Roberto Marchioro

Hanno questo nome alcuni programmi di piccole dimensioni che configurano il computer dell’utente affinche’ questo si colleghi non piu’ al proprio provider Internet ma ad un altro fornitore di accesso, ad un prezzo di connessione spesso molto elevato. …

I RISCHI

Sebbene il dialer sia uno strumento che consente a fornitori autorizzati di contenuti di far pagare l’accesso ad alcuni servizi telematici, molto piu’ spesso viene abusato da soggetti senza scrupoli che tentano di ingannare l’utente, fargli scaricare il programma e far connettere il loro computer a numeri a pagamento. Questi programmi generalmente si sostituiscono automaticamente alla connessione preferenziale dell’utente nella speranza cosi’ di lucrare il piu’ possibile sulle attivita’ online di chi e’ meno attento.

COME VENGONO DIFFUSI

I dialer piu’ invasivi ed abusivi vengono perlopiu’ promossi attraverso messaggi non richiesti di posta elettronica (Spam), alcuni dei quali sono configurati per sfruttare le caratteristiche di Windows e attivare alla chiusura del messaggio stesso lo scaricamento del programma dialer.

Su Web i dialer vengono spesso promossi come metodi di accesso ai contenuti pornografici, allo scaricamento di loghi e suonerie per il cellulare e ad altro ancora. Molto spesso, pero’, non forniscono all’utente in modo trasparente la tariffa che viene applicata alla connessione proposta dal dialer.

COME PROTEGGERSI

La configurazione ordinaria di browser e programma di posta elettronica generalmente permette all’utente di scegliere se installare o meno un dialer, sebbene vi siano certi dialer capaci di proporsi in modo estremamente subdolo. Dunque il modo migliore per proteggersi e’ tenere gli occhi aperti e dare l’autorizzazione a scaricare programmi solo quando si e’ certi della loro natura e funzionamento.

Essenziale e’ tenere aggiornati i software del proprio computer, in particolare se si utilizza Windows. Puo’ succedere infatti che un sito aggressivo nel quale si sta navigando tenti di usare le vulnerabilita’ del sistema per inserire di nascosto, ovvero in modo assolutamente non trasparente, il dialer.

CHI NON CORRE RISCHI

I rischi minori sono corsi da chi dispone di connettivita’ ADSL e dunque di un modem che non puo’ essere utilizzato dai dialer, o da chi non dispone sul proprio computer di un accesso diretto ad Internet ma di un accesso esclusivamente tramite altri computer.

Vedi anche quanto gi? scritto nella guida anti-dialer

Artefice dell’operazione ? il sito Dot.tk che permette la registrazione gratuita di tre domini .tk a persona con redirect verso le proprie pagine ospitate magari su lycos, digilander ecc.
L’unico limite ? rappresentato dal fatto che il dominio in questione devve essere “chiamato” almeno 30 volte in 90 giorni.
Chiss? per quanto durer? …-

L’editoriale di oggi del NY Times analizza il rapporto sui diritti umani prodotto dal Dipartimento di Stato americano citando gravi casi di violazione dei diritti e nell’Asse del Male e nella coalizione dei buoni che hanno sostenuto il governo americano nella guerra in Iraq.
Da leggere e conservare.

A Global Catalog of Wrongs

Around this time each year, the State Department produces a remarkable document detailing the human rights practices and problems of almost every country in the world. Dispensing with the niceties of diplomatic language, the report looks at friend and foe alike with candid scrutiny.

Among the nations that come in for criticism are a number of members of President Bush’s Coalition of the Willing for the invasion of Iraq – embarrassing company in a campaign whose aims include liberating the Iraqi people from dictatorship. Uzbekistan routinely tortures detainees and some have died in custody. Eritrea has ended freedom of the press and restricts religious freedom. Azerbaijan arbitrarily detains dissidents and rigs elections. Significant violations are noted in such other coalition members as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Macedonia, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. In all seven, the overall human rights situation was rated as poor.

Of course, the “axis of evil” also rightly comes in for plenty of scorn. The White House’s main security concern has been these countries’ weapons programs and alleged links to terrorism. But Iraq, North Korea and Iran also victimize their own people. Baghdad has ordered executions without trial, political murders, torture and deadly persecution of Shiite Muslims. North Korea is an absolute dictatorship with detention camps, torture and harsh prison conditions, including deliberate starvation. Iran, relatively better, is still horrific, with arbitrary arrests, disappearances and sadistic punishments like stoning and flogging.

Several other governments deserve dishonorable mention. Myanmar, formerly Burma, is responsible for punitive rape by soldiers, forced relocation of ethnic minorities, forced labor and conscription of children. Turkmenistan’s self-glorifying autocrat models his repressive rule on Stalin’s.

China is much freer than before. But its sheer size makes it the world’s No. 1 quantitative violator of human rights. Beijing executed more than 3,000 people last year, many without due process. It uses torture, forced confessions, imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals and lengthy detentions with no right to communicate with family members or lawyers.

The report cites several countries for withholding sleep and food to extract confessions, techniques some have charged American authorities with using in Afghanistan and Guant?namo Bay, Cuba. These methods are correctly listed under the heading of “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment.” Washington should reject them and should refuse to hand over prisoners to countries that routinely use torture. The rights report must become a tool not just for documenting abuses, but also for combating them.

Sul NY Times un editoriale su come viene percepito questo momento di alta disoccupazione negli USA, lo stress e la frustrazione di chi cerca lavoro e le conseguenze sulla vita e le scelte di ogni giorno.

Workers Who Feel Discarded
By BOB HERBERT

“I’ve gone through a few stages of depression and frustration,” said Dina Ziskin, who is 31 and lives in Brooklyn. “Why is it taking me so long? I panic a lot. I did not think it would be this difficult to find a job.”

“I can’t tell you the number of divorces we hear about,” said Janelle Razzino, who runs an executive search firm in Westwood, N.J. “The job loss in these cases was probably the final straw. Nobody needs that kind of pressure, stress, whatever.”

“It’s like someone ran an electric shock through your system,” said Dr. Steve Korner, a psychologist in Cresskill, N.J. “People are anxious, depressed, feeling unwanted, powerless. The job market is really awful for a lot of people.”

Among the many things overshadowed by the war is the substantial human toll that is quietly being taken by the faltering U.S. economy. Putting Americans to work is not part of the agenda of the Bush administration, and the fallout from this lack of interest is spreading big time.

The U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs. On Friday the government reported that 108,000 more jobs were lost in March. Some 2.4 million jobs have vanished since the nation’s payrolls peaked two years ago.

The jobless rate held steady at 5.8 percent last month, but that is extremely deceptive. People who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work are not counted when the unemployment rate is calculated. This keeps the official rate artificially low. There are five million people in the discouraged category and their ranks are growing.

David Leonhardt, in an article in The Times on Saturday, wrote:

“Last month’s job losses cut across almost every sector of the economy. Manufacturers reduced employment for the 36th consecutive month. The vast services industry, usually a source of stability, has cut 121,000 jobs in the last six months, with department stores, restaurants, airlines and hotels all paring their payrolls in March. After adding jobs through last year, local and state governments have also begun to make cuts to close budget deficits.”

There is not much of a sense anywhere that things are about to improve. “It seems to me that the recovery’s been six months away for two years running,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the international outplacement firm. “The latest version of that is that when the war ends the euphoria will trigger enough optimism on the part of either consumers or businesses to finally turn things around. I’m certainly dubious about that.”

The loss of a job is like a blow to the solar plexus of an individual family. Grand plans give way to a state of emergency in which it is not at all clear how the rent or the mortgage will be paid, or how the bill collectors can be satisfied from month to month, then week to week, and finally day to day.

“I’ve got my own little Ponzi scheme going,” a distraught former executive told me last week. “When the credit card companies pull the plug on me, I’m finished.”

The executive, who asked not to be identified, said he was depressed but could not afford to see a therapist.

John Sampson helps run a support network in northern New Jersey for telecommunications experts who have lost senior positions. “This is the bleakest employment picture I’ve ever seen,” he said. “The number of people looking for jobs is overwhelming. We’ve got a whole bunch of people now who are doing everything from selling cars to driving limousines to working in retail.”

Mr. Sampson, who is 62, said he’s been out of work for more than a year.

There doesn’t seem to be much awareness in the Bush administration of the terrible distress of the unemployed American worker. This is an ache that does not extend to the gilded towers of the very wealthy, which is where the administration has always focused its concern.

The White House response to the latest job loss figures is the same response it has had all along to bad economic news: more tax cuts are the cure.

Mr. Sampson, who described himself as coming from a “Republican background,” said he feels the American worker has been abandoned. “While I’m not a big Bill Clinton fan,” he said, “I liked what his labor secretary had to say. Robert Reich always talked about the work force as a national asset. It is. We should treat it that way.”