Is Facebook Trying to Hijack Your Email Address?

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When you sign up for Facebook you did so with an email address so you could be notified of any action on your profile.  So far so good.  Now a while back Facebook launched @facebook.com email addresses, so people could use a Facebook email account.

The thing is, Facebook signed you up for an account even if you didn't want one.  All of which was harmless enough as you could safely ignore it.  Now though CNN are reporting that Facebook have changed the default email address in your profile to this @facebook.com email account rather than the one you signed up to Facebook with.

Facebook said that the change has been gradually rolled out over the last few weeks, but that many users were unaware of the change until coverage emerged about the changes this week.

The reaction has, to say the least, not been favorable, with many taking to blogs and Twitter to decry Facebook for this abuse of its position.  What's alarming is that Facebook seemingly did not anticipate this hostile reaction to the change.

"We basically defaulted to show your Facebook address as we rolled this out, just to keep it consistent for everyone," said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications.

The change hasn't hit all accounts yet, but it will roll out eventually to all of Facebook's 900 million users, Chin confirmed.

It's worth adding of course that users can revert back to their actual email addresses from within their profile settings but if users start getting emails to an account they didn't know existed it could trigger quite a backlash against the company.

This is especially so as it joins a growing line of feature changes that Facebook have not communicated well to users.

When they launched their email service in 2010 it was tagged as a way to integrate conversations across multiple communication channels.  It seems that Facebook have some big lessons to learn on effective communication before trying to push changes onto the rest of us.

Facebook pulls location-tracking feature

     Following a period of freak-out on the Internet on Monday, Facebook appears to have pulled a controversial feature that let the social network's users get a digital list of other Facebookers nearby.

     When Facebook users logged on to the Find Friends Nearby site, they were supposed to be able to see friends and other Facebook users who were in close proximity.

     Facebook users did not show up on those location-aware lists unless they intentionally logged into that site which was accessible on Monday at http://fb.com/ffn, but at this writing I found nothing there.

     The site came to the public's attention on Sunday after news of the feature was leaked to the tech press, according to news reports.  A Facebook engineer who claimed to have designed the feature said in a message to the blog TechCrunch that it could be used to quickly look up and "friend" someone who you'd met in person.  "For me, the ideal use case for this product is the one where when you're out with a group of people whom you've recently met and want to stay in contact with," that developer, Ryan Patterson, wrote. "Facebook search might be effective, or sharing your vanity addresses or business cards, but this tool provides a really easy way to exchange contact information with multiple people with minimal friction."

Patterson wrote that he developed the app as part of a coding competition, or hackathon.

     "Social discovery" apps like Highlight and Glancee, which Facebook recently purchased, already perform similar functions and have not been hit with the same backlash Facebook received. Facebook says it was "testing" the feature and that it had not become a formal part of the site, despite the fact that it was available online on Monday.

     The company had not promoted the feature.

     "We are constantly testing new features but have nothing more to share at this time," a company spokeswoman told CNN in an e-mail on Monday. The blog ReadWriteWeb dubbed the feature a "stalking app," and news of Find Friends Nearby received a cold reception on the Internet, where Twitter users and bloggers panned the idea -- saying Twitter-y things like "Hell to the naw," "Oh lawd!" and "BAD FACEBOOK!!" Furthermore, a company called Friendthem claimed Monday that Facebook had stolen its concept and was threatening the much-larger social network with a lawsuit.

"I was amazed on Sunday to read that Facebook is blatantly stealing our idea with what they are calling, 'Find Friends Nearby,'" Friendthem CEO Charles Sankowich said in a statement posted on VentureBeat and on other tech news sites.

What do you think of the idea of knowing which Facebook users are nearby? Could this be useful for finding new friends and looking up new contacts? Or does it cross a line in terms of privacy? Give us your opinions!

House Passes CISPA: Make Sure It Dies In The Senate

House Passes CISPA: Make Sure It Dies In The Senate

We pushed them to the brink, but House Republicans rammed through CISPA this afternoon, ahead of schedule.  Let's make sure it dies in the Senate: Please add your name at right.
CISPA would give the government and corporations vast new powers to track and share data about Americans' Internet use.
But our hundreds of thousands of emails and tens of thousands of phone calls have had a real impact:

• Amendments were adopted that made CISPA (marginally) better.

• Earlier this month CISPA was supposed to sail through, but we helped foment opposition, and the vote was far closer than anybody could have imagined even a couple of weeks ago.

• Most Democrats held firm in opposition, and more than two dozen libertarian-leaning Republicans defied their leadership and voted no.

• Most importantly, President Obama has threatened to veto CISPA.

The Senate will consider cyber security legislation in the coming weeks.  Let's turn up the heat right away: Tell the Senate to reject CISPA and any and all legislation that doesn't respect privacy and civil liberties.

Add your name at right to tell the Senate to reject cyber security legislation that doesn't respect privacy.

You can read more about CISPA here.

Internet Explorer 9 beta review: Microsoft reinvents the browser

Internet Explorer 9 beta review: Microsoft reinvents the browser


Today in San Francisco, Microsoft will officially unveil Internet Explorer 9 and make it available to the general public. It is, without question, the most ambitious browser release Microsoft has ever undertaken, and despite the beta label it is an impressively polished product.
A closer look at the Internet Explorer 9 beta (screenshots)
The underpinnings of IE9 are no secret. Microsoft has been talking since last fall about its determined effort to adhere to Web standards and embrace HTML5. It has also detailed its efforts to improve IE9’s performance compared to previous releases. Developers and IT pros have been able to shake out compatibility issues and benchmark performance with four public platform previews over the past six months. But this beta is the first time Microsoft has publicly shown off the new browser’s user interface and given its Windows customers a product they can use day in and day out.
Click above to see this full article, Im gonna install this browser and check it out completely then post a review here.

Microsoft tempts antitrust lawyers with expanded antivirus offering

Microsoft tempts antitrust lawyers with expanded antivirus offering

You want a good, solid, free antivirus program? Microsoft Security Essentials fills the bill nicely. Unfortunately, even though it was officially released more than a year ago, it’s still one of the best-kept secrets in personal computing. Its installed base of 30 million users worldwide might sound big in raw numbers, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billion-plus Windows PCs in use.
All that’s about to change, as Microsoft has now begun delivering Microsoft Security Essentials via Microsoft Update to customers in the United States (a pilot program in the UK started earlier this year). If Windows detects that you’re currently running without up-to-date antivirus protection, this is what you’ll see in the Optional Updates section:

Although this development might seem like a logical one for Microsoft, it’s actually a big step—and a potentially risky one. Security software vendors have their antitrust lawyers on speed dial in anticipation of the day when Microsoft begins bundling antimalware protection directly into Windows. As a result, this long-overdue development is moving at glacially slow speeds.
Earlier this year, on the 10th anniversary of Microsoft’s landmark antitrust defeat, I noted:

Microsoft Security Essentials is available to any Windows PC as a free download, but it’s still not available as part of Windows itself. The Windows 7 Action Center will warn you if you don’t have antivirus software installed, but clicking the Find a Program Online button takes you to this page, where Microsoft’s free offering is one of 23 options, most of which are paid products.
[…]
In this case, I think the mere threat of an antitrust complaint from a big opponent like Symantec or McAfee has been enough to make Microsoft shy away from doing what is clearly in its customers’ best interests.

So Microsoft moves slowly, deliberately, one step at a time. Previously, you had to seek out and download this free (and very effective) software on your own. Now it shows up under Optional Updates, if you know where to look. And Microsoft has upped the stakes by altering the license terms so that small businesses can install up to 10 copies of the software free of charge,
The logical next step, of course, is for Micosoft to classify this update as Important, where it will be offered as an automatic update on unprotected PCs (similar to the way the Malicious Software Removal Tool is delivered monthly). At some point, it can and should be fully integrated into the operating system itself.
As the screenshot above makes clear, this update was released roughly two weeks ago, on October 19, but it’s only now beginning to appear on update screens across the United States. (Lee Mathews at Download Squad spotted this update in the wild last week. It wasn’t available on my system then or even earlier today, when I checked for updates manually. Ironically, I was in Redmond at the time, meeting with the Microsoft Security Essentials team and discussing this very issue. It appeared on my system for the first time just a few minutes ago.)
I’m willing to bet that antitrust lawyers for the big security software vendors are looking at this development very carefully. Will they actually threaten legal action? Stay tuned.

TODAY Tech & Science

TODAY Tech & Science

Hot gadgets: Buy now or later?

From smart phones to iPads and TVs, digital lifestyle expert Mario Armstrong offers advice on snagging the latest and greatest models for the lowest prices.

Report: MySpace to adopt Facebook Connect

Report: MySpace to adopt Facebook Connect

Ok so below is the article I was reading this morning, Google, and Facebook, battling for the Web identity Crown, Lovely, one of the largest company's on the internet is based on a Social Website?

I mean come on, dont we have better things to do with our time than to spend endless hours bull shitting with other people who are wasting there time? 

Is this what our society has come to?  A bumch of fish rasing, farm plowing web heads, with nothing else better to do, what a legacy!

Peace. . . .

Report: MySpace to adopt Facebook Connect | The Web Services Report - CNET News

MySpace's rumored adoption of Facebook Connect could be happening in the near future--as soon as early 2010, Inside Facebook reports.

MySpace and Facebook have historically been rivals, with Facebook having ousted MySpace from their spot as the top social network, but their relations have been of a friendlier nature as of late. It appears as though MySpace has effectively given up on winning the social-networking war and is instead focusing on its already strong entertainment business, which includes the market leader, MySpace Music.

The extent of MySpace's Facebook Connect integration isn't yet known, but it is expected initially to leverage MySpace's media content, like music. This news comes right on the heels of Yahoo announcing a massive Facebook Connect implementation across all of its sites. Facebook and Google are currently battling it out for the Web identity crown. With Yahoo and MySpace out of the race, 2010 should prove to be an interesting year as Facebook and Google both try to carve out pieces of the market.

Secret Service Used Facebook To Learn Of Salahi Presidential Party Crashers

Oh so now our National Security is left in the hands of facebook??  What the HELL!!!  You've gotta be kidding me!

Washington D.C. has been abuzz about the couple who crashed a
Presidential party and proceeded to post photos of themselves on
Facebook. Yesterday the secret service confirmed
that they had used Facebook after the event to find out that the couple
was not permitted to attend. The photos of the Salahis with President
Biden tipped off the Secret Service, which has come under fire in
recent days.





Read Article: Secret Service Used Facebook To Learn Of Salahi Presidential Party Crashers

Teen Accused of Blackmailing Classmates for Sex Acts in Facebook Scam

Teen Accused of Blackmailing Classmates for Sex Acts in Facebook ScamFriday, February 06, 2009

AP/Waukesha County Sheriff's Dept./Milwaukee Journal-SentinelAnthony Stancl, accused of blackmailing other students for sex, in an undated photo.MILWAUKEE — An 18-year-old U.S. student is accused of posing as a girl on Facebook, tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves and then blackmailing some for sex acts."The kind of manipulation that occurred here is really sinister in my estimation," Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel said Wednesday.Anthony Stancl, of New Berlin, west of Milwaukee, was charged Wednesday with five counts of child enticement, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual

FOXNews.com - Teen Accused of Blackmailing Classmates for Sex Acts in Facebook Scam - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Newsvine - Bill Gates releases mosquitoes into audience

Bill Gates releases mosquitoes into audience

Bill Gates just released mosquito's into the audience at TED and said, 'Not only poor people should experience this.'"