Siljaline's Blog : Facebook

Facebook Asks More Than 350 Million Users Around the World To Personalize Their Privacy

Randy Knobloch — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:55:00 GMT

PALO ALTO, Calif. — December 9, 2009 — Setting a new standard in user control, Facebook announced today that it is calling on its more than 350 million users to review and update their privacy settings—a first among major Internet services...(read more)

Facebook fine-tunes privacy controls

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:01:00 GMT

Facebook says it is boosting privacy by giving users control over who sees each bit of information they put on the social-networking site, and by doing away with regional and group networks. "We're adding something that many of you have asked...(read more)

Facebook pulls Obama assassination poll

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:35:00 GMT

Social website Facebook yanked a poll this week about assassinating President Barack Obama after being contacted by the U.S. Secret Service. On Monday, Facebook dropped a question that asked voters whether the U.S. president "should be killed."...(read more)

Facebook shuts down Beacon marketing tool

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Facebook says it will shut down its controversial marketing feature Beacon, an application that broadcasts users' activities, including purchases, on other websites to their Facebook friends. The feature was adopted in November 2007 and immediately...(read more)

Facebook 'cash flow positive,' signs 300M users

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:19:00 GMT

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social networking site has more than 300 million users, and earned more money than it spent last quarter. In a blog post on Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote that the company was "cash flow positive"...(read more)

Jackson's death slows web to a crawl

Randy Knobloch — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:13:00 GMT

In life, Michael Jackson once ruled the pop charts. With his death, he dominated the internet. As reports of Jackson's death on Thursday spread, celebrity gossip websites crashed, news sites slowed to a crawl and traffic on social networking sites...(read more)

Facebook users warned about dangers of being app happy

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Facebook users are being urged to be wary about what Facebook applications they accept and what links they click as cyber criminals increasingly target the popular social networking site. In the past week, several new variants of the Koobface worm, which...(read more)

Facebook undergoes makeover to give users more choice

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:44:00 GMT

The popular online hangout Facebook is revamping its home page and plans other changes so its millions of users can more easily choose the types of information they see. Perhaps taking a cue from Twitter, the rising service for letting people express...(read more)

Facebook to give users say in new policies

Randy Knobloch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:33:00 GMT

Facebook is trying its hand at democracy. The fast-growing online hangout, whose more than 175 million worldwide users could form the world's sixth-largest country behind Brazil, said Thursday those users will play a "meaningful role" in...(read more)

Facebook backs off changes to terms of service

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:06:00 GMT

The founder of Facebook says the social networking website will return to its previous terms of service regarding user data, after critics complained recent changes had eroded user privacy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, wrote early...(read more)

Facebook appraisal pegs company's value at $3.7B

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:10:00 GMT

Facebook Inc. quickly concluded it wasn't worth anywhere near the $15 billion US market value implied in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corp., according to confidential information obtained Wednesday from court documents. http://www.cbc.ca/technology...(read more)

Facebook paid $65M to settle suit: law firm

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:23:00 GMT

A law firm is claiming Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. paid $65 million to settle a suit accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the concept for his social network. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/11/tech-facebook.html...(read more)

Facebook wins faceoff with Montreal spammer

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:40:00 GMT

Facebook has won its case against a Montreal spammer who bombarded users with explicit messages. http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/11/24/mtl-facebookspam1125.html...(read more)

Microsoft expands Windows Live into social networking

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:25:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. is revamping its online Windows Live portal into a full-blown social networking site along the lines of Facebook, complete with photo sharing, news feeds and an instant messaging service. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/11/13/tech...(read more)

The rise of Facebook activism

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Copyright reform must have seemed an unlikely hot-button issue in the winter of 2007 — that is, until 50 protesters arrived at Industry Minister Jim Prentice's constituency office in Calgary in December. They were there to voice their complaints...(read more)

Retooled Scrabulous returns to Facebook as Wordscraper

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:21:00 GMT

Online Scrabble knock-off Scrabulous has traded in its letters, returning to the popular social network Facebook after a self-imposed exile with a new look and a new name.

The new game, called Wordscraper, has a different look and an adjustable board, making it more distinct from the board game Scrabble.

On Tuesday, Scrabulous founders Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla from Calcutta, India, agreed to block the game in the United States and Canada in deference to Facebook's concerns over the ongoing legal battle with Hasbro Inc., the company that owns the North American rights to Scrabble.

Over half a million Facebook users had added the Scrabulous application, making it one of the most popular applications on the social network. But that popularity had drawn the ire of two companies that own the rights to Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights to the game outside Canada and the United States.

Last week, Hasbro announced it was suing Scrabulous's creators for copyright infringement, less than two weeks after the release of an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook's North American users.

Mattel has yet to launch a formal lawsuit against the makers of Scrabulous, but the toy company did send a letter to Facebook in January asking it to remove a popular add-on.

Facebook users in Canada and the United States can still access Scrabulous from the game's website, and users outside the two countries can still access it from Facebook. While Hasbro owns the U.S. and Canadian rights to Scrabble, Mattel Inc. owns the rights to the game in the rest of the world.

At the time Scrabulous was pulled from Facebook, it had accumulated 509,505 daily active users, while the two official Scrabble games offered through Hasbro and Mattel had fewer than 25,000 users on Facebook between them.

Since then, however, membership in Hasbro's Scrabble games has taken off, with membership now over 60,000 Canadian and U.S. users.

The new Wordscraper application, which appeared on Facebook on Wednesday, has so far less than 4,000 users.

New worms target both MySpace and Facebook users

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:55:00 GMT

New worms target both MySpace and Facebook users

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management systems, has detected two variants of a new worm, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a. and Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, which attack MySpace and Facebook respectively. As part of their malicious payload, the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.

Even though the worms are currently only infecting MySpace and Facebook users, Kaspersky Lab analysts are warning users that the worms are designed to upload additional malicious modules with other functionality via the Internet. It is highly probable that victim machines will not only be used for spreading links via these social networking sites, but the botnets will also be used for other malicious purposes.

Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a spreads when a user accesses his/her MySpace account. The worm creates a range of commentaries to friends' accounts. Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, which targets Facebook users, creates spam messages and sends them to the infected users' friends via the Facebook site. The messages and comments include texts such as Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; Hello; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments and many others.

Messages and comments on MySpace and Facebook include links to http://youtube.[skip].pl. If the user clicks on this link, s/he is redirected to http://youtube.[skip].ru, a site which purportedly contains a video clip. If the user tries to watch it, a message appears saying that s/he needs the latest version of Flash Player in order to watch the clip. However, instead of the latest version of Flash Player, a file called codecsetup.exe is downloaded to the victim machine; this file is also a network worm. The result is that users who have come to the site via Facebook will have the MySpace worm downloaded to their machines, and vice versa.

“Unfortunately, users are very trusting of messages left by 'friends' on social networking sites. So the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high”, says Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “At the beginning of 2008 we predicted that we'd see an increase in cybercriminals exploiting MySpace, Facebook and similar sites, and we're now seeing evidence of this. I'm sure that this is simply the first step, and that virus writers will continue to target these resources with increased intensity”.

Kaspersky Internet Security detected these threats proactively and signatures were added to the database on July 31, 2008.

About Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab delivers the world’s most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and the industry’s fastest outbreak response time for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry’s leading IT security solution providers. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com. For the latest on antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other IT security issues and trends, visit www.viruslist.com.

31 Jul 2008

Facebook disables Scrabulous at Mattel's request

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:47:00 GMT

A highly popular Scrabble clone already pulled from Facebook in the United States and Canada continued its tumble over the weekend as the website blocked the game throughout most of the world.

Facebook said Monday it was forced to disable Scrabulous after one of Scrabble's rights owners, Mattel Inc., made a formal removal request and the developers of Scrabulous took no action themselves.

The Scrabulous application remains available in India, where its developers live and where Mattel has filed a lawsuit claiming violations of intellectual property. Facebook isn't blocking Scrabulous there for now, considering the question of ownership still a matter for Indian courts to resolve.

In deciding to block Scrabulous on Friday, Facebook risked antagonizing a community of software developers it has been trying to nurture and promote. But had it done nothing, it could have faced liability for copyright and trademark infringement.

The company initially skirted that quandary after Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the brothers in Calcutta who created Scrabulous, agreed to withdraw the program in the United States and Canada following a legal threat from Scrabble's North American owner, Hasbro Inc.

Facebook had hoped for a similar resolution when Mattel, owner of Scrabble's rights elsewhere, sent a similar notice, but the Agarwalla brothers refused.

In a statement, Jayant Agarwalla said he found Facebook's action "astonishing" given the site's "claims to be a fair and neutral party."

The bulk of his criticism was directed at Mattel, however.

"It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the [Indian court's] decision," Agarwalla said. "Mattel's action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary."

Mattel representatives did not respond to e-mail and phone messages Monday.

Both Hasbro and Mattel have been trying to promote an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook, made by Electronic Arts Inc. in the United States and Canada and by RealNetworks Inc. elsewhere.

The Agarwallas, meanwhile, have released an alternative Scrabble-like word game called Wordscraper, which was not affected by Facebook's latest action. They are hoping that with new rules and circular tiles instead of square ones, Wordscraper can withstand legal challenges.