People’s addiction to networking sites on rise: study

A Facebook login page is seen on a computer screen in Chicago

People’s addiction to social networking sites is fast on the rise, according to a study which said an increasing number of Facebook and Twitter users check their accounts first thing in the morning while some look at their social media messages even while having sex.

The study conducted by consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo said 53 per cent of people surveyed check their Facebook/Twitter accounts as soon as they get up in the morning, even “before getting out of bed”. Nearly 31 per cent say “this is how I get my morning news“.

“What is it about social media that causes people to spend so much of their precious time trading information with friends, family and even giant corporations? Of course, we already know the answer; it is fun and can be rewarding both socially and financially,” Retrevo’s Director of Community & Content Andrew Eisner said.

The Gadgetology study asked consumers how they felt about being interrupted at various times and occasions for an electronic message. While 33 per cent said they did not mind being interrupted by message updates “during a meeting”, 76 per cent said they can take a break from their meal to check their accounts.

Seventeen per cent said they would read a message on Facebook or Twitter during sex, while 63 per cent said they would check out a message while in the toilet.

Thirty-four per cent of the respondents said they would check their social networking accounts first thing in the morning, before switching on the TV. About 30 per cent of those surveyed said they check or update their Facebook/Twitter accounts whenever they wake up in the night.

People under the age of 25 were more likely to lose sleep keeping an eye on their friends’ posts during the night, the study said. iPhone owners stand out in this study as more involved with social media. They use Facebook and Twitter more often and in more places.

“With over 31 per cent of social media users saying checking Facebook and Twitter first thing in the morning is how they get their morning “news”, could we be witnessing the first signs of social media services beginning to replace ’Good Morning America’ as the source for what’s going on in the world?” the study said.

In more evidence that social media is becoming addictive, 56 per cent of its users said they need to check Facebook at least once a day, while 29 per cent said they can go only a couple of hours without checking their accounts.

Thirty-five per cent said they have to check their accounts at least a few times in a day. The sample size for the survey was over 1000 people across the United States.

According to Facebook, it has more than 400 million active users across the world. Some estimates say Twitter ended 2009 with over 75 million user accounts.

India is the world’s number two spammer

Brazil, India, Korea, Vietnam and U.S. top the chart of spammers

Wonder where all those annoying spam messages come from? Who sends them? Well, you have got some answers here. Panda Security, a player in antivirus and preventive technologies segment, has stated in its report that India is the world’s number two spammer. Surprised? Even we were.

Panda Security has released a report stating that Brazil, India, Korea, Vietnam and U.S. head the list of countries from which most spam was sent during the first two months of the year 2010. With respect to the cities from which spam was being sent, Seoul was first in the list, followed by Hanoi, New Delhi, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Mumbai.

The five million emails analyzed by PandaLabs came from a total of almost one million different IP addresses. This shows that the spam is mostly sent from zombie computers belonging to a botnet. This way, the computers of the infected users themselves are those which send the spam. The cybercrooks have thousands of computers at their disposal, which do the dirty work for them.

Spam is nothing but a business and is used primarily either to distribute malware or sell/advertise all type of products. Therefore, as long as there are users, no matter if they are few, who trust these messages, it’s enough to continue betting on it.

—techtree

Anti-virus software maker inside global cybercrime ring

BOSTON: Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine’s capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world’s most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.

According to court documents, former employees and investigators, a receptionist greeted visitors at the door of the company, known as Innovative Marketing Ukraine. Communications cables lay jumbled on the floor and a small coffee maker sat on the desk of one worker.

As business boomed, the firm added a human resources department, hired an internal IT staff and built a call centre to dissuade its victims from seeking credit card refunds. Employees were treated to catered holiday parties and picnics with paintball competitions.

Top performers got bonuses as young workers turned a blind eye to the harm the software was doing. “When you are just 20, you don’t think a lot about ethics,” said Maxim, a former Innovative Marketing programmer who now works for a Kiev bank and asked that only his first name be used for this story. “I had a good salary and I know that most employees also had pretty good salaries.”

In a rare victory in the battle against cybercrime, the company closed down last year after the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit seeking its disbandment in US federal court.

An examination of the FTC’s complaint and documents from a legal dispute among Innovative executives offer a rare glimpse into a dark, expanding — and highly profitable — corner of the internet.

Innovative Marketing Ukraine, or IMU, was at the center of a complex underground corporate empire with operations stretching from Eastern Europe to Bahrain; from India and Singapore to the United States. A researcher with anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc who spent months studying the company’s operations estimates that the business generated revenue of about $180 million in 2008, selling programs in at least two dozen countries. “They turned compromised machines into cash,” said the researcher, Dirk Kollberg.

The company built its wealth pioneering scareware — programs that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tell the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying $50 to $80 to “clean” their PC.

Scareware, also known as rogueware or fake antivirus software, has become one of the fastest-growing, and most prevalent, types of internet fraud. Software maker Panda Security estimates that each month some 35 million PCs worldwide, or 3.5 per cent of all computers, are infected with these malicious programmes, putting more than $400 million a year in the hands of cybercriminals. “When you include cost incurred by consumers replacing computers or repairing, the total damages figure is much, much larger than the out of pocket figure,” said Ethan Arenson, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission who helps direct the agency’s efforts to fight cybercrime.

Groups like Innovative Marketing build the viruses and collect the money but leave the work of distributing their merchandise to outside hackers. Once infected, the machines become virtually impossible to operate. The scareware also removes legitimate anti-virus software from vendors including Symantec Corp, McAfee and Trend Micro Inc, leaving PCs vulnerable to other attacks.

When victims pay the fee, the virus appears to vanish, but in some cases the machine is then infiltrated by other malicious programs. Hackers often sell the victim’s credit card credentials to the highest bidder.

Removing scareware is a top revenue generator for Geek Choice, a PC repair company with about two dozen outlets in the United States. The outfit charges $100 to $150 to clean infected machines, a service that accounts for about 30 percent of all calls. Geek Choice CEO Lucas Brunelle said that scareware attacks have picked up over the past few months as the software has become increasingly sophisticated. “There are more advanced strains that are resistant to a lot of anti-virus software,” Brunelle said.

Anti-virus software makers have also gotten into the lucrative business of cleaning PCs, charging for those services even when their products fall down on the job.

Charlotte Vlastelica, a homemaker in State College, Pennsylvania, was running a version of Symantec’s Norton anti-virus software when her PC was attacked by Antispyware 2010. “These pop-ups were constant,” she said. “They were layered one on top of the other. You couldn’t do anything.”

So she called Norton for help and was referred to the company’s technical support division. The fee for removing Antispyware 2010 was $100. A frustrated Vlastelica vented: “You totally missed the virus and now you’re going to charge us $100 to fix it?”

AN INDUSTRY PIONEER

“It’s sort of a plague,” said Kent Woerner, a network administrator for a public school district in Beloit, Kansas, some 5,500 miles (8,850 km) away from Innovative Marketing’s offices in Kiev. He ran into one of its products, Advanced Cleaner, when a teacher called to report that pornographic photos were popping up on a student’s screen. A message falsely claimed the images were stored on the school’s computer.

“When I have a sixth-grader seeing that kind of garbage, that’s offensive,” said Woerner. He fixed the machine by deleting all data from the hard drive and installing a fresh copy of Windows. All stored data was lost.

Stephen Layton, who knows his way around technology, ended up junking his PC, losing a week’s worth of data that he had yet to back up from his hard drive, after an attack from an Innovative Marketing program dubbed Windows XP Antivirus. The president of a home-based software company in Stevensville, Maryland, Layton says he is unsure how he contracted the malware.

But he was certain of its deleterious effect. “I work eight-to-12 hours a day,” he said. “You lose a week of that and you’re ready to jump off the roof.”

Layton and Woerner are among more than 1,000 people who complained to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about Innovative Marketing’s software, prompting an investigation that lasted more than a year and the federal lawsuit that sought to shut them down. To date the government has only succeeded in retrieving $117,000 by settling its charges against one of the defendants in the suit, James Reno, of Amelia, Ohio, who ran a customer support center in Cincinnati. He could not be reached for comment.

“These guys were the innovators and the biggest players (in scareware) for a long time,” said Arenson, who headed up the FTC’s investigation of Innovative Marketing.

Innovative’s roots date back to 2002, according to an account by one of its top executives, Marc D’Souza, a Canadian, who described the company’s operations in-depth in a 2008 legal dispute in Toronto with its founders over claims that he embezzled millions of dollars from the firm. The other key executives were a British man and a naturalized U.S. citizen of Indian origin.

According to D’Souza’s account, Innovative Marketing was set up as an internet company whose early products included pirated music and pornography downloads and illicit sales of the impotence drug Viagra. It also sold gray market versions of anti-virus software from Symantec and McAfee, but got out of the business in 2003 under pressure from those companies.

It tried building its own anti-virus software, dubbed Computershield, but the product didn’t work. That didn’t dissuade the firm from peddling the software amid the hysteria over MyDoom, a parasitic “worm” that attacked millions of PCs in what was then the biggest email virus attack to date. Innovative Marketing aggressively promoted the product over the internet, bringing in monthly profits of more than $1 million, according to D’Souza

The company next started developing a type of malicious software known as adware that hackers install on PCs, where they served up pop-up ads for travel services, pornography, discounted drugs and other products, including its flawed antivirus software. They spread that adware by recruiting hackers whom they called “affiliates” to install it on PCs.

“Most affiliates installed the adware product on end-users’ computers illegally through the use of browser hijacking and other nefarious methods,” according to D’Souza. He said that Innovative Marketing paid its affiliates 10 cents per hijacked PC, but generated average returns of $2 to $5 for each of those machines through the sale of software and products promoted through the adware.

ANY MEANS BUT SPAM

The affiliate system has since blossomed. Hackers looking for a piece of the action can link up with scareware companies through anonymous internet chat rooms. They are paid through electronic wire services such as Western Union, Pay Pal and Webmoney which can protect the identity of both the sender and the recipient.

To get started, a hacker needs to register as an affiliate on an underground website and download a virus file that is coded with his or her affiliate ID. Then it’s off to races.

“You can install it by any means, except spam,” says one affiliate recruiting site, earning4u.com, which pays $6 to $180 for every 1,000 PCs infected with its software. PCs in the United States earn a higher rate than ones in Asia.

Affiliates load the software onto the machines by a variety of methods, including hijacking legitimate websites, setting up corrupt sites for the purposes of spreading viruses and attacks over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

“Anybody can get infected by going to a legitimate website,” said Uri Rivner, an executive with RSA, one of the world’s top computer security companies.

A scareware vendor distributed its goods one September weekend via The New York Times’ website by inserting a single rogue advertisement. The hacker paid NYTimes.com to run the ad, which was disguised as one for the internet phone company Vonage. It contaminated PCs of an unknown number of readers, according to an account of the incident published in The New York Times.

Patrik Runald, a senior researcher at internet security firm Websense Inc, expects rogueware vendors to get more aggressive with marketing. “We’re going to see them invest more money in that — buying legitimate ad space,” he said.

To draw victims to infected websites, hackers will also manipulate Google’s search engine to get their sites to come up on the top of anyone’s search in a particular subject. For instance, they might capitalize on news events of wide interest — from the winners of the Oscars to the Tiger Woods scandal — quickly setting up sites to attract relevant search times. Anti-virus maker Panda Security last year observed one scareware peddler set up some 1 million web pages that infected people searching for Ford auto parts with a program dubbed MSAntispyware2009. They also snare victims by sending their links through Facebook and Twitter.

Some rogue vendors manage their partnerships with hackers through software that tracks who installed the virus that generated a sale. Hackers are paid well for their efforts, garnering commissions ranging from 50 to 90 percent, according to Panda Security. SecureWorks, another security firm, estimates that a hacker who gets 1 to 2 percent of users of infected machines to purchase the software can pull in over $5 million a year in commissions.

Hackers in some Eastern European countries barely attempt to conceal their activities.

Panda Security found photos of a party in March 2008 that it said affiliate ring KlikVIP held in Montenegro to reward scareware installers. One showed a briefcase full of euros that would go to the top performer. “They weren’t afraid of the legal implications, ” said Panda Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll. “They were fearless.”

BANKING

One of Innovative Marketing’s biggest problems was the high proportion of victims who complained to their credit card companies and obtained refunds on their purchases. That hurt the relationships with its merchant banks that processed those transactions, forcing it to switch from banks in Canada to Bahrain. It created subsidiaries designed to hide its identity.

In 2005, Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait severed its ties with an Innovative Marketing subsidiary that had the highest volume of credit card processing of any entity in Bahrain because of its high chargeback rates, according to D’Souza.

Innovative Marketing then went five months without a credit card processor before finding a bank in Singapore — DBS Bank — willing to handle its account. The Singapore bank processed tens of millions of dollars in backlogged credit card payments for the company, D’Souza said.

To keep the chargeback rate from climbing even higher, Innovative Marketing invested heavily in call centers. It opened facilities in Ukraine, India and the United States. The rogueware was designed to tell the users that their PCs were working properly once the victim had paid for the software, so when people called up to complain it wasn’t working, agents would walk them through whatever steps it took to make those messages come up.

Often that required disabling legitimate anti-virus software programs, according to McAfee researcher Dirk Kollberg, who spent hours listening to digitized audio recordings of customer service calls that Innovative Marketing kept on its servers at its Ukraine offices. He gathered the data by tapping into a computer server at its branch in Kiev that he said was inadvertently hooked up to Innovative’s website. “At the end of the call,” he said, “most customers were happy.”

Police have had limited success in cracking down on the scareware industry. Like Innovative Marketing, most rogue internet companies tend to be based in countries where laws permit such activities or officials look the other way.

Law enforcement agencies in the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Singapore are the most aggressive in prosecuting internet crimes and helping officials in other countries pursue such cases, said Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. “In the rest of the world, it’s hit or miss,” he said. “The cooperation is getting better, but the level of crime continues to increase and continues to outpace the level of cooperation.”

The FTC succeeded in persuading a U.S. federal judge to order Innovative Marketing and two individuals associated with it to pay $163 million it had scammed from Americans. Neither individual has surfaced since the government filed its original suit more than a year ago. But Ethan Arenson, the FTC attorney who handled the case, warned: “Collection efforts are just getting underway.”

—economictimes

Kerala’s first ever Twestival to be held in Kochi

Social media activists in Kerala are gearing up to organise the State’s first ever ‘Twestival’ or Twitter Festival in Kochi on Thursday.

Twestival is aimed at using the social media for social good.

According to the organisers, it would also be a grand celebration of Kerala’s culture and community spirit.

Dubbed ELECTROWESTIVAL, Twestival in Kochi will feature the city’s Electro Boy DJ Arvee; Stand up Comedy by Siddharth, KochiVibe; and a Techno-Humor Geek extravaganza by Binny the blogger.

Twestival will be happening in more than 175 cities around the world on Thursday. Thousands of people will demonstrate social media’s power for social good through the second annual Twestival. The global event is a worldwide fundraising initiative that uses social media,particularly Twitter, to focus participants’ talent and resources to benefit one cause for one day. All proceeds generated from the 2010 Twestival will support education and be donated to Concern Worldwide.

Seven cities in India are participating in the second global Twestival – Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Goa, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

In 2009, Twestival India was able to raise over Rs. 90,000 for the nonprofits supported. “Considering the ever increasing number of Indians taking to the social media platform Twitter, we expect to more than double this amount in 2010,” the organisers said in a press release.

“The most special thing about Twestival,” said K. M. Vaijayanthi, Regional Coordinator for India, “apart from the nonprofit we support, is the way we work. Twestival is 100 per cent volunteer driven. All of us working for Twestival in India, and elsewhere too, are working professionals who believe they can use their free time for a global cause like this.”

“Organising online and gathering offline allows Twestival to harness the incredible communication power of Twitter to propel participation in real events around the world,” said Amanda Rose, founder of Twestival. “There is no shortage of people who are passionate and want to help. The challenge is coordination, not participation. By using social media platforms such as Twitter, Twestival is able to connect hundreds of independent local events into a powerful globalinitiative. At last year’s Twestival, more than 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised more than $250,000 to provide clean and safe drinking water for more than 17,000 people. We know this works—and we’re excited to make it work for every child in the world that deserves an education.”

Can China live without Google?

BEIJING: Google’s decision to withdraw from China showcases a war between the biggest search engine company and the biggest Internet market in the 

world, and questions are being raised in China if they can survive without the giant.

Google’s decision will potentially cut off the country’s 400 million users, the world’s biggest Web audience, but some opinions in the country suggest that the loss may not mean “darkness”, as the western media is putting it.

These opinions also suggest that Google does not “dominate” Chinese people’s lives, and local search engines, including Baidu, can possibly take over in future.

“I’m not sure if Google knows that its arrogance can easily remind the Chinese people of the “big powers” who cracked open China’s door by warships and cannons in the 19th century. The reason those invaders could make the Qing government sign unfair treaties is that they owned advance weapons that China didn’t have,” an opinion piece in China Daily said.

“Google didn’t understand that they had been on the road of the big powers again. The only difference was military weapons in the past and Internet service today,” it added.

The opinions further highlight that “Google has challenged the Chinese government’s sovereignty by demanding the government accept Google’s presumed definition on opening up”, adding that “China has always been in a developing mode that shows no signs of stopping.”

Meanwhile, Ed Burnette, a columnist from adnet.com under the Columbia Broadcasting System Corp (CBS) said it was “a pity and an avoidable mistake” for Google to retreat from China.

He also believes that it is “arrogant thinking to assume that we know what’s best for China, and our values can still work well in that very different culture; and it’s an ignorant idea to believe threats and ultimatums can bring positive results, especially from such proud and sufficient people.”

Windows users to be offered choice of browsers

Microsoft’s Windows operating system has begun offering users a choice of browsers when surfing the web, no longer limiting them to Explorer.

 Many internet users might not be so excited about some freedom of choice coming their way.

Microsoft’s Windows operating system has begun offering users a choice of browsers when surfing the web, no longer limiting them to Explorer. The freedom might excite some, but the less tech-savvy could find the choices overwhelming.

Browsers are essentially the web surfer’s board. They are the programmes that make viewing websites possible. Nonetheless, they are an unknown quantity for many people.

“A lot of people use them without really knowing what they are,” says Tim Bosenick, Manager at Sirvaluse, a German company that evaluates technical products.

Until now, Windows users were more or less forced to use Explorer.

It was automatically installed on most PCs and appeared automatically as a light blue letter e in the toolbar. Anyone who wanted to use a different browser had to make a conscious decision to install and use it. But now the European Union has more or less ordered Microsoft to expand the choices offered.

Users will notice a change when they update their Windows operating system.

“The window automatically pops up,” says Microsoft spokeswoman Irene Nadler. It will show the five most common browsers. Alongside Explorer there will be Version 8 of Firefox – the newest – as well as icons for Opera, Chrome and Safari. Since Microsoft is blocked from promoting Explorer, the solution seems fair, says Jo Bager of c’t, a German computer magazine.

Scrolling right will reveal yet more browser options. Under each symbol is a clickable area where people can go for more information about the browsers – and how to install them. Anyone who wants to think before acting can opt to be reminded about the choice later.

But those who act quickly and then have buyer’s remorse will not get the window again, meaning they will have to manually track down a different browser at its website.

“All four browsers offered in the window are sensible alternatives,” says Holger Maass of Fittkau & Maass, a German information technology marketing research company.

Firefox, for example, can be expanded easily thanks to add-ons, giving it a whole new range of functions. Google’s Chrome also offers add-ons.

“Chrome has developed unbelievably quickly in the meantime,” says Bager. One drawback for users who care about information security: each browser is linked to a personal number that allows the browser operator to track every user and his surfing behaviour. Google has promised to shut that function off in its newest version.

“Fast” is the word most people associate with Opera, offered by the Norwegian company of the same name. The new version 10.50 is particularly speedy. Computer users who don’t have especially fast internet connections can also benefit from a special Opera setting for such computers.

The advantage of Apple’s Safari is its wide array of functions.

“For example, you can page back with a mouse movement.” But those functions could also make users unfamiliar with them nervous.

Indeed, at the end of the day, a lot of computer users have grown used to Explorer, which could be good news for Microsoft.

Google TV : Browse the internet through television screens

The system will be called “Google TV”, will be made by Sony and powered by Intel chips. It has built a prototype set-top box, that allows users to browse the internet through their television screens do things such as download movies and television shows. The “Google TV” however will also come in the form of actual TV sets.

Along with regular television there will also be Hulu, YouTube and other web-video sources, along with games and apps for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.Google TV, will essentially be a big-screen living-room computer.

With this, Google takes a lead among other players in this race like the Apple who have been trying to make people access internet through their TVs. People already with TV sets need not feel disappointed as this device can also be built into the TV. It would facilitate simultaneous viewing of TV and better access to the web, search, and social networking sites. These companies also appear to be in talks with Logitech to build peripherals like a remote control and small keyboard for the system.

The project although is being developed since long but its kept under tight wraps and its details away from the public. The GTV will run on the Android OS, Google’s open-source mobile phone operating system originally designed to run on ARM core, (the processor used in most smartphones, but has been also adapted by some companies to operate on different chip architectures such as MIPS or Intel x86) and will even have the Chrome browser built-in. Partnership with Intel ensures TV will use some form of Atom chips in it. This move was pretty obvious as TV is only one of the few advertising markets Google isn’t yet in.

It has been reported that Google has begun testing the set-top box technology though Dish Network, a satellite TV provider.

However Google’s new venture could weaken the PC industry. This is foreseen as when the people will have the internet in their television, and a tablet appliance like the iPad with them around, they would not need a desktop or even a laptop computer.

It is unclear whether this system would be launched worldwide or be designed for release in the United States only, as with some of Google’s other products.

Both papers, however, cite sources completely anonymous information and denials have come from both the Sony spokesperson and that of Google.

–whitehatfirm

Youngsters prefer internet to family, friends for help

Only a fifth (18 per cent) cross-checked their findings with a friend or parent, researchers found, The Scotsman reported.

Almost nine out of ten young people turn to the Internet to help solve their problems, according to a new survey.

More than half (53 per cent) of the youngsters who took refuge online ended up being more worried after finding the information on web pages, the poll, commissioned by Get Connected, a free confidential helpline, revealed.

Only a fifth (18 per cent) said they cross-checked their findings with a friend or parent, researchers found, The Scotsman reported.

Andrew McKnight, chairman of its board of trustees, said, “These results show that there is a need for young people to be able to verify the information that they find online.”

“In many cases the vast amount of information available on the internet seems to exacerbate their personal worries further.” Andrew McKnight said.

“As a society, we have become increasingly reliant on the internet as a first point of reference for a lot of information.” Andrew McKnight added.

He also said, “It is crucial that we make Britain’s young people aware of exactly where they can turn to for dependable information and support. Get Connected is the safe gateway to these services.”

New password-stealing virus targets Facebook

Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a program that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company’s own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

A Facebook spokesman said the company could not comment on the specific case, but pointed to a status update the company posted on its web site earlier on Wednesday warning users about the spoofed email and advising users to delete the email and to warn their friends.

McAfee estimates that hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the campaign began on Tuesday.

Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of malware research and communications, said that he expects the hackers will succeed in infecting millions of computers.

“With Facebook as your lure, you potentially have 400 million people that can click on the attachment. If you get 10 percent success, that’s 40 million,” he said.

The email’s subject line says “Facebook password reset confirmation customer support,” according to Marcus.

‘Facebook beats Google for visitors’

Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed.

Facebook’s homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The “important milestone,” as described by Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 per cent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine per cent in the same time — although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

Taken together, Facebook.com and Google.com amounted to 14 per cent of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said.

Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail’s format.

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.

Facebook starts hiring at all levels for its office at Hyderabad, India

Social networking site Facebook is all set to establish its support centre at India’s Silicon Valley 2 – Hyderabad. And what’s more, Facebook is already on a hiring spree for its office in Hyderabad. The social networking site founded in 2004 has more than 400 million active users and still counting.

Facebook’s office at Hyderabad would be its first in Asia and worlds fourth support centre following Palo Alto, California; Dublin; and Austin, Texas. Hyderabad office has been announced in view of providing multilingual and round the clock service to Facebook users and advertisers. “The Hyderabad office is expected to provide a round-the-clock multilingual support to its ever-growing user base,” the release said.
 
Facebook’s decision to set up its office in India and mainly Hyderabad could be attributed to a number of reasons. Firstly, the site has a commendable more than 8 million user base in India.

A support centre in India would enable Facebook to provide support across multiple time zones in view of its rapid international growth.Hydeabad with a vast IT base and software culture proved an ideal choice.” We’re proud to now call America’s Lone Star State and India’s City of Pearls home.” Don Faul, director, global online operations, Facebook said in a statement
 
From its establishment back in 2004, Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds. The website has penetrated into every corner of the world with more than 70 translations on the site.70% of Facebook users are based outside US. Facebook ha a mind boggling 100 million active users accessing the site through their mobiles.
 
Facebook is currently looking to hire professionals for various positions starting next week. The positions include local language specialists, online sales managers and IT security heads.

The company is on a lookout for post of India Head. Describing the candidate profile, Don Faul said, “We will start small. Currently, we are looking for a person who can set up an India team and scale it up. The required skill sets obviously include strong insights into consumer internet experience. We also need the person to be intensely passionate about Facebook. The person should strengthen relations with our advertisers and partners in India and support those in North America and Western Europe out of here.”
–infocera

Google teams up with Intel, Sony

Tired of flipping through hundreds of cable channels to find something to watch? Google may be able to help you.

The web search giant has teamed up with Intel, Sony and Logitech to develop a new television platform that the company hopes will extend its dominance from computers and cellphones to televisions, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The reports said that the Google service will run on set-top boxes or built-in TV hardware that uses Intel’s energy-efficient Atom processors, Google’s Android operating system and remote controls developed by Logitech.

The open-source Google TV platform will be open to third-party developers to write their own plug-ins, as they have for the Android platform, the paper reported. Sony is hoping build the new service into its TV sets in a move that could help it gain against increasingly fierce competition from Samsung and others, the reports said.

When tweets can make you a jailbird

In this file photo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville displays part of the Facebook page, and an enlarged profile photo, of fugitive Maxi Sopo in Seattle

 Maxi Sopo was having so much fun “living in paradise” in Mexico that he posted about it on Facebook so all his friends could follow his adventures. Others were watching, too: A federal prosecutor in Seattle, where Sopo was wanted on bank fraud charges.

Tracking Sopo through his public “friends” list, the prosecutor found his address and had Mexican authorities arrest him. Instead of sipping pina coladas, Sopo is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

Sopo learned the hard way: The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

Law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, even going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that surfaced in a lawsuit.

The document shows that U.S. agents are logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

Among the purposes: Investigators can check suspects’ alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree – people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars – can link suspects or their friends to crime.

The Justice document also reminds government attorneys taking cases to trial that the public sections of social networks are a “valuable source” of information on defense witnesses. “Knowledge is power,” says the paper. “Research all witnesses on social networking sites.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the 33-page document when it sued the Justice Department and five other agencies in federal court.

A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today’s social media, which contain a potential treasure trove of evidence.

The document, part of a presentation given in August by cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.

“It doesn’t really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly,” said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking.

The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that states IRS employees cannot use deception or create fake accounts to get information.

Sopo’s case did not require undercover work; his carelessness provided the clues. But covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Officials. They would not, however, say what those rules are.

The document addresses a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account – effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.

The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teen boy and flirted with a 13-year-old neighborhood girl. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her. Drew was convicted of three misdemeanours for violating MySpace’s rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.

“If agents violate terms of service, is that ‘otherwise illegal activity’?” the document asks. It doesn’t provide an answer.

Facebook’s rules, for example, specify that users “will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” Twitter’s rules prohibit users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be “truthful and accurate.”

A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company’s rules. But there have to be limits, he said.

“This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships,” said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is “often cooperative with emergency requests,” the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter’s lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

“Will not preserve data without legal process,” the document says under the heading, “Getting Info From Twitter … the bad news.”

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn’t want to stand in the way of an investigation. “That said, we also want to make sure that our users’ privacy is protected and any data that’s disclosed is done under proper legal process,” Nigam said.

MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand “the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations.”

Mafia boss held after using Facebook

One of the Italian mafia’s most wanted members has been arrested thanks to his use of the social networking website Facebook.

Police arrested Pasquale Manfredi, an alleged mafia killer, in the southern Calabrian town of Isola Capo Rizzuto, after they pinpointed his location via his frequent visits to Facebook using a prepaid pen drive.

Thirty-three-year-old Manfredi, knicknamed ‘Scarface’, had been on the run since last November and was among the country’s 100 ‘most dangerous’ fugitives.

When police raided the apartment building in Isola Capo Rizzuto where he had been living, Manfredi tried to escape across the roof but surrendered after he was surrounded.

Investigators described Manfredi as “cold and calculating”. Besides murder charges, he faces charges of arms trafficking and extortion.

Investigators believe he may have attended a training camp near the northern Italian city of Pavia, where he learned to use bazookas and other heavy weapons. Fugitive mafia boss held after using Facebook

Twitter working on Chinese registration page

Twitter is working on a way to allow Chinese users to sign up to the social networking site in their own language

 Twitter is working on a way to allow Chinese users to sign up to the social networking site in their own language, a co-founder of the site said Monday night, but access to the popular site remains blocked in the country.

Jack Dorsey said at a panel that Twitter is “hard at work” on allowing users to register in Chinese. Dorsey was responding to a question from Chinese avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai has been an outspoken critic of Chinese authorities and their continuing efforts to impose censorship. He said he spends about eight hours a day on Twitter.

“I need a clear answer, yes or no?” he said to Dorsey, who joined the conversation via satellite.

“Yes, it’s just a matter of time,” Dorsey responded, citing limited staff and technical constraints as challenges for setting up the Chinese registration page.

Dorsey, Ai and Richard MacManus, founder of technology blog ReadWriteWeb, were part of a discussion on digital activism at the Paley Center for Media. People from all over the world also participated via Twitter, with their tweets displayed on a large screen behind the panelists.

The conversation came only a couple of days after it was reported that Google was “99.9 percent sure” to close its search engine in China because of stalled negotiations over censorship. Google has about 35 percent of the Chinese search market. The panelists praised the decision, calling it courageous and inspiring.

Ai said he wants Chinese translation on Twitter so users who are able to get past the firewall can read tweets.

Since it was founded in 2006, Twitter has emerged as a tool for digital activism in messages of no more than 140 characters. Ai has used it to demand answers about the number of young children who were killed in the Sichuan earthquake.

Last April, protesters in Moldova used Twitter when mobile phones and news television stations went down, rallying as many as 10,000 people to one demonstration. And tech-savvy Iranians turned to Twitter to protest the disputed presidential election.

Dorsey said he has no idea how Twitter would get around the firewall. He admitted he didn’t know the site was blocked in the country until three weeks ago when he was prepping for the event.

When asked whether he would give user information to the Chinese government, he said he hoped the company could work with the U.S. government to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Step one is translation, getting the site accessible in a Chinese version,” said Dorsey. “That’s something the company is really pushing to do.”

But moving into the country is something “that’s very difficult to do,” he said.

Pressure on Facebook for ‘panic button’

British officials say they’re pressuring Facebook to make a “panic button” available on its Web pages following the death of a teenager at the hands of a man she met on the popular social networking site.

British child protection authorities have been lobbying Facebook and other social networking sites to install a one-click button which can allow children to get immediate police help if they suspect they’re at risk.

Calls for Facebook to install the button intensified following the kidnap, rape and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall. Her killer, Peter Chapman, used a bogus Facebook identity to befriend her online.

Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party, said today ministers were lobbying Facebook to adopt the button.

Enemy in the network

 

Cyber criminals are targeting users of social networking sites

 

In one of the most high-profile cases of identity theft in recent times, the Twitter accounts of the British Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, and House of Commons Leader, Harriet Harman, were hacked into and used to send “inappropriate” messages to their followers.

Following this, the official residence of the British Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, was reported to have commissioned security checks on its own Twitter account and that of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and his wife.

The British politicians are only the latest in a long line of victims of social networking scams. And they won’t be the last.

Every other day, news of cyber-attacks and ‘phishing scams’ on social networking sites hits the Web but the reports often go unnoticed in the media frenzy surrounding these sites, especially Twitter.

Phishing involves sending out legitimate-looking e-mails (apparently from popular, trustworthy sites) in order to gather personal or financial information. The mails are designed to entice people into entering personal details on Web sites that are remarkably similar to sites the users frequent or trust.

RING OF FIRE

Social networking sites, according to a report by security firm Symantec, topped the list of phishing attacks in most countries across the globe.

Almost all the top sites, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, have reported security vulnerabilities, which they made efforts to fix.

Perhaps the most notorious of these was Koobface (an anagram of ‘Facebook’), a computer worm that attacks sites such as Bebo, Friendster, MySpace and Facebook and attempts to gather sensitive data such as credit card numbers.

The worm spreads by delivering messages with links to a “video,” to friends of an infected Facebook user.

Those who click on the link will be directed to a third-party site where they are asked to install an executable file, in order to view the “video.” If the user does install it, the system is compromised. The worm disables security mechanisms and opens the computer for the attackers to abuse.

“Once infected, users are directed to more fraudulent Web sites risking identity theft and will spam more friends, leading to an exponential rise in infections,” says Debasis Nayak, Director of the Pune-based Asian School of Cyber Laws.

BREAK-INs

Last year, Twitter acknowledged “unauthorised access” by a French hacker who is believed to have broken into the site’s internal administration systems, gaining access to users’ accounts.

A 2009 report by security firm Sophos named Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher and Lily Allen as “(Twitter) users known to have been affected by the French hacker’s subsequent actions.”

Orkut, Facebook and Twitter have reported cross site scripting (XSS) holes, a security vulnerability that allows attackers to bypass security mechanisms and inject malicious scripts into Web pages, and thereby gain access to sensitive content.

The malicious code may be in the form of a hyperlink, which a user will click on, or even in the form of an e-mail message.

In November 2009, Symantec reported a malicious spam attack on Facebook, which was followed by a phishing attack. According to research published by Symantec, these spam messages looked like “an official invite or password reset confirmation mail.”

Once users click on the button marked ‘update’, they are “redirected to a look-alike phishing site. Here, users are asked to enter a password to complete the update procedure. Unfortunately, users’ passwords will be stolen if they try to log in, on this page,” the Symantec report states.

SOFT TARGET

So what is it about networking sites that draws hackers by the dozen? Ratnamala Dam Manna, Director, Security Technology and Responses at Symantec, affirms that these sites have “grown to become the most obvious choice for attackers.”

According to a Trend Micro technical paper, “The shift from desktop-based applications to Web-based ones, particularly those on social networking sites, presents a new vector for abuse.”

“As more and more people communicate through social networks, the more viable social networks become malware distribution platforms,” the Trend Micro report states.

Malware or ‘malicious software’ is designed to break into your computer system and perform unwanted actions. Computer viruses, trojans, spyware, worms, et al constitute malware, each designed to cause a specific kind of damage.

Ratnamala avers that networking sites are “easy for criminals to spoof and since social networking pages are generally trusted by users, phishing attacks mimicking them may be more successful.”

Users often tend to disclose personal details and post photographs on their profiles. “Hackers use information gathered from others to carry out a social engineering attack,” she says.

Social engineering is the act of manipulating or tricking people into revealing personal or sensitive information. The attacker may use non-intrusive methods, and gain the confidence of the person, in order to gain access to the system or perpetrate a fraud. Phishing is one of the most common forms of social engineering.

Says Nayak, “Users of sites such as Orkut, Badoo, Perfspot, Twitter and Facebook are facing social engineering attacks. The attacks are based on the fact that subscribers tend to believe messages from friends on these sites more than they would believe spam e-mails.”

IMPACT ON BUSINESS

Research by Sophos has revealed that “two-thirds of businesses fear that social networking endangers corporate security.”

System administrators, the Sophos report adds, worry that “employees share too much personal information via their social networking sites, putting their corporate infrastructure — and the sensitive data stored on it — at risk.”

However, the growing popularity of networking sites and the benefits they provide seem to outweigh the risk factor.

Organisations and individuals, Sophos recommends, should perform regular Internet security checks, educate fellow users about risks and make sure sensitive information is not shared online.

Symantec advises users to be on their guard; especially if they notice anything unusual in e-mails they receive (typos, odd words, phrases or IP numbers). To ward off phishing attacks, “simply pass the cursor over the underlined hyperlink and then check the URL in the status bar of the browser. In the status bar, they can see if the link belongs to the appropriate domain or not,” the advisory states. Users are also advised to type the name of the Web site directly in the address bar of the browser, use complex passwords, avoid clicking on suspicious links or installing updates from unknown sites.

Nayak adds, “Be aware of and use security software for the browser and computer, and avoid turning on features such as Active X controls in the browser as far as possible.”

Dos and don’ts

Use up-to-date browsers and operating systems

Perform regular security scans of your computer

Do not share personal, financial information online

Ignore/delete suspicious e-mails, attachments

Check Web site links before clicking on them

Use complex passwords

====The Hindu Businessline

Youtube can get you arrested

Lima (IANS/EFE) A Peruvian police officer who posted a video on YouTube to complain about corruption and irregularities on the force has been arrested, a media report said.

Sgt. Rogelio Escalante, 49, was charged with conspiracy and insubordination, El Comercio newspaper said Wednesday.

The video, which was posted on the Internet last month, shows Escalante in uniform demanding a pay raise for police and denouncing the ‘gag rule’ imposed on the force by former Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas, an influential figure in Peru’s ruling APRA party.

Escalante also urged fellow officers to join in a strike announced for April 5.

He voluntarily gave a statement to the police Inspector General Office after posting the video, but a judge subsequently ordered Escalante’s arrest.

Escalante is being held in a lockup at the police academy in Lima, along with Sgt. Edward Casas, who was detained last month for advocating a strike.

Following the two officers’s protests, President Alan Garcia’s government decided to pay a one-time bonus of 1,000 soles ($300) to members of the Peruvian police and armed forces.

Congress ratified the payments after a long, heated debate

Twestival: Twitter festival to raise money for educating poor

Bringing together the users of social networking site Twitter, a special festival called Twestival will help raise money for educating the poor.

Celebrities like tennis star Andy Murray, chef Jamie Oliver and Booker Prize author Margaret Atwood are among the famous names backing an effort to raise money for education through Twestival.

Twestival is a London-based movement that encourages people who tweet to meet and donate money to good causes.

The festival will take place in over 200 cities around the world on March 25.

In 2009, the Twestival raised £1,500 for charity and this year has set a target of double that amount

Kareena Kapoor too tied up for Twitter

It has been a wonder for the people from the industry as well as fans that even though a majority of Bollywood is on Twitter, Kareena Kapoor continues to evade the microblogging site

At Shahrukh Khan’s press conference for Ra.1, she was asked why she wasn’t tweeting yet. Kareena expressed that she was still not sure about the whole idea and would need at least another month to settle on an answer. Kareena needs to think about it so carefully because at present she’s too tied up with work to sign up on the site and start using it. Also, she wonders if she will be able to stick by it regularly once she starts it.

Well, let’s give Kareena the time she needs. Maybe we’ll see her on Twitter soon!