WASHINGTON (AP) — Young people are having a harder time keeping their profile pages and email accounts secure, and though many treat hacking or spying as a joke, nearly half who have been victims were upset by it.
An Associated Press-MTV poll finds 3 in 10 teens and young adults have had people log on to their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other Internet accounts and either impersonate or spy on them. That’s nearly double the level seen in 2009.
The poll found solid majorities saying they knew who was behind it: 72 percent for spying, 65 percent for hacking.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee on Tuesday accused China of widespread cyber economic espionage and said many U.S. firms were afraid to come forward for fear their computers would be the targets of even more attacks.
“China’s economic espionage has reached an intolerable level and I believe that the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have an obligation to confront Beijing and demand that they put a stop to this piracy,” Republican Representative Mike Rogers said at a committee hearing on cybersecurity.
“Beijing is waging a massive trade war on us all, and we should band together to pressure them to stop,” he said.
Internet giant Google partially pulled out of China last year after concerns of censorship and a hacking episode that it said originated from China.
Rogers said companies like Google that reported cyber attacks were “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“There are more companies that have been hit that won’t talk about it in the press, for fear of provoking further Chinese attacks,” he said.
Behind closed doors, however, companies describe attacks that originate in China, he said.
While U.S. officials and firms point the finger at China for many cyber attacks, China says it is one of the world’s biggest victims of hacking.
“Attributing this espionage isn’t easy, but talk to any private sector cyber analyst, and they will tell you there is little doubt that this is a massive campaign being conducted by the Chinese government,” Rogers said.
(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Xavier Briand)
The threat to Nicolas Sarkozy’s re-election bid from corruption scandals intensified on Wednesday after a leading state prosecutor close to the president was summoned before judges over an alleged dirty tricks campaign to spy on journalists.
Seven months before the presidential election, Sarkozy, who once promised to be Mr Squeaky Clean of French politics, has seen his close circle come under pressure in a series of corruption investigations whose plots thicken by the day. Investigators are untangling a web of scandals involving alleged illegal party-funding with banknotes variously stuffed into bags, briefcases and brown envelopes, as well as phone interceptions.
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London: New Home Office rules asking academic staff at British universities to keep a tab on students from India and other non-EU countries have sparked off concern that lecturers have been turned into “spies and spooks”.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A prosecutor says a Taiwanese political science professor has been detained for providing data on visiting Chinese activists to Beijing.
Huang Mou-hsin says Wu Chang-yu of Central Police University was detained Friday pending filing of formal charges.
Taiwan’s United Daily News quoted unidentified sources as saying Wu frequently visited China to lecture on fortunetelling — his other specialty. It says Chinese officials offered him fortunetelling businesses in exchange for spying on the Taiwan activities of selected Chinese. None of the alleged targets were named.
Taiwan and China continue to spy on each other despite a recent improvement in their relationship amid growing economic ties. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949.
