivity. But “the very aspects of Web 2.0 sites that have made them so revolutionary” have also made them highly vulnerable to abuse, according to web security firm Websense. The San Diego-based company published its biannual “State of the Internet” on Tuesday.

The report (PDF) reveals that 95% of comments that appear on blogs, chat rooms and online forums fall into two broad categories: spam and malicious content. Cyber scoundrels now seem more focused on targeting Web 2.0 websites with user-generated content than ever before. Many of the most frequented internet properties are sites that tolerate user-generated content. And 61% of the top 100 sites either host malicious content or link to it, according to the report.

Spam and malicious content seem to go hand in hand, for Websense Security Labs found that 85.6 of spam mails in circulation during the first half of 2009 contained links to malicious sites.

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Posted 07/13/09 at 09:29:54 AM by Paul Lilly

Back when our great-grandparents used to walk barefoot to school in scorching hot snow uphill both ways, folks stay connected to world events through newspapers, word of mouth, or via the Pony Express. A lot has changed since then, and in between taking online correspondence courses and sipping on lattes while wearing a robe and slippers to avoid being chilled from the central air conditioning, today's generation consumes the news online.

So it was only a matter of time before someone studied the modern news cycle, and that's exactly what researchers at Cornell have done. Using what The New York Times describes as "powerful computers and clever algorithms," the research team scoured 90 million articles and blog posts on 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs looking for repeated phrases. 

The end result? In most cases, traditional news outlets led the way with blogs following behind, usually by 2.5 hours. However, that wasn't always the case; 3.5 percent of story lines originated from blogs and then made their way to traditional media.

"This is a landmark piece of work on the flow of news through the world," said Eric Horvitz, a researcher at Microsoft and president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. "And the study shows how Web-scale analytics can serve as powerful sociological laboratories."

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Posted 04/18/08 at 01:50:25 AM by Tom Edwards

Tom, Gordon, Dave, and Andy get together to talk about online security and Microsoft's latest marketing move. We also answer your tech questions and poke Gordon with a stick to get him extra angry for this week's rant.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

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Posted 04/16/07 at 06:33:50 PM by Will Smith

With our community blogs, we're giving our super-users a place to share their insight and opinions with you!

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