Web Hosting Blog From Pixel Internet » Tanya

Megaupload Could See All Data Erased This Week

Tanya — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:22:10 +0000

If you’ve been following the news recently then you’ve no doubt heard about the arrest of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (otherwise known as Kim Schmitz), on multiple charges of copyright infringement.

What might surprise some of you however (particularly those who have uploaded data or media to the website), is that all the data located on the site could be erased as early as Thursday this week, according to the Associated Press.

The potential removal of all the data stems from the fact that all Megaupload assets have been frozen, meaning they can’t pay their hosting companies (Cogent Communications Group and Carpathia Hosting, who supply all of Megaupload’s storage). As a result, the hosting providers may begin deleting all data this week, which is bad news for all Megaupload’s users (particularly those who are hosting data legally).

Despite the potential of losing all their user’s data, Ira Rothken (Megaupload’s lawyer) remains confident that an agreement can be put in place to keep the data safe.

Megaupload was shut down in early January by the United States Department of Justice, with the Megaupload founders being charged with making $175million on the back of the distribution of copyright protected materials (most notably films and television programs). If Kim Dotcom and his accomplices are found guilty of the charges levied against them, they could face a maximum penalty of 20 years in US prison.

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Why You Should Consider Domain Privacy

Tanya — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:24:01 +0000

When you register a website domain, the personal information you fill out (often including name, address, contact email and phone number) is then made publicly viewable via the WHOIS information available on all domains. Performing a WHOIS lookup is very simple, and will reveal the personal information of whoever registered the website.

This information is made available for a few simple reasons; if you publish a website containing illegal material, or a website encouraging terrorism or similar anti-social behaviour, then the police (or relevant authority) will use the WHOIS information to locate the individual responsible for publishing the content. There’s also the simple (and far less nefarious) situation of someone simply wanting to get in touch with the owner of a website to request a link, a content swap, etc.

However, in recent times, hackers, spammers and identity thieves have been using this information to aid their illegal activities, potentially putting you at risk (at least easily placing your name on spam email lists).

As a result, domain WHOIS privacy – which is available via Pixel Internet – has become increasingly popular in recent times. This simple add-on will remove all your personal information from the WHOIS registration page, ensuring it’s no longer viewable via a WHOIS lookup. Not only will this simple add-on help keep you (and your domain) protected from hackers and identity thieves, but can dramatically reduce the amount of spam you receive almost immediately.

If you’d like to add domain WHOIS privacy to your website, get in touch with Pixel Internet to discuss including the add-on in your hosting package.

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United States To Build Online ‘Cyber Range’

Tanya — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:20:57 +0000

As technology permeates our everyday lives more and more, so in turn we rely on it more. We’re getting towards the stage where we cannot live without it, and even being without the internet today can seem like a huge inconvenience.

However, as more and more people get online and with an ever wider variety of devices, the amount of people looking to take advantage of them increases. In the past few years there have been an unprecedented amount of high profile hacking cases, ranging from Lulzsec taking hacking requests via Twitter to forged security certificates mentioned in one of the last posts, it’s a constant game of cat and mouse.

It’s a concern that is shared by the US government with the amount of highly sensitive data that they hold globally, as highlighted by some facts that came to light recently. In a bid to keep ahead of the game the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the tech arm of the US government, is creating a huge virtual environment as a cyber weapon testing range. This massive creation will simulate a complete virtual world, populated with virtual people like network managers and sys admins, and will host epic cyber battles to test the latest programs (The Matrix anyone?). It has also been rumoured that they have been trying to recruit the best hacking minds around to do battle with to try and get as much real world experience as possible.

A cool $10 million has been given to Lockheed Martin to build the latest section of the project, named ‘Phase B II’, but exactly what it entails will likely never be known. It’s probably fair to assume that as well as testing programs to improve safety this system will be used for R&D to develop offences as well, which is where more and more silent wars of the future will be fought.

DigiNotar Certificate Authority Banned For Life From Chrome And Firefox

Tanya — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:54:36 +0000

Internet security is something that a lot of us worry about, but how much do we know about what goes on behind the scenes? In very many cases we know almost nothing, and rely on internet security programs and certificates to tell us that our data is safe.

However, online fraud, phishing and identity theft have been on the rise for the past decade, and now constitute the largest form of online criminal activity. It is estimated that losses from this are well into the billions of pounds each year, and with the constant increase and diversity of the ways people access the internet it is a problem that is set to continue.

An example of this has been uncovered recently with the Dutch company DigiNotar. They were a company called a ‘certificate authority’, which issues digital security certificates based on public key encryptions. These give the base for the security of everyday users, who see an SSL certificate and assume they are safe.

The problem began when lax security policies at DigiNotar ended up in a network breach. The hackers that broke in then managed to forge and distribute many different certificates including Google, Mozilla and over 200 others. This in turn put millions of people at risk, not to mention that the same company was responsible for security certificates relating to sensitive government information. Worse than their inability to account for security certificates was the six week period it took them to own up to it, angering many people around the world.

This breach has now been brought under control, with Google and Mozilla adding the offending certificates to their blacklists, but not without consequence for DigiNotar. Since the debacle they have officially been banned for life by both of these internet giants, and the bad publicity has caused the company to go into administration with the loss of several hundred jobs.

Although the results of this whole episode haven’t been as disastrous as many thought it could be, it is a stark warning of the dangers of the internet. It only takes sloppy security in one part of the chain for it to potentially collapse altogether. At Pixel Internet we take our security very seriously and do our best to stay on top of all latest news stories like this, in turn keeping our customers as secure as possible.

David Cameron Suggests Preventing Rioters From Accessing Social Media

Tanya — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:33:45 +0000

Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in the wake of the shocking riots across England, has proposed banning people from social media platforms if they can be shown to be engaging in or plotting criminal activities.

Cameron (and several other politicians and commentators) have taken notice of the way social media and communications platforms were used throughout the riots to encourage and c0-ordinate rioting, looting and other criminal activities. The Blackberry messenger service, which is a closed network (meaning police and other authorities can’t view the messages being sent), as well as hugely popular social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, are all thought to have been instrumental in the co-ordination of ant-social behaviour. The platforms are also widely thought to be a significant factor in how quickly the disturbances spread across the country.

In an attempt to prevent future widespread riots and other criminal activities, Cameron has suggested he will reach out directly to the social media services themselves, hoping he can find a suitable solution to the way this kind of civil unrest can be stirred by communication on the platforms.

In his statement to Parliament yesterday morning, Cameron said:

Everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill, and when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. We are working with the police, the intelligence services and [social media] industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

It certainly seems like a good idea to prevent those convicted of violent criminal behaviour from accessing social media platforms for a specified amount of time, but pre-emptively banning people suspected of plotting such disturbances could prove to be a difficult task, both in terms of the law and the logistics of enforcing such a ban. Sure, you can block names, phone numbers and IP addresses, but what about when someone banned from social media tries to set up an account with a fake name, address and number from an internet cafe? Or from a friends house?

Cameron obviously recognises these logistical difficulties, and has told reporters that Home Secretary Theresa May will be meeting with representatives from Facebook and Twitter (as well as RIM, developers of the Blackberry handset), to discuss the potential ruling, as well as the responsibilities of the platforms when it comes to social unrest.

£50 Google AdWords Voucher with selected hosting plans

Tanya — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:53:18 +0000

Another month and with it another great offer from Pixel Internet!

Order a Home, Business or Pro hosting plan and get a £50 Google AdWords voucher to give your website a kick-start!

Google AdWords gives you the ability to start driving quality, targeted traffic to your website in just a few minutes. It’s a great way to get your website noticed and with our special voucher offer, you can sit back and enjoy the first £50 on us!

This offer is available to new and existing customers.

For more information on this great offer go to our dedicated Google AdWords Voucher page.

(T&C’s apply)

pixmac.co.uk voucher for every Pixel Internet customer!

Tanya — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:26:15 +0000

Hi everyone!

We’ve got yet another great offer this month for all our customers… 10 image credits from our friends at pixmac.co.uk!

pixmac.co.uk have over 10 million stock photography and vector illustrations availble to purchase. It’s the perfect solutions for anyone demanding high qulity images or illistrations for thier website. This offer is availble to all new and existing Pixel Internet custmers! You can get more information from our pixmac voucher offer page.

About Pixmac:

Pixmac is a leading microstock photography site offering millions of images at budget prices. Photos from 58p with the ability to source, download and buy an image in less than 3 minutes, with no registration process. Pixmac offers a fast, time-saving site with great customer service.

50% Summer Sale Now On!!

Tanya — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:51:23 +0000

We’re offering a massive 50% off selected hosting plans this summer, starting from just £14.99 per year! We have slashed the prices of our Home, Business and Pro hosting plans on both our Linux and Windows platforms.

You can order a 1 or 2 year hosting plan and save yourself a packet and still enjoy all the fantastic features and customer services provided by Pixel Internet.

Check out our amazing web hosting offers and save your self a packet!

Using Iconography To Improve Conversions

Tanya — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:57:18 +0000

Whether you’re a website owner or a web designer, conversion optimisation (the ongoing alterations made to your website in order to increase trackable conversions, i.e. sales, enquiries, sign-ups, etc) should be a pertinent consideration.

There are numerous different elements of conversion optimisation, from changing website copy and imagery to altering internal navigation and contact methods, but one particular area now thought to have a positive correlation with conversions is the use of iconography.

Dominoes Pizza, who are always on the ball when it comes to online marketing and social media, have spent a huge amount of time recently looking into the pragmatics of iconography, and how visual imagery could be utilised to improve both conversions and viewer enjoyment of the website.
The result of their research has been a signifcant alteration to the way users fill out their personal information after a pizza purchase, which is necessary in order for the company to deliver the pizza. They removed the traditional online form, and replaced it with icons – the result is an easier, simpler and much faster experience for the user:

Although we don’t have access to Dominoes conversion metrics and can only speculate, I would image this has had a positive impact on both user opinion of their site and overall conversions.

A similar principle could be applied to the rest of your website in order to achieve a similar effect; you could replace conventional (and albeit search engine friendly) text navigation with imagery or iconography. This not only has the benefit of being quickly recognisable to the user and improving ease of use, but it helps to remove any user language barrier, as imagery can typically be universally understood.

Try including iconography in your conversion optimisation campaigns and see if it makes a difference for you, I suspect you might well see a positive impact on your metrics.

Top Digital Marketing Ideas Of 2010

Tanya — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 03:32:37 +0000

Advertising on digital platforms has now grown into the number one market, recently overtaking television advertising spend for the very first time. This fundamental shift means that each year, companies put more and more effort into conceiving interesting campaigns in order to stay ahead of the competition. This year has been no exception, with a wealth of innovative new marketing ideas. Lots of these are undertaken on one of the many new platforms that appear all the time, so are very different year on year. Here is a little roundup of some of the best and most popular of 2010:

- Old Spice Videos
This surely must be one of the miracles of the year. Old Spice had largely been seen as a joke of a brand for most of the past decade. Now, thanks to an excellent interactive YouTube campaign by Wielden & Kennedy they are back near the top of the market. The videos featured ‘Isaiah Mustafa’ answering viewers questions, with the tagline ‘Smell like a man, man’. They ended up shooting nearly 200 videos in all, and attracting a lot of celebrity attention.

- Bar Code Apps
The advances in smartphone technology, combined with the explosion in mobile apps enabled this idea to come to fruition. With a certain app from Stickybits you can scan barcodes with your smartphone, opening up a new world of opportunities for the marketers. This led to a raft of ideas, including collecting ‘karma points’ for discounts, reviews, pictures and other free gifts. The genius part of this idea is that it can use current barcodes, as well as new ones, so has now become a ‘crowdsourcing’ review system as well.

- Chatroulette
One of the more popular new sites to emerge this year, Chatroulette automatically connects you with random strangers for a video chat. The results can be very unexpected, to say the least. It wasn’t long until the idea was exploited by cunning marketers. One of the most popular examples was by travel firm Travelocity, who put a garden gnome up for a day holding different slogans including ‘Awesome things: 1) Tahoe this weekend. 2) Traveling instead of chatting.’ There are many other funny ideas here but many of them, as with Chatroulette, are NSFW.

- Captcha Advertising
An amazingly simple modification to the traditional spam filter, this replaces the ‘code’ with an advert and gets you to reproduce a part of it in the same manner as always. A very simple change and a very clever idea.

- Personalised Video
In a ground breaking collaboration, The Arcade Fire teamed up with Google to create a personalised video experience for their viewers. This involved typing your postcode of your childhood home at the start of the video. Depending on the availability of the mapping, Google will then personalise your viewing of the video with images from the area, in a bid to match the song’s theme of the ending of childhood.

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