Security Loophole In Facebook’s Camera App Allowed Hackers To Hijack Accounts Over WiFi

PSA to all Facebook Camera users on iOS: If you haven’t update you app in the past few days, update it now. The older version of the app, pre-1.1.2 and released before December 21, has a security loophole. When used over WiFi networks, malicious hackers can tap the network and hijack Camera users’ accounts, picking up information like email addresses and passwords in the process.
The white-hat hacker who ID’d the problem is Mohamed Ramadan, an Egypt-based security researcher and trainer with Attack-Secure who has also found and reported vulnerabilities for Apple, Google, and Etsy — which apparently also had the same loophole in its iOS app. Ramadan tells us that the issue lied in the Camera app’s Secure Sockets Layer certification, which was too open.
As he puts it, “The problem is the app accepts any SSL certification from any source, even evil SSL certifications and this enables any attacker to perform Man in The Middle Attack against anyone uses Facebook Camera App for IPhone. This means that the application doesn’t warn the user if someone in the same [WiFi network] trying to hijack his Facebook account.”
Testing his theory by using a proxy to listen in on a WiFi network, he was able to type in his username and password into the Camera app, and then see that information appear via the proxy.
Ramadan notes that he’s tested all Facebook apps and the rest appear to protect from this similar vulnerability. 

 

Credit : Tech Crunch

Facebook Tries Letting You Pay To Guarantee Message Delivery, Changes Messaging Privacy Settings

Sometimes you need to message a non-friend, and today Facebook starts testing if it can make a little money and cut spam by asking you to pay to ensure the recipient sees that message. Facebook’s also changing everyone’s privacy settings into dynamic filters that let “relevant” messages through. These moves address Facebook’s old settings that caused important messages to sometimes go unseen.

Previously, Facebook’s messaging privacy settings were cut and dry. You set your inbox to allow messages from everyone, friends of friends, or friends only. Any sender that didn’t qualify had their messages dumped in the “Other Inbox”, a little known sub-tab of the Inbox that most people rarely checked if ever. I had a friend who actually got a Facebook Message from a long-lost brother from the other side of the world but didn’t see it for six months because he wasn’t a friend of a friend.

Facebook’s trying to rectify this situation, and also make room for the new revenue stream it’s testing by replacing these hard settings with more flexible filters. Facebook is legally allowed to make this change to privacy settings because of the new language about messaging it put into its terms of service this month.

If you were set to accept messages from friends of friends or everyone, you’ll now have the “Basic Filtering” which means you’ll mostly see messages from friends and people you may know in you main Inbox. If you had restricted your Inbox to friends only, you’ll be switched onto the “Strict Filtering” which means you’ll mostly see messages from friends.

You’ll notice the word “mostly” in there. That gives Facebook the freedom to deliver messages to your main Inbox even if they’re from outside your preferred categories of senders if it thinks they’re highly relevant. For example, if you have the Strict Filtering setting and are in a group message thread with three friends and one non-friend, Facebook might allow that non-friend to reach your main Inbox because there’s a high likelihood you want to see their message.

The new filters help out with the new version of Facebook Messenger For Android that allows signups from people without Facebook accounts. If a non-Facebook user that has your phone number in their address book tries to message you, Facebook might let that through.

These filters also pave the way for Facebook’s new paid messaging system that it begins testing today with a very small percentage of users in the United States. The idea is that by letting people pay $1 or some other small fee, Facebook knows a message is important to the sender. The price also theoretically deters spam because conversion rates on spam messages are so low that having to pay to deliver them makes it very tough to earn money. Facebook is also capping the number of paid messages you can receive per week at one for now to reduce the potential for abuse.

Facebook explains that “Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.” Considering the frequency cap, and fact that most people won’t need this at all or very often, it’s unlikely to turn into a major revenue stream for Facebook if it’s ever rolled out to everyone.

So what do the new privacy settings and paid messages (if rolled out) really mean for users? Above you see the message Facebook is showing users. Most people will hardly notice the difference. Thanks to the dynamic filtering, you might see more important messages that would have been relegated to the Other Inbox

If you previously allowed Messages from everyone you might see a little less spam. The extra economic signal means Facebook can be stricter in classifying messages as spam and simply refuse to deliver them entirely.

Finally, if you’re somewhat of a public figure, a beautiful woman, or otherwise get a lot of unwanted messages, you can now be more confident about using a more defensive privacy setting like Strict Filtering without worry you’ll miss messages about people you care about. Random strangers won’t be able to get through. Meanwhile, someone who’s friends with many of your friends, was tagged in photos with you, or that Facebook somehow thinks you’ll want to hear from will be able to pass through the filter. And if they want to make sure you see the message, they could pay the fee.

Some users will surely be annoyed by both changes. Most people don’t want Facebook meddling with their privacy settings without express consent. Others will likely be angry that anyone with some money to spare can pester them with Messages.

In the end, these settings might actually help people but we’ll have to wait and see what their impact is, and whether users are able to understand their value through their fears about Facebook exploiting them for dollars. But if I had to comment on the announcement of the paid messaging test, I’d say Facebook didn’t do a clear enough job explaining that this is to deter spammers who are way too stingy to pay for a Facebook message when they could email you for free.

Credit : Tech Crunch

Twitter: Everyone Will Have Enhanced Profiles On December 12th, For Beautification Reasons

In case you haven’t seen the updated Twitter profiles, they allow you to add a “cover photo”, ala Facebook and other services. The idea there is that they’d like you to expand your identification on the service, to feel like it’s a place you want to show off to friends, family and colleagues.
These profiles are available on the desktop, as well as official Twitter apps.
It was a good move, although it didn’t roll out to everyone right away. Today, the company announced that enhanced profiles will be available to all Twitter users on December 12th:

A few months ago, we introduced new Twitter profiles so that you could make your profile beautiful and display your style on your profile page. By uploading a header photo on twitter.com or our mobile apps on iPhone, iPad or Android, you can make your profile more uniquely yours. We’ve seen a lot of cool takes on these new profiles –– including shots from Mars, silly themes, and brands and celebrities expressing themselves in clever ways.
On December 12, we’re rolling this out to all users: you’ll automatically get this new version of the profile on twitter.com. If you don’t upload a header photo by then, you (and everyone else) will only see a default grey image on your page. That’s not fun! To get inspired about what you can do, check out this video to see how to make your profile a little more “you”, less generic. Have fun out there.

Here’s the video that Twitter shared with the announcement, which was clearly created for 11-year-olds:

Get ready to get prettier on Twitter!

Credit : Tech Crunch

How A Company Takes Full Advantage Of Access To Your Facebook Information

When you grant a company access to your Facebook profile, do you think about how it’ll use the info you’ll be handing over on an ongoing basis? Probably not. When you click that Facebook Connect button, you’re probably just thinking, “Awesome, that makes it easier to sign onto that website.” What you should actually be thinking is, “This company may now be mining everything I say and do from here on out to figure out what to sell to me.”
At a conference organized by data warehouse company Teradata this week, one Japanese company laid out exactly how it’s leveraging insights from Facebook to better market to its customers and increase sales. Nissen Co., LTD is a catalog company that sends out over 200 million food, clothing, and consumer good catalogs in Japan each year. “We customize the page content for each customer,” said Shigeru Kakimaru of Nissen’s marketing team. The catalogs people now get in the mail reflect products chosen for them based on their Facebook chatter, though the customers probably don’t realize it.

Through analysis of its customers’ Facebook data, Nissen can incorporate “psychographics” into its marketing. It knows about a customer’s “life stage” (whether they’re married or unmarried, pregnant, dieting, planning a party, etc.) “household” (if they have a child, an aging parent, a pet, a condo, etc.) and “personality” (are they into volunteering, fortune-telling, food, traveling, sports, running, etc?). Apparently, fortune telling is big in Japan?
“Consumers now post a huge amount of data about themselves, their activities, and their feelings,” said Kakimaru through a translator, noting that the amount of information companies can collect will grow in the future thanks to smartphone sensors and NFC technology. “We can learn the life background of our customers — their lifestyle and psychology. We can then target our catalogs accordingly. And we can predict when someone needs a product based on what they say on social media.”
It’s rare to hear a company speak candidly about the extent to which they can mine Facebook once given access by its customers. Perhaps it’s easier to do so when you’re giving a presentation in the U.S. and the majority of your customers are in Japan.

“There’s nothing easier to find from social networking data than that someone has a pet,” said Kakimaru, noting that people with pets tend to talk about them a lot on social networks. He mentioned one test of the company’s methods using a control group of female customers; one group got regular non-Facebook-personalized catalogs for three months while the other group got personalized ones that wound up offering them pet products rather than female apparel and resulted in higher sales.
The company also benefits from the richness of the Facebook social graph and the ability to pull information about its customers’ friends.
“We can see who their friends are and recommend birthday gifts for them based on their interests,” said Kakimaru. “We can relate at an emotional level.”

 The permissions a Nissen app asks for

Nissen gets access to this info for those customers who choose to sign in using their Facebook or Twitter account. A customer who uses Facebook Connect, for example, gives Nissen authorization to download info from their profiles, and get access to their list of friends, profile updates, and photos (depending on privacy settings).” All that info gets sucked up on an ongoing basis and dumped into the company’s Teradata warehouse.
The key to mining the data is “True Teller,” a text mining tool that “turns yarn into gold,” says Nissen tech lead Shinichi Yokote. “Its powerful filtering turns seemingly random data into strategic value. The data from Facebook is useless unless you refine it. You have to drill down through 20,000 or 50,000 data points to find the valuable data.”
Such as you talking about your cat. Or mentioning Nissen. The company “values customers who buy once a year and say positive things about the company on social media more than a person who buys three times a year.”
“It’s important not to overwhelm or alienate the customer,” said Kakimaru seeming to echo Target’s “don’t be too creepy about what you know” mentality.
He mentioned Japan’s strong culture of privacy being a concern for them, giving as an example of the privacy expectations there that people are generally uncomfortable talking too much about themselves. “It is dangerous to overly exploit the information too much now, but we think this will change in the future.”

Nissen fears that a feeling of invasiveness would make customers dislike the company. “That’s the exact opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish by doing this [mining],” said Kakimaru. “Unlike in the U.S. where we would fear being litigated against, we are more concerned about customers being upset by use of psychographics.”
I asked which information Nissen regards as being too sensitive to use for now. Kakimaru says Nissen doesn’t use sexual orientation; relationship status; or a person’s hometown. That last one is a “cultural thing.” “There’s historically been racism based on where you’re from [in Japan],” he explained.
He put religion and political views in the gray zone category.
“We could use these but are steering away for now,” he said. “That’s the same everywhere, right? Best to avoid politics and religion.”

Credit : Forbes Magazine

DJ Tip : Using Facebook and Twitter To Promote Your DJing

Facebook and Twitter are a great way to get closer to your fans. This series looks at how the complete beginner can start using social networks for DJ promotion.

Everyone knows that they should be using Facebook and Twitter to promote themselves as DJs. But if you’ve never gone past chatting to your friends on Facebook, and not even tried to get to grips with Twitter, it can seem like a difficult task to get going.

1. Why join a social network? – Gigs, DJ mixes – whatever you want to promote, Facebook and Twitter are your direct connection to your fans
2. How do I get started?- If you already have Facebook and Twitter accounts, great! If not, sign up. On Facebook you want to create a fan page so that you don’t have to add fans as friends individually, and so that you get an unlimited number of potential fans (you can only have 5,000 friends on a profile). Make sure to use your DJ name if it’s different from your real name
3. So what is it with Twitter? – Best thing with Twitter is to just jump in – follow people you find interesting (DJs, this website…), reply and voice your own opinions to things people say, follow people you’re interested in (DJs, interesting industry site and people). It’s chatter, and it doesn’t have a start or an end. Little and often is key
4. What next with my new Facebook page? – Add a description and profile picture, just like if you were setting up a Facebook profile. When your page looks nice, start inviting people to like you. Friends and family are a great starting point
5. How quickly will I see results? – It takes time so don’t expect thousands of fans in a week! Keep interacting with those you do have and things will grow. Also remember a handful of hardcore fans is better than 1,000 who don’t really care for what you have to say. With social media, quality is much more important than quantity

Credit : DJ Digital Tips

Social Network : Facebook rolls out Timeline feature worldwide

Get ready for a This Is Your Life-style recap available online, as Facebook's Timeline feature is now out of beta and available to all users worldwide. Originally announced during the f8 conference back in September, it wraps up all the information you've posted, friendships you've made and embarrassing photos you were tagged in, in a neat, date organized package. If you're worried it may uncover some things better left private -- and posted years ago before you were more savvy about social media -- you can enable the feature and still wait a week before it goes public for viewing by others. Currently timelines are visible on the main site, via the recently updated Android client and the mobile version of the site. If you want to turn it on right way, head to the Introducing Timeline page and click Get It Now.

Update: Facebook has just rolled rolled out a fresh version of its Android app that you'll need to grab for Timeline access there, the change log (after the break) also mentions changes including access to games & apps, new push notifications and a new photo viewing experience.

What's in this version:

1. Navigate anywhere, fast: Get to your groups, apps, pages, and settings with a single press
2. Search and you will discover: Look through friends, subscribers, apps, and pages
3. See your friends tags on pictures and zoom: New photo viewing experience
4. Faster notifications: Get alerted in real time with new push notifications
5. Games & Apps: Play games and access your favorite apps on the go
6. Access to mobile timeline (If you already have a timeline)
7. Access to friend lists and subscriptions

Boost Mobile lets you refill your account on Facebook, allows gifting to and from friends

So busy playing networking on Facebook that you can't find time to refill your Boost Mobile account? Your little conundrum has been solved, as the prepaid carrier has set up an app on the social network called Re-Boost for this very purpose. It satisfies the obvious need of filling up your own account at your own free will, but it also hasn't neglected the social aspect: you can refill a friend's account as a gift or even scrounge a few bucks off your connections by sending a request to your network. It's definitely a unique take on an otherwise inconsequential task; perhaps those high school buddies you never talk to would be willing to part with a buck or two in exchange for some Farmville animals. 

 

Press Release

Boost Mobile Launches New 'Re-Boost' Facebook Application

First application to be launch by a U.S. mobile carrier that allows customers to add funds directly to their wireless account via Facebook

IRVINE, Calif. – Boost Mobile, ranked Highest in Customer Service Performance and Purchase Experience among Non-Contract Wireless Providers by J.D. Power and Associates1, is giving its customers an early holiday gift this year – the ability to add money to their Boost Mobile account using the Re-Boost App directly through their Facebook page.

Launching today, the new "Boost Mobile Re-Boost Application" will enable a Facebook subscriber to:

-Add money to their Boost Mobile account via Facebook.
-Request a Re-Boost gift from their network of Facebook friends, which is asking friends for some extra funds to fuel your phone.
-Request a Re-Boost gift by sending a customized email to a friend, which is asking one friend personally for some help.
-Send a Re-Boost gift to a fellow Boost Mobile Facebook subscriber, since it's better to give than to receive.
-Review the last 10 transactions (Facebook Re-Boost requests and gifts).

The Boost Mobile Re-Boost Application can be downloaded to the Facebook subscriber's account by entering "Boost" in the search bar and selecting the "Re-Boost" application from the search results.

Social Network : PayPal Facebook app lets you send money and greetings to friends, only takes 2.9-percent cut of your 'free' e-card

Well, this certainly seems like a no-brainer for PayPal. The company just launched a Facebook app that lets you send money to anyone on your friends list, with the usual list of terms and conditions in tow. After logging into Facebook and authorizing the app, you'll be able to use PayPal to transfer funds to individuals that you're connected with (who also have PayPal accounts, of course), adding a layer of security to the notoriously fraud-laden online payment service.

Payments are free to send and receive, but only if they're funded using a bank account with both parties in the U.S. Want to use a credit or debit card instead? PayPal will collect 2.9 percent (either from the sender or recipient), with a 30-cent processing fee to boot. And if you're sending funds abroad, fees range from 0.5 to 3.9 percent, depending on a variety of factors. A rather comprehensive collection of e-cards helps soften the blow if a fee applies, and includes selections for just about every occasion. Fourth of July coming up? Let's top up that fireworks fund. So dig up those account and routing numbers and get ready to stick some virtual cash in a virtual card

Social Network : Facebook outs Timeline, gives your profile page a new outfit

Well, Mark's just unveiled Facebook's new look at his f8 keynote, and he's calling it Timeline. The idea is to make it easier to see what you want to see from your past, by placing a, surprise surprise, timeline on the right edge of your profile page that breaks down your content by year and month. There are also Timeline Views, that allow you to filter the content by photos, where you've been (courtesy of Bing maps innovation), and more. You can also add apps to your timeline

Gaming : PlayStation Vita getting social networking apps, 'winning' hashtag making a comeback next year

Wondering how you'll be able to most efficiently brag to far away friends about your new PlayStation Vita? Sony's got the answer in the form of newly announced apps for its next generation portable. Vita Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Skype apps will be landing in the PlayStation Store in Japan before the end of the year. The US and Europe will get their shot at the free apps in early 2012. 

 

Press Release

PlayStation Vita Expands Its Entertainment Experience by Introducing Various Applications for Social Networking Services and Communications

TOKYO, Aug. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) today announced that it will introduce dedicated applications for Facebook, foursquare, Skype™ and Twitter*1 to PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita) which will launch in Japan by the end of 2011, followed by the U.S. and Europe early next year*2.

PS Vita users will not only be able to enjoy the immersive rich gaming content but through the addition of these social networking services and communications widely used around the globe will also have an easy access and greater opportunity to enjoy communicating with friends by simply selecting the dedicated application. PS Vita, as the next generation portable entertainment system, will deliver an unrivaled entertainment experience, through close collaboration with various social networking services and communications.

The applications will be downloadable to PS Vita directly from PlayStation®Store at no charge. Users will be able to activate the application just by selecting the icon which will appear on the PS Vita home screen and enjoy easy navigation using the touch screen. Also, PS Vita's beautiful 5-inch organic light emitting diode (OLED) screen will allow users to enjoy photos and movies shared with their friends and acquaintances via Internet in visually striking graphics. Service profiles of each service are as follows:

Facebook - Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Over 750 million active users visit Facebook each month.
Foursquare - foursquare is a location-based service that helps users explore the world around them. Using PS Vita, users can "check in" at the locations they visit to meet up with friends, and share information about places. Users can also collect virtual badges for exploring new places, and can earn points to compete against friends.
Skype - Skype is software which enables people to communicate with others around the world using Internet-connected devices. Skype has more than 170 million average monthly connected users (for the three months ended June 30, 2011). Users of PS Vita will be able to use Skype to make free calls to others on Skype, as well as low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles virtually anywhere in the world.
Twitter - Twitter instantly connects people everywhere to what's most meaningful to them. At the heart of Twitter are short messages called Tweets, which are 140 characters or less in length. Users can follow celebrities, friends or other people they find interesting to discover what's happening around the world.


SCE will vigorously promote PS Vita towards the launch as the next generation portable entertainment platform and work towards expanding the portable gaming market.

Social Network : A Eulogy for Google Plus

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It may not be dead, and it’s entirely possible I’m shoveling dirt on something that’s still writhing around, promising me it is in fact the next big thing, but I’m now deaf to its cries. Google Plus is a failure no matter what the numbers may say.
25 million users in barely a month is nothing to sneeze at. Google Plus holds the honor of being one of the fastest growing websites in history, and these early numbers had analysts screaming that Facebook would be all but dead in a few more months.
But today I click on my newsfeed and see tumbleweed blowing through the barren, blank page. It’s a vast and empty wasteland, full of people who signed up but never actually stuck around to figure out how things worked in this new part of town. One simple click takes me back to Facebook, and my wall is flooded with updates and pictures from 400+ friends. This just isn’t a contest, and it never will be.
To know why G+ has failed, we must first look at how Facebook succeeded.
Facebook had exclusivity on its side, a once-upon-a-time fact we’re only reminded of when we watch The Social Network, but even when it expanded past college to the general population, it was a hundred times more user friendly and visually streamlined than MySpace. That site was destroyed by the tackiness of its own users with a propensity for glitter text GIFs and autoplaying pop songs, and when it failed to evolve, the exodus to Facebook was massive and unstoppable.
Conversely, we look at a recent failure, this time where Google came out on top. When’s the last time you got THAT frustrated with the Google search engine? Sure, you might not find what you wanted on occasion, but 99.99% of the time, it fulfills its function exceedingly well. So why on earth would anyone feel the need to switch to Bing? It may work yes, but to the average user, it doesn’t offer anything above and beyond what you’d find with Google, and in some avenues, is actually worse. But how many millions were invested in the idea? Did they really think they had come up with something to unseat the emperor of search?
Now Google has fallen into the same trap with Plus. If anyone is annoyed by Facebook, it’s simply that they’re tired of using it. Their gripes aren’t from the layout, or even the privacy settings, as much as internet outrage over the suspect Terms of Service would have you believe. Google can launch a product that fixes Facebook’s issues, and even looks a touch nicer to boot, but its biggest flaw is simply something it can’t overcome. It’s not Facebook.
My profile tells me everything I need to know about Google Plus, and I suspect the same is true for many others. As active as I am in social media and the latest and greatest internet trends, I have 26 people who have added me into circles, only 8 of them being people I wanted to add back, as for all Plus’s claims of privacy and intimacy, I don’t know most of the others. Out of those, only two post anything at all to the site, and the majority don’t even have profile pictures yet, an indicator they haven’t returned since day one. My recommended friends list is filled with people I’m actually close with, presumably pulled from my Gmail contacts, but the fact that we haven’t added each other yet describes just how little we care about this new network.

Less successful than graphs would have you believe.

Yes, the die hard hipsters on the internet might flock to G+ to be the first kids on the block embracing the new network, and might even have their own little Google Plus cliques, but most of those who have gone there have found it to be an empty room. They’ve left one party at Facebook, which yes, may have been going on a bit too long, and could be starting to wind down, but arrived at a new one where simply no one has shown up. And those who have arrived aren’t exactly calling their friends to come on over, as there isn’t a whole lot to see. It’s the same party with different decorations but only 3% of the guests. It might be nice there’s better music or drinks, but none of that matters without anyone there to hang out with.
The fact is, very few people have room to manage many multiple social networks. Yes, you might have someone who is an active poster on Reddit, an avid user of Facebook and a dedicated World of Warcraft player, but that’s approaching the maximum online presence limit as is, since there is only so much time in the day to waste on the internet. Add in Google Plus, effectively a duplicate of Facebook, and there just isn’t space for it.
You can use both, but what’s the point? Why manage two different social networks where the only difference is cosmetics and a few bug fixes? Why post a status update or album to Plus where ten people will see it, when you can do so on Facebook where it will catch the eyes of 500 friends instead? Sure, it might be a slight upgrade if EVERYONE quit Facebook  and instantly migrated to Google Plus, but there just isn’t motivation for the vast majority of users to do that, and even with its flaws, they’ll will stick with what they know, and will want to keep the network intact they’ve spent years amassing.
Google Plus may brag about the subscriber numbers it’s racked up in a relatively short time, but a closer inspection is needed. Yes, many have joined, but these are not converts from Facebook, they are just curious souls who wanted to see what all the buzz was about (no pun intended about Google’s previous failed experiment).
Google just should have known better. No one is going to scrap a social network they’ve spent 8 years building up to start over from scratch for one that offers only a few minor improvements. To compete there needs to be something put forward that’s truly revolutionary, and tech companies half-heartedly copying each other is not going to cut it and can’t masquerade as true innovation.

Social Network : 9 Most Bizarre Facebook Related Crimes

The woman who was arrested for ‘poking' someone on Facebook

In yet another case of blurring between the lines of virtual and reality, a woman broke the law for poking via Facebook! Shannon Jackson of Tennessee broke the law when she poked a contact on her Facebook list, by violating a restraining order.

The order specifically prohibits either telephoning, contacting, or otherwise communicating with the petitioner. Violation of a restraining order in Tennessee is a class A misdemeanor, punishable up to 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine up to $2500.

(Link | Via)

The man who got arrested for pretending to be a Moroccan prince on Facebook

In the U.S., pretending to be a celebrity online is something of a trend. There's a whole slew of fake celebrity blogs out there. Search Facebook or MySpace and you'll find dozens of pages supposedly opened by Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes -- all fake.

The Moroccan government, though, apparently isn't quite hip with this trend, and in 2008 arrested a man for creating a Facebook profile under the guise of the brother of King Mohammed VI.

The man, 26-year-old Fouad Mourtada, was arrested and charged with "villainous practices," a very dire and vague sounding offense. At this point, it's unknown just what he said on the fake profile and whether his intents were malicious or satirical, but it's safe to say that whatever he was doing with the fake Facebook identity wasn't terribly amusing to the Moroccan government. (Link | Via)

The emergency worker who got 4 years in jail for posting crime scene photos on Facebook

Mark Musarella, an emergency worker who posted photos on Facebook of a beaten and strangled woman called Caroline Wimme, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to misdemeanor official misconduct and disorderly conduct. The 48-year-old retired New York Police Department detective also lost his emergency medical technician license.

Now, the parents are suing Facebook for allowing the pictures to be shown. (Link | Via)



The woman who was convicted for decapitating a mouse and posting the footage on Facebook
A young Queensland woman has escaped jail time over an animal cruelty case, in which she filmed herself hacking off a mouse's head before posting the footage on Facebook. Naomi Anderson, 23, pleaded guilty to one charge of animal cruelty in the Caboolture Magistrates Court, north of Brisbane, in July 2011. The Caboolture woman had used a steak knife to cut off the mouse's head, filming the episode and later uploading it onto Facebook using an alias. The mouse took 40 seconds to die.

Anderson received an 18-month good behaviour bond and was ordered to serve 180 hours community service. (Link)

The two preteen girls who were accused of cyberstalking after hacking into a classmate's Facebook page

Two preteen US girls accused of hacking into a classmate's Facebook page and posting sexually explicit photos and messages have been charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing. The girls, ages 11 and 12, have been under investigation since the alleged victim's family contacted Issaquah police. The two defendants used the victim's password information to post sexually explicit content on her Facebook page. They also posted messages that indicated the victim was willing to perform sex acts on people.

The defendants instant-messaged some boys to arrange dates where sex acts were to be performed by the victim, according to the charges. Jon Knight, the stepfather of the 12-year-old victim, said his family is relieved that the case has resulted in criminal charges. He said that he wasn't taken seriously when he reported the incident to Issaquah police and to staff at Issaquah Middle School. (Link)

The couple who was arrested for eating rare iguana on Facebook

This story concerns an American couple's meal of an endangered iguana that landed them in Bahamian jail. They were caught after the country's officials saw pictures of the feast on Facebook. The couple -- Vanessa Starr Palm, 23, from Illinois and Alexander Daniel Rust, 24, from Indiana -- posted incriminating snapshots that included "the suspects catching an iguana, parts of an iguana on a grill, two men eating the iguana pieces, and a man and a woman cleaning what appears to be undersized conch," according to police. It's unclear exactly how it got to the police, but apparently many people reported it.

Palm and Rust have been charged with violating an animal protection act and were released on $500 bail each. They'll be back in court next Tuesday. As if that wasn't enough, a Bahamian official said the pair "could also be charged under U.S. law which makes it illegal to commit an offence in a country that has a relationship with the U.S." Good.

The iguanas are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Florida. (Link | Via)

The PA teen who admitted to trying to hire a hitman on Facebook

Chester County teenager faces 11 to 22 years in prison after agreeing to a plea agreement on charges he used Facebook to try to hire a hit man to kill a woman who had accused him of rape. Nineteen-year-old West Chester, Pa., resident Corey Christian Adams accepted the plea agreement on charges of rape, criminal solicitation of murder and other counts.

In July 2010, a 20-year-old woman who had accused Adams of raping her after a party called police to point out a posting on his Facebook page offering $500 for "a girls head." In a later posting, police say Adams said "he needed this girl knocked off right now." Neither Adams nor his attorney commented outside court. (Link)

The man who got jailtime for Facebook friend request

When you have a restraining order out against you, you need to be careful when playing around on social networks. A 37-year-old British man had been given a no-contact order after harassing his wife with text messages and phone calls. When he joined Facebook, he checked the box that would invite his entire address book to join as well. In Silicon Valley, that's just an annoying social faux pas. But for him, it was a violation of his no-contact rule. He received ten days in jail, but served only seven after his lawyer petitioned the court that he had been "confused" by Facebook's sign-in procedures. Good thing he didn't poke her. (Link)

The teen who was busted after posting about toilet crime on Facebook

Consider this 16-year-old's chances of avoiding Internet infamy flushed down the drain: After playing a prank that resulted in $247,000 worth of repairs and a five-month closure of a public library because of flooded toilets, he wrote about it on Facebook, which led to a public admission of guilt in court. This crime happened in Portsmouth, UK, where the teen boy confessed to using toilet tissue to fill the plugholes in the third-floor men's toilets of the Portsmouth Central Library and turning on the taps, resulting in an epic flood.

The teenager had apparently tried to protest his innocence at first. But he changed his plea when presented with proof of his vandalism: A transcript of the Facebook comments he made with one of his mates in which he copped to the deed.

While he had told the cops he had done nothing, he had answered a question on Facebook as to whether he might be guilty. His reply: "Kind of, yeah. I've kept it to myself. A few mates know."

Social Network : Facebook buys group messaging and digital book outfit

Facebook gone and done some serious damage to the company credit card, but thankfully, it's being used for more than replacing chimneys and repairing pool liners. Zuck's prized possession has just snapped up Push Pop Press and Beluga, with the former being best known for creating interactive digital books, most notably gadget junkie Al Gore's "Our Choice" book for iPad. Beluga on the other hand, gained lots of attention for its group messaging app built for iOS and Android. Push Pop Press co-founders (and former Apple engineers) Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris were quick to say that Facebook has no plans to publish digital books; they did confirm, however, that "the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories." Mysterious. Could the Push Press Pop acquisition be the key to the fantasmical iPad app we've yearned for since the dawn of the new millennium? Beluga confirmed the future of Facebook mobile messaging when it said, "we're excited to build our vision for mobile group messaging as part of the Facebook team." Equally mysterious. Unfortunately, no concrete details are being made available, with each site's homepage simply confirming that It's Complicated.

Tech : Skype 5.5 for Windows now available, complete with deeper Facebook integration

 

The beta version has been available for over a month, but those that prefer to play things safe can now download the final version of Skype 5.5 for Windows (and Windows only, at the moment). According to Skype, that version includes a number of additional updates based on user feedback, but the standout feature remains the deep Facebook integration, which will let you call and IM your friends, update your status, and engage in other Facebook-related activities. Skype is also promising "enhanced video call reliability," and it's made yet more design changes that promise to "improve your overall Skype experience.

Social Network : The Minuses of Google+

Google Plus is touted as the Facebook killer presumably someone has been waiting for. If you have such intense feelings invested in Facebook or social media at all you probably need to leave the computer and have a nice tea, but whatever. That aside, Google plus has garnered a ton of positive reviews, but it’s not all sunshine and status updates, there is a disappointing underbelly to all this.

Circles So You Can Relive High School

The most noticeable difference between Google + and Facebook is the social circles function which has one purpose, to segregate your friends. Finally you can avoid the sticky situation of posting a status update about how you pooped in your boss’ office plant when he was out at lunch while at the same time forgetting he’s on your friend list by ensuring he’s in a circle that your update isn’t posted to. Of course you could just not add people to your social networks that you don’t want to know what kind of person you are but that would mean being in a n honest society and God knows we can’t have that. So instead, everyone has to get quantified and qualified and you expend more effort determining who amongst your friends gets to read what.
You also get to wonder what you’re seeing on your friends’ pages. Are you in the cool kid circle? Or are you just an acquaintance? Just a sorry ass loser who gets to see family vacation photos and nothing else
Everyone You’ve Ever Emailed Will Add You

I have been on Google + for a week and half of the people who have added me I honestly don’t know. I was in their contact list and they saw I had Google + so they tossed me in a circle. I hope my circle is “who is this guy?” because that’s the circle I made for them.
If you remember when you first got on Facebook, this is the exact same thing that happened there. You added your email contacts but then you thought “what ever happened to that one-legged girl from grade 7?” so you looked her up and Holy Shit! She’s on Facebook! So you added her too. Then 100 other people you haven’t talk to since.
Sparks

What am I, an 11 year old girl who’s really into orienteering all of a sudden? My interests are not “sparks.” Just call them interests since someone else cornered the market on “like.”
Is Google Any Less Evil than Facebook?

One of the big pushes to get people on Google + instead of Facebook is security issues. If Facebook were a bank, they’d be keeping your valuables in paper bags hung from tree branches. But do you trust Google to not do the same? Didn’t Google scam personal info from wi-fi networks? Weren’t they saving search data for an inordinate amount of time? I’m not saying they’re up to shenanigans but if Facebook gets a bug up your butt, why not Google?
It’s Unnecessary

Google + isn’t Facebook and that’s kind of its only selling point. That’s like going to the hooker with herpes because she advertises herself as not the hooker with super gonorrhea. Is that good? Not really, just something else. I guess it depends on your feelings about VD. But in terms of social networking, which is a term that I think honestly doesn’t mean anything, Google + is just another way to either ignore people you don’t actually care about or pointlessly update those you d care about who in turn ignore you because you’re in their circle of those they don’t care about.
Facebook has been around for years – everyone you know on Google + is already on Facebook, plus hundreds of other people. Is the font too hard to read?
99% of social media is masturbation (the metaphorical kind). No one really needs it to keep in touch with their good friends, you probably talk to those people other places, like in person and other crazy things. You use social media to make jokes, post links you like, hilarious photos and tell everyone what you’re doing in status updates. It’s not social media so much as “I’m important” media. If anything, with its circles and segregation, Google + makes it harder to be lazy about telling people what you’re up to.
People who are sick of Facebook and want to use Google + are like people who are sick of the wallpaper in their bathroom. You can change it, but at the end of the day it’s the same room.
And the Pluses!

Not to be a total downer, we can recognize the upside to Google + and that’s the lake of awful apps. People were excited for apps once upon a time on Facebook, but let’s be honest, one app in 1000 is useful. The rest are godforsaken and terrible. I don’t want to see an app on Google + for anything. I can manage my life just fine without apps. I don’t need Farmville, I don’t need Mafia wars, I don’t need invitations every single day to every stupid thing you have stumbled across. Don’t make me banish you to my “Idiot” circle.
That being said, check to see if Google + exists in a year and if it hasn’t gone down the same road as Facebook, offering up plenty of real estate for awful apps and ads and all manner of spammy crap that clogs your inbox because Google wants to make money of this, they don’t want you to chat with your old high school friends.

Social Network : Woman sues Facebook boyfriend for $8,386 after 'romance' sours

How much is a broken heart worth? For one woman, the devastation she allegedly suffered at the hands of a man she met on Facebook has a precise figure: $8,386.88.
Single mom Cheryl Gray says Wylie Iwan, whom she met on the social networking site last November, led her on and caused her to drain her finances as she lavished him with gifts and spent money on a vacation to his home state of Washington. 

|f that wasn't bad enough, she says, when the relationship soured he posted vile comments on her Facebook wall. That was when Gray, an unemployed paralegal, took an extraordinary step: She sued him.

On May 18, she filed a civil suit against Iwan in Michigan, asking for $8,368.88 for misrepresentation, promissory estoppel, defamation of character and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Gray, 50,says she was 'devastated' and furious when Iwan informed her a week before her planned trip to visit him in Washington that he'd met someone else.

Now, 'I feel foolish,' Gray told Washington state's Tri-City Herald. 'I'm not so much mad or angry. I feel foolish. I am disillusioned.' 


The pair first met over Facebook and quickly found common ground playing the online game Mafia Wars. But Iwan, who works at the restaurant Applebees, insists the relationship never progressed past the friendship stage. 


He clearly told her, he says, that she was welcome to travel to visit him as 'my friend.'

He also says he never led Gray on, and in fact quickly told her when he'd met someone new -- at which point she seemed fine with it.  


But Iwan, 35, claims she soon launched a hate group about him on Facebook, going so far as to brand him an 'online predator.'

 

'I want this lady to move on and leave me alone,' Iwan told the newspaper. 'It's a completely frivolous lawsuit.'

While this lawsuit is a novel one, Gray isn't the first to try to recoup money spent on a doomed relationship. According to Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor, a judge will want to know if the case constitutes fraud before deciding to hear a case like this one.


'Courts get reluctant to regulate matters of the heart,' Goldman told the Tri-City Herald. 'Judges don't really want to be in the middle of a lover's quarrel.'

Gray, who lives with her 13-year-old daughter, said she and Iwan grew closer as the months passed playing Mafia Wars, exchanging Facebook messages, texting and chatting by phone.


Iwan eventually invited to join a special group page where they could 'meet' privately, sometimes spending more than eight hours a day online together, Gray claims.

During that time, Iwan used the phrases 'I love you' or 'I'm falling in love with you,' and making plans for the future. 'He led me to believe for a number of months that our meeting was to explore a potential relationship between the two of us,' she says.
Then came the gifts. Gray says she sent Iwan and his son presents, including on Christmas, his birthday, and Valentine's Day. 


Next was her trip to Washington in April, for which she purchased airplane tickets, booked a rental car and a hotel room in Seattle, and scored tickets to the Mariners' opening home game.

Iwan says he, too, was happy to meet.
'We decided — it wasn't all me — but we decided we wanted to meet each other," he told the paper.

'After that, things started toward a relationship and we started sharing more information. For Valentine's Day, she said she wanted to tell me she loved me as a friend. I told her I love her, too. I was meaning it as a friend.'

The trip never happened, however, because Iwan told her just days before she was due to leave about his new relationship.


'I had done some very nice things for him,' Gray says. 'He supposedly met this person on Saturday, but I don't believe that. I believe he was already involved in a relationship. ... I felt like this guy is taking me on a ride.'

Iwan claims she lied to him, too, telling him early on that she was 42. He says she only confessed to being 50 when their plans to meet up grew closer.


He also says she took screen shots of their private Facebook page, and proceeded to write on his wall claiming he led her on for three months. Iwan says he only posted the vile comment about Gray after she allegedly created a hate group in his name.


Gray now says she was 'shocked, humiliated and embarrassed' by Iwan's portrayal of her in posts, which were visible to all their friends, and said her reputation was injured, according to court documents Gray filed.

12 Ways the Internet Can Get You Fired

Check out these 15 complete fails that make you want to scream ‘Man! I cant believe you just did that over the Internet!’.





This handy guide provides you with 12 pitfalls you will need to avoid if your aim is to remain gainfully employed for the foreseeable future.




1. Juror Fired for asking online friends for help








A jury member was released from service during a trial in the UK for uploading case details to her Facebook page. She was caught red handed using the social networking site to ask friends and relatives to vote on whether or not the defendants in the case we guilty as she was unable to arrive at her own conclusion.

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2. Don’t blast Your Boss if he is your Facebook friend






No matter how much you hate your boss pissing him off is a bad idea. Check out this poorly timed rant from an employee about her boss just two weeks shy of completing her trial employment period.

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3. Anti Semitic Cheerleader




A really important lesson to learn here is that sharing any extreme religious or racist views no matter how funny your Facebook friends will find it, is a really bad idea! Especially when you have a career in the limelight like this young lady who ironically was cheerleader for the New England Patriots.





4. Don’t Tweet Secret Sex Blog






Everyone is entitled to a private life just make sure you don’t go blogging about yours over twitter for the whole world (including your boss!!) to see, like this woman who was fired from a non-profit organisation in St Loius.

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5. Abusive Tweeting by A Politician






Learning the true power of social networking sites and the effect they can have on your work life is essential to keep a squeaky clean image in the eyes of your employer. Take a look at this Twitter update from UK politician Stuart Maclennan who clearly forgot all about his position during his quest to amuse his followers. Other twitter outbursts including calling British Prime Minister David Cameron “t***” and Deputy Nick Clegg, “a b******”.

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6. “Cisco Fatty” Fired before even starting the job






We all take jobs for different reasons and many people endure jobs they dislike for a decent wage but what ever you do don’t go blogging about it especially before you’ve even completed a single days work. Also remember to properly complete background research on your future employer, Connor Riley quite clearly underestimated how well versed employees at Cisco Systems are in maters of the Internet when she posted this tweet.

7. EMT fired for posting Murder Photos Online






Using your camera phone to post pictures of work related material on the web is a strict no no! But it looks like no one informed emergency medical technician Mark Musarella as he was swiftly shown the door by Richmond University Centre in Staten Island NY for uploading pictures of murder victim Caroline Wimmer’s corpse to his Facebook page.

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8. 20 Million Email Chain Letter…



One of the most important skills you must hone to survive in the workplace is to check, check and check again exactly who you are forwarding emails to. As truly devastating effects can occur when an email is placed in the wrong hands. Just learn from London based law firm employee Claire Swire who forgot the cardinal rule ‘Never get confused between reply and reply to all!” and sent an dirty email between her and a male colleague to the rest of the office. The message was quickly circulated all over the world and reportedly viewed by over 20 million people.

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9. Woman Fired for Emailing over “Pornographic” invite






Most people are guilty of squeezing some form of social planning time into their working day but former American Express employee Rachel Fountain might have taken it a bit too far when she accidentally sent an invite to her ‘pornstars, prossies, pimps, flashers and slutty schoolgirls party’ to a company finance director who shared the same name with one of her friends. Needless to say the director decided against arriving at the party in full costume and sacked miss fountain for gross miss conduct.

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10. The Gary Glitter baby in a bag scandal






A natural reaction to receiving a funny email is to send it on to as many people as possible but always consider the consequences this may have as once you have forwarded something on the power to remove your name from the chain is out of your hands. 15 Council Workers from South Lanarkshire, England found out the hard way when when they were fired for circulating this image of Gary Glitter while he was being tried as a paedophile in Vietnam. This was particularly bad press for the council as most of the employees were social workers in charge of child protection.















10. Webcams at Work



Most people understand that the use of webcams with the exception of video conferencing is a strictly an after work activity but not British soap actor Lesley Grantham who lost is job in the top soap opera ‘Eastenders’ for engaging in cyber sex sessions from his dressing room. The press also revealed that whilst performing in a pantomime version of Peter Pan,  Grantham was caught backstage committing lewd acts online dressed as Captain Hook.













11. Missuse of Police Computer




You need to remember when using technology at work that everything you do can be monitored. Its easily forgotten that everything we input into a computer can be tracked but what on earth was San Antonio Police Officer Gabriel Villarreal thinking when he decided to use a police computer to find the home address of a woman who caught his eye during a shift. The woman was extremely surprised when the police officer showed up on her doorstep and subsequently filed a complaint that resulted in his dismissal from the force.









12. Mafia Boss who couldn’t resist Facebook




Privacy controls on your social networking sites are there for a reason, if you lead an extravagant lifestyle that may interfere with your working life and you may need to use them to prevent your secrets from going public. A prime example of this is Italian Mafia boss Pasquale Manfredi who even whilst on the run from the police couldn’t resist updating his status and giving his friends photos a ‘like’.  This complete disregard for the sheer scale of social networking led the authorities to co-operate with Facebook and track his location down to tiny basement flat in Isola Capo Rizzuto, Italy.