Facebook shutting down March 15 (or April 1)

Facebook is closing down. The Roman Emperor of social networking is tired of it all. He is heading for pastures new. Oh, and you might never be able to get your photos (or your pokes) back.
Such was the story printed by the venerable Weekly World News in order to allay the boredom of standing in line at Albertson's.
The fateful day of Facebook's going away was said to be March 15, the Ides. The tides of sadness immediately crashed over the Web, as the hurt, the bewildered, the forlorn, and, no doubt, the Schadenfreunds of freunds lamented, jeered, and cheered.
With just a few clicks from the cities and the sticks, the twig of a rumor began to sprout a trunk.

Ramnit worm goes after Facebook credentials

A pervasive worm has expanded its reach to now steal login and password details for Facebook users, warned security vendor Seculert, which found a server holding 45,000 login credentials.

The worm, called Ramnit, infects Windows executables, Microsoft Office and HTML files, according to a profile published by Microsoft. It steals user names, passwords, browser cookies and can also function as a backdoor, allowing a hacker to do other malicious actions on an infected computer.

Researchers from Seculert discovered a command-and-control server for the worm and found that it had harvested some 45,000 credentials from Facebook users, mostly in the UK and France, according to its blog.

Aviv Raff, CTO and cofounder of Seculert, said Ramnit's authors may be finding that attacking social networks is a more productive way to collect people's sensitive data.

"We see a growing trend of malware writers embedding social networks in the malware instead of sending the malware itself via email spam," Raff said. "This is the same for Ramnit."

Once the Facebook login and password have been collected, it is suspected that the victim's account is then accessed and a link is posted on their Facebook profile that leads to Ramnit, which will try and infect the computer.

"We suspect that they use these credentials to continuously spread the Ramnit malware through Facebook," Raff said.

Another security vendor, Trusteer, noted last year that Ramnit appeared to have been modified in order to commit financial fraud, acquiring similar capabilities as the famous Zeus and SpyEye malicious software programs.

Ramnit can inject HTML fields into a Web page and ask for information on a banking site that would not normally be asked, Trusteer noted in a blog post on Aug. 22.

Seculert estimates that some 800,000 computers were infected with Ramnit between September through the end of December. A Symantec report from July 2011 put Ramnit as the most common piece of malware it blocked in June and July 2011.

Ramnit's mining of Facebook could yield passwords that people have re-used on other websites, a common mistake that gives hackers an easy in.

"Many users use the same password for Facebook and other organization web services, such as SSL VPN or Outlook Web Access," Raff said. The "attackers may use this to gain remote access to corporate networks. Same goes for their online bank account."

Facebook Timeline Doesn’t Show in Internet Explorer 7

If you don’t like Facebook Timeline, all you have to do to get rid of it is use Internet Explorer 7 — but be prepared for a buggy experience. Facebook’s latest profile redesign is not visible in IE7, and the company might soon completely phase out support for the aging browser, ZDNet suspects.
It took Facebook quite awhile to cut support for IE7′s ancient predecessor, Internet Explorer 6. In August 2010, Facebook had announced that its chat feature will no longer support IE6, joining many other web services that gave up on the bug-ridden browser.
It seems that the same fate now awaits IE7, which currently has a market share of about 4%, according to StatCounter. When you open a Facebook profile with the new Timeline feature enabled, IE7 will simply show a buggy, old version of the profile.
Officially, Facebook says it recommends using the “most up to date” version of Firefox, IE, Safari or Chrome; it doesn’t, however, mention support for older versions of these browsers.
If the move is intentional, it’s hardly a surprising one. Once, support for older versions of browsers was an important feat for web services, especially popular ones. Now with many browsers, including IE, being automatically updated for users, there’s little reason to keep using a browser that’s more than 5 years old

Facebook Threatens to Sue Mark Zuckerberg

In response to an ongoing legal battle with the social networking giant Facebook, Rotem Guez, an Israeli entrepreneur changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg.

This dispute started when Guez launched ‘Like Store’, the store which sells advertisers Likes for their Pages. Like store is the company which promises to give companies a boost in traffic by offering Facebook users free content only if they Like a given company’s page. As his startup does not come under the terms of services of the Facebook, the company wants to shut it down. Guez admits that his company’s service violates the terms of services of Facebook, but claimed that many firms in U.S. provides similar services.

Guez sued Facebook on January 29^th this year. This lawsuit was filed against Facebook’s local affiliate in Israel, named Nana 10 MASA. Facebook was accused of not returning Guez’ Facebook profile for no ‘apparent, legitimate reason’. Facebook banned the Israeli entrepreneur from its website for selling Likes and creating fake accounts and warned him not to return to the social networking site for any reason.

He went to the Ministry of Home Affairs on December 7, 2011, and changed his identification to Mark Zuckerberg in the passport. The main intention for him to change his name was to see if Facebook continuous to threaten and sue Mark Zuckerberg in spite of the publicity. ZD Net reports that Rotem thinks he stands more of a chance as a Zuckerberg than a Rotem Guez. Rotem Guez, just to acquire the publicity, told the Facebook that if at all they want to sue him, they are going to sue Mark Zuckerberg.

According to the report, Facebook again started threatening him with a lawsuit on December 14^th, just one week after he had changed his name. Facebook has also stopped Guez’s account on the site that he had created using the name of Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, Social Networking Via SMS On Vodafone

After Tata Indicom and Airtel, it is now Vodafone's turn to enable its subscribers to access Facebook using SMS. This makes it possible to access the social networking service even if you don't own a smartphone.

Vodafone will use Myriad's flagship mobile social networking platform Xumii to deploy Myriad Updates, which is a text-based mobile social networking service. Subscribers will not be required to have a data-enabled handset to be able to access this service.

Vodafone Essar CMO, Kumar Ramanathan said, "Adoption of social networking on mobile devices across India is growing exponentially. In order to keep pace with market demands, our partnership with Myriad will enable us to quickly and seamlessly deliver social networking services on a massive scale across our entire subscriber base using SMS and USSD". Additional services including instant messaging and mobile email will also be introduced soon.

This new service makes use of USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) service, which is a protocol used by GSM to communicate with service provider s computers. Those who have had mobile phones for over a decade, may remember that USSD had been in use in the form of WAP-over-SMS to access mobile internet in phones not supporting any form of internet connectivity. Due to the limitations of the technology, the interactivity is also limited to status updates, "friend" requests and posting text on walls.

The revenue model for this feature has not been specified, although it is likely to be free like the one offered by Airtel.

Facebook accused of leaking private user info to advertisers

We’ve seen it over and over again, Facebook and its infamous way of of handling user security. Last week, the most popular social networking was gripped by yet another scam and is now accused of misusing user info. The European Commission plans to put a halt to Facebook’s eavesdropping on its members’ personal information, reports The Sunday Telegraph. The social network gathers information like users’ opinions, sexuality, religious beliefs and whereabouts, according to the report.

Stealing info

Reportedly, Facebook uses certain software to gather such information irrespective of the user’s privacy settings and sells it to advertisers. In order to ban Facebook from stealing information, unless of course, a user approves of it, a new EC directive will be introduced, starting January. This move was initiated as a result of the investigation report put up by the newspaper, which states that Facebook helps advertisers to focus depending upon the user’s profile.

It collects information of the user’s family and background. So, if it’s a bride-to-be, then the profile page is targeted with advertisements related to weddings or bridal needs, says the report. It is believed that whatever people share is being tracked and individuals are obviously unaware of such things. EU data protection party will meet to discuss the matter this week. The gradual rise in advertising has ensured that Facebook is self-sufficient and ‘ready for a stock market flotation.'

In response, Facebook has disclosed that the social firm does not track a user’s behaviour to offer advertising and takes user security very seriously. Do you think your personal information is safe on Facebook?

How to get the new Facebook Message System?

Facebook is gradually introducing the new message system to its users, not immediately at once, unlike what you expected, so you should see steps to upgrade soon. For the impatient lot, you can request for an invite from Facebook.

Once you are updated, Facebook will show you the steps and a small tutorial on the new system.

How to get yourname@facebook.com

After you have received your invite, you can claim your facebook.com email address. It will match your Facebook Profile Name. If you don’t have one, you can get it at the same time.
Example:
Profile: facebook.com/am.samalex
Email: am.samalex@facebook.com

So what’s it all about?

Rather than the current messages and updates buttons on the left sidebar of your Facebook Home page, the new messages and other buttons will appear. All messages from your friends will appear in the Messages category. Everything else is sent to the other folder, including messages from Facebook Groups, from Pages you like and external mails from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.

Localized conversations

All conversations with your friends are centered in the new message system, everything from chat to text messages and emails are available under one roof. Yeah, if you provide your phone number, you can bring SMS messages into the system too.

Facebook E-Mail Service

Your Facebook messages are even compatible with traditional email systems (Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail). When you get mails from these systems via yourname@facebook.com, they’re directed to your Facebook Messages. When you send mails to external email addresses, they’re formatted to look like your messages on Facebook, including your name and profile pic along with your mail. You can even attach files other than pics and videos in messages/mails.

New Search

Another addition is the search element. Facebook has updated how message search works. You can either search for a person’s name or for a topic you were chatting about. You can also add people to conversations, remove yourself, or forward conversations to others.

Send Facebook messages via SMS

You can text Facebook to update your status or message on the go. You can also choose to receive SMS with messages, pokes, and wall posts from your friends in real time.
Example: To send a message “what’s up?” to a friend William Smith via a mobile text, just text msg sam alex what’s up? to 9232232665
For more info, click here

How to control Privacy settings?

If you’d like to choose who can send you Facebook messages and Emails:

1. Open the Account drop-down menu at the top of any Facebook page and click on Privacy Settings.
2. In the Basic Directory Information section, go to View settings.
3. Change the settings for Send me messages. Your options include Everyone, Friends and Friends of Friends.

In a Nutshell:

• It’s free and easy to set up.
• Having your email integrated with your messages, chats and texts makes it easier to check them all at once. All your different types of messages are in one place.
• When people send you emails from external systems (Gmail, Hotmail, etc), they’re delivered to your Facebook Messages. When you send mails to external email addresses, they’re formatted to look like your messages on Facebook, including your name and profile picture along with your message.
• Owning yourname@facebook.com makes it easier for friends and family who are not on Facebook yet to connect with you.
• Attach files in messages and mails & send messages via SMS.