Archive for internet
Having problems with free tax software and e-file
Posted by: | CommentsFor the second year in a row, the Internal Revenue Service is offering its own version of electronic tax forms tool, Free File Fillable Forms. It’s more primitive than commercial tax software, but it’s workable.
For the first time in years I ditched commercial tax software to give Free File Fillable Forms a try. It allowed me to file Schedule Cs and other forms of mid-level complexity with no more guidance than the IRS instructions and my 2008 return. It made me wonder if I really needed a $20 or $50 tax program.
Then I hit a weird glitch. The IRS rejected my e-filed tax forms. Twice.
This is surprising because e-file is supposed to be the IRS’s forte. A big reason it went to the trouble of creating Free File Fillable Forms was to help taxpayers file electronically.
What made things worse is that the error message didn’t help solve the problem. It said I could only file two Schedule SEs. (I had only filed two) and referred me to the online help documents. They didn’t help either, so I called IRS media relations.
An IRS official said the agency would update the error code with additional information to make that point clear. But the episode got me to wondering: Are other taxpayers having trouble with e-filing?
The government says no. “The IRS is not aware of any problems or issues with Free File Fillable Forms,” the IRS said in a statement.
A spokesman for H&R Block, the nationwide tax preparer, concurs, saying his company is not seeing any difference this year in the number of rejects after e-filing.
So maybe it’s just me.
But in case you, too, are having trouble e-filing with Free File Fillable Forms, here are some tips from the IRS:
1. Check out the IRS FAQs for help.
2. Make your computer system as compatible as possible: Disable pop-up blockers, allow for cookies, and have an updated Adobe reader so you can print.
3. If you hit a snag not addressed by the FAQs above, try clearing your cookies, closing your browser, and then reopening it. (Also, if you are using an office computer, there also can be some firewall issues.)
4. If these steps don’t work, contact the IRS support desk at irs.gov.website.helpdesk@speedymail.com
Internet Lenders to Pay $1 Million to Settle Complaint
Posted by: | CommentsA group of Internet payday lending companies that allegedly threatened customers who didn’t make payments with arrest and called customers at work and swore at them has agreed to pay US$1 million to settle charges from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the state of Nevada.
The FTC, in a November complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, charged the companies with using unfair and deceptive collection tactics.
The companies told consumers that the loans had to be repaid by their next payday with a fee ranging from US$35 to $80, or the loans would be extended automatically for an extra fee debited from consumers’ bank accounts until the loans were repaid, the FTC said. Some customers voicing complaints on Internet sites have reported being charged hundreds of dollars in late fees for a small loan.
The settlement order, approved last week, requires the defendants to pay $970,125 to the FTC and $29,875 to the state of Nevada. The order prohibits them from falsely claiming that consumers may be arrested or imprisoned for failing to pay debts, that they are legally obligated to pay the full amount of a purported debt, and that for nonpayment they are subject to lawsuit, seizure of property, or garnishment of wages.
The defendants also are barred from repeatedly calling consumers’ work places, using obscene or threatening language toward consumers and third parties, and disclosing the existence of consumers’ purported debts to third parties.
The order also includes provisions relating to alleged violations of Nevada law. The order prohibits the defendants from violating Nevada state consumer protection law when conducting business from the state or when selling goods or services to Nevada residents, including failing to be properly licensed, failing to provide notice and disclosure of all material facts, and failing to comply with any state or federal law in selling goods or services.
DRM: Bad for Business, Artists and Consumers
Posted by: | Comments“Piracy is a scourge. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, of the intellectual property and the creativity and the energy of the investors in this industry and the artists who make the great games. Period. Okay?”
“It’s a problem of such degree that it’s between two and three billion dollars a year that it costs our industry in this country alone. When you look at piracy across all of entertainment, it’s a much bigger number when you put in movies and look what it’s done to the music industry. So, the going-in proposition has to be a recognition that piracy is wrong, it’s illegal and it should be stopped…”
Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints
Posted by: | CommentsTOKYO (Reuters) – Internet search engine Google said it would reshoot all Japanese pictures for its online photo map service, Street View, using lower camera angles after complaints about invasion of privacy.
Google’s Street View, which offers 360-degree views of streets around the world using photos taken by cruising Google vehicles, has already run into privacy complaints in other countries and activists have tried to halt the service in Japan.
Google said in a statement on Wednesday it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40 cm (16 inches) after complaints they were capturing images over fences in private homes.
But it said it would continue filming in Japan, where it has so far covered 12 cities.
“It is certainly a fact that there have been concerns,” said Yoshito Funabashi, a spokesman at Google’s Tokyo office. “We thought of what we can do as a company and tried to be responsible.”
Google said it has also blurred car number plates in the pictures, as it has done in Europe, but the new steps did not convince Japanese campaigners.
“They are just trying to get through at the technological level … The question is, can we allow for them to shoot (images) unselectively?” said Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Britain’s privacy watchdog has rejected calls to shut Street View down there, where concerns have ranged from images such as someone throwing up outside a pub to media reports that a woman filed for divorce after her husband’s car was pictured outside another woman’s house. [ID:nLN970530]
Both Google Maps and a related mapping service, Google Earth, have also been criticized by some countries for providing images of sensitive
Complaints force Google to remove Street View images
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle has been forced to remove scores of pictures from Street View, its controversial mapping service, following complaints from users who believe the photos are a breach of privacy.
The Street View database comprises tens of millions of photos, which include many thousands of residential addresses. Some users coStreet View has had a controversial past. After being launched two years ago in the United States bloggers had, within hours, found and posted images of people, their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing, and urinating in public.
Learning lessons since then, Google has introduced technology that automatically blurs faces and car number plates so that they are no longer recognisable. However, it emerged that many faces are still visible and are identifiable from the pictures. Ed Parsons, Google’s Geospatial technologist said their blurring technology worked “99.9 per cent of the time” but that “sometimes it does not work completely”.
complained that viewers could zoom in to the open windows of their homes, or that they could be identified within their cars
At the launch yesterday, Google pledged to remove any pictures that people objected to. “We put tools in place to allow people to remove images quickly, and this shows that the technology works,” said a Google spokeswoman. “The images have been removed, in many cases within hours.”
Privacy Complaints Make White House Reconsider YouTube
Posted by: | CommentsWashington – The White House has stopped using Google’s (NASD: GOOG) YouTube as the primary distributor for its online videos, following complaints from numerous parties about YouTube’s privacy policies, CNET News.com reported.
Specifically, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others took objection to the cookies that YouTube videos contain that the company uses to track a user’s browsing habits.
While the White House videos are still being syndicated to YouTube, the White House website now utilizes a Flash-based video player that sends video across Akamai’s content delivery network
Complaint against Facebook
Posted by: | CommentsAfter three days of pressure from angry users and the threat of a formal legal complaint by a coalition of consumer advocacy groups, the company reversed changes to its contract with users that had appeared to give it perpetual ownership of their contributions to the service.
Facebook disavowed any such intentions but said early Wednesday that it was temporarily rescinding the changes and restoring an earlier version of its membership contract.
In a message to members, the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it would collaborate with users to create a more easily understandable document.
Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, also invited users to contribute to a new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which would serve as a governing document for the site. Facebook has been redefining notions of privacy while growing so rapidly that it now has 175 million active users, giving it a population larger than most countries.
“We were not trying to make a substantive change in our rights or ability to control our members’ content on the service at all,” Mr. Kelly said. “As that misunderstanding became the main theme, we became very concerned and wanted to communicate very clearly to everyone our intentions by rolling back to the old terms of service.”
They’re Censoring Your Reality (Alex Jones)
Posted by: | CommentsThis video is my entry for the Alex Jones Internet Censorship video contest. I have noticed that a lot of people have entered this contest so far so I’ve added some of them to the Favorites section on my channel. Please have a look at some of these other entries as well, because they’ll contain info that has been omitted from my edit, and vice-versa.
In this video, from August 4th 2008, Alex discusses in detail the serious issue of Internet censorship and how it is affecting us. The only winners of this censorship are the governments and corporate oligarchies who want to severely restrict our freedom of speech and our ability to acquire factual information from independent news sites. If you sit by and do nothing about the info you hear in this video, you are effectively kissing goodbye to the Internet as we know it. By 2012, the ‘powers-that-be’ plan to turn the Internet into nothing more than a glorified cable TV system where access to anything other than mainstream sites will be highly restricted – just like in communist China. We cannot allow this to happen. Only the power of the people can stop this. If we fail to voice our views on this issue NOW, the Internet as we know it will be gone forever and important sites like InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com will not be there for us anymore. I cannot stress enough how important this issue is. Please go to InfoWars.com and check out the links covering Internet censorship and you’ll see what I mean. Copy and paste the articles and email them to everyone you know, including the mainstream news sites. Post the articles on MySpace and as many other forums as you can. You can also download this video and upload it to your channel and to other video sites. We need to make a big noise over this, otherwise they’ll go full steam ahead with their plans to dismantle the Internet by 2012. Once the Internet is gone, it’s gone forever, and there won’t be any complaints departments to complain to when you want the old Internet back. The time to take action is NOW.
I tried to squeeze in as much into this video as possible but I had to omit some really important stuff – such as the interview with Paul Watson – who details some of the communist-style Internet censorship that is taking place in the UK right now. I for one will not sit by and allow this to happen. I don’t want to get all my news from the likes of CNN, Fox and the BBC. I want to expand my world view, not limit it.
This is a serious call to action folks. We have now reached a huge crisis point in terms of our freedom of speech and our freedom to access information from non-corporate sources. We can either do nothing and just watch the Internet being dismantled before our very eyes, or we can take action now and salvage what’s left of the Internet as it stands today.
If everyone who watches this video rates it and shares it with their YouTube contacts, we can make our voices heard and together we can save the Internet. All it takes is for everyone to do SOMETHING, no matter how small. Please click on the “Send Video” link (displayed below the video itself), and send this video out to all of your contacts on YouTube. It’ll only take 20 seconds of your time, but it will have a big impact in waking people up to what’s being done to our freedom of speech and our freedom to access information. It took me a whole day to edit this video. All I ask of you is 20 seconds of your time to rate the video and send it out to your contacts. But if you feel as strongly about Internet censorship as I do, you’ll also go to InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com and start pasting the articles on this subject all over the net. The links are provided below. Thank you everyone for your support, I appreciate it immensely.