“That's where
the people is...” to miss-quote Willie Sutton.
Attacks
on Chinese sites continue: Now it’s 40 million users of Tianya who
get the bad news (updated)
December 26, 2011 by admin
Zheng Yi reports:
The registration
details of about 40 million users of tianya.cn, a big social
networking site, were found to have been leaked on Sunday, following
last Thursday’s discovery that user information had been leaked
from several other websites.
According to Web
users, tianya.cn was hacked and some 40 million users’ names and
passwords were accessed. The details had been stored
in clear text format instead of being encrypted, the
Chengdu Evening News reported.
A tianya.cn
customer service staff member who wished to remain anonymous
confirmed the leak and said it was being investigated.
“The released
information belongs to users who registered on our website before
November 2009, when we saved information in clear text format. After
that we started using encryption,” she said.
Read more on Global
Times.
China.org.cn
and ShanghaiDaily.com
also report the breach, the latter adding that although there has
been no official confirmation of some breaches I previously noted on
this blog:
More profiles were later found online,
including 20 million from 7k7k.com and 8 million from duowan.com,
both gaming sites, and 5 million from SNS website renren.com, the
newspaper said.
Update: Renren has
reportedly denied
that they had any breach or ever stored passwords in clear text.
(Related) Is
this why?
"China is increasingly
operating an online parallel universe where social media clones
'mimic the functions of the most popular, internationally recognized
social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The
replicas, however, come with a major catch: they systematically
comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship
requirements.' They are satisfying the growing demand of hundreds of
millions of Chinese citizens for social media tools, reducing
incentives for them to circumvent the 'Great Firewall,' Freedom House
warns. Testing by researchers found that a search for the names of
seven prominent Chinese lawyers, activists, and journalists on Sina
Weibo returned no results, only an Orwellian notice that 'According
to related laws and policy, some of the results are not shown here.'"
Perspective: I'm
a “Bah, humbug!” kind of guy, so I'm looking for a good
anti-social network... (Seriously, worth reading.)
December 25, 2011
ComScore:
Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed
It’s
a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and
Where It’s Headed, December 21, 2011
- "The importance of social networking in today’s online experience cannot be overstated. Social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in October 2011, and reaches 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe. This report analyzes the current state of social networking activity around the globe, providing key insights into how social networking has influenced the digital landscape and implications for marketers operating in this social world."
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