Facebook Revamps News Feed, Annoying Users

Facebook's F8 Developer Conference just days away but the social network has already debuted a new "smarter" News Feed.

For a couple of years now, Facebook has had a two-tabbed News Feed, one with "Top Stories," or updates Facebook thought you'd be interested in (based on your browsing history), while the other tab had the "Most Recent" updates. Facebook has apparently decided to get rid of this two-tabbed interface and integrate users' Top Stories and Most Recent Stories in one big, smart, News Feed.

Now when you log in to Facebook, you'll see a smart News Feed with all of your updates -- both the "important" and recent ones -- in one place. Facebook will still try to determine which stories will most interest you, and will highlight these "top stories" with a pale blue corner.

Facebook says that the top stories will depend on how long it's been since you've logged into Facebook. In other words, if you haven't visited the site in awhile, your top stories may not be extremely recent (rather, Facebook will try to give you an overview of the important stuff that happened when you were gone). But if you just logged in five minutes ago, your top stories will probably all have happened within the last five minutes.

According to Facebook's Updates to News Feed FAQ page, top stories are determined based on a number of factors. These factors include your relationship to the person posting the update, how many comments and likes the update receives, and what type of update it is. You can still hide updates if you think they're boring or spammy (even if they are from your best friend) by hovering over them and clicking the drop-down menu. This menu gives you the option of hiding the story, hiding all posts by that person, and reporting the story as (real) spam.

Facebook's new News Feed has only been live for a few hours, but people are already voicing their annoyance on PCWorld's Facebook page.

"I don't like this update because now it's a bit more confusing to find recent updates," says PCWorld reader Devon Tourond. "I do like the new update they added to the top of the page, now I can scroll through the page and the header follows me."

"FB should have a simple toggle function between 'recent stories' and 'top stories,' " says PCWorld reader Anthony Nozzi. "Better yet, they should enable a user to prioritize their news feeds by assigning a ranking score to each particular page that provides the news feeds. That way, a user can control which pages get the highest priority in providing news feeds."

Facebook's also added a real-time feed in the upper-right corner of the page. Some readers are concerned that this will adversely affect their privacy, but as far as I can see the updates in the box will not share more than can normally be found on a person's private profile page.

Facial Recognition Technology: Facebook Photo Matching Is Just the Start

As facial recognition tech moves into law enforcement, military use, and targeted advertising, and onto the streets of your town, will your privacy be a casualty?

The Internet was in an uproar earlier this year following Facebook's launch of facial recognition software for its photo services, enabling users to identify their friends in photos automatically--and without their permission. Though critics described that move as creepy, the controversial technology may now be on the verge of widespread use.

For instance, this month a Massachusetts company called BI² Technologies will roll out a handheld facial recognition add-on for the iPhone to 40 law enforcement agencies. The device will allow police to conduct a quick check to see whether a suspect has a criminal record--either by scanning the suspect's iris or taking a photo of the individual's face.

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the military and Georgia Tech Research Institute had started testing on autonomous aerial drones that could use facial recognition software to identify and attack human targets--in effect, the software performs the assessment that determines who gets killed.

And in yet another development, the Federal Trade Commission announced earlier this week that it will hold a free public workshop on December 8, 2011, to examine various issues related to personal privacy, consumer protection, and facial recognition technology.

[Read: "Facebook Photo Tagging: A Privacy Guide"]

Of course, the government and large private companies have had access to facial recognition software for years. The pressing question today is what happens to privacy when everyone has access to the technology? Already smaller businesses--and even private individuals--are developing sometimes amazing, sometimes very creepy uses for security-focused software.

Tom Cruise encounters facial-recognition-generated ads in a scene from the film Minority Report.In Las Vegas, advertisers have taken a page from Minority Report, the 2002 Tom Cruise movie. The Vegas advertisers use facial recognition to target ads to passers-by. For instance, if a woman in her mid-twenties walks past the advertising kiosk, its built-in software will identify her likely age and gender and then display ads for products deemed appealing to her specific demographic.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a startup called SceneTap links facial recognition technology to cameras in bars and clubs so that users can figure out which bars have the most desirable (in their opinion) ratio of women to men--before they even arrive.

If you think the corporate implications are unsettling, wait until the general population gets deeply involved in using facial recognition technology. One recent instance: In the wake of the August London riots, a Google group of private citizens called London Riots Facial Recognition emerged with the aim of using publicly available records and facial recognition software to identify rioters for the police as a form of citizen activism (or vigilante justice, depending on how you feel about it). The group finally abandoned its efforts when its experimental facial recognition app yielded disappointing results.

Though the members of London Riots Facial Recognition undoubtedly believed that they were working for the greater good, what happens when people other than concerned citizens get their hands on the technology? It shouldn't take too long for us to find out.

Present-Day Reality Check

The use of facial recognition software by governments and online social networks continues to provide headline fodder. A Boston-area man had his driver's license revoked because when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a facial recognition scan of a database containing the photos of Massachusetts drivers, it flagged the man's license as a possible phony. Afterward it emerged that the system had confused the man's face with someone else's.

Scene from the 2011 London riots.In England, law enforcement officials ran photos of August riot suspects through Scotland Yard's newly updated face-matching program, which is under consideration for use during the 2012 Summer Olympics in the UK. In Canada, an insurance company invited Vancouver police to use its facial recognition software to help identify rioting fans after the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost the seventh game of the NHL championship series.

And of course Facebook endured a hailstorm of criticism in June when it announced its plans be roll out a facial recognition feature for its members to provide semiautomatic tagging of photos uploaded to the social network.

[Read: "Facebook Facial Recognition: Its Quiet Rise and Dangerous Future"]

One Facebook critic was Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, who said earlier this year that the "surprising accuracy" of existing facial recognition software was "very concerning" to his company and that Google was "unlikely" to build a facial-recognition search system in the future.

Indeed, Google seems to have been so concerned by the technology that Schmidt declined to implement it even though his company already had the know-how to make it. “We built that technology and withheld it,” Schmidt said. “People could use it in a very bad way.”

TABNABBING: BEWARE OF NEW TYPE OF PHISHING ATTACK

Phishing attack is one of the best methods used for hacking email passwords. Aza Raskin introduced new way of Phishing called Tabnabbing.

Tabnabbing - New Type of Phishing Attack :

Tabnabbing is using the same phishing concepts which we were using previously. But, there are slight changes made to our conventional Phishing method.

Requirements for attack:

- The attacker must have a website.
- The attacker has to embed javascript file(necessary for phishing) in his website.
- Tabnabbing implements multi-tabbing advantage. So, user must browse with multiple tabs.

How Tabnabbing works???

- The user visits the attacker site which looks normal at first.
- The user switches from this attacker site tab and opens another site in new tab, leaving this attacker site tab open. Assume that user opens many tabs.
- While the user browses another site, the attacker site which is left open in previous tab changes or redirects itself to a phishing page say Gmail login.
- Now, when the user returns back to this tab, he may not remember exactly which site he had opened. He will now see fake Gmail login and will think that he has left this Gmail login tab open.
So, now, without checking out url of the site, the user is most probable of logging in to his account.
- Once he enters his login userid and password in our phisher, this information is sent to our inbox or any online account. Thus, his account hacked using this Tabnabbing.

How to protect yourself from Tabnabbing???

The most useful way to remain protected from such attacks is to reside on addons like Secure Login for logging in to any online account. So, when you return to attacker website(which has been redirected to phisher), the addon Secure Login will check for url and will show the message:

"No login data found for this page"

So, even if the attacker website has changed itself to phisher and the user has forgotten to check it's url, Secure Login will alert user that page is a phisher. Also, it is expected that various browsers will soon release a fix for this hack.

So friends, beware of this new phishing attack - Tabnabbing and protect your online accounts. Remember, Secure Login is the best solution to phishing attacks. If you have any views on this new phishing attack, please share it with us in comments.

How to avoid facebook scams

Facebook is the part of people's daily life. It's no. 1 social networking website so it is used for spreading scams by spammers. Scammers search through Facebook user accounts and gather information from public profiles to send phishing emails so they can gather more secure information such as bank account numbers, credit card numbers and user login and password to other secure sites. On facebook scammers use Facebook applications to gather user's information and use their profile to post links of worms and trojans.

Steps to protect your facebook account from scams:

Steps

1. Avoid clicking on short url's posted in facebook. If you want to click that link, verify it first from the person who posted it. MOst of this type of links are posted by facebook worms.
2. Most of the scams are of the form of some videos. So avoid to click on such video link without verifying.
3. If any of your friend send a link with some strange message, ask your friend first before click on those links.
4. If after clicking on a link, it is aksing for some permission for using your profile information as every application ask before use. Be sure to check all the permission whether it is asking for valid permission or not.
5. Try to use less application on facebook. Most of the applications on facebook are useless.

i know it's hard to avoid facebook applications but use those application after verifying it. Most of the scammers use your information for phishing and selling your information to other parties