Posts tagged facebook news
Can block websites like China, Delhi High Court warns Facebook, Google
Jan 13th
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be “blocked” like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages.
“Like China, we will block all such websites,” Justice Suresh Kait said while asking counsel for Facebook and Google India to develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove “offensive and objectionable” material from their web pages.
The two companies had moved the High Court seeking a stay on summons issued to them by a Delhi trial court that is hearing a private criminal complaint against them. Justice Kait did not stay the proceedings against the two websites before the magistrate’s court.
Former Additional Solicitor General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Google India, said the postings of “obscene, objectionable and defamatory” articles and other things cannot be “filtered” or “monitored”.
“No human interference is possible, and moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents. Billions of people across the globe, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked,” Mr Rohatgi said.
He tried to distinguish between Google India and its US-based holding company Google Inc. “The US-based Google Inc is the service provider and not me (Google India) and hence, we are not liable for the action of my holding company. Moreover, it is a criminal case where a vicarious liability can be fastened on a company which has no role, whatsoever, in the alleged offence,” the lawyer argued.
Citing provisions of the Information Technology Act, the counsel for Google India said these websites are protected by the law in respect of such “objectionable” material so far as they are not the authors. The websites, he said, may lose that legal protection if they either modify or monitor an article or comments or fail to deal with the complaints of an affected person or the government on such issues.
Advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Facebook India, questioned the authenticity of the documents provided by the complainant, Vinay Rai, to the magisterial court. “We do not know as to when, how and from where, the documents came into being. They are not the documents as per the provisions of the Evidence Act,” he said. Mr Luthra also said the social networking site could not be held accountable for the acts of third parties.
The High Court fixed the next hearing in case on January 16.
A Google spokesperson said, “We did file a petition before the Delhi High Court. The Court has now issued a notice to the petitioner. We can’t comment further at this stage.”
The criminal case against the two Web giants and 19 other companies has been filed by Vinay Rai, the editor of an Urdu daily.
The case is scheduled to be taken up today at the Patiala House trial court, which had earlier summoned the representatives of the 21 sites named after taking cognisance
of the private criminal complaint. It had also directed the Centre to take “immediate appropriate steps” and also file a report on January 13.
Taking note of Mr Rai’s complaint, the trial court had held that the websites named in the complaint connived with each other and various unknown persons to sell, publicly exhibit and put into circulation “obscene, lascivious content.” The websites have been booked under section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
Facebook warns of recent wave of spam
Nov 17th
New York: Facebook said Wednesday that it has stopped most of the spam that has flooded many users’ pages with pictures showing graphic sex and violence. The social-networking company urged its 800 million-plus users to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked. That includes reporting suspicious links on friends’ pages and not clicking on links that offer deals that are too good to be true.
Social-networking sites are popular targets for spammers because people are more likely to trust and share content that comes from people they know. This makes spam, scams and viruses easy to spread. Still, Facebook says less than 4 per cent of content shared on the site is spam. By comparison, about 74 per cent of email is spam, according to security firm Symantec, though the bulk gets filtered out before reaching the inbox.
Over the past couple of days, many users have complained about finding links on their Facebook pages taking them to images depicting jarring violence and graphic pornography. Although the way the latest spam messages spread isn’t new, their content is more shocking than the typical scam enticing a free iPod shuffle. The latest attack tricked users into clicking on links by offering some sort of promise – free plane tickets, a fun new video or answers to a quiz, for example, said Vikram Thakur, principal security response manager at Symantec.
Clicking on the link took users to a page that asked them to copy and paste a line of malicious JavaScript programming code into the address bar of their Web browser. “Pasting that little message will pick up a message or picture from whatever website the JavaScript is posting to,” Thakur said, adding that it doesn’t matter what type of browser people use.
The content is then posted on the users’ Facebook page, usually without their knowledge. It spreads further when their friends then click on those links, thinking that it was posted by the user on purpose. Facebook said no user data or accounts were compromised during the attack.
It urged users not to cut and paste unknown code into a browser’s address bar. They should always use an up-to-date browser and report any suspicious content on the site. While the site scans malicious links against security databases and blocks those known to lead to spam, it can’t stop people from copying and pasting text manually into their Web browser.
That’s where user vigilance comes in. Thakur said users should be suspicious by the mere fact that someone is asking them to copy and paste something that Facebook is not permitting to be clickable directly.
Facebook said it built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit the vulnerability. “Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack,” Facebook said in a statement. “We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future.”
Source : http://ibnlive.in.com/news/facebook-warns-of-recent-wave-of-spam/202982-11.html
Facebook, Skype to launch video chat
Jul 5th
Just as Google’s next big thing ‘Google Plus’ is all set to launch, Facebook and Skype are about to strike a deal that would bring the video chatting service to the social networking site. With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising an “awesome” new feature on July 6, Skype, which was recently purchased by Microsoft for a whopping $8.5 billion, could become a fixture on the world’s largest social network.
The beta version of Google’s social network, Google Plus, debuted last week to rave reviews, especially for its +Hangouts feature that allows for multi-user video chat.
At present, Facebook users update message and status through their profile, and share photos but the addition of video chat will bring an interesting change to their account.
Editor of Tech Crunch, Michael Arrington stated in the Next Week that Facebook, in collaboration with Skype, will unveil its video chat option which will be powered by Skype.
This move will strengthen Facebook’s position in the social networking market.
Facebook at present is the most influential and one of the biggest social networking sites in the world having over 500 million active users.
This isn’t the first time that Skype has been linked to Facebook.
Back in September 2010 the same rumour reared its head and this March it was reported that talks had resumed between the two companies.
Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com/Facebook-Skype-to-launch-video-chat/Article1-717437.aspx
Facebook to make $1 billion from social gaming this year
Jul 2nd
Facebook will generate an estimated $1 billion in revenue from social gaming this year. The majority of this revenue will come from advertising, but some will come from Facebook Credits, the social network’s currency for purchasing content on the site. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is declining to comment.
Kevin Ryan, a leading Internet entrepreneur and former chief executive of online advertising giant DoubleClick, made the prediction in an interview with Reuters this week. Ryan’s brother, Sean Ryan, became director of gaming partnerships at Facebook in early 2011, and the two likely share information on a regular basis.
Facebook is a private company and so it doesn’t have to disclose financial information. The company is going public next year, possibly as soon as Q1 2012. The website’s initial public offering (IPO) could be very high, given that its valuation has been predicted to top $100 billion.
Zynga, the dominant developer of social games on Facebook, just filed for an IPO today, and the number is (coincidentally?) $1 billion. Zynga reported that its 2010 revenue was $597 million, compared to $121 million for 2009, and 19 million for 2008.
Facebook to launch Facebook Credits for Indian users today
Jul 1st
New Delhi: Social networking site Facebook will Friday introduce a payment system ‘Facebook Credits’ for Indian users who could spend the virtual currency across various games or applications they use on the popular website.
A virtual currency, Facebook Credits is already popular among gaming enthusiasts in many other countries, including the US.
“Facebook will introduce a new payment system Facebook Credits in India from July 1,” a company spokesperson told media.
Facebook Credits enables fast and easy transactions across games on the social networking site and would benefit about 2.5 crore Facebook subscribers in the country.
The users would be able to enter their payment information once and can buy, earn and spend safely across various games or applications they use on Facebook.
“Starting July 1, we will require all social game developers on the Facebook canvas platform to process payments through Facebook Credits,” Facebook Platform Marketing Manager Deb Liu wrote on the company’s official blog in January.
This will also help various brands, which use the medium of Facebook to retail them goods through their social pages.
“Facebook Credits is currently used in more than 350 applications from 150 developers, representing more than 70 percent of virtual goods transactions volume on Facebook,” Liu had said.
Facebook Credits would also offer incentives such as early access to product features, premium promotion on Facebook, premium targeting for ads, and access to new co-promotion opportunities.
Many developers such as Zynga, Playfish, CrowdStar , Digital Chocolate, PopCap and Arkadium have already adopted Facebook Credits for in-game virtual goods.
Source : http://zeenews.india.com/business/news/news_content.aspx?newscatid=4&newsid=26554
Google challenges Facebook with Google+
Jun 30th
Google’s latest move into the domain dominated by Facebook has created a real buzz unlike its maiden foray last year. It is unusual for Google-the world’s biggest web search engine- to play a catch-up game with established social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but then, its past efforts that included Buzz, Orkut and even Google Wave did not make much of progress.
“It’s like Google opening a Facebook account, but with much better privacy and some enhanced features . I will go for it,” says Ankit Tripathi, a Bangalore-based software developer who quit Facebook earlier this year. .
In pic: A screen shot of the Google Plus social network is shown in this publicity photo released to Reuters on June 28, 2011. Google Inc, frustrated by a string of failed attempts to crack social networking, designed the service to tie together all of its online properties, laying the foundation for a full-fledged social network. (Image: REUTERS)
Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/9046560.cms
Facebook, Twitter Kick Out Indian Hacker Group
Jun 15th
Facebook and Twitter have kicked out the Indian arm of a hacker group known as Anonymous, known as Anonymous Operation India, one week after they hacked into major Indian government websites, threatening to compromise national security. Therefore, the Operation India Facebook page and @operationindia Twitter handle owned by the group, have now become inaccessible. You may already know that the Anonymous group was responsible for recently attacking Sony‘s servers, in addition to acts of online aggression against the governments of Iran, Spain, New Zealand and Colombia.
While little was known about their activity in India until recently, they came into the limelight with the hacking of the websites of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Indian Army, last week. The group defaced the NIC website URL with a graffiti and declaration stating, “We exist without nationality. We exist with humanity. NIC took 3 mins.” They did the same to the Indian Army’s website, taking it down for an hour, and releasing login names and password details, as well as forensic logs of indianarmy.nic.in.
Though the DoS attack, reportedly did not cause any loss of data, the group later boasted on the site, “We took Down Indian Army Official Site and NIC knows more what we did.” Anonymous claimed responsibility for both hacks in a message posted on their IRC group saying, “The NIC hack, was merely a taste of what may come…The time has come now, when we’ll wage a war of independence – from corruption and we promise to fight till the end.” In addition to boasting of their achievements, they have placed some demands, most of them being reasonable, though we do agree that the method used is a bit crude.
Facebook employees are youngest, satisfied yet stressed
Jun 11th
Employees at social networking site Facebook are the youngest, satisfied and yet the most stressed, among workers at major US technology companies, according to a new report that also said staffers at Google are best paid as compared to those at other tech companies.
Seattle-based research firm PayScale said Facebook employees are the most satisfied and the Mark Zuckerberg-led company had the lowest median age – 26.
It also had the highest portion of female workers at 33 per cent, among nine of the industry’s top businesses.
A typical worker at Facebook is only 26 years of age, compared with a typical age of 36 across the other companies.
Workers at Facebook are the most satisfied with their jobs, while those at Hewlett-Packard [ Images ] are the least satisfied.
The report said while Facebook employees may be the most satisfied with their work, they are also some of the most stressed.
“With a CEO who is 27, it is not surprising to find many who work at Facebook are young, excited to work there and a little stressed out,” said Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.
The report said median pay for Google employees is 23 per cent higher than similar workers performing similar roles at other companies.
PayScale’s Technology Company Salary and Job Satisfaction Report examined the characteristics of Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft [ Images ].
The ‘worst’ paid workers are at Hewlett-Packard, where employees earned 5 per cent less than similar workers at all other employers and earn about 15 per cent less than similar workers at the other big tech companies.
Employees of IBM stay the longest with the company, with the average tenure at IBM at eight years, which is about six years longer than the tenure at the other tech firms.
Similarly, IBM workers tend to be the oldest.
The typical age of workers at IBM is 44.
“IBM celebrates its 100th anniversary this year; the workforce is a little grayer than Facebook, but the employees’ tenure at IBM testifies that it is still a great place to work,” Al Lee said.
Other findings indicated female employees are still a minority at the big tech firms.
On an average, only 25 per cent of the employees at the tech companies are female as compared with over 50 per cent of employees at all companies.
The report named Microsoft the most flexible tech company in terms of work and vacation schedules.
The report included details such as common jobs, pay, tenure at the company and employees’ typical years of experience within their career/field, demographics, including age and gender as well as soft features such as job satisfaction levels.
