The harrowing details of the armed robbery of $10 million in jewels from Kim Kardashian in Paris has created a media firestorm, and some are saying that’s exactly what the reality star wanted.

Adding some fuel to doubters’ fires: According to a report from TMZ on Tuesday, there was no surveillance video inside or outside the ultra-expensive, ultra-private hotel.

How did Kardashian free herself from being tied up in the bathroom? Or who found Kardashian in the hotel room or bathroom? Where was her security and hotel security personnel or hotel security cameras, wonders pivate investigator Patricia DOrsa-Dijamco. If this was a publicity stunt, she could be in big trouble for making a false police report. Does ‘Ryan Lochte’ sound familiar?

Lochte is the U.S. swimmer who got in hot water at the Rio Olympics for claiming he was robbed at gunpoint, which later turned out not to be the case.

Police trial expert and former undercover DEA agent Michael Levine said when he first heard of the reality stars traumatic ordeal he initially thought the Kardashian robbery could be an elaborate hoax.

It was one of the first possibilities that occurred to me. By now the French police might have a good idea of this,” he said. “However, I’m certain they will say nothing. They have enough problems.

Levine said Paris has more pressing law enforcement issues. The amount of terrorism problems, threats and investigations ongoing in France right now likely has every man and woman with a badge working double-time, so if you wanted to run a hoax or publicity stunt, and I am not saying that is what they did, but France would be the place to do it, Levine said.

An NYPD detective told FOX411 that while the robbery sounds legit to him, there may have been some embellishing around the edges.

Most likely they knew she was staying there, and cased the spot, but its more likely they are blowing the story up for publicity because she has a huge security detail,” the detective said. “She most likely has something new thats going to happen.

The new season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians debuts on October 23.

However, pop culture expert Lex Jurgen at gossip site WWTDD.com doubts the events were made up, rightly noting that Kardashian is not hurting for attention.

She has so many ways to get publicity that dont involve her getting arrested for lying to the police,” Jurgen said. “She could lose her top at Fashion Week and get 10 million SEO hits.”

FOX411 reached out to the local Paris police department but did not receive comment.

Kardashians rep told FOX411 in a statement: “Kim Kardashian West was held up at gunpoint inside her Paris hotel room this evening, by two armed masked men dressed as police officers. She is badly shaken but physically unharmed.”
 

Fox News.com Reporter and FOX411 host Diana Falzone covers celebrity news and interviews some of today’s top celebrities and newsmakers.  You can follow her on Twitter @dianafalzone.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/10/04/kim-kardashian-robbery-story-raises-some-eyebrows.html

Every time a major hack becomes public—Target, Yahoo, take your pick—Mike Stabile is grateful its not an adult site. As the director of communications for the Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment industry trade group, he knows what the fallout could be, and that its potentially a lot worse than another password dump.

Its one thing if your credit card information is stolen from something like Nordstrom,” Stabile says. “When youre dealing with an adult company, it says a lot about you. Its tremendously exposing, especially if youre closeted or in a community thats going to frown upon that.

You dont have to look especially far to prove that out. Ashley Madison isnt a porn site, but it trades in adult (or more specifically, adulterous) themes. The leak of its member information over a year ago had devastating implications for some of them. Its not a perfect comparison; no ones equating watching porn with cheating. But Stabile says it speaks to the same type of vulnerability that visitors of porn sites should feel. Theyre only a hack away from the world knowing their most private online actions.

That all changes today, as the FSC and the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital civil liberties nonprofit, embark on a quest to make pornographic sites safer to browse. Together, they hope to bring the encryption protocol HTTPS to online porn, securing an incalculably large portion of the web along with it.

If successful, the initiative could make hundreds of millions of people more safe online every single day. When Google recently published a list of the 100 largest (non-Google) sites, eight were adult destinations, making it easily one of the best-represented categories. Even that belies the extent to which pornography has consumed the web, so heres some additional context. According to analytics company Comscore, 200 million unique visitors pass through Facebook every month. A single porn conglomerate, Luxemborg-based MindGeek, boasts over 100 million uniques every day.

And thats just one company. There are too many more to count, too many new operations springing up each day to keep track of, in part because theres virtually no barrier to entry. In 2016, anybody can pick up a camera and become an adult producer, says Stabile. Avenue Q should have gone one step further; the Internets not just for porn. Its largely made of it. Its not just the deeply personal information these sites have access to thats the problem. Its the unfathomable scope.

And thats also a big reason why its going to be so difficult to secure.

Getting Their Fix

The best way to make adult sites more secure is the same as with any site: Add HTTPS.

Weve talked in depth about the benefits of HTTPS previously here at WIRED. In fact, weve even implemented it on our own pages. The short version, and what makes it so critical for the porn industry in particular, is that HTTPS encrypts content between servers and browsers. It makes sure that what you do online remains strictly between you and the sites you visit.

The two big benefits are confidentiality and integrity, says Joseph Hall, chief technologist at CDT. With HTTPS, your ISP cant know how youre spending time at the websites you visit. Neither can government spy agencies, or anyone else for that matter. That information is encrypted. It remains private. As for integrity, deploying HTTPS can prevent the injection of malware by third parties, or ISPs from stripping out advertisements in favor of their own. With a standard HTTP connection, you can never be completely sure whos watching, or in extreme cases, whos on the other end of the line.

The initial goal of the FSC and CDT partnership isnt to force HTTPS on porn sites but to educate them as to its importance, and help with the transition. Its not a monetary commitment, but an instructional one. The FSC has members who need to encrypt; CDT can show them how to do it.

Initially its about raising awareness, introducing why they would want to do this and why it might not be as much of a burden, says Hall. Im hopeful that when they see the benefits, theyll realize they need these things yesterday.

HTTPS isnt totally absent in the online porn industry; two largest cam sites, which connect viewers with live erotic performances, both use it, for understandable reasons.

Those are locked down to the teeth, Hall says, in part because of the direct interaction. These are also typically paid sites, which invites stronger protections. Theyre highly encrypted, whereas the majority of porn traffic are broadcast sites, and those dont do much of that at all.

Thats not necessarily for lack of interest. The bigger problems, says Stabile, are awareness and resources.

People think of the adult industry as a bunch of large companies, says Stabile. The truth is, even a lot of the ones that are large now started off as mom and pops. Its not people who necessarily have their own IT department.

Hard Sell

For all the advantages of HTTPS, there are reasons porn sites might be wary. For one, it does take some resources beyond just know-how, which for smaller sites arent always readily available. More concerning, though, is that the transition to HTTPS can come with all sorts of unknowns.

Take the media industry. While WIRED and a handful of other publications have fully implemented HTTPS, the bulk of news sites remain unencrypted. Thats because news sites host third-party elements (ads, mostly) that often include trackers that don’t work with HTTPS. If the ads are delivered over HTTP, the site can’t be considered secure. The good news there is that porn sites actually use far fewer tracking elements than media sites, but a smaller-scale impediment is still an impediment.

Then there are the unknown side effects. WIRED, for instance, saw some SEO challenges during its HTTPS transition. Hall acknowledges that search traffic is vital to adult sites, which may cause some anxiety about adopting the protocol. Its not clear that theyd actually lose any incoming eyeballs by switching over, but its understandable that no one would want to be the first to chance it. This is something we will learn through this partnership, what the specific barriers are, he says.

Eventually adult sites may not have much choice but to adopt HTTPS. I could imagine that its going to become something where in order to do business in this industry, you have to have HTTPS up and running, Stabile says. If youre leaving yourself exposed, youre leaving a lot of people in your network exposed; advertisers, billing providers, members. The pressures going to come from a critical mass of vendors and partners.

The question, then, isnt really if the porn industry will or wont go HTTPS eventually. Its if they can get there before the next big hack.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/quest-make-porn-sites-secure/

 (Courtesy of Whole Foods Market)

Walking into a Whole Foods Market without a shopping plan is like willingly entering a fugue state and re-emerging very confused an hour later and $200 lighter, with a $20 bag of maca powder in one hand and a $6 kombucha in the other. But if you know what to look for, youll find its possible to shop and save a few bucks in the process. 

We spoke with Kate Neu, the companys Global Sales & Supplier Marketing Manager, about six little-known, smart-shopping hacks that will keep your wallet fuller when you come out on the other side (spoiler alert: none of them involve maca powder).

1. Ask to Try Anything (Anything!)

Whole Foods has a try before you buy policy that you can and should use to your fullest advantageand its not just relegated to the bulk bin aisle. Ask an employee for a sample of just about anything in the store, from a box of cereal to a bottled drink, and theyll let you try it right in the store. If youre really lucky and/or persuasive, they might even offer to let you take the full product home.

2. Ask for Items Hand-Cut

The cheese, meat, and seafood counters at Whole Foods are great because you can buy exactly the amount you want and no one will blink an eye if you ask for four shrimp. And just the same way, you can also ask for half a cabbage (or squash, or watermelon) and a team member will hand-cut it for you in the store. Its a nice option to have when your alternative is to let half a cabbage low-key rot in your fridge because you only used half of it for that one recipe that one time. We should note this is on a case by case basis (i.e. theyre not going to let you buy half an apple), but its definitely worth asking about if you dont want to lug home a monster squash.

3. Hack the Salad Bar

Look past the sea of colorful grain salads (and those weirdly addictive potato samosas) at any Whole Foods salad bar and youll find a section of plain ingredients like sliced bell peppers, celery, and cherry tomatoes. This section of the salad bar is your secret best friend when you need to buy just a little bit of an ingredient for a recipe, so you dont end up buying a whole head of celery you dont need just so you can use ¼ cup in a dish. Just remember you pay by the pound, so this is probably not the place to pick up something like cooked rice, which is heavy.

4. Cash In on Bones and Shells

Ask the butchers and fishmongers if you can take home bones or shells, which many locations can give to customers for free. That means you can make liquid-gold Toasted Garlic-Beef Stock or Back-Burner Stock from literally nothing. And some Whole Foods butcher and seafood counters sell cheap, pre-packaged bones and shells for a tiny fraction of the cost of a steak or a whole fish.

5. Go for the Case

Whole Foods will automatically give you a 10% discount on most anything you buy by the case, from a pack of Larabars to a case of wine (fun fact: 350 out of 439 stores nationally sell wine). If youre buying something you know you love and will restock in the future, spring for the case.

6. Be a (Digital) Coupon Clipper

So youre never going to sit down with a stack of coupons and clip away on a weekend afternoon. Thats where the Whole Foods Market mobile app comes in. The app shows you whats on sale at your local store, but it also shows you coupons you might otherwise miss out on for things like $5 off $20 of produce, or $5 off fresh or frozen meat. All you need to do when youre shopping is pull out your phone and scan an app-generated barcode at the register to cash in on all of the sales and coupons being offered at that moment. Neu says the app will become more personalized to individual shoppers in the futureso if youre someone who likes to hit up the salad bar three times a week, you might start seeing more salad bar deals.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/10/20/6-ways-to-save-money-at-whole-foods/