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China is targeting popular smartphone-based instant messaging services in a month-long campaign to crack down on the spreading of rumors and what it calls “hostile forces at home and abroad,” the latest move to restrict online freedom of expression. The official Xinhua News Agency said the campaign started Tuesday and the services targeted included WeChat, a service run by TenCent Holdings Ltd, which incorporates social media functions that resemble microblog features and that has surged in popularity the last two years. Users can use such services to send messages to a select group of friends, or can follow public accounts,...

Long Knives Out for That Punk Kid Snowden June 11, 2013 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. We have the Washington and media elites upset about Edward Snowden. Folks, let me ask.Didn't we just go through an election where we were toldthat the youths of America had all the answers? We had to get the youth of America interested in American politics. We had to get them interested to the point that they cared. The youth of America, it's their future. The youth vote, that mattered as much as anything,whoever got the youth vote was...

NEW YORK -- Instant-messaging conversations, though quick, are not always fleeting. Former Republican Rep. Mark Foley's salacious chats with teenage interns, know as pages, emerged along with e-mails last week as the congressman abruptly resigned. ABC News, which broke the story, has said former pages were the source of the revelations about instant messages from 2003. Most likely, the pages who corresponded with Foley either manually saved messages or used IM software with built-in logging capabilities, allowing time-stamped chat sessions to be kept indefinitely on one's computer. The programs vary in whether the features are initially on or off and...

Can the computer expert Freepers explain how one can verify/authenticate the IM's attributed to Foley? Can it be done reliably and/or on the other side, is it possible for someone well-versed in computer technology to issue "phony" IM's, so it would appear as if Foley had sent them?

A 16-year-old girl who had been missing since Saturday was found stabbed to death and dismembered — and police say her killer lived right next door. Jonathan Zarate, 18, appeared Monday in Morris County Court to face charges of murder, weapons offenses, and hindering apprehension in the slaying of Jennifer Parks. Zarate lived next door to Parks in their Randolph, N.J., neighborhood, and prosecutors say the 16-year-old victim left her house early Saturday morning to watch TV with Zarate. But then, authorities said, the two became embroiled in an argument that led to Parks' gruesome killing.

Reuters has shut down its instant messaging system after suffering an onslaught from a new Kelvir worm, the company confirmed Thursday. The London-based international media company decided to take its Reuters Messaging system completely offline after noticing the attack on its network earlier on Thursday, a Reuters representative said. The new variant attempted to spread by sending fake instant messages to people in contact lists on infected systems, a technique used by earlier Kelvir strains. The messages, crafted to look exactly like legitimate IM correspondence, attempted to lure people to a Web site where their computers would be infected with...

Over the last four years, I've been saying that instant messaging (IM) is a security threat waiting to happen. While a few random computer viruses over the years have exploited IMs, there's been a definite uptick in IM-borne virus activity within the last few weeks. Most of these IM-borne viruses have targeted MSN Messenger, although the ever popular AOL IM is not without its own problems. Microsoft's recent announcement regarding greater IM capabilities within Microsoft Office, however, could set the stage for faster and more efficient computer virus attacks in the very near future.

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In 1996 a little known Israeli company wrote a piece of software that quickly became one of the most downloaded programs on the web and revolutionised global communications. It enabled any two people anywhere to type messages to each other in real time. ICQ was a prototype instant messaging (IM) system that within two years had 11 million users. It attracted the attention of internet powerhouse America Online, which bought it outright in 1998 for $287 million. Since then scores of companies have produced similar products that can usually be obtained free of charge. "If you live in Europe or...

My daughter's AIM screenname just sent me a message that said "check this out," followed by a link with what looks like a television station, "wgutv," in the URL.Clicking on the link leads to a site with a picture of Osama bin Laden, with the headline "OSAMA FOUND."Fifteen seconds after I clicked on this link, my daughter sent a message that saying "don't click on any weird links my screenname sends you!"So I refused to accept the applet for this video and exited the site.Problem is, my daughter did not send this link. The message did not show up on...

Interesting!

Vonage said Thursday it intends to fight the first-ever decision by a U.S. state to regulate companies that provide Internet-based phone services. Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission unanimously decided two weeks ago that the New Jersey-based voice over IP (VoIP) provider is subject to the rules and regulations that cover traditional phone companies. The state has ordered Vonage to get the proper telephone company business licenses and to immediately pay fees to the state's Department of Administration to support 911 services, according to a representative for the Minnesota PUC. Bill Wilhelm, an attorney for Vonage, called the decision into question Thursday,...