It’s Time to Cancel Your Forgotten Internet Accounts

From the Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Inc.’s revelation of a massive 2014 security breach might have reminded you of an old account or two you haven’t logged into for years.

No good comes from leaving details of your identity—alternate email addresses, date of birth and, yes, passwords—floating around the backwaters of the internet. Hackers who find their way into one account, dormant or still in use, can exploit details such as PINs or security-question answers to get into other accounts. That’s right, your old AOL Instant Messenger account could compromise your Facebook account.

It’s best to reduce your overall exposure. Think of it as a pruning exercise.

Before you start shuttering accounts, consider a few things. You might lose access to services you never knew were related. Your Yahoo account, for example, gets you into the popular photo site Flickr. Your Hotmail email address could be your login for Xbox Live, Office 365 or Skype.

Respect the finality of your decision—when you’re out, you’re out. But canceling isn’t always easy.

Alternative Internet archive sites to the Wayback Machine

Stolen from a librarian, naturally:

A list of 50 sites similar to waybackmachine.org -  http://www.similarsitesearch.com/alternatives-to/waybackmachine.org

Top 5 Best Internet Archive Wayback Machine Alternative Sites http://technofizi.com/best-internet-archive-wayback-machine-alternative-sites/

Alternatives to Wayback Machine for all platforms http://alternativeto.net/software/wayback-machine/

Best Wayback Machine Alternative Sites
http://beebom.com/2015/09/wayback-machine-alternative

The Best WayBack Machine Alternative
http://authoritywebsiteincome.com/wayback-machine-alternative/

List of Web archiving initiatives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Web_archiving_initiatives

11 Best Wayback Machine Alternatives in 2016 to Check History of Websites http://www.pingzic.com/best-wayback-machine-alternatives-in-2016-to-check-history-of-websites/

Internet Publishing Industry Revenue Reached $110 Billion in 2014

Service Annual Survey Provides Comprehensive Statistics on Service Industries in U.S. Economy Jan. 28, 2016 — Revenue for Internet publishing and broadcasting and Web search portal (NAICS 519130) employer firms increased 13.1 percent to $109.6 billion between 2013 and 2014. These information sector firms are primarily engaged in publishing and/or broadcasting content on the Internet exclusively or in operating websites that use a search engine to generate and maintain extensive databases of Internet addresses and content in an easily searchable format. Revenue among wireless telecommunications carriers (NAICS 517210) – another industry in the information sector – grew 8.0 percent between 2013 and 2014 to $251.8 billion. All in all, information sector (NAICS 51) revenue increased 5.3 percent to $1.4 trillion for employer and nonemployer firms. This sector is primarily comprised of publishing industries, including software and Internet publishing, motion picture and sound recording, broadcasting and telecommunications.   These revenue data come from the Service Annual Survey, which provides the most comprehensive national statistics available each year on service industry activity in the United States.

The Deep Web you don't know about

From CNN:

What we commonly call the Web is really just the surface. Beneath that is a vast, mostly uncharted ocean called the Deep Web. By its very nature, the size of the Deep Web is difficult to calculate. But top university researchers say the Web you know -- Facebook (FB), Wikipedia, news -- makes up less than 1% of the entire World Wide Web.

When you surf the Web, you really are just floating at the surface. Dive below and there are tens of trillions of pages -- an unfathomable number -- that most people have never seen. They include everything from boring statistics to human body parts for sale (illegally).

Though the Deep Web is little understood, the concept is quite simple. Think about it in terms of search engines. To give you results, Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing constantly index pages. They do that by following the links between sites, crawling the Web's threads like a spider. But that only lets them gather static pages, like the one you're on right now.

What they don't capture are dynamic pages, like the ones that get generated when you ask an online database a question. Google and others also don't capture pages behind private networks or standalone pages that connect to nothing at all. These are all part of the Deep Web.

So, what's down there? It depends on where you look.

SEE Deep Web Search – A How-To Site.

Technology's Impact on Workers

The internet and cell phones have infiltrated every cranny of American workplaces, and digital technology has transformed vast numbers of American jobs. Work done in the most sophisticated scientific enterprises, entirely new technology businesses, the extensive array of knowledge and media endeavors, the places where crops are grown, the factory floor, and even mom-and-pop stores has been reshaped by new pathways to information and new avenues of selling goods and services. For most office workers now, life on the job means life online.

Pew Research surveyed online a representative sample of adult internet users and asked those who have jobs a series of questions about the role of digital technology in their work lives. This is not a sample representative of all workers. It covers online adults who also have full- or part-time jobs in any capacity....

Email and the internet are deemed the most important communications and information tools among online workers.

The high value of email comes despite the challenges of the past generation, including threats like spam and phishing and competitors like social media and texting. Surprisingly, landline phones outrank cell phones for these internet-using workers. Social media is very low in importance....

While commentators worry that digital tools can be a distraction in the workplace, many online workers say that is not the case when it comes to their productivity.

Internet to Hit 3 Billion Users in 2015

The number of internet users worldwide will surpass 3 billion in 2015, according to new figures from eMarketer, increasing 6.2% next year to reach 42.4% of the entire world's population.

This year, the internet will reach more than two in five people in the world for the first time as online audience hits 2.89 billion users globally. By 2018, eMarketer estimates, nearly half the world's population, or 3.6 billion people, will access the internet at least once each month.

- See more at Emarketer

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans Have Access to High-Speed Internet

Connectivity Varies Across U.S. Metros and Demographic Groups

      An estimated 78.1 percent of people in U.S. households had a high-speed Internet connection last year, according to a new report released this week from the U.S. Census Bureau. However, digital divides exist among the nation’s metropolitan areas and demographic groups.

       These statistics come from the American Community Survey, which collected data on this topic for the first time in 2013 and is the largest survey used to examine computer and Internet use in the U.S.

       Although most Americans have access to computers and high-speed Internet, differences in high-speed Internet use were as large as 25 percentage points between certain age and race groups, while divides between specific income and educational attainment groups were as large as 45 percentage points. In addition, among the nation’s metro areas, Boulder, Colo., had one of the highest rates of high-speed Internet use at 96.9, while Laredo, Texas, had one of the lowest rates at 69.3 percent.

       The report released this week, Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2013, includes analysis of household computer ownership and Internet use by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, income and education. It covers areas of the country with populations larger than 65,000.

Who Has Speedy Internet in the USA?

Internet speeds are so slow in the USA. But what about within the USA? Not surprisingly, they vary a great deal.

Not only do they vary but how they vary tells us some important things about factors that go beyond monopolies. One good source of information is this article from last year in Gizmodo which breaks the country down by congressional districts and then cross-references that data with income and population density.

One thing pretty clearly are the higher rates in areas of greatest population density. Montana seems to be in a particularly sad place.

More from Talking Points Memo.

New Internet Domain Extensions: Don't Get Blinded by the Sunrise or Run Over by the Landrush

2014 is going to be a landmark year for the Internet as the oldest and most basic form of user online navigation gets a major overhaul. The domain names that marketers and end users have relied on since the Internet's inception—extensions like .com, .net, and .org—will no longer be the only game in town. New generic top-level domains (gTLDs), including extensions such as .app, .sports, .club, .healthcare and many more, have already started to launch.

However, bringing those new extensions to market is more complicated than slapping on a price tag and hanging a for sale sign. It's been a multiyear process already; and, despite some hiccups, the organization that governs the Internet and is managing the rollout, http://newgtlds.icann.org/en ICANN, has tried to make it fair for everyone involved. Accordingly, introducing domains under a new extension is a multistep process that's designed to include protections for trademark holders and give average users a fair shake at getting the names they want.

Every marketer should understand the two important phases under this process: the Sunrise and the Landrush periods. ICANN mandates that a Sunrise period lasting at least 30 days must take place for every new domain extension that launches. During that timeframe, trademark holders are given an opportunity to claim domains that are associated with their marks before anyone else is able to register them. If multiple parties are seeking the same domain, disputes will be arbitrated or will go to auction at the end of the Sunrise period.

Read more from MarketingProfs.

If Famous Events Had Happened in the Viral Era

Please stop this, Internet.

From Brian Sargent.

Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2012

Based on Current Population Survey statistics from July 2012, the Computer and Internet Access in the United States infographic provides household and individual level analysis of computer use and Internet access, as well as a profile of individual smartphone usage.

Detailed Tables
Infographic PDF

2013 Web Index Report

Targeted censorship of Web content by governments is widespread across the globe. Moderate to extensive blocking or filtering of politically sensitive content was reported in over 30 percent of Web Index countries during the past year.

Legal limits on government snooping online urgently need review. 94% of countries in the Web Index do not meet best practice standards for checks and balances on government interception of electronic communications.

The Web and social media are leading to real­world change. In 80 percent of the countries studied, the Web and social media had played a role in public mobilisation in the past year, and in half of these cases, had been a major catalyst.

Rich countries do not necessarily rank highly in the Web Index. The Philippines, with a per capita income of $4,410 per year, is more than 10 places ahead of Qatar, the world’s richest country, with an average income over 20 times greater than the Philippines. Saudi Arabia is outperformed by 10 of the sub-­Saharan African countries in the Index. Switzerland, the world’s third wealthiest nation, is only one place ahead of Estonia. The study shows that once countries surpass a GDP threshold of US$12,000 per capita, the link between wealth and Web Index rank weakens significantly.

The rights and priorities of women are poorly served by the Web in the majority of countries researched. Locally relevant information on topics such as sexual and reproductive health, domestic violence, and inheritance remain largely absent from the Web in most countries. Only 56 percent of Web Index countries were assessed as allocating ‘significant’ resources to ICT training programmes targeting women and men equally.

Read the Full Report (PDF) from World Wide Web Foundation.

N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.

The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

READ MORE from the New York Times

The Connectivity Continuum: Rising Internet Use Shows Impact of Smartphones on Digital Divide

From the New Strategist:

Twenty-seven percent of Americans are highly connected to the Internet, accessing the Internet at multiple locations with multiple devices. Another 16 percent of Americans are not connected at all to the Internet, lacking any kind of computer or Internet use. These are the two extremes of what the Census Bureau calls the "connectivity continuum," with everyone else at various stages of connectivity in between (home-only connectivity, single-device connectivity, etc.). At this link you can access the Census Bureau report, Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2011. The report is admittedly dated, but it captures an historic moment--the transition from pre- to post-Internet age when connectivity sharply divided the population. The highly connected and the unconnected were the two largest segments of the population in 2011.

Rising Internet Use; Impact of Smartphones on Digital Divide

While disparities in Internet use persist among racial and ethnic groups, smartphones appear to be helping to bridge the digital divide, according to a report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The findings are part of the latest Census Bureau report, Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2011, which provides analysis of computer and Internet use for households and individuals. The information comes from data collected as part of the Current Population Survey’s 2011 Computer and Internet Use Supplement, which was sponsored and funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The report also features a table that places users along a “connectivity continuum” and shows that a sizeable percentage of Internet users now make their online connections both inside and outside the home and from multiple devices.

“Going online is no longer a simple yes or no proposition,” said Thom File, the report’s author and a sociologist with the Census Bureau. “Different groups of people are accessing the Internet in very different ways, and these statistics give us a better understanding of how and where those connections are taking place.”

According to the report, a gap of 27.1 percentage points exists between groups with the highest and lowest reported rates of home Internet use. Asians reported the highest use at 78.3 percent and Hispanics the lowest at 51.2 percent. However, the gap narrows to 17.5 percentage points when smartphone use is factored into overall rates of Internet use. With smartphones factored in, 83.0 percent of Asians and 65.5 percent of Hispanics reported going online.

In terms of smartphone usage on its own, 51.6 percent of Asian respondents reported using a smartphone. About 48.0 percent of both white non-Hispanics and blacks reported smartphone use, and 45.4 percent of Hispanics said they used smartphones. The reported usage rates for blacks and Hispanics were not statistically different from each other. Overall, 48.2 percent of individuals 15 and older reported using a smartphone.

Household and Individual Internet Usage

Although disparities in Internet use for households persisted across race and Hispanic origin groups in 2011, they appear to be shrinking. In 2000, white non-Hispanic households were about twice as likely as black households to report Internet access (46.1 percent vs. 23.6 percent). By 2011, white non-Hispanic households were only about 1.3 times as likely as black households to report the same (76.2 percent vs. 56.9 percent).

Divides also existed for individual Internet use. About 75.0 percent of both non-Hispanic whites and Asians reported accessing the Internet from some location, compared with 60.3 percent of blacks and 54.4 percent of Hispanics. The estimates for non-Hispanic whites and Asians accessing the Internet are not significantly different.

In 2011, 71.7 percent of all households used the Internet, including 82.7 percent of Asian households, 76.2 percent of white non-Hispanic households, 58.3 percent of Hispanic households and 56.9 percent of black households.

Connectivity Continuum

As technology has changed and evolved over the years, people have seen an increase in the variety and number of ways they use computers and access the Internet. To explore this phenomenon further, the Census Bureau designed a scale to place individuals along a “connectivity continuum.”

The connectivity continuum shows variations in adoption of these technologies, ranging from people with no Internet connection or computer, to those connecting from multiple locations and devices.
In 2011, 27.0 percent of Americans connected to the Internet from multiple locations and multiple devices. These individuals were considered “high connectivity” users. On the other end of the connectivity continuum, individuals with no computer or Internet (15.9 percent) made up the second largest group. The remaining 57.1 percent of Americans were located somewhere between these two extremes.

Current Population Survey

The information was collected as part of a July 2011 supplement to the Current Population Survey, which asked a sample of approximately 54,000 households various questions about computer ownership, Internet use and mobile device usage.

Pew Report on Global Social Networking

Social networking has spread around the world with remarkable speed. In countries such as Britain, the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic and Spain, about half of all adults now use Facebook and similar websites. These sites are also popular in many lower-income nations, where, once people have access to the internet, they tend to use it for social networking.

Meanwhile, cell phones have become nearly ubiquitous throughout much of the world, and people are using them in a variety of ways, including texting and taking pictures. Smart phones are also increasingly common – roughly half in Britain, the U.S., and Japan have one. Globally, most smart phone users say they visit social networking sites on their phone, while many get job, consumer, and political information.

More from Pew Research.
***
An element of our mission at the Library of Congress is to collect the story of America and to acquire collections that will have research value. So when the Library had the opportunity to acquire an archive from the popular social media service Twitter, we decided this was a collection that should be here.

In April 2010, the Library and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms.

The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date.

More from the Library of Congress.

Wayback Machine Updated with More URLs

From Internet Archive Blogs

The Wayback Machine has been updated with much more data and some code improvements. Now it covers from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, it has gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website.

Internet Users by Language

Internet World Stats is an International website that features up to date world Internet Usage, Population Statistics, Travel Stats and Internet Market Research Data, for over 233 individual countries and world regions.

Because of the importance of this research, and due to the lack of other sources, Internet World Stats publishes several tables and charts featuring analysis and details for the top ten languages and also for the detailed world languages in use by country.

Connect NY-$25 Million High-Speed Internet Access Program

Governor Cuomo announced that today the state will begin accepting applications in the “Connect NY” program which provides $25 million in grant funding to promote broadband internet access across the state. The grants are made available through the Regional Councils and Empire State Development and will help expand high speed internet access in rural upstate and underserved urban areas of New York.

Expanding high-speed internet was identified last year as a priority by the Regional Councils in order to help local businesses expand their ability to reach customers and encourage broadband providers to improve internet access for local communities. Broadband internet grants, such as Connect NY, both spur investment by service providers in communities and help boost economic development in each region by expanding the ability of local businesses to reach consumers globally.

Applications will be reviewed and scored on the following metrics.

• Providing new service to areas with little or no Internet. Additional weight will be given for plans that provide more internet access to the local public through libraries, parks, and other community areas, help local health centers provide new online access to health records and services, and expand internet service in economically distressed areas.

• Creating a plan for educating local businesses and residents on how to use the internet.

• Building off existing internet networks to more efficiently expand high speed Internet service in communities that broadband in only some areas but not throughout the area.

• Receiving of the endorsement of the local Regional Council.

For more information and to read the full press release.

The application process will be open on August 22 and can be accessed by visiting the NYS Broadband website.

Computer and Internet Use at Home: 2010

These tables provide information about computer and Internet use from the Current Population Survey (CPS) School Enrollment and Internet Use Supplement. The tables display national and state level data and examine householder and individual characteristics by school enrollment, age, race, sex and Hispanic origin. Additional tables use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine how and why people connect to the Internet. The CPS has been collecting data on computers and Internet use periodically since 1984. SIPP data on this subject have been collected since 1998.