The PC Informant » Social sites

Facebook malicious spam attack

Vic Laurie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:07:34 +0000

Security software vendor McAfee says that Facebook users are being subjected to a massive malicious spam attack. InfoWorld reports:

Facebook’s 400 million users have been targeted by a spam run that could infect their computers with malicious software designed to steal passwords and other data, according to security researchers at McAfee.

Over the last two days, millions of messages have been sent, which McAfee detected through customers running the company’s security software, said Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of security research and communication.

Privacy died and no one cared?

Vic Laurie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:03:37 +0000

It is a commonplace observation that privacy in the modern world is dead. But what is also being said more often is that most people don’t care. Declan McCullagh of CBSNews.com has an article at CNET, Why no one cares about privacy anymore. He writes:

Norms are changing, with confidentiality giving way to openness. Participating in YouTube, Loopt, FriendFeed, Flickr, and other elements of modern digital society means giving up some privacy, yet millions of people are willing to make that trade-off every day. Of people with an online profile, nearly 40 percent have disabled privacy settings so anyone may view it, according to a Pew Internet survey released a year ago. The percentage is probably higher today.

Is the concept of privacy a generational thing? McCullagh writes:

If any of this concerns you, then you didn’t grow up with the Internet. It’s difficult to overstate how thoroughly today’s youth–call them Generation X-hibitionist–have adjusted to living in a world of porn spam and Viagra ads that utterly lacks quaint 20th-century conceptions of privacy.

Later he says:

Perhaps the real issue is not technology but psychology. Irwin Altman, a professor emeritus in the University of Utah’s psychology department, created one of the more widely cited theories of privacy before Facebook’s founder was born. “If one can choose how much or how little to divulge about oneself to another voluntarily, privacy is maintained,” Altman wrote, effectively blessing the social media of a generation later. “If another person can influence how much information we divulge about ourselves or how much information input we let in about others, a lower level of privacy exists.”

For a different point of view, there is another article at CNET. This one is by Chris Matyszczyk and is entitled Why people really do care about privacy. Among other things, he says:

People care about privacy because having a private life makes them feel like people, rather than billboards. It’s an essence of humanity, as we currently know it, that we only allow certain people to see more of who we really are, what we really do, what we really think, and how we really feel. There are many reasons for that. One of them is that we don’t really trust other people all that much.

If all of our information were made public, wouldn’t we all become just a little too predictable? This–remarkably coincidental–is exactly what algorithm worshipers would love: “We know who you are. We know what you think. We know what you like. So you’ll definitely buy this product, won’t you?”

Still another analysis is from a Microsoft researcher. AppScout reports:

Microsoft researcher danah boyd (she prefers no caps) presented a pretty bleak picture of how privacy and publicity is managed online today in her SXSW Interactive keynote. Targeting Chatroulette, Facebook, Google Buzz as examples, boyd says consumers have no idea what they are sharing online–and that the business that build social networks don’t either.

Are you concerned about the loss of privacy in general? Or is the bigger concern fear of what governments and big business can do with all the information they collect about individuals?

How we get our news

Vic Laurie — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:33:20 +0000

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published a study, Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, that looks at how we get our news and how Americans’ news consumption habits are changing. The reports says many are seeing news as a social, participatory activity:

To a great extent, people’s experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads.

Tech Flash has done a good job of summarizing the results:

– 33 percent of cell phone users access news on their devices.

– 28 percent of Internet users have customized their home pages to include news from a variety of sources on topics of particular interest.

– 61 percent of Americans get some of their news online, more than radio (54 percent) and newspapers (50 percent).

–92 percent of Americans get their news from multiple platforms.

– 57 percent of Americans say they rely on two to five Web sites for their online news.

–75 percent of online news consumers get news forwarded through email or social networking sites.

–51 percent of users of social networking sites say they get news items from people they follow, while 23 percent of this group follow news organizations or individual journalists.

–37 percent of Internet users say they have contributed to a news piece, either commenting (25 percent), posting a link on a social networking site (17 percent), tagging the content (11 percent), creating news content (9 percent) or Tweeting news (3 percent).

The study is attracting a lot of attention. The New York Times, which has as much at stake in news trends as anybody, comments:

The new news junkie looks very different from even five years ago. Now, she is likely to scan the headlines on her phone in the morning, check a handful of different Web sites over the course of the day and click on links that friends have e-mailed or posted on Facebook or Twitter.

New social networking fad- Chatroulette

Vic Laurie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:35:17 +0000

I’ve been trying to ignore this subject but it keeps popping up. For example, here is an excerpt from Yahoo News:

A new Web sensation called Chatroulette feels like a throwback to the early 1990s, when online chat rooms brimmed with lonely strangers looking for meaningful connections, meaningless sex, or something in between.

But this time, there’s a twist: Everyone on the site has a webcam. Chatroulette randomly links users with strangers who could be anywhere in the world. If you don’t like the person who pops up on the screen, just click “Next.” Repeat.

The result can be unpredictable and raw, like a slap in the face, but also refreshing, a peek into someone else’s life. It’s far from the sanitized worlds we create for ourselves on sites such as Facebook, where we mainly connect with friends, family and people with common interests.

Is this a lasting social networking development? I have no idea. Anybody tried it?

Video about phishing on social sites

Vic Laurie — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:38:01 +0000

Symantec has a video demonstrating how phishing works on social networks. Consumer Reports has posted it and comments:

This video by Norton from Symantec graphically shows what havoc can result when cybercriminals hijack your friends’ social networking accounts. The e-mail looks like it came from a friend, but when the victim clicks on the link directing them to a “hilarious video,” malware is downloaded onto the victim’s computer that lets a hacker track their every move–and get an up-close look at banking information and other personal data.

The video can be seen below:

Thanks to Sol Libes for the link.

Google Buzz makes privacy advocates irate

Vic Laurie — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:46:52 +0000

Google’s venture into social networking that it calls “Buzz” is creating a different kind of buzz than Google intended. The New York Times reports:

When Google introduced Buzz — its answer to Facebook and Twitter — it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google’s e-mail and chat services.

But what Google viewed as an obvious shortcut stirred up a beehive of angry critics. Many users bristled at what they considered an invasion of privacy, and they faulted the company for failing to ask permission before sharing a person’s Buzz contacts with a broad audience. For the last three days, Google has faced a firestorm of criticism on blogs and Web sites, and it has already been forced to alter some features of the service.

Update 02/14/10: Google has responded quickly to the criticism about privacy and has made changes in Buzz. The New York Times reports:

Google moved quickly to contain a firestorm of criticism over Buzz, its new social network, taking the unusual step of announcing changes to the product over the weekend to address privacy problems.

Late Saturday, Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, wrote in a blog post that Google had decided to alter one of the most vehemently criticized features in Buzz: the ready-made circle of friends that Buzz gives new users based on their most frequent e-mail and chat contacts. Now, instead of automatically connecting people, Buzz merely suggests to new users a group of people that they may want to follow or want to be followed by.

Google announced at the Google Blog:

We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear, and since we launched Google Buzz four days ago, we’ve been working around the clock to address the concerns you’ve raised. Today, we wanted to let you know about a number of changes we’ll be making over the next few days based on all the feedback we’ve received.

Google Buzz

Vic Laurie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:29:34 +0000

So far, Google has not been much of a player in the social network scene but it is trying to get in the game with something called “Google Buzz”. The Google Operating System blog has some details.

More about the dangers of Twitterism

Vic Laurie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:08:07 +0000

In a previous post, I commented on George Packer’s unfavorable remarks about Twitter at the New Yorker Magazine blog and Nick Bilton’s responding criticism of Packer and paean to Twitter at the New York Times Bits Blog. Packer has responded in turn and I think his entire riposte is worth reading. But here’s a little of the flavor:

There’s no way for readers to be online, surfing, e-mailing, posting, tweeting, reading tweets, and soon enough doing the thing that will come after Twitter, without paying a high price in available time, attention span, reading comprehension, and experience of the immediately surrounding world. The Internet and the devices it’s spawned are systematically changing our intellectual activities with breathtaking speed, and more profoundly than over the past seven centuries combined. It shouldn’t be an act of heresy to ask about the trade-offs that come with this revolution.

Statistics on usage of social sites by age group

Vic Laurie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:27:14 +0000

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is a major source of statistics on how the Internet is used by Americans. A new study shows patterns of social site usage among different age groups. One result is that young people are blogging less while older adults have increased blogging activity. Instead of blogging, younger people are turning to Twitter. Some statistics are shown in the figures below:

Facebook celebrates 6 years and 400 million users

Vic Laurie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:46:46 +0000

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg blogs:

Today we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.

Who would have predicted it?