Internet & Websites - Page 21

Remember how the Islamic State is using social media in a clever way to recruit members, lure girls away from their homes, and intimidate locals? Well, it looks like a few women in Chechnya have duped the Islamic State for some quick cash.

The unidentified women, currently being investigated for fraud, scammed at least $3,300 from the Islamic State - by promising to head to Syria to join the group. Instead, the women shut down the social media accounts after the money was successfully wired into their accounts.

"I don't recall any precedent like this one in Chechnya, probably because nobody digs deep enough in that direction," said Valery Zolotaryov, a police officer in Chechnya, speaking to a Chechen newspaper. "Anyhow, I don't advise anyone to communicate with dangerous criminals, especially for grabbing quick money."

Facebook is by far the No. 1 social networking website, at least based on numbers, with a whopping 1.49 billion monthly active users, the company said. The site also has 968 million daily average users, which was higher than the 960 million estimate put forward by Wall Street analysts.

Combining the Facebook website, Messenger app and Instagram, users average 46 minutes per day, Facebook officials said.

The increased number is a strong 3.47 percent over its previous quarter, and 13 percent year-over-year increase - as Facebook still finds ways to keep users engaged. Not surprisingly, Facebook is generating a lot of success, especially when it comes to advertising, with the company's mobile app ensuring people are using the service.

More US citizens are being stopped as they try to leave the country, in an effort to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

FBI Director James Comey admits the group's recruitment efforts using social media is successful, as they recruit "troubled souls." IS has been able to radicalize potential recruits from across the world, and those responsible for running the accounts are quick to create new online profiles if one is taken down.

"What worries me most is that ISIL's investment in social media - which has been blossoming in the last six to eight weeks in particular - will cause a significant increase in the number of incidents that we will see," Comey said while speaking at a national security conference. "That's what I worry about all day long."

Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer isn't having a good day, as the Internet is flooding his business with angry phone calls, emails, and Yelp reviews.

Palmer, an avid hunter, was hunting in Zimbabwe when he shot 13-year-old Cecil the Lion. The lion, which lived on protected national parkland, was lured out of its sanctuary - and was shot by the bow hunter. After being wounded, Palmer and his paid guides tracked the animal for about 40 hours before finally killing him.

The lion was extremely popular among tourists at the park, and had six lioness mates and more than a dozen cubs. Palmer paid more than $50,000 to go lion hunting while in Zimbabwe, and killed an animal that wore a GPS collar while being tracked by Oxford University researchers, according to The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

Republican House representative Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, believes it's time for the United States to begin striking back against the Islamic State's cyber commanders.

"What they are saying is 'attack military installations and attack police officers,'" said McCaul, while speaking on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "The chatter is so loud and the volume so high that it's a problem that's very hard to stop and disrupt in this country."

"We need to take the fight over there a little stronger. And we need to hit these guys, these cyber commanders, that are sending these Internet directives out to attack, attack, attack in the United States." However, trying to figure out how to "take the fight" to Islamic State in the online world will be rather challenging - there are at least 100,000 Tweets per day from 50,000 suspected Islamic State-influenced Twitter accounts.

The Islamic State is heavily restricting Internet access in its so-called capital of Raqqa, Syria, according to recent reports.

The group recently began circulating leaflets that demand Internet cafes to remove all Wi-Fi boosters, private wireless adapters, and other hardware that helps provide Internet connectivity.

"You won't find computers in 95 percent of them," said Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, c-founder of the Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently organization, in a statement to The Daily Beast. "It's more like a small shop where not even two or three people can sit down. You go there, bring your own cell or laptop. You tell them, 'I want an account with you.' The Internet café owner will give you a password and account username."

The Islamic State is facing daily problems trying to keep ground in Iraq and Syria, but has had little trouble on the Internet. The group is able to use Twitter and other social networking services to recruit, spread propaganda, and terrorize opponents in a clever twist on public relations.

Islamic State wasn't the first group to spread propaganda and expand extremism using the Internet, but its savvy social media abilities caught Western intelligence officials off-guard. There are thousands of Twitter users posting and retweeting extremist material - and resources simply outmatch that of the State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, for example.

"Online, we move too slowly and know too little to combat this generation of Web-native jihadists," said Jane Harman, former Democratic member of the House of Representatives, in a Washington Post op-ed. "We've failed to mobilize tech and messaging talent to counter the Islamic State on social media. This country built Silicon Valley, we shouldn't need computer lessons from 7th-century thugs. It's past time to bring our counter-narrative up to date."

PewDiePie reportedly makes millions of dollars for creating videos that are published on YouTube - watched by more than 27 million subscribers. A Swedish newspaper said PewDiePie Products AB generated a total of $7.4 million in 2014, a drastic increase from $3.5 million year-over-year.

"Money is a topic that I purposefully tried to avoid for the five years I've been making videos. I just feel like it's not important to anyone. I just want to make entertaining videos," PewDiePie recently said in a video.

I highly doubt PewDiePie believed he would earn millions of dollars from online videos - and feel that if you can build a following the way he did - a paycheck isn't out of the question.

It looks like Internet users in the United States absolutely love streaming content, with more than 135 billion songs and music videos steamed so far in 2015, according to Nielsen. It's a 50 percent increase year-over-year, with more users enjoying Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, and other services on PCs, mobile devices, and in the living room.

Not surprisingly, digital song sales dropped another 10.4 percent, racking up 531.6 million sales - with CDs and digital albums dropping 4 percent down to only 116 million. Music labels are desperate to find ways to collect revenue from streaming music, especially with more people making the transition from downloads to streaming content.

"Obviously, the streaming piece is really great news, when you're talking about darn near 100 percent growth... with no new players," said Dave Bakula, SVP of Nielsen Entertainment, in a statement to Re/code. Of course, the figures compiled by Nielsen Entertainment don't include the recent launch of Apple Music - which may have a significant impact on streaming music.

More than 21 million people used Twitch to livestream events during the E3 gaming expo earlier this month, the company said in a recent blog post. The maximum number of concurrent viewers was 840,000.

It was an impressive event for Twitch, with 11,986,000 hours of E3 content watched during the gaming show. The Microsoft news conference gained the most attention out of all hardware makers, while Electronic Arts drew the most Twitch attention from software makers.

It's getting easier of interested gamers and tech enthusiasts to watch keynotes and press events remotely using Twitch, YouTube, and direct stream links. Considering Amazon's low acquisition costs of Twitch, it absolutely turned out to be the right investment.

An officer from the North Charleston Police Department has been fired after he foolishly posted a picture in which he was wearing nothing but Confederate flag boxer shorts. Not surprisingly, the post by former Sgt. Shannon Dildine - which was online for a few days - quickly spread on the Internet, and found its way to his commanding officers.

"Your posting in this manner led you to being publicly identified as a North Charleston Police officer and associated both you and the Department with an image that symbolizes hate and oppression to a significant portion of the citizens we are sworn to serve," said Police Chief Eddie Driggers, in a termination letter to Sgt. Dildine.

Following a violent gun incident in which nine black worshipers were killed in a South Carolina church by a self-proclaimed white supremacist, the Confederate flag has become a topic of national debate. Even for those arguing the officer has the right to free speech, he clearly lacked a bit of common sense by posting the picture.

Europol has dedicated itself to the difficult task of fighting the Islamic State online, as there are around 100,000 daily tweets from up to 50,000 accounts with links to the terrorist group. Europol officially starts its operation on July 1, and wants to take down Islamic State-linked accounts within two hours following identification.

"Who is it reaching out to young people, in particular, by social media, to get them to come, in the first place? It's very difficult because of the dynamic nature of social media," said Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, in a statement to the Guardian.

Trying to fight IS online has proven difficult, with more interest from the Western world - but the United States has struggled in its efforts. There are no easy answers, and it will take cooperation from regular Twitter users, and continued vigilance from intelligence experts.

Google wants to fight back against the Islamic State's "viral moment" that has been effective in posting rather disgusting and gruesome videos and images on social media.

The Internet giant wants to allow users to be educated about the barbaric and violent actions of the Islamic State, but doesn't want to serve as a distribution method for beheading videos and other content.

"ISIS is having a viral moment on social media and the countervailing viewpoints are nowhere near strong enough to oppose them," said Victoria Grand, policy director at Google, while speaking during the Cannes Lions advertising festival. "ISIS, in particular, has been putting up footage that is inhuman and atrocious. We are still seeing about two or three of these beheadings each week. They are heeding advice from a decade before from Osama bin Laden and they are taking it to another level using social media."

Europol wants to combat the Islamic State online, trying to keep track of almost 50,000 Twitter accounts with suspected ties to the terrorist organization. The United States seems to doubt its own ability to fight IS online, and the group continues to recruit new fighters and young women into its ranks in Iraq and Syria.

If all goes according to plan, the new efforts would be able to shutdown Twitter accounts within two hours of creation - and is designed to be an "effective way of combating the problem," said Rob Wainright, director of Europol, in a statement to BBC.

However, trying to identify and track all social media accounts with suspected IS ties is not feasible. "We will have to combine what we see online, with our own intelligence and that is shared with us by European police services, so we can be a bit more targeted and identify who the key user accounts are... and concentrate on closing them down."

The US State Department recently issued an internal memo that shows growing frustration in the effort to combat the Islamic State on social media. The US has tried launching "countermessaging" campaigns that have only been "trumped" by recent IS efforts, according to officials.

"The memo is an assessment not of the larger counter-ISIL messaging effort, but how the small group of coalition members communicates internally and externally, said John Kirby, State Department spokesman, while speaking to the New York Times.

There is concern that the Obama Administration is leading a failed effort to combat IS in Iraq, with the extremist group trying to solidify its so-called caliphate.

If you thought your PC or Internet connection couldn't handle that 8K video we reported on last week, what do you think will happen with this new 360-degree, 8K video that Dubai360 has just posted to YouTube? Your PC will melt in its own flames, that's what.

The world's first 360-degree 8K video is a beautiful one, with a 24-hour timelapse of the Dubai airport. The 8K video was achieved using 88,000 individual shots that created many four-hour videos, that were then stitched together. It's an incredible video, and is sure to test out both your PC, and your Internet connection. Just don't try it with dial up.

The fight against Internet piracy apparently isn't going well for copyright holders, and "legislation is pushing people to steal," said Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market for the European Commission. Speaking during Midem, Ansip believes providing content across the EU - and educating users about legal options - are two critical steps that must be addressed.

The EU's recently adopted Digital Single Market strategy will hopefully end geo-blocking among EU nations, while consumers can legally purchase more content. The removal of geo-blocking will make it legal for 100 million Europeans to access content they own in other countries - a major development, with Europeans taking more than 270 million cross-border trips that last at least one night.

"Today, we don't have a Digital Single Market in the European Union," Ansip said.

The ISIS terrorist group suffered an attack from three Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) missiles, based on social media intelligence collected by the 361st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group. It took just 22 hours following the US military identifying the online posts before an airstrike that destroyed an ISIS headquarters building.

"It was a post on social media to bombs on target in less than 24 hours," said Air Force Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of the Air Combat Command, in a statement published by Defense Tech. "Incredible work when you think about (it)."

ISIS is rather clever in its continued use of social media, which the US and other governments have struggled to keep up with, but mistakes have been made by the extremist group. This is the latest example of social media-related issues leading to real-world destruction - and unknown casualties.

The Google Gmail email service now has 900 million users across the world, a drastic increase over the 425 million monthly active users the company reported in 2012.

At least 75 percent of Gmail users access their accounts on a mobile device, and now is a good time for Google to launch Inbox. The service, which is available on Google Play or from the Apple Store, allows users to better organize their mobile Gmail inboxes. Inbox is available to anyone interested in downloading it and giving a shot, which features "Highlights" so information is more easily viewable in the email feed.

Outlook.com has at least 400 million active accounts, while Yahoo Mail has 225 million monthly active users - with many users owning multiple email addresses, sometimes spread across different email providers.

The Islamic State continues vicious attacks in Iraq and Syria, taking over new territory while also suffering setbacks - and the fight continues on another front: the Internet.

The US State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) tries to monitor how IS uses the Internet for its own purposes, though has struggled to counter its evolving online strategy. Secretary of State John Kerry has hired Richard Stengel, former Time managing editor, to help create a new strategy to publish the harsh reality of citizens living under IS control.

Here is what Stengel told the Houston Chronicle: "You say the Caliphate is heaven on earth? We're going to show you pictures where sewers don't work. You're winning on the battlefield? Here's a satellite picture of you guys retreating."