Most of you will have heard of or are using facebook, to keep in touch with family and friends and also for playing games, etc...
Facebook Admits Advertising ID Breaches
Facebook has become embroiled in another privacy controversy after confirming that millions of items of personal information were being shared without users' consent.
The social networking site blamed popular third-party applications for violating its rules and transmitting identifying information to advertising and internet tracking companies. "In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work," Facebook engineer Mike Vernal said in a blog post. "We are talking with our key partners and the broader web community about possible solutions." Mr Vernal said press reports had exaggerated the implications of the situation and that getting user identification (UID) information did not provide access to private data without express permission. "Nevertheless, we are committed to ensuring that even the inadvertent passing of UIDs is prevented and all applications are in compliance with our policy," he added. "We take strong measures to enforce this policy, including suspending and disabling applications that violate it."
His comments came after a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation which found that the issue affects tens of millions of Facebook application users - including people who set their profiles to be completely private. The practice breaks Facebook's rules and renews questions about its ability to keep secure identifiable information about the activities of its members. "Our policy is very clear about protecting user data, ensuring that no one can access private user information without explicit user consent," Mr Vernal said. "Further, developers cannot disclose user information to ad networks and data brokers."
The WSJ said applications were providing access to Facebook members' names and, in some cases, their friends' names, to companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online. All of the 10 most popular applications on Facebook were transmitting unique user ID numbers to outside companies, it said. They include Zynga's FarmVille, with 59 million users, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. The WSJ said several applications became unavailable to Facebook users after the newspaper informed the California-based social network that they were transmitting personal information.
Facebook is the world's most popular social network with around 500 million users but has faced persistent complaints about privacy protection.
But what mos people must remember is that Facebook is not the only website that does this. Personally I hate playing online games, downloading free music from websites such as Limewire, Bearshare, etc.. to name but a few. Even with really good security you are never 100% totally safe online
Is WiFi Security Easy To Crack?
…in a word YES, if you know how.
Go into any cafe, or similar, coffee shop on a busy day and you will notice many folks sitting down with their laptops and Netbooks using the free (usualy) WiFi.
It is truly scary to think how many of those laptops I could easily invade whilst sitting there myself, armed only with a Windows laptop and some free software available for download via the Internet.
Or, another scenario is driving through a town/city looking for businesses with wireless networks that are either unsecured or poorly secured.
Perhaps even sitting in a hotel room all day connected to the free WiFi and slipping in and out of other folks laptops.
Wireless networks are everywhere today, even many homes now have them…. and yet I see SO MANY that can easily be hacked into and sensitive data such as passwords to online banking stolen.
I am not trying to be alarmist here, just trying to provide a wake up to the home user/small business user who are basically targets waiting to be found by cyber criminals!
This morning I carried out an experiment to see how easy it was for a person with little or average computer skills to see how easy it would be for them to hack into somebody elses broadband connection. I was shocked within ten minutes I had step by step instructions and software found that would guide a novice on how to do this. Now I know already about the threats as I have been at computers 17 years and have a degree in IT / Computing, but it still surprised me how easy it is to hack nowadays. I thought what if a person spent an afternoon what could they do? Remember, next time somebody gives you a free game, music or video to download over the net, think twice...
For security reasons I cannot tell you what sites I was on or what software I found but believe me its a lot easier nowadays to do this than years ago! Just be careful when your online.