Porn attack on YouTube

YouTube, which just announced its users upload 20 hours of video every minute, was attacked by an anime community that uploaded hundreds of videos that looked like they were aimed at young people but had porn edited into them, the BBC reports. "The material was uploaded under names of famous teenage celebrities such as Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers. YouTube owner Google said it was aware and addressing the problem." The BBC says it spoke with one of the raiders, a man whose YouTube profile (since disabled by YouTube) said he's 21 and lives in Germany. The man said the attack was by an online group called 4Chan focused on Japanese manga and anime. He said he uploaded some of the porn videos as part of a 4Chan raid "because YouTube keeps deleting music." As for the 20 hours of video upload every minute, YouTube announced that in its blog on May 20. That's up from 15 hours of video a minute in January, which YouTube says equates to "Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies into theaters each week." To understand the YouTube phenomenon a little better, see "Watch this video, parents" and other YouTube coverage at NetFamilyNews.

Dealing with cellphone spam

Are your children getting text-message spam on their cellphones (or are you) - those annoying messages that you can't delete without opening them and that you, not the sender, pay for? Well, there's hope, or help, rather, David Pogue at the New York Times reports. AT&T and Verizon Wireless let you block spam messages. Sprint and T-Mobile "don't go quite as far," Pogue writes, "but they do offer some text-spam filtering options." In his Circuits column, he explains how cellphone spamming works and where to find each cellphone company's spam controls. See also Forbes on "Cellphone Addiction" (more about grownups, though).

Spam: Fact of life?

That’s how Americans are beginning to view it, apparently. A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that US Net users are becoming more resigned to having spam in their in-boxes, and parents will be glad to know that porn spam is on the decrease. The Associated Press reports that “37% of US email users say they are getting more junk in their personal email account, about half say they have not noticed a change,” and more than a quarter (28%) say spam isn’t a problem at all, up from 16% four years ago. Spam containing pornography “appears to be dropping in relation to pitches for drugs and financial opportunities, as well as scams for sensitive data like passwords.” Here’s the Pew study.