Madam45for2923
Madam45for2923's JournalNYT: Russian Cyberforgers Steal Millions a Day With Fake Sites
Michael Tiffany, center, chief executive of the computer security firm White Ops, said of a Russian cyberforgery ring: “Our adversaries are bringing whole new levels of innovation to ad fraud.”
The fraud, which began in September and is still going on, represents a new level of sophistication among criminals who seek to profit by using bots — computer programs that pretend to be people — to cheat advertisers.
“We think that nothing has approached this operation in terms of profitability,” said Michael Tiffany, a founder and the chief executive of White Ops, the ad-focused computer security firm that publicly disclosed the fraud in a report on Tuesday. “Our adversaries are bringing whole new levels of innovation to ad fraud.”
The thieves impersonated more than 6,100 news and content publishers, stealing advertising revenue that marketers intended to run on those sites, White Ops said.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. DEC. 13, 2016
Ads Show Up on Breitbart and Brands Blame Technology DEC. 2, 2016
Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say NOV. 17, 2016
The scheme exploited known flaws in the system of digital advertising, including the lack of a consistent, reliable method for tracking ads and ensuring that they are shown to the promised audience.
The spoofed outlets include a who’s who of the web: video-laden sites like Fox News and CBS Sports, large news organizations like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, major content platforms like Facebook and Yahoo, and niche sites like Allrecipes.com and AccuWeather. Although the main targets were in the United States, news organizations in other countries were also affected.
“It will be a big shock to all of these publishers that someone was selling inventory supposedly on their sites,” Mr. Tiffany said in an interview on Monday, before the report’s release. White Ops and an advertising industry organization, the Trustworthy Accountability Group, held a conference call with about 170 advertisers, ad networks and content publishers on Tuesday morning to brief them on their findings.
Mr. Tiffany said White Ops had traced the fraud to Russia and believed that the organization behind it was a criminal enterprise out to make money. There was no evidence of a connection between the fraud and the politically motivated hacking during the United States election that American intelligence agencies and President Obama have linked to the Russian government.
The Methbot scheme — named after the word “meth,” which shows up in its software code — was carefully designed to evade the antifraud mechanisms the advertising industry has put in place in recent years. Digital ad fraud was projected to cost marketers more than $7 billion in 2016, according to a study by the Association of National Advertisers and White Ops.
To carry out the operation:... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/technology/forgers-use-fake-web-users-to-steal-real-ad-revenue.html
Im the guy who first tried to warn Hillary Clintons fans about the Pantsuit Nation scam
Numerous members of a secret Facebook political group called Pantsuit Nation are up in arms this week after learning that the creator of their group is planning to publish their stories in a for-profit book without their permission. They’re are outraged that their posts in the group, which they thought were private, are being publicly sold off – and many are wondering where the book profits are going. The Huffington Post is going so far today as to call the group a “sham.” I tried to warn people that something wasn’t right with that group months ago – and I got my head taken off for it.
The story goes like this: a friend added me to the Pantsuit group, which was purporting to be a secret group for Hillary Clinton supporters, in the first week of its existence. While I was initially impressed that it had gained around two hundred thousand members in its first few days, it only took me a minute and a half to figure out something wasn’t right. Based on everything I’ve seen by participating in various Facebook political groups over the years, the relatively paltry number of likes, shares, and comments on the posts in the Pantsuit group were more in line with a group of perhaps ten or twenty thousand members. There was simply no way it had two hundred thousand members. Nor could that many people have been manually added to the group by human fingers that quickly since its launch, without using computer scripts.
If you’ve been around Facebook groups long enough, you know these things instinctively, but you’re not going to be able to convince those who haven’t seen these things for themselves. I’d seen this same disparity in the past in another political group whose membership number was completely out of line with its post activity. In that particular group (which has fallen into such irrelevance that there’s no point in naming it here), I had been able to suss out that most of the “members” were actually fake inactive accounts from a handful of specific foreign nations which are notorious for manufacturing and selling Facebook accounts to groups on the cheap who want to pad their membership. I won’t post a link here to such disreputable sites, but if you google something like “buy facebook group members” you’ll see just how cheap and easy it is to buy fake members.
So I searched the Pantsuit Nation membership for the most common first and last names from the nations where those kinds of accounts are made and sold, and sure enough, it was chock full of fake foreign accounts that had almost certainly been purchased. In other words, Pantsuit Nation probably didn’t explode out of the gate with a huge membership because everyone was adding their friends. Instead, the creator of the group most likely purchased a bunch of fake members at the outset in order to create the appearance of soaring popularity, so that real Hillary Clinton fans would join what they thought was already an explosively popular group. Stupidly, I didn’t think to immediately take screen captures of these searches in order to document my findings. By the time I realized I’d need them, I’d already opened my mouth about it and been banned from accessing the group’s membership list.
Lacking the evidence I would have needed to report on this matter as a journalist and make a bulletproof case, I opted not to publish an investigative story on the matter. Instead I simply made a post on my personal Facebook page, warning the Hillary Clinton supporters among my own friends that they should be careful regarding the Pantsuit group. But the group’s creator got wind of it, and she made an inflammatory post within the group in which she encouraged the members to harass me on my personal page. And they did, for days on end, to the point that my friends who supported Hillary ended up telling them off and the whole thing became a food fight. During the course of it, various Pantsuit members vowed to boycott my news publication Daily News Bin out of revenge.
Over the past year I’ve reported the ugly truth on everyone from the journalist-murdering Vladimir Putin, to the media-harassing Donald Trump, to the corrupt Director of the FBI without an ounce of fear, even though these are people who could easily make me disappear. But the creator of the Pantsuit Nation group proved to be so dishonestly and viciously vindictive that she’s someone I’ve come to fear. Even now I hesitate writing this, for fear she’ll turn her remaining disciples loose on me again.
Last time it was hinted that I was everything from a secret Republican, to a secret Bernie Sanders fanatic, to a sexist who simply didn’t want women to have their own group. I’m not sure my professional reputation has ever taken as big of a dishonest blow as it did from the Pantsuit group creator. But as the Pantsuit saga grows darker, and more people now consider themselves victims, I feel that I have no choice but to speak up now and share my own experience. Some of those same members who had been harassing me on that day have now messaged me today to apologize, and to tell me I was right.
But at the time, there was simply no way I could have convinced her members that the whole thing was a sham. They would simply need to figure out for themselves that something wasn’t right. Sure enough, I knew that day would be coming soon when I learned that the creator of the group was filing for nonprofit status. The only way a Facebook group (which inherently has no revenue to begin with) would ever file to become a nonprofit is if it was planning to start having revenue coming in.
And now predictably comes this for-profit book deal, which various members of the group have privately informed me today that they first learned about in the New York Times, rather than learning about it from the group’s creator herself. In other words, she presumably didn’t want her members to know until it was already a done deal. There’s nothing wrong at all with creating a group and then profiting from it – but not by lulling people into a false sense of security and privacy, so you can turn around sell their stories that they thought they were sharing privately with like minded people. The question raised about intellectual property rights alone are astounding.
By the way, when I spoke up that day about there being something not-quite-right about Pantsuit Nation, even though I did it in low-key fashion, I heard from multiple people close to Hillary Clinton and her campaign who privately thanked me for having done so (no I won’t divulge their identities; off the record communication stays that way). To the best of my knowledge, the Clinton camp suspected from the start that something wasn’t right with that group. So when Hillary used her concession speech to urge the private Facebook groups supporting her to go public, it’s incredibly unlikely that she was referring to the Pantsuit group. There were (and still are) dozens of active and vibrant secret Hillary Clinton groups on Facebook; they just don’t seek out media attention, because that’s not what legitimate secret groups do. Hillary was almost certainly referring to those groups, some of which are full of influential people and have been supporting her in private for years.
I feel terrible for the Hillary Clinton supporters who got sucked into the Pantsuit Nation group and honestly believed they had found a private safe space for sharing their personal stories, which are apparently now being sold off for someone else’s personal profit. Perhaps I should have sounded the alarm more loudly early on, when I first figured out something wasn’t right. The only reason for a Facebook group to spend money on large numbers of fake members out of the gate is to create the appearance of popularity so a lot of real people will join, and if anyone was willing to pay for members up front, they were clearly planning from the start to get that money back in the end. So this kind of ending seems sadly inevitable.
more here: http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/i-long-ago-tried-to-warn-hillary-clintons-supporters-about-the-pantsuit-nation-scam/26779/
From His Home in Russia, #Calexit Leader Plots California Secession
Louis Marinelli heads the secessionist group Yes California. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the organization has gone from an unknown fringe group to one discussed seriously in mainstream media.
What has not been discussed as prominently is Marinelli’s deep ties to Russia.
A former right-wing activist from Buffalo, New York, Marinelli first moved to Russia almost a decade ago. He studied at St. Petersburg State University, the alma mater of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He returned to the United States to campaign against LGBTQ rights as part of the National Organization for Marriage.
Marinelli then returned to Russia. He would marry a Russian citizen, and the couple moved to San Diego, where Marinelli launched a political career based on a platform of California secession.
“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Marinelli says from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a city of about 1.4 million just east of the Ural Mountains and about 1,000 miles from Moscow.
In an interview with The California Report, Marinelli confirms he’s living and working in Russia as a teacher.
More in link plus audio: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/12/13/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession/
Cal exit opens "embassy" in Russia
http://www.notey.com/blogs/calexit
There is Louis Marinelli in burgundy suit!
SEP 2016. Moscow welcomes the (would-be) sovereign nations of California and Texas:
The speaker was calling for California’s independence from the United States.
Alexei Gavrilko nodded approvingly. A burly, bearded, camouflage-wearing separatist from eastern Ukraine, he said he had come to the posh Moscow hotel just outside the Kremlin to “communicate with colleagues” representing separatist and secessionist groups from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.
During a conference dubbed the Dialogue of Nations, Gavrilko listened carefully to Louis Marinelli, head of the Yes California group that is determined to hold the Golden State’s “independence referendum” in 2019.
“For the first time in history, we, the people of California, who were conquered and annexed by the American military about 170 years ago, will have a chance to express our voice to either remain a state in the American union, or instead, to pursue a path toward a nationhood,” Marinelli said solemnly.
Gavrilko, who is from the unrecognized but de facto independent Donetsk region, and the entire separatist crowd cheered and applauded. They did it again, louder, when Nate Smith, a self-proclaimed “foreign minister” of the Texas Nationalist Movement, promised that one day, the independent Lone Star state “can formally exchange ambassadors with your free and independent countries.”
The arrival of Californian, Texan, Puerto Rican, Northern Irish, Catalan, Italian and Lebanese secessionists to mingle with activists from several unrecognized separatist territories in former Soviet republics is becoming a tradition as Moscow turns to belligerent, anti-Western nationalism coupled with a readiness to take up arms against its former Soviet vassals.
Moscow uses these gatherings to promote its political agenda, gain more political leverage in the West and push for the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine, a former lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party said.
“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html
The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,
“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html
SEP 2016. Moscow welcomes the (would-be) sovereign nations of California and Texas:
The speaker was calling for California’s independence from the United States.
Alexei Gavrilko nodded approvingly. A burly, bearded, camouflage-wearing separatist from eastern Ukraine, he said he had come to the posh Moscow hotel just outside the Kremlin to “communicate with colleagues” representing separatist and secessionist groups from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.
During a conference dubbed the Dialogue of Nations, Gavrilko listened carefully to Louis Marinelli, head of the Yes California group that is determined to hold the Golden State’s “independence referendum” in 2019.
“For the first time in history, we, the people of California, who were conquered and annexed by the American military about 170 years ago, will have a chance to express our voice to either remain a state in the American union, or instead, to pursue a path toward a nationhood,” Marinelli said solemnly.
Gavrilko, who is from the unrecognized but de facto independent Donetsk region, and the entire separatist crowd cheered and applauded. They did it again, louder, when Nate Smith, a self-proclaimed “foreign minister” of the Texas Nationalist Movement, promised that one day, the independent Lone Star state “can formally exchange ambassadors with your free and independent countries.”
The arrival of Californian, Texan, Puerto Rican, Northern Irish, Catalan, Italian and Lebanese secessionists to mingle with activists from several unrecognized separatist territories in former Soviet republics is becoming a tradition as Moscow turns to belligerent, anti-Western nationalism coupled with a readiness to take up arms against its former Soviet vassals.
Moscow uses these gatherings to promote its political agenda, gain more political leverage in the West and push for the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine, a former lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party said.
“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html
SEP 2016 Moscow welcomes the (would-be) sovereign nations of California and Texas
The speaker was calling for California’s independence from the United States.
Alexei Gavrilko nodded approvingly. A burly, bearded, camouflage-wearing separatist from eastern Ukraine, he said he had come to the posh Moscow hotel just outside the Kremlin to “communicate with colleagues” representing separatist and secessionist groups from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.
During a conference dubbed the Dialogue of Nations, Gavrilko listened carefully to Louis Marinelli, head of the Yes California group that is determined to hold the Golden State’s “independence referendum” in 2019.
“For the first time in history, we, the people of California, who were conquered and annexed by the American military about 170 years ago, will have a chance to express our voice to either remain a state in the American union, or instead, to pursue a path toward a nationhood,” Marinelli said solemnly.
Gavrilko, who is from the unrecognized but de facto independent Donetsk region, and the entire separatist crowd cheered and applauded. They did it again, louder, when Nate Smith, a self-proclaimed “foreign minister” of the Texas Nationalist Movement, promised that one day, the independent Lone Star state “can formally exchange ambassadors with your free and independent countries.”
The arrival of Californian, Texan, Puerto Rican, Northern Irish, Catalan, Italian and Lebanese secessionists to mingle with activists from several unrecognized separatist territories in former Soviet republics is becoming a tradition as Moscow turns to belligerent, anti-Western nationalism coupled with a readiness to take up arms against its former Soviet vassals.
Moscow uses these gatherings to promote its political agenda, gain more political leverage in the West and push for the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine, a former lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party said.
“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html
From His Home in Russia, #Calexit Leader Plots California Secession
On paper, the leader of the California secession movement lives in an apartment complex near San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood. But in reality, the Calexit campaign is being run by a 30-year-old who lives and works in a city on the edge of Siberia.
Louis Marinelli heads the secessionist group Yes California. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the organization has gone from an unknown fringe group to one discussed seriously in mainstream media.
What has not been discussed as prominently is Marinelli’s deep ties to Russia.
A former right-wing activist from Buffalo, New York, Marinelli first moved to Russia almost a decade ago. He studied at St. Petersburg State University, the alma mater of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He returned to the United States to campaign against LGBTQ rights as part of the National Organization for Marriage.
Marinelli then returned to Russia. He would marry a Russian citizen, and the couple moved to San Diego, where Marinelli launched a political career based on a platform of California secession.
“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Marinelli says from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a city of about 1.4 million just east of the Ural Mountains and about 1,000 miles from Moscow.
In an interview with The California Report, Marinelli confirms he’s living and working in Russia as a teacher.
More in link plus audio: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/12/13/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession/
From His Home in Russia, #Calexit Leader Plots California Secession:
From His Home in Russia, #Calexit Leader Plots California Secession
On paper, the leader of the California secession movement lives in an apartment complex near San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood. But in reality, the Calexit campaign is being run by a 30-year-old who lives and works in a city on the edge of Siberia.
Louis Marinelli heads the secessionist group Yes California. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the organization has gone from an unknown fringe group to one discussed seriously in mainstream media.
What has not been discussed as prominently is Marinelli’s deep ties to Russia.
A former right-wing activist from Buffalo, New York, Marinelli first moved to Russia almost a decade ago. He studied at St. Petersburg State University, the alma mater of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He returned to the United States to campaign against LGBTQ rights as part of the National Organization for Marriage.
Marinelli then returned to Russia. He would marry a Russian citizen, and the couple moved to San Diego, where Marinelli launched a political career based on a platform of California secession.
“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Marinelli says from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a city of about 1.4 million just east of the Ural Mountains and about 1,000 miles from Moscow.
In an interview with The California Report, Marinelli confirms he’s living and working in Russia as a teacher.
More in link plus audio: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/12/13/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession/
Here's what the biggest police union wants from Trump: Racial profiling, deport immigrigants
Largest police union wants Trump to lift federal ban on racial profiling, which police unions say police never do.https://twitter.com/radleybalko/status/810852734589108224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A return to racial profiling and deporting immigrants: The Fraternal Order of Police has a plan for Trump's first 100 days.
Donald Trump didn't earn too many endorsements from unions during his presidential campaign, but one enthusiastically supported him. The national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which boasts more than 330,000 members and is the country's largest police union, announced in September that it would be backing Trump because he "understands and supports" its priorities. (The organization declined to make a formal endorsement in the 2012 presidential election but in 2008 backed John McCain.) Trump's rhetoric on safety and law and order seemed to align with the right-leaning union. "Our members believe he will make America safe again," the group explained when it announced its support. About a week after Election Day, it offered the president-elect a list of its priorities for the first 100 days of his administration.
Donald Trump didn't earn too many endorsements from unions during his presidential campaign, but one enthusiastically supported him. The national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which boasts more than 330,000 members and is the country's largest police union, announced in September that it would be backing Trump because he "understands and supports" its priorities. (The organization declined to make a formal endorsement in the 2012 presidential election but in 2008 backed John McCain.) Trump's rhetoric on safety and law and order seemed to align with the right-leaning union. "Our members believe he will make America safe again," the group explained when it announced its support. About a week after Election Day, it offered the president-elect a list of its priorities for the first 100 days of his administration.
The policy ideas, released through the union's official website with little fanfare, includes more than a dozen proposals. Many involve aggressively dismantling the modest reforms suggested by the Obama administration in a 2015 plan called President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, such as increasing the use of body cameras nationwide and implementing a national database on police use of force. The FOP also wants Trump to bring back racial profiling in federal agencies by lifting or changing the 2003 ban put in place by the Bush administration. The union suggests he should cut off some or all federal aid to "sanctuary cities" and bring an end to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), using its database to deport the individuals who had been protected by being included in it. Using police officers to participate in the deportation of undocumented immigrants was an idea Trump suggested in his immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, last August. Several large cities have indicated they will not use police officers or relinquish their status as sanctuary cities to help deport immigrants
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/heres-what-biggest-police-union-wants-trump-his-first-100-days
https://t.co/OokAGrGcSb
Many electors are now stating those concerned should call the DOJ at (202) 514-2000, to delay d vote
Many electors are now stating those concerned should call the DOJ at (202) 514-2000, to delay the vote
I called already.
Matthew Chapman ?@fawfulfan 11h11 hours ago
IMPORTANT. Many electors are now stating those concerned should call the DOJ at (202) 514-2000, to delay the vote for an intel briefing.
Also posted here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512661233
It starts at 10 AM ET: Today the Electoral College will seal our fates.
Will they - the Electors- act as Americans of good faith?Schedule here of the different States:
https://www.scribd.com/document/334572576/Electoral-College-Voting-Schedule#from_embed
Profile Information
Member since: Mon Sep 19, 2016, 10:04 AMNumber of posts: 7,178
