Clickjacking: Hijacking clicks on the Internet

What if you reached to grab a newspaper out of a news stand and you found a rock in your hand instead? How about opening the front door to a grocery store and ending up on a boat?

This sounds like a Matrix movie, but the virtual equivalent of this is real and poses one of the most serious new risks on the Internet, according to Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer and co-founder of Whitehat Security.

"Most exploits (like worms and attacks that take advantage of holes in software) can be patched, but clickjacking is a design flaw in the way the Web is supposed to work," Grossman said. "The bad guy is superimposing an invisible button over something the user wants to click on...It can be any button on any Web page on any Web site."

The technique was used in a series of prank attacks launched on Twitter in February. In that case, users clicked on links next to tweets that said "Don't Click" and then clicked on a button that said "Don't Click" on a separate Web page. That second click distributed the original tweet to all of the Twitter user's followers, thus propagating itself rather quickly.

At the time, Grossman called it a "harmless experiment," but the potential for harm by an attacker who isn't just having fun is huge.

In a demo at CNET offices, Grossman showed how someone could launch a clickjacking attack using Flash to spy on someone by getting them to turn on their computer Web cam without knowing it. (Grossman also appeared on CNET Live to talk about clickjacking.)

Like the name suggests, clickjacking is the hijacking of your click, unbeknownst to you. A victim may not even know that the click has been redirected, which means there could be clickjacking attacks going on that no one knows about yet.

Clickjacking attacks are accomplished by creating something called an iFrame that allows a browser window to be split into segments so that different items can be shown on each. This code is inserted into the target Web page and is invisible to the end user. When the end user's cursor clicks on the section of the page where the malicious iFrame is hiding, the attack is launched to do whatever the attacker desires.

An attacker could hide an iFrame under any innocent link on any Web page--a headline on The New York Times or a "digg this" button on Digg, for instance--and when the victim clicks on the link, the cursor is actually clicking on the hidden iFrame.

In the Web cam demo, the iFrame created contains a Flash pop-up window that asks the user to grant permission to have the Web cam turned on. When the victim clicks the link, the Web cam is turned on and secretly begins recording everything the user does in front of the computer.

One of the scariest things about clickjacking is the potential for abuse. An attacker could spy on you by turning on your Web cam or microphone, direct you to a Web page with malicious content that is downloaded onto your computer, or even rig it up so you end up clicking "buy" instead of "cancel" on an e-commerce site.

Another thing that makes clickjacking so serious is that there really is very little that end users can do to protect themselves, Grossman said.

In the Web cam scenario, the best defense is probably to put a post-it note or other item over the Web cam lens and to disable the microphone in the software, he said. Flash Player 10 provides some protection by preventing anything from obscuring the security permissions dialogue box, he said.

Web site owners optimizing their sites for Internet Explorer 8 have the ability to prevent pages from being framed in, which means visitors to their site will be safe, only on that site and only if they are using IE8, Grossman said.

People using Windows and IE should disable JavaScript to help protect against clickjacking, he said. Firefox is safer; the NoScript add-on for Firefox not only lets people selectively block scripts, but it has a ClearClick feature designed specifically to protect against clickjacking, he added.

People should also log out of Web sites, like Facebook and Twitter, when they are done using them for the time being. "You can't be forced to do something on the site if you are not logged in," Grossman said.

More details are in a white paper on the technique, written by Grossman and Robert Hansen of SecTheory and published in September 2008. Grossman and Hansen coined the term in that document.

The authors canceled their talk on the subject at the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) conference that month at Adobe's request because their proof of concept revealed a bug in Adobe's software, according to IDG News Service.

Facebook being urged to remove Holocaust-denial groups

Part of the power of social networking is the ability to form communities with like-minded individuals.



But what happens when those communities are offensive to others?

That issue is at the heart of attempts by a Dallas, Texas, attorney to have social-networking site Facebook remove pages for Holocaust deniers.

The Holocaust Denial movement seeks to deny or minimize the Holocaust, in which Nazis killed about six million European Jews during World War II.

Attorney Brian Cuban, brother of Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban, has been trying since last year to have the pages of groups with such names as "Holocaust: A Series of Lies," and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" removed from Facebook.

He pointed out that Facebook has removed groups based on complaints before and said the site is "setting the subjective standard on what they remove and what they don't."

"There is no First Amendment right to free speech in the private realm," Cuban said. "This isn't a freedom-of-speech issue. Facebook is free to set the standard that they wish."

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said his company is in agreement with Cuban that the Holocaust-denial pages are offensive and objectionable.

Where the two sides part, Schnitt said, is whether people have the right to discuss such ideas on Facebook.

"It's a difficult decision to make. We have a lot of internal debate and we bring in experts to talk about it," Schnitt said. "Just being offensive or objectionable doesn't get it taken off Facebook. We want it [the site] to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones."

Schnitt said Facebook has drawn the line with pages or groups that attack an individual or incite or threaten violence. Schnitt pointed to the recent removal of the "Isle of Man KKK" page, created by residents of the island off the coast of England.

Facebook interpreted the page's advocacy of "cleansing the island of foreigners" as threatening and inciting violence, he said.

Facebook receives lots of reports about such pages and actively polices the site, Schnitt said. Last year Facebook removed several pages posted by Italian neo-Nazis after complaints that they encouraged violence against gypsies.

Brian Cuban, who is of Russian Jewish descent, has written about his fight to have the Holocaust-denial pages removed on his site, The Cuban Revolution.

He said he contacted Facebook after a conversation with a friend who runs the Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group that monitors and tries to eradicate anti-Semitic online content.

The Jewish Internet Defense Force, which was successful in removing a Facebook page for the group "Israel Is Not A Country! Delist It From Facebook As A Country," is outspoken in its own right and sometimes guilty of sweeping generalizations of its own.

In an article on Brian Cuban's site published during the 2008 presidential campaign, a representative from the Jewish Internet Defense Force was quoted as saying that "99.9 percent of Muslims hate us."

The article went on to quote JIDF spokesman on the last Presidential campaign: "We hope to continue to highlight the issues surrounding [then-candidate Barack Obama's] terrorist connections as well as his racist and anti-Semitic church, which has supported Hamas and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan."

A Jewish Internet Defense Force spokesperson named David, who requested his last name be withheld because his group has received death threats, said Thursday he would rather people not focus on those specific quotes for several reasons, including the fact that it was an "informal interview" and Cuban "would not let us correct any of our statements after we quickly answered him to help him meet his deadline."

But on the matter of Facebook and Holocaust deniers, the Jewish Internet Defense Force has a clear stance.

"Facebook should not provide a platform for hatred, especially as it is against their TOS [terms of service]," David said. "Holocaust denial is illegal in 13 countries and represents a form of Jew hatred and hate speech in general."

Deborah Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and an expert on Holocaust denial. She said social-networking sites like Facebook are attractive to deniers.

"It allows people to find one another, both for good and for bad," she said. "People who are drawn to Holocaust denial tend to be fringe kind of people who might not otherwise be able to find a group, but this way they can find other like-minded people."

Deborah Lauter, director of Civil Rights for the Anti-Defamation League, said the issue of anti-Semitism and hate speech online is a growing one, partly because of the anonymity the Web offers.

Lauter pointed out that Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities says that users "will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence."

She said the Anti-Defamation League has worked with sites such as YouTube and MySpace to encourage them to be "socially responsible corporate citizens."

"Even though in the States this kind of hate is protected speech, [Web sites] don't have to provide the forum to help spread it," said Lauter, whose organization is the U.S. representative for the International Network Against CyberHate. "Our position is that if you are going to be providing it, then you have to step up and put in the mechanism for policing it."

From Youtube...To the olympics

Slam-dunk phenom being courted for high jump

Justin Darlington – a.k.a. "Jus Fly" – is used to making great leaps on the basketball court.

The question is whether the 20-year-old slam-dunking wizard from Ajax, Ontario can make an even greater leap – becoming Canada's superstar high jumper.

Daniel St-Hilaire, an extremely passionate, if not a quirky, veteran coach from Montreal, is convinced he can.

St-Hilaire's scouting methods aren't exactly conventional. It started on the Internet when he punched "slam dunk basketball" into Google. Among other things, he came across hundreds of videos of the 6-foot-4 Darlington in action.



"He was like a lost jewel," said St-Hilaire, who once coached Canadian sprint star Bruny Surin.

What he saw left him awestruck: A kid who could do a cartwheel on the court and dunk in one fluid motion. But, even more impressive, Darlington could get his head above the rim when he took flight.



"My mouth opened for five minutes and my eyes went big and I just froze," said St-Hilaire. "I kept playing the video and going in slow motion and freezing it where his head went above the rim. I thought `I never saw a guy jump that high.'

"And I said to myself `Wow, I wonder if this guy can do high jump.' I became a headhunter. I was like `Where could I meet that guy?'"

It turned out St-Hilaire didn't have to go all that far. He located Darlington on Facebook and found out he was from Ajax. They met for two hours at Pearson International Airport when St-Hilaire was flying home from a track meet in Saskatoon in February.



It turns out that a man cannot live off dunking alone. Darlington has travelled throughout Europe and is currently traveling in Shanghai with Team Flight Brothers, a sort of Harlem Globetrotters of the dunking world, but there isn't a huge amount of money to be made.

"He had no incentive, no target," said St-Hilaire. "I said `Here's your target – 2012 (London Olympics). Jump for Canada, make it big and your life will change. Because now you're recognized as one of the best dunkers, but who cares, nobody knows you.'"

At the end of their airport meeting, St-Hilaire said Darlington had only one question for him: "When do we start, coach?"

The education of Darlington as a high jumper has begun, partly under St-Hilaire in Montreal and also here in Toronto under Gary Lubin, who developed Brampton's Mark Boswell, a two-time world championship medallist. They plan to share the coaching duties.

This has all been a whirlwind for Darlington.

"I wasn't even thinking about the Olympics a year ago," he told The Gazette in Montreal recently. "I was hoping that maybe they would make dunking an Olympic sport."

Darlington is planning to enrol at McGill University for September – his mom, Ann-Marie, wants him to put emphasis on his studies – and train in Montreal under St-Hilaire. His regimen will include two dunking workouts per week so he can maintain that skill.

It's a talent he discovered only two years ago. He never really stood out playing basketball at J. Clark Richardson Collegiate in Ajax, but entered a dunk contest in his last year and wowed everyone with his high-flying skills. Things have taken off since then.



"It sort of snuck up on us," said Ann-Marie Darlington, who was a high jumper in high school. "He was trying to match what the others could do in the gym and he realized he was above most of the guys. It was amazing."

Adds St-Hilaire: "He's a born leaper. The legs are like a mutation."

Darlington has a wide array of videos on You Tube under his nickname "Jus Fly," including some with more than 200,000 views and comments like "That last dunk was absolutely sick!"

Former world hurdles champion Perdita Felicien agrees it will be a neat story if Darlington can pull it off, but adds it won't be easy in such a technical event.

"You can have the raw goods, but to have the discipline to study the event and the sport and to be great that way – that's kind of different," Felicien said. "That's probably the hardest part of it."

St-Hilaire said the key will be teaching Darlington the right technique so that he can develop into a true high jumper and not just a leaper.

St-Hilaire notes Darlington has already jumped 2.01 metres after six technical workouts – equal to the height achieved by the sixth-place finisher at last year's Olympic trials in Windsor (the world record is 2.45 metres.) The coach believes he can get up to 2.10 or 2.20 metres this summer.

St-Hilaire already has a golden glint in his eyes as he thinks toward the 2012 London Olympics. He points to Donald Thomas of the Bahamas, who won at the 2007 world championships, less than two years after switching to track from basketball.

"I feel Justin has more potential," said St-Hilaire.

R.I.P. Geocities

Maybe you’ve already heard by now that, But Yahoo is shutting down Geocities. Yes, the same Geocities it paid $3 billion dollars for a mere 10 years ago for.

Yahoo has shut down the Geocities website. Geocities was a free website service and online community. It was one of the hottest properties on the internet during the late 90s. Yahoo overpaid for the service in 1999, paying a whopping $4.9 BILLION for it in a stock deal.

CNET calls Geocities a "relic of Web's early days." PC World says "So Long, GeoCities: We Forgot You Still Existed."

The Geocities website now contains the following message.

After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please sign in or visit the help center for more information.

Yahoo has also posted a faq about the closing. "Yahoo will be closing Geocities accounts by the end of the year". The faq states, "Later this year we will be closing all GeoCities accounts and web sites. We'll send you more details this summer."

It remains to be seen whether the failure of Geocities is a lesson for today's ultra hot web communities like MySpace and Facebook.

The first thing I thought about when I heard this news was MySpace.

Before you laugh out loud, I’m not talking MySpace the darling amongst teens and music artists today, I’m talking about MySpace 10 years from now. Take a ride in your time machine to the year 2019 because it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if by then MySpace has met the same grim fate. A lot of MySpace pages are nothing more than Geocities type over-busy pages with sound. The major difference is MySpace is more ‘social’ whatever that means.

There will be something cooler than MySpace within the next 10 years and the inevitable shut down will follow. That’s not to say MySpace is a complete waste of time today so don’t think I’m trolling here but I think the sobering news about Geocities being here today gone tomorrow within 10 years – a lifetime on the internet, BTW – should be a wake-up call for MySpace users.

What do you think, am I wrong? Will MySpace have more longevity than Geocities? If you need another example of a waning giant, look at eBay vs. Craigslist. It’s tough staying relevant, popular and cool online. For that matter, what about Facebook? it's not really all that hot as it was back just a few years ago is it? (I still don't get what the big deal is) or for that matter, Twitter, whats THAT all about? will we be reading about these in the cyber obituaries a decade from now? remembering back to what life was like when these "giants" were around?

Thoughts?

Candidate's racy Facebook photos showed 'lack of judgment': B.C. NDP leader

B.C. NDP Leader Carole James says the party's former candidate for Vancouver-False Creek showed a "lack of judgment" over pictures displayed on his Facebook page.

Ray Lam resigned on Sunday over the photographs, one of which showed him palming a woman's breast and another with his pants down and two people pulling at his underwear.

"Ray felt that they were inappropriate. Certainly it shows a lack of judgment, and he made the decision to step down," James said on Monday. "He didn't want it to distract from the campaign, so we are moving on."

James said candidates had been warned something like this could happen, saying even though the pictures were posted on a private page, "once you become a public figure, everything is public."

"I saw the pictures on TV. I thought they showed a lack of judgment. It's his age, you know, we all recognize that, but when you're in politics and you are going to be a public figure, it's important that you recognize that," she said.

NDP responsible, Campbell says

B.C. Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell said the B.C. NDP has to take responsibility for the appearance of the images online.

"This was public information. It was on the NDP website and they have some responsibilities in terms of that. - They were totally inappropriate pictures and the NDP has some questions to answer for," he said Monday while campaigning near Vancouver.

Lam should have realized pictures from his private life, if posted online as part of his Facebook profile, would become part of the public record, Campbell said, adding Liberal candidates undergo a strict vetting process that includes online checks.

Campbell himself is no stranger to the troubles the private lives of politicians can cause their public careers.

In 2003 he fended off demands from the B.C. NDP to resign after he was arrested while on vacation in Hawaii and pleaded guilty to several charges related to driving while impaired.

The NDP has until Friday at noon to nominate a replacement and get the necessary papers to Elections BC in order to have a candidate included on the ballot for the May 12 provincial election.

Pillow Fight Lands Man In Court

South Burlington Vt. Man Charged For Inciting Pillow Fight


The man police say organized an impromptu pillow fight in front of a Vermont mall is being dragged into court to face charges.

Darin Cassler, 21, of South Burlington, Vt., was charged Friday by city police after he allegedly incited a pillow fight at the town center on Church Street. Police said his actions warranted a disorderly conduct charge.

The feathery fracas was organized by Cassler, police say, and included about 50 participants. A video of the pillow pounding appears on several Internet sites and shows about a two-minute scrum that began and ended with a whistle being blown.

Not long after the whistle sounded ending the puffy clash, Cassler can be seen in video footage of the event being taken away by a police officer.

The pillow fight was organized on the social networking site Facebook, which listed the following rules:

- Bring a pillow and a container in which to conceal it.

- Assemble on the street as if you were loitering, do not acknowledge anyone else participating.

- Our host will shout 'pillow fight' and we will all spontaneously break into a big miasma of feathers and pillows.

- Soft pillows only!

- Swing lightly, many people will be swinging at once.

- Do not swing at people without pillows or with cameras.

- Remove glasses beforehand!

- The event is free and appropriate for all ages.

- Wait until the signal to begin.

- This event is more fun with feathers!

Click For Facebook Post On Event

Courtesy of WPTZ.com

Is Facebook losing its glow?

The following was a pretty good read I found in (on? it was online...hmmm) Fortune magazine, that I thought i'd share:

Is Facebook losing its glow?
The social networking site is still growing -- but that also means serious growing pains.

It's been a busy couple of months for social networking site Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the cover of FORTUNE (dressed in a tie, no less) and shared with us his plans to turn Facebook into the next digital communications platform. Soon thereafter he landed on Oprah Winfrey's couch to offer a tutorial on the site he'd initially built four years ago. In March the company launched a redesign that a vocal group of users roundly criticized. A few weeks after that chief financial officer Gideon Yu resigned unexpectedly, prompting bloggers to speculate that the company must be readying itself for a public offering.

Meanwhile the site has kept adding users at a rapid clip (the redesign has not kept newcomers away), and analysts are starting to raise questions about just how much Facebook is spending on infrastructure to maintain the large site.

It is hard to know much about Facebook's financial situation, because the company is privately held, and its management team has long been reluctant to address the issue of profits. Until now, executives and investors alike have said they place a priority on adding users and getting them to spend more time on the site. In my February interview with operating chief Sheryl Sandberg, she made it clear that the company was very focused on making money specifically so that it could continue to fund its user growth. And early board member Jim Breyer, who put in $1 million of his own money and $12.7 million from an Accel Partners fund, told me he wasn't demanding or even expecting immediate economic returns, saying profitability is "a key focus but there has never been a very specific time table."

Indeed, the company has a deep well of capital to fund its business. It has raised more than $400 million in financing so far. Its largest investor is Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), which paid $240 million in 2007 for a 1.6% stake in the company, giving Facebook a valuation of about $15 billion. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing also invested $120 million at the same valuation. (The company's internal valuation as of last June was $3.7 billion.)

But analysts posit that the business itself is becoming increasingly expensive to run. Facebook reports users are uploading more than 850 million photos each day and more than eight million videos. That's a lot of server space.

(And Facebook may not be able to make a return on all those new users. Some 70% of the site's members come from overseas, and many of them hail from countries where there is no real potential for drumming up advertising dollars.)

Will Facebook's 2009 revenues be enough to fund this growth? In 2008, the company brought in an estimated $280 milion. Most of that came directly from banner ads, and a substantial chunk was still coming from a deal with Microsoft in which the Internet behemoth sold traditional banner ads, which cost as little as $0.15 cents per one thousand ads shown to users.

But the company has said that it is on track to beat revenue projections and make 70% more than it did in 2008. In the past year, Facebook has doubled its sales team to more than 130. And a quick scan of the source code for the site's ads would confirm Facebook's assertion that the Microsoft deal accounts for an ever smaller number of the ads the site serves up.

Facebook is in fact seeing positive results with a new ad format it launched last fall, the engagement ad. A good case study comes from Vancouver, Wash.-based pizza restaurant Papa Murphy's, which ran an ad offering a free pizza to anyone who "became a fan" of the restaurant on the Facebook page it created. Users received notifications in their newsfeed and then were directed to the Papa Murphy's Web site to get their pie.

More than 131,000 users became a fan of the national pizza franchise saw traffic to its site jump 253%. And within two weeks, 1,200 people had posted to the site's wall. As Facebook's user base grows, advertisers continue to experiment with these types of ads even as they're pulling back in other areas.

Facebook's popularity seems not to have diminished: the company says more than half of its 200 million active users log on every day. And users spent 178 minutes on the site last month on average, according to Comscore, up 5 % from the previous month.

With so much momentum, will Zuckerberg look to go publlic soon? When Yu left the company, the Wall Street Journal quoted Zuckerberg in an internal memo saying the company would look for a new chief financial officer "with public company experience who can help take us to the next stage in our growth." Indeed, Zuckerberg has always alluded to an IPO, turning down early acquisition offers from large Internet companies. But Zuckerberg isn't revealing his plan. Any speculation as to whether Yu's departure suggests Facebook is hastening its plans is just that: speculation.

Is the end drawing near for Facebook?

Back in the 1870s, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota experienced a gold rush and quickly became home to gunfighters, gamblers, cussing and plenty of women woman "of poor reputation". Today, Deadwood is just a tourist trap in boring old South Dakota (No offence to anyone FROM South Dakota, but come on, even you'd have to agree!).

In many ways, that's exactly what's happened to the social-networking website Facebook.

Facebook's formative years (2003-2006) started out much like the Wild West had. Open, kind of barren, but people were free to do as they pleased without much worry of repercussions.

With ridiculous status updates, embarrassing photos, nasty late-night wall postings on an ex's wall following a "user is now single" update. With the creation of the news feed in September 2006, which allows a user to see what other users are doing, it was like picking up a newspaper in the morning and every article was a gossip story about someone you knew.

It was awesome!

But slowly, Facebook has evolved into something else. Something that managed to take up much more of my time, yet bores me in a way it never did before.

Here's how it happened....

Phase 1: Fear your neighbours! Then improvise!

When the media first discovered Facebook (scholars suggest this was sometime in late 2006 after it got a mention on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"), there was one nearly homogenous response in reporting - "lock your doors, hide your face, evildoers want your information!"

After being scared about their privacy, users started clamping down on the way they allowed their information to be seen. The news feed has slowly been reduced to a shadow of its former self, with many users choosing to severely limit the feature.

At the same time, the website skyrocketed in popularity to the point where both your mom and your boss (and even your bosses mom) were on it. Suddenly, those pictures of you being held by the ankles while you're performing a keg stand didn't seem like such a smart thing to post.

Worst of all, were all the reported cases of employers scouting out Facebook for dirt on potential employees. While Facebook profiles are always an idealized version of a person, soon people began setting their profiles to look like a bland virtual-resume...just in case.

This is not to say there's not some fun, risqué stuff on Facebook. There is. But with the tent growing larger and larger, it's no surprise that people have become more tentative and conservative with what they post and how they act.

Phase 2: Every day is exactly the same

Every Facebook user over 25 knows (but won't necessarily admit to it) that the best part of Facebook is "catching up" with someone you haven't seen in years.

Seeing their profile for the first time, with its orgy of photos (are they still hot? what?? they're hotter??), information on marital status, jobs and children (oh damn, i'm too late, she's married and has children) -- well, that's as good as Facebook gets.

Eventually though, you are going to run out of people that you will want to glean your years apart with a check of their profile.

But after that initial "catch-up", you are left with the day-to-day boring minutiae. A sample:

- Tom is going to the shower, then bed.
- Amy is tanning.
- Sarah is loving her new red kitchenaid mixer!
- Jenna is without power and cable at home.

I already have my own perfectly mundane life to deal with, I don't need to know yours.

Dr. Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University anthropologist has said that the brain's cognitive power limits the size of a person's (real-life) social network to about 150 people. That sounds reasonable.

Yet, There are people with over 500 Facebook friends (at last count). I've also seen others that have nearly 1,000 "friends". This is data Malcolm Gladwell should write a book about.

A lot of people on Facebook have massive networks, but must be inundated with so much data it's utterly pointless for them. They might as well be logged into someone else's account because there's no way they are interested in the majority of people on their account, Do they even remember when they added most of those people, or when that person added them? or who the heck most of those people even are?

You just can't care about your massive amount of Facebook friends, your brain won't do it.

Phase 3: Useful to the point it's work

It was reported that social networking has surpassed email in terms of worldwide popularity, with Facebook being the most popular of the social networking sites.

This is not surprising, as Facebook has an email system that simplifies getting in touch with people, as well as a built-in instant messenger.

Facebook has also become the go-to planning calendar for social groups of a certain age, with its Event interface making it easier than ever to plan a social gathering.

Add in socially-conscious groups to join, bands and TV shows I "need" to become a "fan" to promote, too many applications to count (I'm especially looking at you Scrabble!), birthday wishes to give and a quick log-in to Facebook can feel like the start of a marathon.

You know when you put off logging in to Facebook, the same way you put off taking out the trash, that's not a good sign for something that's supposed to be entertainment.

Somewhere along the line, Facebook stopped being a place to "creep" your ex-girlfriend's profile and became a semi-useful technology you can't live without.

The wild Deadwood of U.S. history eventually became Deadwood, the town that's a National Historic Landmark. Prettier, more useful and a lot less crazy - truly, the inverse of the mores of its founding.

That's the same fate awaiting Facebook. A place where people will stop by to say, "I remember that...It used to be fun here."

Nurses at Wisconsin medical center fired over cell phone photos of patient

Nurses accused of photographing a patient and posting the pictures on the Internet have been fired. Case Referred To FBI For Possible HIPAA Violations.



Two nurses at Mercy Walworth Medical Center in Lake Geneva, WI, accused of photographing a patient and posting the pictures on the Internet have been fired. The investigation started with an anonymous call from an employee at the medical center, with the allegation that a nurse took pictures of a patient with her cell phone and posted them on her Facebook page. County authorites said they have notified federal authorities of the allegation to see if there are federal and HIPAA violations.

The investigation started with an anonymous call from an employee at Mercy Walworth Medical Center in Lake Geneva, with the allegation that a nurse took pictures of a patient with her cell phone and posted them on her Facebook page.

Last week, the nurse told 12 News she never posted the pictures on the Internet. Investigators have since interviewed the nurse and said she offered more details.

"There were two nurses that independently took a picture each of an X-ray of a patient," Walworth County Under sheriff Kurt Picknell said.

The patient was admitted to the emergency room with an object lodged in his rectum. Police said the nurse explained she and a co-worker snapped photos when they learned it was a sex device. Police said discussion about the incident was posted on her Facebook page, but they haven't found anyone who actually saw the pictures.

The nurse removed her Facebook page from the Internet last week. Without more, Picknell said this conduct does not appear to violate any state laws. He has referred the case to the FBI.

"We've notified federal authorities of this allegation to see if there are federal violations, most notably HIPAA violations, patient rights," he said.

Facebook guru says nothing sinister in service terms

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has told his company's 175 million users that the recent changes his company has made to its terms of use have not been implemented for nefarious purposes.


A contentious clause in the social networking site's recently-amended terms of use has raised the ire of some Facebook users. It reads as follows:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service..."

The new terms of use, which were posted to Facebook on February 4, give the social networking site the right to hang onto information posted by users for as long as the site wants -- and even after that information is removed from a user's profile.

Privacy lawyer Brian Bowman told said that some users may want to consider using Canadian-owned social networking sites that must adhere to stricter privacy laws.

"You're probably going to be afforded much better privacy protection in Canada than you will in other countries, such as the United States," he said.

Zuckerberg, in a post published on The Facebook Blog on Monday, explained why the company made the changes it did.

He said the company changed the language of its terms of use because it better described the way the site works.

"When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created -- one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox," Zuckerberg said on The Facebook Blog.

"Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear."

"In reality," Zuckerberg continued in his posting, "we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work."

Zuckerberg said that people want full ownership and control of access to their information, while demanding full access to information that has been passed to them by others, such as email addresses, phone numbers, phone numbers and the like.

"These two positions are at odds with each other," Zuckerman said in his posting. "There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with."

The Facebook founder said his site's users that the contextual issues of privacy and information exchange on the Internet are complex and are constantly "being worked out."

Zuckerman said these issues form "difficult terrain to navigate," but he pledged his company would make efforts to "resolve them very seriously" as they arise in future.

The Real Chris Brown Stands Up

In his first statement since facing assault allegations, the singer's sorry, sad and certainly not venting on Facebook.

Chris Brown didn't update his Facebook status to ominously warn his friends about recently smacked around singer Rihanna. In his first statement on the "super scandal", he denies any of the comments attributed to him on the always accurate internet were his.

"Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired. I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God's help, to emerging a better person."

"Much of what has been speculated or reported on blogs and/or reported in the media is wrong. While I would like to be able to talk about this more, until the legal issues are resolved, this is all I can say except that I have not written any messages or made any posts to Facebook, on blogs or any place else. Those posts or writings under my name are frauds."

Media Takeout had posted a screenshot of Christopher Maurice Brown's Facebook with a status line "you'll begin to see her true colors. Believe me." It was then picked up by the New York Post and other suckas (like, um, me) before Chris denied it was his account.

Recent reports have claimed both Chris and Rihanna are in Los Angeles; Rihanna with her longtime assistant Melissa Forde and Chris with his mother Joyce Hawkins. A source tells Radar Online that Chris says he and Rihanna have broken up and he doesn't think she'll press charges.

Ya, good luck with that Chris. Her dad, Ronald Fenty, thinks Rihanna wants to set a good example for women in abusive relationships. "She has support from both sides of the family, and I think she'll come out and represent women and be a heroine," Ronald Fenty told People. "In the end, she'll speak out." That's where I'm hanging my hopes and dreams: that Rihanna's over at Tina Turner's house right now picking up that torch she's been meaning to pass on.

Appraisal pegs value of Facebook at $3.7B

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.

In a transcript of a June court hearing that was closed to the public, lawyers arguing over a legal settlement revealed Facebook's own appraisal had priced its privately held stock at $8.88 US per share, giving it a market value of about $3.7 billion US.

The Palo Alto-based company relied on the appraisal to value employee stock options fairly and avert possible tax problems.

Facebook, which currently runs the internet's largest social network, made the assessment after striking an October 2007 deal with Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft. As part of a broader advertising partnership with Microsoft, Facebook agreed to sell a 1.6 per cent stake to the software maker for $240 million US.

The Microsoft investment implied Facebook's stock was worth $35.90 per share — a figure that was relied upon in the settlement of a lawsuit that accused the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of stealing the idea for his online hangout from three former classmates who started another social network called ConnectU.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt declined to comment on any of the figures obtained from the court documents. Microsoft had no immediate comment.

Debate over worth of shares

In last June's court hearing, Facebook's lawyers argued the company's appraisal of its common stock couldn't be held up as an apples-to-apples comparison with the Microsoft investment because the software maker bought Series D preferred stock.

Microsoft also had an incentive to pay a premium for Facebook's stock because it wanted to deepen its ties to the company's popular website, whose worldwide audience of 150 million people could eventually attract billions of dollars in advertising.

Analysts believe Facebook generated somewhere between $250 million US and $300 million US in revenue last year.

Lawyers opposing Facebook said the company cited the $35.90 US per share figure in the settlement negotiations.

Zuckerberg's former classmates — Divya Narendra and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — balked at settling the case last March after learning Facebook determined its common stock was worth about one-fourth of the value derived from Microsoft's investment.

U.S. District Judge James Ware decided to enforce the settlement despite ConnectU's contention that it had been misled about the true value of Facebook's stock.

ConnectU's resistance to the settlement triggered widespread speculation about how much Facebook's stock is really worth.

Settlement reached this week

Facebook fought fiercely to keep the details of its market value and the ConnectU settlement under wraps. Before last June's hearing, Facebook lawyers persuaded Ware to remove reporters from a San Jose courtroom so the final details could be hashed out in private.

Large portions of that hearing are redacted in a transcript of the June hearing, but the Associated Press was able to read the blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document.

Under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. The stock was worth $45 million US, based on the Microsoft valuation, but only $11 million US under Facebook's own appraisal.

That means ConnectU received anywhere from $31 million US and $65 million US for settling the suit, depending on which stock valuation is used.

Facebook's stock probably is worth even less now because of a severe recession that has decimated the values of companies around the globe.

The $65-million settlement amount has been reported in the media this week, based on information that was inadvertently leaked by a law firm that represented ConnectU in the case against Facebook.

The firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, boasted about the $65 million US figure in a newsletter that was obtained this week by The Recorder, a legal publication.

ConnectU fired Quinn Emanuel before Ware signed off on the Facebook settlement.

Facebook hit by scams and viruses

The Better Business Bureau is warning that your Facebook site can be targeted by hackers, scam artists and ID thieves.

Facebook and other social networking sites are extremely popular because they allow us to connect and reconnect with people we know and trust.

Scammers take advantage of that trust.

Some of the top scams that have hit Facebook recently include the Friend in Distress Scam, the Koobface Virus, and the Viral Wall Post.

In the Friend in Distress Scam you get an email from a friend who says they are in trouble -- maybe stranded in a foreign country -- and need money wired to them.

The Koobface virus is spread when you get a message apparently from a friend saying "you look awesome or you look funny in this video". You're directed to an outside website and then instructed to download an updated version of Flash to view it. Agreeing to the update actually installs the virus. It can allow hackers to retrieve personal information and is very difficult to remove.

The Viral wall post is a similar scam which directs you to an outside page to view a photo. But-clicking on the link will allow hackers to gain access to your personal account and post the same message -- seemingly coming from you on your friends' walls.

To limit your risk, keep private information private. Take down unnecessary personal information. It's not being coy to withhold your year of birth. That information can be enough to make you a victim of ID theft. The same applies to your phone numbers and addresses.

Be extremely wary of messages that direct you to another web site via a hyperlink.

Use your computer's antivirus and firewall software and update them regularly, and finally be selective when choosing friends. You might not want to be rude, but you should decline a request for friendship if you don't actually know the person.

Should you and your boss be (Facebook) friends?

The social networking phenom known as Facebook's been around for almost five years -- a lifetime in the Internet world -- and by now it has become a mainstay of workers who want to kill a little (or a lot) of time updating their statuses and playing Scrabble.

Hidden deep beneath the site's fun, technological distractions, some people are actually using the site for its intended purpose: networking (social and professional).

You know, touching base and building relationships with people -- all things that used to be done in person with awkward phone calls and cocktail-party pleasantries.

At workplaces, online networking has become an effective way for co-workers within the same building or on different continents to connect. Bosses and employees are also befriending each other, which can make balancing personality and professionalism difficult.

There are obvious drawbacks to letting the boss see too much of your non-work self, but do the positives compensate?

Friend request accepted

Before you decide if you should be your superior's Facebook friend, you have to ask yourself why you would want to be online buddies. Is everyone else in your department connected online or are you going to be the only employee "SuperPoking" the boss? (that really does give a whole new meaning to the term "poking the boss")

"If you work for a forward-thinking company whose entire staff is on Facebook, then your participation is the online equivalent of lunching with co-workers or a water cooler chat," says Patrice-Anne Rutledge, a social networking expert and author of "The Truth About Profiting from Social Networking."

"The advantage to connecting with a current or former boss on Facebook is the opportunity for more personalized networking. When you connect online, you get to know someone better," Rutledge says.

"You could discover a common interest in marathon running, foreign films or yoga, for example, that could help your boss get to know you better as a person. These personal connections can become a major asset when you're looking to move forward in your career or find a new job."

Of course, networking with colleagues is different than befriending the boss.

Do you or don't you?

Naturally, you don't necessarily want to be your boss's virtual pal if you have something to hide. The obvious drawback to online friendship is that your profile is open to your list of friends, and that means the good and the bad of your online persona is fair game.

"If you use Facebook to air political rants, document your wild weekend escapades, post wacky photos or vent about your job, you should obviously have some concerns about letting your boss view this aspect of your life," Rutledge cautions. "But what's important to remember is that no online content is truly private, even if your intention is to share this information only with your Facebook friends. Facebook makes your profile viewable to anyone in the networks you belong to, even if you're not directly connected with or even know all the network members," Rutledge says.

You should be monitoring your online content as though your current and future boss can see it, even if they aren't on your buddy list.

"Unprofessional online content, or 'digital dirt' as it's often called, is a problem that goes beyond Facebook. Anything you post online is essentially public and can affect your career and job prospects, both positively and negatively."

The rules of engagement

Like the beginning of any relationship, online networking requires that someone make the first move. As you might expect, you need to be the judge based on your experience at the company.

"In some cutting-edge companies, entire work groups -- from VPs to interns -- are on Facebook and interact regularly. In other circumstances, the proper etiquette would be to wait for an invitation or bring up the subject during a private discussion to see if your boss is open to the idea," Rutledge says. You don't want to put your boss in an awkward position or come across as presumptuous.

"In other companies, younger workers may be hard-pressed to find any members of senior management on Facebook," she explains. "The bottom line is that you really need to understand the 'unwritten rules' in your corporate culture to determine the appropriate way to initiate a Facebook connection."

But if you have some unsavory online content attached to your profile, what do you do if your boss made the first move?

"Declining this invitation obviously isn't a very smart idea, but you can remove your digital dirt before accepting the connection." Rutledge suggests that, if your profile is viewable to the entire company or city network, the boss may have already seen it, so a speedy clean-up is in your best interest.

For the sake of your professionalism, here are some important factors to keep in mind when logging into Facebook or similar sites:

- Networks. The default setting on many sites allows a profile to be viewable to people in your networks, which can be defined by broad categories like your city or alma mater. You have to actively restrict who can see your information. In your settings options, you can opt to be someone's friend but not let them see your pictures or what comments people leave on your Wall. This way you can still be yourself and maintain a good professional relationship with your boss.

- Audience. If your profile can be seen by people who aren't friends, keep in mind that your views aren't necessarily shared by everyone. So your current boss might agree with your diatribe against a Supreme Court ruling, but a future employer might not.

- The Wall. The Wall, which is the place where friends can post comments or videos to your profile, is viewable to all of your friends and networks (unless you restrict access to it). Even if you're on your best behavior, you should make sure your friends are, too. Otherwise, hilarious but inappropriate accounts of your wilder days can creep into your profile.

New Zealand police use Facebook to stop crime

Theft 101:

- When breaking into a premises, Wear gloves so you don't leave prints, and a mask, so you aren't recognized or recorded on camera
- DON'T take mask and gloves off!!!!!
- DON'T look up for camera's without a mask on!!
- If you find that you have been caught on tape... DON'T post images of yourself performing the theft or robbery on your Facebook page

Police in southern New Zealand nabbed a would-be burglar after they posted security camera images of him trying to break into a safe on the popular social networking site, Facebook.

The Queenstown police are calling it their first Facebook arrest. The police department created its online presence on the site just two months ago, said Constable Sean Drader.

"It's pretty popular, isn't it, this site?" Drader said Wednesday, surprised at the quick success.

The 21-year-old masked man allegedly broke into a local pub through a roof early Monday morning and spent considerable time trying to crack open a safe using an angle grinder.

"It's a very small room that he broke into, and it was hot weather. It's summer here," Drader said. "There are sparks flying all about him. And after about an hour, he gets too hot and takes his gloves and balaclava off."

Unable to break open the safe, the man gave up and got ready to leave, Drader said.

"He looks around to see if he's forgotten anything, and he looks up right at the camera. It was rather silly. We got a good look," he said.



The police department posted the surveillance camera photos on its Facebook page. By the next day, the man was in custody, fingered by viewers who recognized him from the images on the site, and from TV segments on the Facebook posting.

Police did not release the suspect's name, but said the Queenstown native is charged with two counts of burglary.

Facebook, the Web's most popular social networking site, allows users to create personal profiles. They can then connect with one another, upload photos and share links. The site boasts more than 90 million active users.

In November, Facebook helped a seafood restaurant owner in Melbourne identify five customers who dined on oysters, trout and expensive wine and then bolted without paying the US $323 bill.

According to media reports, the owner remembered one of the diners asking about a former waitress.

The waitress suggested the restaurateur look through her friend's list on Facebook. A quick scroll later, the owner spotted one of the bill dodgers.

Find old friends on Facebook

Facebook is a great way to meet up with friends you haven't spoken to in years. Reunite with your old home town friends online or take your old group offline for a reunion. Either way, you can talk about the old days together.
Get started by opening up a Facebook account online. Facebook requires your email address so they can confirm your identity and start you off with a new account. Either use your own name so your old friends can find you or choose an alias ID if you are skeptical about being online.

Next, Fill in your profile as best as you can with some details about yourself. You will want your old friends to be able to find you easily and by putting down details about you, they will! Write down some of your old and present hobbies, old schools, jobs etc. Facebook gives the user the opportunity to search for old friends by keywords.

Uploads some photos of yourself so people can recognize you. You do not have to include photos of yourself or your face, but it is helpful if you want old friends to identify you. Include photos of your travels, favorite places, or of anything you like as long as they remain within the Facebook guidelines.

Write a thorough description about yourself and tell your old friends what you have been up to over the years. Let old friends see your hometown, your present location and what you are doing now. Be personable and friendly with your description. A friendly approach to the Facebook online community is the way to start and rekindle some good friendships.

Finally, Perform a search for old friends by putting in keywords to the search. Put in your old high school, sports teams, clubs or your university class. Put in your home town if you are looking for old friends that were raised in the same town. You can search for any old friend you wish.

Facebook has really helped people in reconnecting with there past. It's been a GREAT help! people that haven't seen each other in years, sometimes decades have found each other on Facebook.

I personally have benefited from Facebook's huge membership base, having searched for a an old friend from my junior high for over 14 years, back when I was younger, the internet wasn't really around, the early years of my search was pretty much searching through phone books, along with hoping to meet a mutual friend somewhere, anywhere (the subway, the street..anywhere) so I could ask them if they knew of her whereabouts.
As the internet grew in popularity, (it didn't really take off until I was around 23-24) not having had any luck with my old phone book search, and not having really met anyone with any good information they could give me, I then used Yahoo, then Altavista, then Google, entering her name into searches multiple times over the years in the hopes that i'd be able to locate her, nothing really ever came up.

Then finally, along came Facebook, and although it didn't hit me right away to search for her on there, I finally got it (hey, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer..but things eventually do come to me!) I entered her name into the search hit search...waited for my slow wireless connection (that never seems to want to work properly right when I want it to) to load the results page.. Sucess!! it found one...but was it her? I mean, several people can have the same name right? it looked like her, but its also been 14 years (aged a heck of a lot better then I did!!!) I sent a message...and waited... and waited...and waited.... a good 2 and a half weeks went by before I got a reply (women really do love to make guys wait, don't they?) the email confirmed that it was in fact her, and my search was over (finally).

Thankfully, she remembered who I was... we got re-acquainted somewhat over the next little while, I was in the best of moods that I had been in, in several years.

We met up for a coffee, I have to tell you, my heart was beating 1000x a minute when I first heard her voice and saw her again...
She was now a mother of 2 adorably beautiful little girls (they took after there mother for sure).... and was engaged to be married.

We would continue talking for a few weeks more before she and her husband to be decided that it was best that she and I no longer continue our friendship.

Maybe not the ending I was forseeing all those years I searched for her, but I was glad that I had at least found her again and my search had come to an end after all that time and I was happy to see that she found happiness, I wouldn't have to wonder what happened to her and if she was happy any longer.

To close off this posting, You know who you are, I don't know if you'll ever read this... But I want you to know that even though we no longer converse, I still do think of you.. Congratulations on the wedding.

Until next time....