Facebook prohibits unauthorised crawling

Facebook has made changes to its social networking site in order to stop crawling activity by unauthorised users.

The changes, introduced by modifying the Facebook robot.txt file including crawling data settings, specify that only certain search engines (such as Google and Microsoft's Bing) have authorised access to perform such activities.

Facebook attempted to sue Pete Warden, associate of www.fanpageanalytics.com after he used data crawling on Facebook to gather user information for the website. Following the legal case, Facebook decided to modify their current crawling settings in order to improve privacy and user safety.

They have insisted that they will grant crawling permission to any legitamite search outfits or sources provided that their reasons are appropriate. Written permission will be granted to all successful applications.

A blog post from Facebook CTO Bret Taylor can be found here regarding the subject.

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Two Million Indecent Images and Videos Shared by Sex Offenders

The NSPCC have found that over two million indecent images were shared between 100 offenders convicted within the last 20 months.

Research also confirmed that approximately one in four offenders held a position of trust within the community. Such roles included teachers, Police officers, medical professionals and social workers.

An estimated 10% of the convicted had been in possession of indecent imagery for five or more years before being caught. One third of offenders had distributed indecent material online and one in six had abused or groomed a child.

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Obscene Punlications Act used with Online Chat

An individual has been charged with nine offences under the Obscene Publications Act (1959) in relation to online chat material.

According to the law, any publications that "tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely ... to read, see or hear" the content are counted as an offence.

The individual has also been charged with two counts of making and four counts of possessing indecent material.

A Detective Sergeant from the Kent Police force insisted that the Law should be changed to cover the "legislative gap in terms of written fantasy material specifically about child rape and murder".

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NHS hit by data stealing worm

A worm capable of transfering sensitive data to remote servers has infected over 1,100 computers in the NHS network.

The amount of stolen data is thought to be much more serious than just the four gigabytes of data researchers say the NHS has lost. The sensitive information contains browser cookies, logon and banking details.

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple Quicktime player have been cited as the root cause for the worm infestation.

See more details here.

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UN Cybercrime Debate

A UN commitee cannot decide on a strategy for targeting and preventing cybercrime.

Some parties voiced that a new agreement must be created, whilst others thought it best to only modify the existing strategy.

More information can be found here.

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SCD9 will fight obscene publications and related problems

Experts in several different fields have been brought together into one London unit named SCD9.

The aim of the unit is to tackle crime in areas such as trafficking, prostitiuion, violence, drugs and other relevant crimes. Approximately 39 officers with the necessary experience have been hired to work within the unit.

One area of the unit will also focus on obscene publications, extreme pornography and sharing of indecent images of children via the Internet. It is hoped that the research and work done in this part of the unit will cut down the overall problem of indecent imagery and related sex offences.

SCD9 has been criticised as being a waste of Police resouces and money. However, the Metropolitan Police are confident it will make a significant difference in the fight against crime.

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800,000 affected by NHS 'computer error'

The NHS Blood and Transfusion service has today apologised for a computer error that lead to database records of over 800,000 people being misunderstood.

The database (used for storing details of organ donation) was found to contain incorrect information regarding the transplant wishes of those 800,000 people. Data had been imported from the DVLA and incorrectly processed so that some people had organs removed without personal consent and vice versa.

The NHS stressed that only 21 people had died with incorrect details on their records. In the instances that organs were removed, family members gave their permission to carry the proceedure out.

The technical error that is thought to have caused the problems affects only those who registered preferences on a driving license application form.

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