Top 5: Best countries to host your website for data privacy (Nomad Capitalist)

 Reliability issues are totally different from privacy issues. This is the goal of this article (Ed)
by Andrew Henderson |           

This site is about the idea of thinking beyond borders and challenging pre-conceived notions. When it comes to data privacy and the best countries to host your website, you have to think outside of the box. That means that a country that has high taxes and a high cost of living may be valuable for other reasons, such as protecting your data privacy.

While the United States has most of the world’s top web hosting companies, those companies are subject to increasingly draconian anti-privacy laws. (The US also hosts more malware than any other country by a factor of three). Just as the US government has helped themselves to offshore .com domain names, hosting your website within US borders could pose a serious risk to your data privacy, especially if you publish things the US government doesn’t like.

While the best countries to host your website may vary based on what country you’re based in, here are some of the countries with the strongest data privacy laws for websites and the press. They just so happen to be some of the most scenic countries in the world… in case you ever want to pay your server a visit.

Top 5 Best countries to host your website for data privacy

Romania: The Eastern European country is an emerging destination for web talent and hosting, and also benefits from European attitudes toward data privacy.

5. Romania

Romania has some of the fastest internet speeds in the world, and is an emerging destination for hiring a virtual assistant for internet work. But Romania’s position in less-regulated eastern Europe gives it an advantage not only in its central location close to Europe and Asia, but also with its personal and data privacy laws. Unlike The Land of the Free, which cloaks its privacy-killing measures in patriotism, Romania has established agencies such as The National Supervisory Authority For Personal Data. Freedom of the Press in Romania is approaching that of the US, as well.

Switzerland: Websites hosted in the central European country jumped after PRISM was unveiled. Despite its banking debacles, Switzerland has high standards of privacy.

4. Switzerland

After the Edward Snowden incident, web hosting company Hostpoint reported a 45% increase in customers. Now, telecom company Swisscom is building a Swiss-based cloud for data privacy. While the US government covertly gathers internet user data using FISA and the Patriot Act, Switzerland requires a formal request to be filed by prosecutors to get internet data. Switzerland’s Federal Act on Data Protection attempts to maintain one of the highest data privacy standards in the world.

The Netherlands: a top country for data privacy, and one of the best countries to host a website

3. Netherlands

Score one for freedom: the Dutch government recently accused Google of violating data privacy laws. While the US government is encouraging such anti-privacy measures, the Netherlands has EU privacy laws as well as its own provisions to provide websites with excellent privacy. It’s no surprise, considering the Netherlands is ranked second in Freedom of the Press, behind only Finland. There are actual examples of how Dutch web hosting companies forced the government to provide them legal paperwork for taking a site down, and the government backed off. Of course, the Netherlands’ location in Europe makes it an excellent choice for pure geographic reasons, but one of the highest privacy standards in Europe doesn’t hurt, either.

Norway: Data privacy laws are strong throughout much of the Nordic region, but most so in Norway, which also boasts a high ranking on the Freedom of the Press Index

2. Norway

While Sweden web hosting company Banhhof reportedly hosts Wikileaks, Norway surpasses Sweden in data privacy and freedom of the press rankings. Despite sharing many of the European values of data privacy, Norway is not a member of the EU, which means it has been free to craft its own privacy laws free from Eurozone interference. Web hosts in Norway, called “webhotell”, are a bit more expensive but offer greater protections than a US web host. Cloud storage services like Runbox operate from Norway, and Jottabox brags how its pure Norwegian ownership allows it to protect its clients’ data from US law in a way that US companies operating European data centers can’t. This assertion is based on the need for foreign governments to get permission from a Norwegian court to access private data.

Iceland: According to our findings are the opinions of webmasters around the world, it is the best country to host your website

1. Iceland

Despite its economic issues following the Global Financial Crisis, Iceland is well-known for its strict data privacy laws. In addition to its excellent connectivity to both Europe and North America, Iceland’s Data Protection Act in 2000 took great measures to ensure the government of all of 300,000 people followed strict protocol to protect privacy. While Iceland has adopted the Eurozone’s privacy regulations – which are undoubtedly better than those in the United States, it has gone a step further and gotten rid of more stringent requirements to maintain data. Encrypted communication services like Unseen.is operate from Iceland. And Kim Dotcom recently announced that he would move to encrypted Mega file service to Iceland if New Zealand passed anti-privacy laws.

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Andrew Henderson

Expat entrepreneur. Perpetual traveler. Citizen of the world. Andrew visits over a dozen new countries  each year in search of more freedom and better opportunities. His tips show how you can make money and take back your liberty beyond your own borders.

                                     

Cyberwar in Ukraine Falls Far Short of Russia's Full Powers

By Carol Matlack                                                         March 10, 2014

A protester holds a Ukrainian flag in front of the parliament building in central Kiev, on Feb. 27

The tense on-the-ground standoff in Ukraine has already tipped into open hostilities online, with hackers targeting members of parliament and state agencies.

The government in Kiev has linked Internet and phone service disruptions in recent days to cyberwar attacks. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council reported a “massive denial-of-service attack” that overwhelmed its servers for several hours last week. Even some Ukrainian news outlets say their websites have been hacked, along with similar reports of attacks on news outlets in Russia.

A pro-Russian group calling itself CyberBerkut is claiming on its Facebook (FB) page to have blocked the phones of more than 700 Ukrainian government officials, whom it describes as “political traitors.” The group said it also has attacked websites belonging to government agencies and to protest groups that helped oust former President Viktor Yanukovych. The name Berkut refers to a former special police unit, disbanded by the new government, that Yanukovych used to crack down on protesters.

STORY: Putin’s Gamble: Crimea Land Grab Will Be Met With Western Inaction

But is it really cyberwarfare, or just the time-honored practice of psychological operations? Even if the attacks are being coordinated from Moscow, which so far isn’t clear, what’s happened looks, at least to this point, mainly like skirmishing for propaganda advantage, says John Bumgarner, a former intelligence officer in Charlotte, N.C., who now works for the nonprofit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit and advises governments on security issues. “If Russia really wanted to deal a devastating blow,” he says, “they could have definitely done it.”

Some of the disruptions appear to have little to do with cyberwar. There have beenreports of telephone and Internet service disruptions between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, but those appear to have involved cutting of phone lines, a military tactic that predates the Internet era by decades. Some Ukrainian government agencies have also been infected by a vicious malware called Snake that has plagued the Pentagon and some other governments in the past, according to theNew York Times, which cited a new report by British defense group BAE Systems(BA/:LN). But Snake seems to have appeared in Ukraine before the recent showdown with Russia.

The cyber attacks in Ukraine pale by comparison with what happened in Georgia during Russia’s military intervention in South Ossetia in 2008, Bumgarner says. Moscow effectively shut down more than 30 websites used by Georgian civilian groups opposed to Russian intervention and kept them offline until Russia had achieved its objectives. Bumgarner, who has studied the Georgia cyber attack, says there was clear evidence it was orchestrated from Moscow and designed to complement its military action.

STORY: A Moscow MBA Program Fights to Keep Russia's Brightest at Home

Even in Georgia, however, Russia didn’t deploy all its cyberwarfare capabilities. The country’s electrical and transportation systems could have been disrupted by cyber attacks, Bumgarner says, but that never happened.

Russia has also been blamed for a cyber attack that hit the Baltic country of Estonia in 2007, during a dispute over removal of a memorial to Soviet soldiers in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. The Kremlin denied involvement in that attack, which nearly shut down the government and the banking system for several days.

By contrast, most targets of recent attacks in Ukraine have gotten their service restored in a matter of hours. Whoever is behind the attacks, Bumgarner says, has “shown considerable restraint.”

STORY: Drinking Vodka With Russia's Crimean Forces After the Last Invasion

Matlack is a Paris correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Comcast y Netflix se ponen de acuerdo

Netflix further boasts improvements on Comcast this April

Summary: Comcast didn't crack the top 10 on Netflix's monthly ISP Speed Index, but that will almost certainly change by April.

By Rachel King for Between the Lines |                                                        March 10, 2014 

Netflix and Comcast recently came to terms in a widely-reported deal, the fruits of which should become evident to consumers very soon.

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Netflix just released the figures for its monthly Internet Service Provider speed and performance update. Comcast didn't crack the top five, placing at 11th.

A two-spot improvement sequentially, but there is still some work cut out for mass media conglomerate.

Readers only casually familiar with Netflix (subscribers or not) might be surprised considering the recent hubbub about the online rental giant and the cable company trying to merge with Time Warner, which ranked fifth on its own.

But don't worry as that's all about to change.

Under the agreement hammered out in February, Netflix will gain direct access to Comcast's broadband network -- an arrangement that could become the model for the first of many to follow for the digital streaming company.

Acknowledging that there wasn't much of a flux in North American ISP index rankings in February, Netflix communications director Joris Evers touted in a blog post on Monday that the company expects to see "Comcast’s performance improve in the rankings next month" as a result of the deal.

However, Evers refrained from offering a more specific forecast than that.

For reference, the Netflix ISP Speed Index covers the user experience for more than 44 million Netflix members worldwide  and counting. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company asserted that its user base now streams over one billion hours of digital content on a monthly basis.

Evers also noted that Netflix extended its list of domestic ISPs to account for the top 60.

Image via Netflix

Disney Bets $1 Billion on Technology to Track Theme-Park Visitors (BusinessWeek)

By Christopher Palmeri                                                              March 07, 2014

Jason McInerney and his wife, Melissa, recently tapped their lunch orders onto a touchscreen at the entrance to the Be Our Guest restaurant at Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort and were told to take any open seat. Moments later a food server appeared at their table with their croque-monsieur and carved turkey sandwiches. Asks McInerney, a once-a-year visitor to Disney theme parks: “How did they know where we were sitting?”

The answer was on the electronic bands the couple wore on their wrists. That’s the magic of the MyMagic+, Walt Disney’s (DIS) $1 billion experiment in crowd control, data collection, and wearable technology that could change the way people play—and spend—at the Most Magical Place on Earth. If the system works, it could be copied not only by other theme parks but also by museums, zoos, airports, and malls. “It’s a complete game changer,” says Douglas Quinby, vice president for research at PhoCusWright, a travel consulting firm.

That would suit Disney just fine, as it expands its global empire of theme parks and kicks up efforts to fend off rivals. The most formidable is Comcast’s (CMCSA)Universal Studios, which this summer will unveil a massive expansion of its hit Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction at its parks near Walt Disney World.

STORY: Disney's Magic Kingdom Nears $100 Tickets, and the Crowds Keep Coming

One hitch for Disney could be if devotees such as the McInerneys find MyMagic+ confining, confusing, or even a bit creepy. Some have lit into it with such vigor onFacebook (FB) and blogs such as micechat.com that Kevin Yee, a former Disney World employee who operates the travel website UltimateOrlando.com, called their grievances “a rolling boulder … and it’s going to be difficult to stop completely.”

Change is always tricky for Disney, especially at its parks, where introducing a new brand of coffee can spark a revolt by fans. Unhappy mouseketeers last year began a petition drive to keep Disneyland in January from pulling the Billy Hill and the Hillbillies show after 21 years (it didn’t work). Others marched on the park’s City Hall in 2004 after recalibrations made to the Mad Tea Party ride in the name of safety slowed it down.

MyMagic+ promises far more radical change. It’s a sweeping reservation and ride planning system that allows for bookings months in advance on a website or smartphone app. Bracelets called MagicBands, which link electronically to an encrypted database of visitor information, serve as admission tickets, hotel keys, and credit or debit cards; a tap against a sensor pays for food or trinkets. The bands have radio frequency identification (RFID) chips—which critics derisively call spychips because of their ability to monitor people and things.

STORY: Tracking Every Move You Make—for a $5 Gift Card

That tracking power also is what makes them so important for Disney’s $14.1 billion theme park and resort business. Intelligence collected using the bands coupled with what visitors input into the related My Disney Experience app and website—all voluntary—help Disney determine when to add more staff at rides, what restaurants should serve, which souvenirs should be stocked, and how many employees in costume should roam around at any given time. Data about customer preferences could be used to craft e-mails or text messages alerting them to restaurant menu changes or sudden openings for reservations in an expedited queue at Space Mountain or the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

The goal is to offer people what Tom Staggs, head of the company’s parks and resorts unit, calls “a more immersive, more seamless, and more personal experience”—allowing Disney employees to address a child by name, for example, or wish someone a happy birthday. “The implications for big data and for personalization are extraordinary,” says Quinby. “It could radically change interaction between customers and the company.”

Moreover, visitors with full Disney World schedules mapped out in advance on the MyMagic+ system will be less likely to jump spontaneously to one of the dozens of other attractions in Central Florida, including five SeaWorld Entertainment (SEAS)parks and a Legoland. And, of course, the MagicBands make it so easy to spend.

STORY: Hong Kong Disneyland Hits Its Stride, Readies for Chinese Rivals

“When you make [the logistics] easier, people tend to spend more time on entertainment and more time on consumables—be that food and beverage, merchandise, etc.,” Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said in a November investor call. “We do expect this to be a … growingly positive impact on our business in the years to come.”

STORY: Tesco Monitors Employees With Motorola Armbands

Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger told analysts in February that the new system helped the Magic Kingdom park accommodate 3,000 additional daily guests during the Christmas holiday season by reducing congestion around the most popular attractions. “I’d say the biggest impact is, one, being able to accommodate more people because it’s just more efficient,” Iger said, “and second, enabling guests to have a substantially better experience than they’ve had before because they’re doing more.”

Many Disney fans are already sold. “I think this in the end is going to make Disney better,” says Jamie Landry, a Boston police officer who visits Disney World with his wife and daughter every year. He was floating in the pool at Disney’s on-site Coronado Springs Resort hotel, appreciating his waterproof MagicBand, which allows him never to carry identification or room keys or credit cards.

That’s not how many critics have reacted in the blogosphere. The harshest complaints are directed at FastPass+, a way of reducing wait times for popular rides. Under the original FastPass—introduced in 1999 and still used at Disney’s other parks—a visitor could race around to collect more than six paper reservation slips a day at kiosks outside the most popular attractions, show up at a time printed on the slip, and get into a theoretically shorter queue. The new system, while letting guests at Disney hotels book reservations months in advance via the My Disney Experience app and website, limits all visitors’ reserve-ahead slots to three per day. That unleashed a torrent of objections that Disney is limiting the number of reservations guests can make for its most popular attractions, and that the lines are as long as ever.

A Disney spokeswoman says neither lines for its reserved spots nor walk-up lines are longer. The number of attractions on which slots can be reserved has doubled to 60 and limits on advance reservations for the most popular rides should allow all guests to book at least one of their top choices, Disney says. A Disney World spokeswoman says 80 percent of the comments on social media about MyMagic+ have been positive, and just 2 percent have been negative.

STORY: Apple's Location-Tracking iBeacon Is Poised for Use in Retail Sales

Still, Tom Burnet, CEO of Accesso Technology Group, which makes queue management systems for theme parks, says his company’s experience with ride scheduling at parks in Europe is that people don’t like to schedule their days in advance. “One of the joys of being in a theme park is you’re not on a schedule,” he says.

That’s been part of Disney World’s appeal for Clayton Cannon, who lives about an hour’s drive away in Daytona Beach and holds an annual pass. His gripe is that MyMagic+ puts day-trippers like him and others who don’t plan ahead at a disadvantage. “Magic Kingdom was definitely a worse experience,” he says about a recent visit. “You used to be able to get there at 3 or 5 p.m. and still get a FastPass. Now all the FastPasses for top rides are being wiped out by 10 in the morning.”

Despite such grousing, hospitality experts say that the use of more monitoring technology is only a matter of time. Explains Accesso’s Burnet: “Where Disney goes, other people follow.”

STORY: Airline Lost Your Luggage? Let Your Phone Find It

The bottom line: An RFID-aided reservation setup let Disney handle 3,000 more daily guests at the Magic Kingdom last Christmas.

Palmeri is a reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek in Los Angeles.

Otro día y otro detallista con robo de identidad masivo en las tarjetas de crédito

Another Day, Another Retailer in a Massive Credit Card Breach

By Karen Weise                                                                                               March 05, 2014

The corporate hacks keep coming. The latest target, according to cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs, is the beauty supply chain Sally Beauty (SBH), a retailer that draws customers from salons and other stylists.

A new batch of 282,000 stolen debit and credit cards were posted for sale this week on underground marketplaces, and Krebs believes they have been used at one of Sally Beauty’s 2,600 stores. It’s the latest scoop from Krebs, who has managed to penetrate the criminal underground to break major stories, including the Target(TGT) and Neiman Marcus (NMG) hacks.

He used a similar technique to help triangulate the source of the Sally Beauty data breach, working with banks to buy back some of their compromised cards and analyze which stores had transactions on each account. Krebs says the underground marketplaces offering the stolen Sally Beauty card data were also affiliated with the same young Ukrainian man whom he has linked to sales of data purloined from Target.

BLOG: Who Should Pay for Data Theft?

Sally Beauty’s spokeswoman Karen Fugate walked Krebs through the company’s efforts to investigate a possible breach. She said the retailer first noticed suspicious activity around Feb. 24, but so far investigators, including Verizon (VZ) Enterprise Solutions, have been unable to detect any hacks.

The highly publicized Target breach, coming in the middle of the key holiday shopping season, helped drag down store traffic this winter. But investors have rallied behind the company recently as Target moves to repair the damage caused by the hack. Today, Target announced an overhaul of its security operations, bringing in a new high-level executive to replace the outgoing head of information security, Beth Jacob, who resigned today.

The rash of retail-related breaches has intensified the battle between banks and retailers over who should be responsible when a store is hacked. Just minutes before the Sally Beauty news broke, the National Retail Federation submitted a statement to the House asking Congress to resolve the feud in a “holistic fashion.“

STORY: Hack-Resistant Credit Cards Bring More Safety—at a Price

Weise is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York. Follow her on Twitter @kyweise.

El lado oscuro de las impresoras en 3D (techRepublic US)

The dark side of 3D printing: 10 things to watch

By Lyndsey Gilpin March 5, 2014, 4:51 AM PST //  lyndseygilpin

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The 3D printer is a double-edged sword. It stands to transform technology and society for the better, but we also can't ignore the potential negative consequences. 

This 3D printed Darth Vader might say: "Give yourself to the Dark Side."

 Image: mattk007/Thingiverse

 As with any new technology, it's easy to get swept up in the benefits of 3D printing. It opens up a world of new possibilities for all industries, and stands to lessen transportation costs, environmental impacts, waste, and reliance on corporations by enabling the maker movement.

But 3D printers are still potentially hazardous, wasteful machines, and their societal, political, economic, and environmental impacts have not yet been studied extensively. To make sure you aren't thrown off guard by the conversations to come, we've compiled a list of 10 things you need to know about the dangers and potentially negative impacts of 3D printers.

1. 3D printers are energy hogs

When melting plastic with heat or lasers, 3D printers consume about 50 to 100 times more electrical energy than injection molding to make an item of the same weight, according to research by Loughborough University. In 2009, research at MIT's Environmentally Benign Manufacturing program showed that laser direct metal deposition (where metal powder is fused together) used hundreds of times the electricity as traditional casting or machining. Because of this, 3D printers are better for small batch runs. Industrial-sized 3D printers may not be the answer to lessening our use of coal power any time soon.

2. Unhealthy air emissions

3D printers may pose a health risk when used in the home, according to researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The emissions from desktop 3D printers are similar to burning a cigarette or cooking on a gas or electric stove. The 2013 study was the first to measure these airborne particle emissions from desktop 3D printers. While heating the plastic and printing small figures, the machines using PLA filament emitted 20 billion ultrafine particles per minute, and the ABS emitted up to 200 billion particles per minute. These particles can settle in the lungs or the bloodstream and pose health risk, especially for those with asthma.

3. Reliance on plastics

ABS plastic filament is the most common material used in 3D printers.  Image: MakerBot

One of the biggest environmental movements in recent history has been to reduce reliance on plastics, from grocery bags to water bottles to household objects that can be made from recycled materials instead. The most popular—and cheapest—3D printers use plastic filament. Though using raw materials reduces the amount of waste in general, the machines still leave unused or excess plastic in the print beds. PLA is biodegradable, but ABS filament is still the most commonly used type of plastic. The plastic byproduct ends up in landfills. If 3D printing is going to be industrialized, that byproduct or other recycled plastic needs to be reused.

4. IP and licensing deals

In January, 3D Systems acquired Gentle Giant Ltd., which owned the licensing rights to toy franchises such as The Hobbit, The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, Alien, and Star Wars. Gartnerhas said that companies may lose at least $100 billion in four years to licensing or IP owners. 3D printing will change the business market—and the black market for these items—and the legislation will have to rush to catch up. This potential digital piracy situation is comparable to the way the internet challenged the movie and music industries for copyrights, trademarks, and illegal downloads.

5. Gun control loopholes

The first successful 3D printed gun is old news, but its ramifications are very important. Companies are popping up around the world, attempting to sell these guns and/or the CAD designs for them. Engineering firm Solid Concepts has even fired rounds out of the first 3D printed metal gun. Congress' Undetectable Firearms Act, which bans guns that can't be detected by metal detectors or x-ray scanners, was renewed for 10 years. It left a loophole in the law, however: 3D printed guns with a tiny piece of metal aren't banned by the Act. Legislators are attempting to close that loophole now, after Congress ignored the issue for quite some time, with special requirements for printed guns.

6. Responsibility of manufacturers

Weapons can be 3D printed. So can safety equipment such as helmets, wheels for bikes, and toys for small children. Of course there is the issue of intellectual property and trademark, but the larger issue involves responsibility. If a person shoots a gun and harms or kills someone, stabs someone with a 3D printed knife, or breaks their neck while riding on a bike with a 3D printed helmet, who is held accountable? The owner of the printer, the manufacturer of the printer, or the irresponsible person who thought it was a good idea to produce and use an untested product?

7. Bioprinting ethics and regulation

Cornell bioengineers and physicians created an artificial ear that looks and acts like a natural one.

 Lindsay France/University Photography

The conversations about the ethics of bioprinting have already begun. Organovo is printing liver cells as well as eye tissue cells in a partnership with the National Eye Institute and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Scientists have also proposed mixing human stem cells with canine muscle cells to create enhanced organ tissue. Printing cartilage is still the most realistic type of bioprinting, and printing whole organs is still many years away, but 3D printing is growing in medicine quite rapidly. Conversations about the moral, ethical, and legal issues surrounding bioprinting have started, but they will inevitably cause a lot more controversy as it becomes more commonplace.

8. Possibility of 3D printed drugs

Assembling chemical compounds on a molecular level using a 3D printer is possible. A researcher at the University of Glasglow created a prototype of a 3D "Chemputer" that makes drugs and medicine. He wants to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry by allowing patients to print their own medicine with a chemical blueprint they get from the pharmacy. Of course, this is a very long way off, but it stands to enable DIY chemists to create anything from cocaine to ricin.

9. National security risks

A white paper released from the National Defense University highlighted national security risks from 3D printing technology. Since there will be significant legal and economic implications on the business sector and 3D printers offer the ability to produce a wide range of objects that cannot be controlled yet, the paper noted that there are definitely national security risks that need to be analyzed in the near future.

10. Safety of items that come into contact with food

Kitchenware is popular to 3D print, but the safety of the materials used is questionable.

 Image: Silverbeam/Shapeways

You can print out a fork or spoon with your MakerBot, but if you use ABS plastic, it is not BPA-free. Luckily, new filaments that are safer to put in your mouth are being created for this specific reason, but they aren't widely available yet. Many 3D printers have spaces where bacteria can easily grow if they aren't cleaned properly, as well. In order to more safely-produced 3D printed food and kitchenware, there may be a need for an FDA-approved machine. People probably don't want to eat genetically-engineered pizza off of toxic plates.