Public Policy Blog
Updates on technology policy issues
2-step verification: stay safe around the world in 40 languages
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Posted by Nishit Shah, Product Manager, Google Security
(Cross-posted on the
Online Security Blog
)
Earlier this year, we
introduced
a security feature called
2-step verification
that helps protect your Google Account from threats like password compromise and identity theft. By entering a one-time verification code from your phone after you type your password, you can make it much tougher for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account.
People have told us how much they like the feature, which is why we're thrilled to offer 2-step verification in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries. There’s never been a better time to set it up: Examples in the news of password theft and data breaches constantly remind us to stay on our toes and take advantage of tools to properly secure our valuable online information. Email, social networking and other online accounts still get compromised today, but 2-step verification cuts those risks significantly.
We recommend investing some time in keeping your information safe by watching our
2-step verification video
to learn how to quickly increase your Google Account’s resistance to common problems like reused passwords and
malware and phishing scams
. Wherever you are in the world,
sign up for 2-step verification
and help keep yourself one step ahead of the bad guys.
To learn more about online safety tips and resources, visit our ongoing security
blog series
, and review a couple of simple
tips and tricks
for online security. Also, watch our video about
five easy ways
to help you stay safe and secure as you browse.
An update on our Admeld acquisition
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising
Last month we
announced
our plans to acquire Admeld, in order to make display advertising simpler, more efficient and more valuable for publishers. Companies have publicly said that this acquisition “is great news for the industry and is proof that our space will continue to have aggressive, compound growth for the next several years” (Cadreon) and that it “will accelerate innovation and lead to great new advertising options for both publishers and advertisers” (Photobucket). Some more industry reaction is
here
.
We’ve been discussing this deal with the Department of Justice, who are obliged to review the transaction because of its purchase price. As they do for many acquisitions, they have sent us a “second request”, which means that they are asking for more information in order to complete their review of this particular acquisition. This doesn’t surprise us, as today’s display advertising industry is very new and highly complex. But we’ll work to enable this review to be concluded as quickly as possible - display advertising is highly competitive and fast moving, and we don’t want our efforts to bring better services to our clients to be delayed.
Here’s why we think the display advertising business is, and will remain, extremely competitive:
Buyers and sellers of display ads and ad space have an incredible and ever-growing range of options for transacting display ads—direct sales, networks, exchanges, demand and supply platforms, yield managers, private exchanges and more.
In fact, since we announced this acquisition about a month ago, at least
three
new
and
expanded
platforms for buyers and publishers have been launched. Others continue to
grow
.
Analysts have noted that switching suppliers is relatively easy and that this isn’t a “sticky” business.
Even another supplier of publisher solutions is reported as
acknowledging the reality
that Google “continues to face competitive pressure from the more than a thousand companies angling for a piece of marketers' budgets".
While the Department of Justice works to finish their review, it’s business as usual for our clients, and we’ll continue to actively work to improve our solutions for our partners in the display advertising space.
Celebrating the creativity of YouTube’s Partners
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Posted by Tom Pickett, Director of Content Operations and Online Creators
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
and the
YouTube Blog
)
College friends make
trick basketball shots into a career
. A small blender company gets international attention by
blending glow sticks and iPads
. A musician goes from bagging groceries to
beatboxing around the world
. One of the most inspiring things about YouTube is the way people across the U.S. and around the world use it as a way to express their passions—and to turn those passions into careers.
There are 20,000 people in the
YouTube Partner Program
, and numerous other companies and organizations use YouTube to draw attention to their causes and promote their businesses. Hundreds of people are making six-figure incomes on the site, enabling them to hire editors and producers and create even more original content. We’re helping our Partners grow their careers by running
programs like YouTube NextUp and Creator Institute
, and working to
make the site a better and better place
for people to grow businesses and build audiences.
To shine a light on the many inspiring things happening on YouTube, we’ve put together a report sharing the stories of 20 YouTube Partners who are changing lives, businesses and in some cases, history. You can
download a PDF
version of “YouTube: Celebrating the next generation of creative video” or visit it online at
youtube.com/awesomeytpartners
. YouTube is a very special place because of the passion of our Partners and the positivity they bring, and we hope you’ll find these stories as uplifting as we do.
Using data to protect people from malware
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Posted by Damian Menscher, Security Engineer
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
The Internet brings remarkable benefits to society. Unfortunately, some people use it for harm and their own gain at the expense of others. We believe in the power of the web and information, and we work every day to detect potential abuse of our services and ward off attacks.
As we work to protect our users and their information, we sometimes discover unusual patterns of activity. Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results:
This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called “proxies.” We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections.
We hope to use the knowledge we’ve gathered to assist as many people as possible. In case our notice doesn’t reach everyone directly, you can run a system scan on your computer yourself by following the steps in our
Help Center article
.
Updated July 20, 2011
: We've seen a few common questions we thought we'd address here:
The malware appears to have gotten onto users' computers from one of roughly a hundred variants of fake antivirus, or "fake AV" software that has been in circulation for a while. We aren't aware of a common name for the malware.
We believe a couple million machines are affected by this malware.
We've heard from a number of you that you're thinking about the potential for an attacker to copy our notice and attempt to point users to a dangerous site instead. It's a good security practice to be cautious about the links you click, so the spirit of those comments is spot-on. We thought about this, too, which is why the notice appears only at the top of our search results page. Falsifying the message on this page would require prior compromise of that computer, so the notice is not a risk to additional users.
In the meantime, we've been able to successfully warn hundreds of thousands of users that their computer is infected. These are people who otherwise may never have known.
Measurement Lab introduces a new, hardware-based tool
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Posted by Meredith Whittaker, Program Manager, Google, and
Nick Feamster
, Associate Professor, Georgia Tech
Over the past two and a half years, more than 40 million consumers have accessed
Measurement Lab
tools to better understand their broadband performance. Nearly 400 terabytes of broadband performance data are now
publicly available
. Now, researchers have developed a new tool that will help take M-Lab measurement to the next level.
BISMark
(the Broadband Internet Service BenchMARK), a project being led by Georgia Tech and the University of Napoli, aims to measure Internet performance continuously over time. Unlike the many existing tools that run from a user’s computer, BISMark runs on a user’s home router itself. As a result, BISMark can not only measure Internet performance continuously over time, but also help differentiate any performance problems caused by a user’s ISP from those caused by a user’s home network setup.
If you’re interested in better understanding your broadband performance, you can
sign up
today to receive a free BISMark measurement router. Working with SamKnows and the FCC, the BISMark team will be selecting participants in the coming weeks, and routers will be shipped shortly thereafter. (If you’re especially eager and tech-savvy, you can skip the sign-up and try out an early version of the
BISMark package
on any OpenWRT-capable device; the project page has information about planned upcoming releases.)
Once you connect your BISMark router to your modem, the tool will run tests throughout the day, including measurement latency, packet loss, jitter, throughput, and network capacity. The BISMark team is also developing a
network dashboard
, which will allow users to access a detailed view of their ISP’s historical performance.
Like all M-Lab tools, BISMark is fully open-source, and all data collected on M-Lab servers will be placed in the public domain.
Explore America’s diplomatic efforts around the world
Friday, July 8, 2011
Posted by Will Houghteling, YouTube News and Politics
Throughout the past year American embassies, consulates, and ambassadors around the world have uploaded hundreds of videos to YouTube across a wide array of topics. Some are informative, like U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos
updating American citizens following the devastating tsunami
; some are inspirational, like First Lady Michelle Obama’s
message to a school in Santiago
; and others are instructional, like this video on
what to expect at a visa interview at the US Consulate in Juarez, Mexico
.
In an effort to continue offering easy access to this information, we’ve launched the
YouTube State Hub
, a place to find all of the U.S. Department of State’s various YouTube channels in one place.
This site follows the model of two similar YouTube channels, the
House Hub
and
Senate Hub
, which also help users easily find videos posted by government officials. Just click on the pin in each country, and you can find content from that embassy.
Throughout the coming year we’ll showcase some of the most creative videos from embassies, consulates and ambassadors around the globe on our
CitizenTube
blog and via our twitter account,
@CitizenTube
.
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