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Monitor Facebook Status Updates While You Use Chrome

Fei — Sun, 20 May 2012 23:00:19 +0000

By Rick Broida
May 21, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Are you a Facebook junkie? If so, you probably find yourself hopping back and forth between a Facebook tab and whatever else you happen to be doing in your browser. That’s not terribly productive.

If you’re a Google Chrome user, you can keep Facebook front and center with MyStatusBar. This extension adds a Facebook status bar to the bottom of your browser, where it stays visible in every tab you have open. That way you can keep up with the latest messages, friend requests, and notifications, all without clicking away from your current page.
Here’s how to get set up with MyStatusBar:

1. Head to the extension’s page in the Chrome Store, then click Add to Chrome.
2. Wait until you see a new tab, then click the Login to Facebook button at the bottom.

3. That’ll open a pop-up window, where you’ll click Log in with Facebook.

4. Now you’ll see a permissions list. You’ll probably want to allow them all to get the maximum benefit from MyStatusBar, but you can certainly disable any you’re uncomfortable with. (Needless to say, using an extension like this requires access to your account.)

5. On my system, I had to click the X in the bottom-right corner of that window, the one just above the blue MyStatusBar bar, to make the Allow button visible. Without clicking that button, you can’t finish the setup.

And that’s it! Now just open a new tab and you’ll see your Facebook status bar at the bottom. Neat!

It works much like the standard status bar, but adds a Search field and a handy “Share this page” button (useful for sharing any page that doesn’t have its own Facebook button). My only complaint is that when you click, say, the message or notification icon, it opens a new Facebook tab rather than a pop-up showing the actual content.

That said, you can scroll through status updates by clicking the up/down arrows, which is definitely nice. As something a Facebook junkie myself, I’m liking this add-on a lot.

Facebook vs. Google: Who Will Win?

Fei — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:59:22 +0000

By Christina DesMarais
May 21, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is now officially a public company, scads of new millionaires are on a Silicon Valley spending spree, and media outlets near and far have yet to pipe down about the IPO, likely one of the most anticipated in history.
But is the long-term viability and success of Facebook a slam dunk? You’d think so, considering 900 million people on the planet use the social network now valued at nearly $105 billion.Not everybody thinks so.The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon says he was once addicted to Facebook but now thinks its users hardly have anything to say on it compared with Twitter, which he calls “magnetic” because it “incessantly breaks and circulates news.” He even goes as far to say Facebook in a few years will “be as sad and lonely a ghost town as MySpace.”
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but he makes some valid points. Many people have grown tired of Facebook and do prefer alternate social networks, such as Google+.
Google certainly is serious about social and it’s no secret that Facebook wants more of Google’s advertising, but who will come out on top?
Social Networking RivalryYes, Facebook has a huge head start in social compared to Google, but Google+ users tend to be fiercely loyal because, honestly, it’s a great — albeit very different — product .
Unlike Facebook, Google+ is where you’re more likely to engage with strangers — many of whom reach out from countries around the world.

Just this morning I had a Google+ chat with a blogger from India who, even though he uses both Facebook and Google+, was only able to reach me through the latter where in seconds we were having a conversation about the merits of both social networks. Such contact wouldn’t have happened on Facebook because my Facebook friends are all in the U.S. and most of them know me personally, which means I keep my chat disabled because I don’t want people I haven’t seen in 20 years messaging me every time I check my stream.

Eric Norstrom, a molecular and cellular neurobiologist, is another person with whom I’ve connected through Google+.
Here’s how he aptly puts it:

“G+ is not FB, Twitter, or anything else. It’s G+. It’s great for content aggregation and collaboration in addition to the services provided by the other major social apps. It’s not people bleating on a street corner. It’s more like, you walk down a street and don’t see anyone, but then you go into a building and you find that there’s a party going on. Not only that, it’s a good party with interesting people talking about things you care about and leaving out things you don’t. Less noise, more signal.”

He’s right about Google+ being a more lively place to hang out. You’re not likely to see inane posts — most contain photos, videos or links to other interesting content. This morning someone in one of my circles shared a post by Google Maps touting a NASA map that shows where the May 20 eclipse can be seen. (See also “Google+ vs. Facebook: See How They Compare.”
Google’s Many Products are an Advantage

While there certainly were some privacy concerns when Google said it would share user data across its products, it can’t be denied that the company has created a slick and seamless experience for users.
On my Android phone I use Places, Maps and Navigation, YouTube, Voice, Talk, Calendar, Drive, Goggles, and Play Music, and many of these apps sync to the cloud for integration to the desktop.

In essence, Google has a very large window into what I’m doing, where I’m going, what I’m watching, and who I’m talking to. And this window stays open for much of every day I’m online or using my phone.

While Facebook also garners data from me when I’m on its network, I’m not there very often, relatively speaking.

Battle Over Advertising

Facebook has many fans, is growing on a billion users, and now has a big pile of money with which to continue to innovate. For instance, the company recently said that at some point it could launch an advertising network to display ads outside of its platform. That would be huge and put the company in a much better place to compete with Google.
CNET’s Rafe Needlemanwrote a great piece summing up the many ways Facebook and Google’s trajectories cross, particularly when it comes to advertising. And as he points out, both companies have their strengths.
“The infusion of public IPO money will embolden Facebook to take on Google directly in areas where it’s clearly weaker — primarily advertising, but also search and mobile. Google will defend its turf while simultaneously attacking Facebook in social (and hopefully in identity services),” he writes.

That last part — identity services that let you sign into a Website or account using your Facebook credentials — is definitely something Facebook has a good hold on, and as Needleman points out, it’s something Google needs to get better at marketing.

But Google is kicking it with mobile. CEO Larry Page, in a letter to investors last month said the company is “seeing a hugely positive revenue impact from mobile advertising, which grew to a run rate of over $2.5 billion by the third quarter of 2011 — two and a half times more than at the same point in 2010.”
Can Facebook figure out how to get some of that pie? It had better — its users are now using the social network more from their mobile devices than from their desktops.

If it doesn’t, Michael Deacon’s dire prediction about Facebook might just come true.

How to Quit Facebook Without Losing the Best Facebook Features

Fei — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:29:52 +0000

By David Daw
May 17, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Almost everyone uses Facebook, but almost everyone agrees that the social network has quite a few problems. Chances are, most Facebook users have encountered some feature or flaw–from overarching privacy concerns to assorted interface annoyances–that made them reconsider their membership in the social network. Nevertheless, Facebook users tend to stick around because they believe that the benefits outweigh the costs–and because they don’t know how to leave the service without losing a few valuable features, such as games or public photo albums.

Luckily, you can export or replicate many of Facebook’s most useful features with ease, so you can quit Facebook without losing what you love about it. If Facebook is your all-in-one stop for socializing online, you’re probably better off staying with the service and hoping that the company fixes a few issues in the next redesign. But if you’re hanging on for the sake of just one or two features even though you’d rather quit, take a look at the following tips and tricks. With some help, you’ll be able to enjoy the best parts of the most popular social network without all of that Facebook anxiety.

Export Info From Facebook

If you quit Facebook, all your personal data should be deleted from the Facebook servers. Eventually. But if you want to leave Facebook without losing any of your data, you can download a copy of your Facebook information fairly easily. Simply navigate to your Facebook account settings, and you should see a Download a copy of your Facebook data link at the bottom of the page. Click the link, and confirm that you’d like to have an archive created for you; Facebook will send a download link to your email address in a few hours when your archive is prepared.
Several mobile apps (such as the free SmartSync for iOS or AddressBook for Android) will scrape your Facebook friends info and automatically add it to your smartphone contacts database, as well.
Even so, Facebook offers far more information on you and your friends than you’ll ever really need, and it’s better to be selective about what data you take when you leave. Think of it as an opportunity to do some spring cleaning. Unless you really want your whole Facebook friends list clogging up your phone, do a quick manual review of your friend info and copy any pertinent information before shutting your account down.

Another trick lets you copy one of Facebook’s most used and least appreciated features: the birthday reminder. Navigate to your Facebook Events page and click the magnifying glass icon. Select Birthdays, click the magnifying glass again, and choose Export Birthdays to quickly and easily grab your contacts’ birthday info in formats compatible with every major scheduling program. This way, you’ll remember to drop your best friend from college a birthday note even after you leave Facebook.

Organize Events

I’ve kept Facebook around for years because, despite its many faults, it has been the single best way to schedule parties and other events with my friends. That’s starting to change, however. In the past, Facebook was a superior event-planning platform because users were sure to check it often enough to catch event invites; with the rise of event spamming, though, more and more of my Facebook-using pals now ignore all Facebook event invitations. This problem forces me to confirm through other channels, removing Facebook’s one real advantage over other event-planning tools.

If you want to invite people to your event without using Facebook, you can find a lot of options, such asEvite and Eventbrite, that are free and work well. I’m a fan of Doodle, which uses a simple, clean interface and is incredibly quick to set up. Just enter an event name and time, and Doodle will provide you with a link that you can send to your friends by email; they can then RSVP with one click.
Doodle also offers a killer feature that Facebook doesn’t: Doodle events allow participants to choose a start time from a list of host-provided options. This feature can save a lot of time, and it eliminates irritating auto-updates like the kind you get when you’re trying to coordinate event timing via Facebook.

Move Your Photos off Facebook

If you download your data from Facebook as described earlier, that archive will include any photos or videos you shared on Facebook. To start sharing them again, as well as to have the same quick online access without Facebook, you can transfer those photos to Google’s photo-sharing service Picasa.
Unfortunately, Facebook makes it all but impossible to export photo and video files directly to other hosting services. The easiest way to migrate photos over to Picasa is to download Move Your Photos, a Chrome extension that, once installed, will show you thumbnails of all your Facebook photos so that you can easily sort through them and transfer the ones you want to keep over to Google’s photo-sharing service. If you want to transfer your Facebook photos to a social-network-agnostic photo-sharing site such as Flickr, you must manually download the photos to your hard drive and upload them directly to Flickr.
Of course, you can’t replicate every Facebook feature without an account. (Sadly, a life without Facebook seems to mean a life without FarmVille; if you’re a social games addict, check out a few social games on Google+.) On the bright side, moving your personal info, photos, and event calendar to a better, safer service should make quitting Facebook much simpler. Good luck!

Facebook’s Mobile Future All About Advertising

Fei — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:00:16 +0000

By Christina DesMarais
May 15, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook users are increasingly accessing the online social network via their mobile devices, a trend the company expects to capitalize on through advertising as it prepares for its IPO.

In March, the average Facebook mobile user engaged with the social network for more than 7 hours, according to comScore. That’s a lot of head-down time to which Facebook has to respond.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, who was on the road last week talking with investors about the company’s growth strategy, said his top priorities this year are to transform Facebook’s mobile and advertising experiences and further integrate online apps into the platform, reports Reuters.
[See more: 25 Facebook Apps for Savvy Users]
With more people than ever using smartphones and accessing sites like Facebook on them, the big question is how the company can make more money with advertising on mobile. You can bet Facebook will figure it out considering advertising is the reason Zuckerberg and other insiders are about to become extremely rich.
For users, more advertising on mobile is somewhat of a drag, but there’s utility involved as well. A lot of what we’re doing on and with our mobile devices is being tracked by scads of application developers and device makers who aim to improve their products and marketing activities because they know what we like, where we go and how we spend our money.

Facebook wants that data, too.

The ads we’ll be seeing on mobile will increasingly be highly relevant and the time is coming when we’ll get offers and ads pushed to our phones the minute we step over a retailer’s threshold at the mall.

Facebook is “just getting started” with its mobile app, said Zuckerberg, who explained last week at an investor event that as Facebook collects more data, such as location and which friends “like” certain products mobile ads will be better targeted to users.

Facebook’s initial public offering is set for this week and media outlets are stirring up a frenzy, reporting on everything from whether the company is overvalued at $96 billion to which character traits propel Zuckerberg to give speeches to groups of big-shot investors wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. Facebook’s mobile future is also getting a lot of attention.

What’s your take? Are you looking forward to getting offers and personalized ads on your phone that can steer you to products Facebook knows you or your friends like? Or will they merely be a deterrent to using Facebook while on the go?

How to Control Your Facebook Privacy Settings

Fei — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:00:47 +0000

By David Daw
May 14, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook’s privacy settings are confusing by design, often hiding similar settings in totally different menus and defaulting to unnerving levels of public sharing. Ensuring that you share the right information with the right people can be difficult, and Facebook even has a few specialized settings that will override your other privacy settings if you aren’t careful. Luckily you can take control of your privacy on Facebook fairly quickly once you know what you’re looking for.

To that end we’ve assembled this quick guide to each part of Facebook’s Privacy Settings page (accessible via the menu that drops down when you select the downward arrow at the top right of your Facebook page). Following it should help you get your Facebook information locked down on the double. For each section of Facebook’s privacy settings, we provide a brief description of what to look for, along with notable settings that you’ll probably want to adjust. Click on any screenshot to zoom in for a close look at the different privacy settings on display.

Default Privacy

Description: Your default privacy setting is the first thing you’ll see on your Privacy Settings page. It’s also the most important item on the page, since it controls who can and can’t see content that you post automatically. Facebook provides three options here: Public, which lets anyone see your new posts; Friends, which limits access to your content to people whom you’ve friended on Facebook; and Custom, which permits you to take a more granular approach to your privacy settings.

Notable settings: For many users, the Friends privacy setting should be perfectly acceptable, but you may want to experiment with Custom and familiarize yourself with the privacy customization menu–it’s the same one you’ll see across all of Facebook’s privacy pages. You can configure the Custom setting to make posts visible to specific people, to custom lists of people, or to any school/work networks that you might be a part of. I set my default privacy setting to include friends of my friends, though some users may consider that setting too open to sharing.
How You Connect

Description: These settings, which control who can view your personal information and who can contact you on Facebook, constitute what most users think of as their Facebook privacy settings. Clearly they’re among the most important privacy controls on the site.

Notable settings: All of the settings in the How You Connect section are significant. They determine who can send you a friend request on Facebook, who can message you on the service, and who can see your Timeline. They also control who can see your email address and phone number if you provide that data to Facebook. The settings are structured to give you the same Public, Friends, or Custom options as does the Default Privacy menu and most of them default either to ‘Everyone’ or to ‘Friends of Friends’, so you may want to configure them to be a little less permissive.

Timeline and Tagging

Description: This menu contains the bulk of your Timeline settings, including specifications for who can post on your timeline and who can see those posts. Bear in mind, however, that the actual controls for viewing your Timeline appear in the How You Connect section (see above).

Notable settings: Though the timeline settings are important, the two settings here that will be most useful to users involve Facebook automation. The first controls Facebook’s unsettling facial recognition feature (added last year). To disable that feature, set ‘Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?’ to no one; if you go this route, you and your friends will have to manually tag your face in photos. The second setting lets you review firends’ posts that you’ve been tagged in before the posting is approved. If you’ve ever worried that an embarrassing and clearly labeled photo might circulate on Facebook before you can detag it, set ‘Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline’ to enabled and worry no more.

Next: Settings for ads, apps, and websites

Ads, Apps, and Websites

Description: This section controls how your Facebook profile and personal information interact with things outside Facebook proper, including Facebook apps, personalized ads, and websites that use Facebook data to customize your experience. It’s also where the truly Orwellian stuff lives; if you’re worried about Facebook destroying your privacy, head here first and turn pretty much everything off.
Notable settings: Everything here is worth scrutinizing, especially the ‘Apps you use’ control panel. Here you can review and remove all of the third-party apps you’ve added to Facebook. Be warned, however, that you must remove (and confirm removal) of each app separately, unless you elect to delete them all, so the operation may take a while to complete. In the Ads settings, you can turn off social ads and preemptively opt out of having your data used in third-party advertising. This section also lets you turn off Facebook “features” such as instant personalization (which exports your personal data to partner websites) and public search (which allows users whom you haven’t friended to see your timeline through search engines, even if you’ve set your Timeline to be visible to friends only).

Limit the Audience for Past Posts

Description: This section is an anomaly on the Privacy Control page. Instead of popping up a new window of settings, Limit the Audience for Past Posts generates a small pop-up box with text explaining that, when you confirm that you want to limit the audience for your past posts, Facebook will automatically set all posts in your timeline to be visible only to friends. This will retroactively change the status of your previously public timeline posts to friends-only.

Notable settings: The Limit Old Posts option is the only setting here (besides Cancel), but it’s a doozy. Facebook frames it as a kind of nuclear option, but for most people it’s a convenient timesaver. Unless you prefer to leave most of your timeline public, activating this option and manually making a few posts public should take much less time than managing the privacy settings for Timeline posts individually.

Blocked People and Apps

Description: The Manage Blocking settings let you selectively block Facebook apps and users from interacting with you. They range from relatively benign settings that help deter an overzealous aunt from inviting you to try Farmville (without offending anyone) to a full global block to prevent abusive users from interacting with you in any way on Facebook. These settings are unlikley to be of much use for you when you first establish your privacy settings, but they may become more useful when friends or apps start spamming your Facebook feed.

Notable settings: The ‘Block users’ setting is a fantastic tool if you’re being harassed on Facebook and want to take care of the situation yourself. Preventing all interactions with a threatening person through Facebook is easy (be sure to report the harassment to Facebook as well); for most users, though, the less serious settings will be more useful. For example, do you have a friend who asks you to come to arts events every weekend? Simply enter the person’s name in the Block invites from field of the ‘Block event invites’ setting, and Facebook will automatically block any new event invitations from them. Similarly, adding a friend to your restricted list will ensure that thenceforth the person will be able to see only your public posts, effectively unfriending them without inviting any unpleasant histrionics.

On Facebook, Think Before You ‘Like’

Fei — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0000

By Anne Kandra
March 26, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – Anyone who has survived middle school knows that publicly admitting you “like” someone can have serious repercussions. You’ve probably outgrown adolescent angst by now, but when you’re roaming the halls of Facebook, you might want to consult your inner tween before clicking a ‘Like’ button. That’s because Facebook, not unlike that nosy girl in seventh grade, wants to tell everyone about your objects of affection, via ads that make you an unwitting and unpaid celebrity endorser.

Facebook calls these ads Sponsored Stories. To create them, Facebook essentially repurposes users’ status updates and activities to hawk an advertiser’s products or services. Once you ‘Like’ a company page, check in at a merchant location, post an update mentioning a product, service, or company, or otherwise interact with a Facebook advertiser, your activity becomes potential fodder for that company’s ad. Your friends could then receive an update informing them of your activity–whether you want Facebook to share it or not.

The upshot? A single click could make you that advertiser’s newest spokesperson. And since you can’t opt out, you really can’t do anything about it.

In a video on Facebook’s site, a product manager notes that the Stories go only to your friends, and they aren’t getting anything you haven’t already sent them. True, but isn’t there a difference between your recommending a movie to your friends, and Facebook taking it upon itself to do so?

Plus, the Sponsored Stories don’t always take context into account. Consider the case of blogger Nick Bergus, who made a funny post about an Amazon ad for a 55-gallon drum of “personal lubricant.” Next thing he knew, he was in ads hawking the lube to his friends. One pal told Bergus he saw the ad every time he logged in to Facebook.
If Sponsored Stories were to stay in the ticker feed, where they’re relatively easy to ignore or hide, they might not be such a big deal. Unfortunately, as of this writing, Facebook’s ads-masquerading-as-updates are no longer confined to the low-rent ticker district. Facebook has started subtly releasing them into users’ news feeds, and that could be a bigger issue for a lot more users.

You can’t stop Facebook from using you as an unpaid endorser or tainting your news feed with ad pitches, but you can minimize the noise by being judicious about your activities. Before you click a ‘Like’ button, check in at a shop or restaurant, post an update about a product or service, or install an app that tracks or shares your actions, ask yourself if you feel strongly enough about the product or service to endorse it to your friends. You might still end up being an involuntary shill, but at least you can be selective about it. After all, a little “like” can go a long way.

Zoom Facebook Photos Just by Mousing Over Them

Fei — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 22:59:18 +0000

By Rick Broida
March 13, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – I’m a big fan of anything that makes Facebook less of a hassle. Don’t get me wrong–I like Facebook a lot, but certain aspects of the service can be annoying.

For example, when you’re perusing your news feed, you might see a photo that’s of interest–but too small to see in sufficient detail. So you click to make it larger, than have to click again to close it.

Hey, you don’t have all day! And don’t get me started on all that extra wear and tear on your mouse.

Fortunately, there’s a way to enlarge Facebook photos without a single click. All you need is the right extension for your Web browser: FB Photo Zoom for Chrome and Thumbnail Zoom for Firefox.
Once installed, you’ll discover a much easier way to interact with Facebook photos: just mouse over them. In other words, move your cursor on top of any photo in your news feed, then wait a second. Presto: the image appears full-size.

If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll be glad to know that Thumbnail Zoom also works with Amazon, Twitter, and loads of other sites that use thumbnail images. (Alas, Craigslist isn’t one of them; for that, check out CraigsList Image Prefetcher.)
I’ve been using FB Photo Zoom in Chrome–and loving it. Definitely worth a look if you’re a Facebook fan.

New Facebook phishing attack “In the wild” warns Kaspersky Lab

Fei — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:00:52 +0000

February 8, 2012

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions is warning Facebook users of a new form of phishing which, tries to steal not just their Facebook credentials but also their credit cards information.

“This Facebook phishing attack is pretty interesting because it does not just try to trick the victim into visiting a phishing website,” says Kaspersky Lab security expert David Jacoby.

“It will reuse the stolen information and login to the compromised account and change both profile picture and name. The profile picture will be changed to the Facebook logo and the name will be translated to “Facebook Security” but containing special ASCII characters replacing letters such as “a” “k” “S” and “t”,” Jacoby explained.

Once an account is compromised it will also send out a message to all contacts of the compromised account. The message looks like this:

“Last Warning: Your Facebook account will be turned off Because someone has reported you. Please do re-confirm your account security by: => http://apps-xxxx-xxxxx-user.de.vu
Thank you. The Facebook Team”/

When a victim clicks on the link, he will be redirected to a website that looks and feels like Facebook’s own website. The fake Facebook site then asks the victim to provide personal information such as name, email address, password, webmail system, among others.

When submitting this form, the details will be sent to the attacker who can automatically login to your Facebook account and compromise it.

After filling up these details, the victim will be asked for final identity confirmation with a payment and by having the person give his or her credit card information.

Jacoby advises Facebook users to be aware of such threats to avoid becoming victims.

“These scams are just getting more popular and we really recommend not giving out personal information, especially not email, password and credit card information over social media. It is also recommended that you contact your security vendor and the social media vendor if you encounter these sites,” he said.

Facebook may let you share what you do off-site

Fei — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:59:13 +0000

By Sharon Gaudin
January 20, 2012

FRAMINGHAM – Speculation is swirling that Facebook is getting ready to announce a way to combine information on what users do on, and off, the social network.

News reports began surfacing that Facebook planned a press conference for Wednesday evening in San Francisco. Last fall, the social network announced that it was working on what it called Open Graph applications, designed to enable people to share on http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9157638/Facebook_Complete_coverage what they are doing elsewhere online.

The applications began rolling out over the past few months to Web sites like the Washington Post and Hulu, according to a report Tuesday from All Things D.

The applications are expected to enable users to share what they’re doing on other Web sites – listening to music, reading an article or watching a video – with their Facebook friends. They also may be able to invite their friends to join them, according to All Things D.

Facebook declined to comment on what Wednesday’s news will entail.

“I think this falls under the ‘this is the kind of thing you will like if you like this kind of thing,’ ” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “I believe, however, that part of Facebook’s user base will shut off all permissions in response to this reduction in privacy. Of course, all they’re doing is providing the enabling technology, but I don’t think it’s a net win for them.”

He added that he doesn’t think most of Facebook’s users will want to share this much information.

“It assumes that you want all your friends, close and distant, to know what you read, where you shop, what songs you listen to,” said Gottheil. “I think Facebook has expanded far beyond its 20-something core, and most older people will be put off … There has been resistance to Facebook’s other incursions on privacy. To me, it is one of the recurring reminders that with respect to my desire for control over what I share with others, Facebook either does not get it or does not care.”

Last November, Facebook took a very public privacy hit when it settled charges by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission the social network deceived users and shared information that it had promised would be kept private.

Industry watchers are waiting to see how Facebook handles the privacy issues that will surround the Open Graph applications.

Facebook chat-based phishing attack impersonates Facebook Security

Fei — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:59:32 +0000

By Lucian Constantin
January 16, 2012

IASI, ROMANIA – A new phishing attack that’s spreading through Facebook chat modifies hijacked accounts in order to impersonate the social network’s security team.

The attackers replace the profile picture of compromised accounts with the Facebook logo and change their names to a variation of “Facebook Security” written with special Unicode characters, said Kaspersky Lab expert David Jacoby in a blog post.

Facebook claims that changing the profile name can take up to 24 hours and is subject to confirmation. However, in Jacoby’s tests the change occurred almost instantly and required only the password. This was also confirmed by a victim whose profile name was modified within 5 minutes of their account being compromised, he said.

After the victim’s profile name and picture get changed, the attackers send out a chat message to all of their contacts informing them that their accounts will be suspended unless they re-confirm their information.

The rogue messages appear to be signed by “The Facebook Team” and contain a link to a phishing page hosted on an external domain. The Web page mimics Facebook’s design and asks for name, email, password, security question, country, birth date and other information needed to hijack the account.

However, the attack doesn’t stop there. According to Jacoby, a second form asks users for their credit card details and billing address. This is somewhat unusual for Facebook phishing attacks, the majority of which target only social networking account information.

“These scams are just getting more popular and we really recommend not giving out personal information, especially not email, password and credit card information over social media,” Jacoby said.