8 ms·
Microsoft Censors Pirate Bay Links in Windows Live Messenger
- victorantos 15y agothis is clearly not a solution
- jstepien 15y agoI wonder whether they block magnet links as well. In either case, URL shorteners seem to be a sufficient solution.
- udp 15y agoMaybe switching IM networks is an altogether better solution.
- udp 15y agoSo, what's the most convenient way to IM with end-to-end encryption? I don't like the idea of it being possible for an intermediate to scan through my private messages.
- 18pfsmt 15y agoI would suggest using an XMPP-based service, and then using a client like Pidgin with an Off The Record (OTR) plugin.
- hamidpalo 15y agoOTR has nothing to do with encryption. All it says is "pretty please don't save my conversation." The only way for fully encrypted conversations is to use a plugin that encrypts messages themselves, or use an ecrypted P2P IM network.
- jeltz 15y agoOTR is all about encryption, it is a plugin which encrypts the messages themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
- eurleif 15y agoI think the GP was thinking of Google Talk's feature to disable logging, which is also called 'off the record'.
- burgerbrain 15y agoHe was not: "using a client like Pidgin with an Off The Record (OTR) plugin."
- buu700 15y agoWhat are you on about? OTR is pretty robust encryption. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
- bryanl 15y agohttp://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ the OTR protocol mentioned in the parent does provide encryption.
- hamidpalo 15y agoThere seems to be some confusion about the XMPP definition of OTR as defined in XEP-0136 which does not mention encryption (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html#otr http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html#otr) and the colloquial use of OTR which apparently means "encrypted IM." AFAIK there is no defined standard or agreed-upon XMPP extension for the latter. I should have clarified this in the original comment.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jb55 15y agoIt's kind of sad that most IM clients do not provide OTR out of the box, I would use it all the time but unfortunately most people do not use pidgin or Adium.
- pirateking 15y agoMessages in OS X Mountain Lion will support end-to-end encryption by default (for messages sent through iMessage)[1]. [1] http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#messages http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#mess...
- apawloski 15y agoThis pretty surprising. Given the industry standard with mining similar communications I'm surprised that Apple gave up a gigantic pool of user information like that.
- batista 15y agoApple is not an advertising company. They have also made other similar moves to the same effect.
- apawloski 15y agoNot to call you out, but what other moves are you thinking of (legitimately curious)?
- pirateking 15y agoApple almost always puts respect for the end user (the paying customer) as one of its highest priorities. Off the top of my head, some examples would be: not forcing users to enter license keys for software, dropping DRM from iTunes, blocking third-party cookies by default, and their refusal to allow the carriers to pollute the iPhone with their preloaded software. Now I just wish they would make it easy for me to set DuckDuckGo as my default search engine in Safari.
- batista 15y agoWell, off the top of my head: 1) The "third party cookies block" championed by Safari for one. 2) Refusing to let the publishers get user info without the user opting in first (there was big hoopla about that from the publisher's end): http://counternotions.com/2011/02/16/stores/ http://counternotions.com/2011/02/16/stores/
- tomjen3 15y agoThere is a plugin for pidgin that will allow you to send encrypted messages. Though it requires that both parties have installed it.
- Bloodwine 15y agoFor anybody that is interested, it is called "Off-the-Record Messaging" and you can get the plugin at http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- 7952 15y agoPossibly Skype? It does have end to end encryption but this is hard to validate independently.
- zotz 15y agoSkype is owned by Microsoft.
- nextparadigms 15y agoSkype? No: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/29/microsoft_skype/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/29/microsoft_skype/
- drchaos 15y agoWell I for one hope they roll out this "feature" in Skype too, ASAP. I've been preaching to (some of) my buddies for years now why it is not a good idea to rely on a closed, centralized platform for communication, but they keep on telling me that Skype is just "so convenient" and they "don't need anything else". Making Skype less convenient (by means of censorship) would mean that open and decentralized alternatives like XMPP get more attention, and that's a good thing IMHO.
- 7952 15y agoOf course its a bad idea to rely on a closed platform. Except that the majority of people rely on closed platforms (Windows and iOS) to communicate all the time. MS could prohibit pirate bay links on windows using the automatic update system; but they probably wont't. You have to use software that people are actually comfortable with and operate within that ecosystem. At the moment Skype may well be the best bet. Try finding another piece of software that has end to end encryption and is widely adopted by non-geek's.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nextparadigms 15y agoRetroshare, I believe: http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
- johnchristopher 15y agoWASTE was pretty cool and hip but it seems to have been dead for years. From wikipedia: WASTE is a decentralized chat, instant messaging and file sharing program and protocol. It behaves similarly to a virtual private network by connecting to a group of trusted computers, as determined by the users. * Secured through the trade of RSA public keys, allowing for safe and secure communication and data transfer with trusted hosts. * WASTE can obfuscate its protocol, making it difficult to detect that WASTE is being used. * WASTE has a "Saturate" feature which adds random traffic, making traffic analysis more difficult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE_again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE_again edit: Added relevant details
- 18pfsmt 15y agoPort forwarding is still a frustration when dealing with your non-tech friends. It took me 3 months to push my brother to set it up right. Now I'm trying to convince him to setup milkfish[1] on his router, so I can save mobile minutes, but I continue to fail. [1]http://wiki.milkfish.org.sipwerk.com/index.php?n=TheMilkfish.Idea http://wiki.milkfish.org.sipwerk.com/index.php?n=TheMilkfish...
- citricsquid 15y agoI'm a regular WLM user and this has been happening for years, I've seen innocuous links to small websites blocked too. It's rare that links are blocked but I wouldn't be so quick to suggest this is intentional on the part of Microsoft. The frequency at which a new URL is being shared could have triggered some sort of automatic blocking system because it's assumed to be a worm? > Apparently, the company is actively monitoring people’s communications to prevent them from linking to sites they deem to be a threat. Everything passes through their servers, it's not P2P and never has been, doesn't everyone know this about WLM? It's how they're able to support offline messaging.
- udp 15y agoThere's a difference between having a private conversation pass through your server and scanning it for naughty words.
- nextparadigms 15y agoThis has been reported for at least 2 weeks. Surely, they found out about it by now?
- Animus7 15y agoI wonder what the political forces behind this are, because I'd like to think that the engineers that implemented it understood that a) it will do nothing to stop piracy, and b) it will reduce usage of Live Messenger
- pavel_lishin 15y agoTo be fair, there is a lot of malware masquerading as The Lion King.torrent. They may not care about the piracy aspect; they may just want their users to have less malware on their computers, especially since Windows machines seem to be a prime target for botnets.
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y agoThe comment section always have people informing if it is malware or not, besides; in that line of logic they would have to censor all file hosting services (those don't even have comment section)
- jstepien 15y agoFirsty, comment sections are usually full of noise and it's next to impossible to distill any valuable information out of it. Secondly, don't expect an average person to bother checking for potential malware.
- chc 15y agoEh, the comment section very often contains people notifying everyone that a) the torrent contains malware, and b) the torrent does not contain malware. It's such a crapshoot. The uncertainty would put me off pirating as much if nothing else did.
- m_for_monkey 15y agoCensorship is never the right solution, though. That would be education.
- 15y ago
- pearkes 15y agoFacebook does this as well. (Or at least, they did until The Pirate Bay changed it's TLD to `.se`) You could argue that it's for the user's security. Torrent sites do have a lot of sketchy cruft.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoYou could argue it is to appease advertisers.
- zotz 15y ago> You could argue that it's for the user's security Who would believe that argument?
- pavel_lishin 15y agoPeople who frequently have to clean out their parents' computers because they wanted to watch something, and ended up joining a botnet.
- v-yadli 15y ago+1 Tech people detect malware with bare eyes,average users do this by installing the malware.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago> average users do this by installing the malware And even then, I'd say they only detect it 50% of the time, at best.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago> average users do this by installing the malware And even then, I'd say they only detect it 50% of the time, at best.
- billybob 15y agoBaloney. This has nothing to do with security. Even if you're chatting with me and you link to www.pleasegivemeviruses.com, nobody at MS should overrule that piece of conversation. Maybe I wanted the link. Maybe we're both security researchers. Or maybe I'm gullible. Who's to decide? I've chosen to chat with you, and you've chosen to say something. Normal human trust mechanisms apply. Censoring our conversation because you think you know what's best is ridiculous. The minute I thought a chat client was actively thwarting my conversation, I would uninstall it.
- jacquesm 15y agoWe'll be seeing a lot more of this in the next couple of years. The RIAA and the MPAA will get more and more desperate and will call in more favors with industry buddies as they get closer to the recognition that they are losing the war in spite of winning a couple of battles. In the Netherlands 'Brein', one of the rights organizations has done more to promote the pirate bay than the pirate bay ever could have hoped to achieve by themselves. This is the biggest case of disruption that I've witnessed in my life so far and even though the outcome seems all but certain it remains to be seen how much damage the wounded bear will be able to inflict before finally keeling over. edit: This prompted me to post a thing I wrote a while ago but didn't publish: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+death+throes+of+an+industry http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+death+throes+of+an+industry
- javert 15y agoI'm disappointed to see the destruction of property rights (intellectual or otherwise) being lauded on HN. The RIAA and MPAA make deals with artists to distribute their music, and you want to interfere and just steal it instead. It's dishonest, it's juvenile, and it's eroding at the basis of society (equality under the law, property rights, basic respect and goodwill towards others, etc.).
- mrebus 15y agoJust because you use the word property doesn't make intellectual monopolies property.
- javert 15y agoIf you don't like the words, good, go look at the moral foundation that underlies the idea. It is a fact of reality that it is morally right to give people ownership rights for things they produce (besides, again, being the basis of society). And why not? Paying for something rather than stealing it (or changing the law so it's not officially "stealing" anymore), just isn't that big of a deal.
- 15y ago
- gigantor 15y agoSolution from the comments: tinyurl.com (or similar). This should be instinct for many twitter users by now
- fotbr 15y agoShortened urls are trivial to check, and could still be easily blocked. Or else the url shortening services will just be flagged themselves as being "bad" links.
- spdy 15y agoAs more and more of this surface in critical times of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA etc. we will see an "outer net" emerging soon based on a p2p solution and highly encrypted. I know there is TOR but it`s not cutting it yet. Maybe one of the big players (Google?) will join this battle for free speech and an open internet. Most of us do not want to be censored in any way. The Unstoppable Force vs The Immovable Object.
- flyt 15y agoGoogle needs the cooperation of the content industry to make its media service, Google Play, anything approaching successful. If the choice is between censoring content and having a successful product then kowtowing to the other entities will always win.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- trotsky 15y agoWhile I'd be willing to bet this is due to some malware flag (as that pretty much always ends up being the case with IM provider X is censoring Y), I am baffled as to why people would consider it scandalous that a multi-billion dollar company who makes pretty much all of its revenue from selling intellectual property licenses might drop links conveyed using its free service to a site that is unabashedly one of the world's foremost facilitators of intellectual property rights violations.
- jacquesm 15y agoThe would consider it scandalous because: 1) they consider their communications private 2) they think that what they type into an IM client will pop out on the other end unchanged 3) they believe that their relationship with the facilitator of their communications media should not be subject to relationships that provider has with other commercial parties. Where does it end? Being unable to share the link of your favourite restaurant because it hurts the interests of your communications provider? The amount of modification of any messages by two parties that trust each other enough to engage in one-on-one communications should be set to '0' by default, unless they request otherwise.
- rwmj 15y agoThat gives me an idea for the most evil chat system ever: modify links to hotels, restaurants etc based on the size of kickbacks from competing establishments. More seriously, chat should work so that the client signs and encrypts each message, hiding it from the provider and anyone other than the intended recipient.
- jhaile 15y agoOr you could just create a chat client that modifies links to amazon and other retailers to automatically include your affiliate link. Profit!
- waterlesscloud 15y agoYou've released your chat media out into the world. As far as I can tell that makes them fair game for everyone to look at and download and alter and remix as they desire.
- NiekvdMaas 15y agoMSN/Live Messenger is blocking all URLs ending in .torrent for years already. But blocking a FQDN like thepiratebay.org is even stranger... who makes/maintains these censoring block lists, and why is this not explained to users?
- nextparadigms 15y agoIf this was actually done by mistake by their software, then we can expect TPB links to start working again in Windows Live Messenger any minute now, right? I don't need Microsoft to "protect" me by not allowing me to see something. At most what they should do is warn me that it might contain malware, which is something they used to do with file transfers, too. But today I believe they just outright block most of them - even .rar files, unless they are scanned with some special MSN software of theirs that you need to download. No thanks, Microsoft.
- nyellin 15y agoI feel sick to my stomach. Companies shouldn't censor personal chats like this.
- b0rsuk 15y agoIs there anything stopping them from doing the same in Internet Explorer ? And they're not stranger to issuing automatic updates that mess with Firefox, so..
- res0nat0r 15y agoHN is slowly turning into Reddit. TPB is probably being censored by the software because some automated process to ingest and aggregate threating sites flagged that site as hosting malware. This is just like Google stopping you from clicking thru to sites which they know host virii / trojans. Calm down.
- sek 15y agoThe Gmail Man seems to be working for Microsoft now.
- wisty 15y agoMicrosoft knows very well that people will just write "thep!!!!!ratebay.se/slug".
- Craiggybear 15y agoThe world has gone mad.
- tluyben2 15y agowow I thought everyone knew this. I ran the 110mb.com infra and that domain and subdomains were blocked in messenger. years ago that was.
- kogir 15y agoI think this is totally fine. Live Messenger is a private service, and Microsoft can run it however they want. Users will simply switch to competing services that don't suck. Let the market decide. Also, as behavior like this increases in frequency, we'll finally be forced to address the current usability issues with point-to-point cryptography and adopt it more broadly. Microsoft shouldn't be able to read anything you write unless you choose to share it with them. A world where all communication is encrypted requires more software development effort, but ends up better for everyone in the long run. Calls, emails, text messages - none of them should be intelligible to anyone other than the parties explicitly involved.
- jhaile 15y agoAny censorship or modification of your "private" communication is a very scary precedent to set. Will they start modifying hotmail emails or bing search results next?
- rbanffy 15y agoIf Microsoft is able to police conversations carried over Live Messenger, shouldn't it be unable to invoke the dumb pipe defense and be held responsible for any piracy its service allows to happen because its negligence in blocking the evil activity happening on its own network. They even profit from those activities! And not only copyright infringement - bank robberies, terrorist attacks, child molestation, heresy - it's all their fault for not blocking it in the first place. I would love to see this idea in court. OTOH, who can be sure they do not store IP and login (or other personal information associated with the Live profile) and hand it to anyone with the proper court order?
- jsilence 15y agoThank you, Microsoft for promoting endpoint to endpoint encryption.
- ggwicz 15y agoThis doesn't bother me. Or, I should say, I'm not inherently opposed to it. Microsoft is a private company acting on their own will. This censorship is one I might not agree with, but it could just make the case for another uncensored client to become popular. As long as this type of behavior isn't forced by a government, I actually like it in the long run. I think companies should take a stance on things, and seeing Microsoft act this way just makes me more happy with companies who take the opposite stance. If that favorability change happens with enough people, theoretically Microsoft could hurt financially. This would then make it more profitable to be open and uncensored. So, in a nutshell, I've seen comments elsewhere about this that were SUPER negative and hateful. I understand them, but at the same time, I think this is just another signal to instead focus on and promote those platforms that focus on and promote freedom. And a big signal, to boot.
- sdfjkl 15y agoJust one more example of why you shouldn't use private communication without end-to-end encryption.
- jrockway 15y agoThe text looks like it thinks TPB is malware. TPB is certainly not a site I'd visit on a Windows box, the ads bring new meaning to the word "shady". (Google's safe browsing database disagrees with me here, though.)
- beagle3 15y agoIt's an unregulated private service, they can. It's just that they can no longer claim "commOn carrier" status. If they don't do that for everyone, they are assisting piracy. Let the lawsuits begin.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoOh give me a break! I hate when they pull the censorship card like that. It cheapens all other real threats to free speech. If you like propaganda that justifies pirating, keep reading the Torrent freak blog with their red herrings like censorship and their "battle for free speech". Microsoft is exercising their rights just like we get to exercise ours. It's a private company offering you free software (as in no money exchanged) and they don't want to let you share torrent files and for good damn reason. I'd do that too if I were Microsoft! Anyone who claims the Pirate Bay is a place to share cool new media that's released for free is just kidding themselves. Look at their most popular downloads. It's primarily all copyrighted music, movies, and software that are being shared without the owner's consent. Sure, there are a decent number of artists sharing their work via TPB and the Pirate Bay do a lot of promoting of that stuff. But make no mistake, the majority of people are just downloading a bunch of free, copyrighted work. It would be censorship if Live Messenger were the only or one of few viable options for IM but that's far from being the case. I sincerely doubt Microsoft cares about you downloading albums for free. They just don't want you sharing Windows 8 over their app (when it finally ships, that is) that's all. Is that not a legitimate concern? To try to stop people from getting your product without paying you? That's reasonable. They put a ton of time and money into developing software and they don't do it for their health. Just because it's digital and takes zero effort to copy doesn't mean that after the first copy is sold everything else should be up for grabs. Whenever the torrent people start yammering about censorship and free speech and try to sound all hip, smart, and progressive, it's just a distraction. It's really about continuing to operate while ignoring IP laws. Whether you think copyright is okay or not is irrelevant because the laws are on the books and enforced. If all you do in protest of those laws is pirate music and movies you're really just creating more problems for yourself. Piracy alone as a protest only creates more censorship and restrictions of free speech as Torrent Freak would call it. If you really believe in all those nice sounding ideals you have to get up from behind your monitor and write a letter, make a phone call, or actually show up somewhere and do something. This article was downright laughable. This is just a PR war and damn easy one to win too. It's easy to hate "big evil corporations" and to love getting shit free with little to no effort needed.
- seanp2k2 15y ago>"It would be censorship if Live Messenger were the only or one of few viable options for IM but that's far from being the case. I sincerely doubt Microsoft cares about you downloading albums for free. They just don't want you sharing Windows 8 over their app (when it finally ships, that is) that's all." Not at all true. Free speech is free speech. Where do you draw the line? This establishes precedent, and frankly it's pretty creepy to think that M$ is monitoring all your communications. Solution: tell M$ that you're dropping all of their products over this, and actually do it. Then set up XMPP and dump their messaging service.
- dpn 15y agoSo what does this mean for companies that conduct legitimate business over TPB. Does this allow for some kind of action against MS?
- slug 15y agoThat's why people should move to open and decentralized instant messages networks. xmpp/jabber for example are easy to setup, federation is supported by some major parties (google talk for example) and use OTR (or PGP if you can convince your friends) encryption whenever possible. Pidgin, Adium and others support it out of the box or through easily installable plugins and even your [mom] can use it since the key generation and handshake can be automatic, requiring only optional authentication if you are paranoid.
- judgej2 15y ago"Actively" by having software do it for them.
- jxi 15y agoNow we know why Microsoft/MSN doesn't have a true "off the record" feature. They want to be able to monitor your conversations and censor you like this.