Facebook Year in Review: Privacy issue?

It seems you can check the year in review for any of your friends. Here is how...

Just replace username in the following textlink with the facebook username of your friend
(When you go to the facebook profile of your friend, username is something that appears after facebook.com/user.name42)
And voila!!!
This will give your a sneak preview of what your friend was up to last year!
https://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/username 

Should anyone be crying out for privacy? Nope! I think the feed grabs what you already shared with friends or publicly. So, chill! It could be a nice way to catch up with your friend too.

Also, there is another way:
https://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/friends/

This is more aggregate view of all of friends' feeds.

If you have more time, there are also other nice things in FB year in review
http://www.facebookstories.com/2013/en-en
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Scam: Free $500 Costco Cash Voucher ...

I have noticed that couple of friends have already been scammed by so called " Free $500 Costco Cash Voucher".
The scammers have used a nice trick to trap the people by redirecting people to website with url address something like:
costco. com. something .xx
It is crafty!
It is deceiving in the first look as there is costco.com in the url. However, it is subdomain for that something .xx website where the script is running.
The first step gets the code and in the second step, you are simply allowing it to post on behalf of you. As you can see below, the app ends up posting on your behalf and the scam spreads faster since "you" posted the advertisement.

The app puts three pictures in your profile.

Note the URL at the top. It is dot tm website. The attention and steps are very convincing!

Whenever you "allow" an app, keep the permission to "only me" so that such scams will not spread too fast.

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input: Facebook, process Worfram Alpha

You can learn about your facebook data using
Wolfram Alpha...... http://t.co/o0AmTL3h

I was impressed with the clusters that it picked out from my profile.
It could clearly classify my friend's circles:
For example: I could see friends made in a conference/workshop, being differentiated from physics friends and blogger friends etc.
Try yours!

My Facebook cluster

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Schedule posts in #Facebook page

Yes, this feature is live now!

Scheduled posts are my favorite tools in blogging.
I usually write in my spare time (#?) and schedule 'em to have them uniformly distributed in the weeks. I schedule my posts in blogger (keep few in draft), schedule tweets in tweetdeck. Tweetdeck had schedule feature for facebook pages, however I do not remember that feature working correctly (instant post, yes; no schedule via tweetdeck). Now I can also schedule in facebook pages. I am sure many like the schedule feature as it allows one to post the items in due time. (Well this was not scheduled :P )
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Add Interests in facebook stream

Hide all by Texas Poker.

Facebook wall is mostly filled with activities. If your FB friends are addicted to games or apps, it is going to be very near to the noise level.
One of the ways to handle such noise is to block the app or hide the story from the annoying app.

On the other hand, Facebook has come up with better way to keep users engaged.  It is called interests (no, not pinterest! :P).
https://www.facebook.com/addlist/#

You can manage and create interesting list there.
For example, if you are interested in food, or news, or something else, there is a list  which you can subscribe to.

I have also created a Nepali Bloggers interests list:
https://www.facebook.com/lists/10150630800961229
You can subscribe to it. I will be adding more blogs into it. Or, even better, you can make your own and let me know, I will subscribe to it.
:)

Another case of innovative Facebook spam App

Yesterday @aakarpost tweeted...
"फेसबुकमा मेरो फोटो को पोष्टकार्ड बनाएर ह्याप्पी तिज भन्न थाले ! अति गर्छन् यार !"
http://twitpic.com/69y1v5

I thought: well he is a star, so no wonder if people/ladies go crazy (on teez :P )!

Today, I saw similar message on my wall. 
Half dozen other friends also saw the similar post and they all "liked" them.
Having seen similar wall post before,  it clicked to me:
It is a spammy app for sure!

The trick here is to show the picture of the person looking into the app. This makes the post virtually likeable by anyone who is viewing it. No wonder other people liked it because they were thinking that the first person wished him/her.

Need to spam friend?
There is an app for that...

Facebook's Free Apps and Free Info they pull

Well, let me give you a free app and pull some of your info to serve you "better"... I need this, this, and that ... well everything on your database!

How social virus can spread

Social networks are often the soft target for the spammers because if it can be broken into, it can be easily infected. Once I was in a machine learning conference in New York and one of the presenter was saying that the half life of the social infection is 30 minutes.

The clicks propagate very fast. So, the maximum damage is done within 30 minutes of spreading such infection.

During last few months so many friends have been infected. A few I could remember:

"I cried after watching videos"

"Who is not following you/who unfriended me"

etc etc
The topics are made spooky so that people will be interested towards it. You click, and your walls are hacked and what not. It becomes a matter of social shame.

Mahesh shares a detailed story of how he got it and how to avoid it.

Information about How virus is spreading from facebook!

Beware, next time when you see "interesting" link to videos on the facebook. What might be little helpful is to watch where the link goes when you hover the mouse over the video and watch the link address on the status bar.

Google+ just rightly pitched?

Wave was over hyped, Buzz was under hyped.

Wave was not available to many, that made it useless. You were (luckily) in the wave, but then so what? Without many friends, what are you supposed to wave at?
Buzz was pushed as a free item. That took hit on its value. You were already in but the response was,"But ... but I was not ready for its hot-ness".

Google+ is pitched just in between. It has been properly hyped, being made available subsequently.  Increasing the expectations and value.  However, they have to rush the process of getting people in. I have a lot of friends who wanted in, but could not get in because of the systematic delay. They need to get in before it starts cooling like wave again. Google+ needs to catch the mood, and catch it fast.

The best thing so far, other than hangout, is that the wall posts are not automated.
I wonder how many people are already tired of automated  $#!* they get on their facebook wall? If it was important to post, would not you already post it manually?

Circlehack your Facebook Friends

One of the cool factor of the Google plus was the feature of circle.  Being able to group contacts in different circle was definitely a nice feature over the facebook (FB).

Few clever people thought of doing it the other way around.
Thus,  circlehack!
http://www.circlehack.com/

The app requires few permissions, looks fine.
Once you enable, you can add your FB friends in circle.
Although it is not the facebook product, circlehack provides one of the feature that facebook lacked in comparison to Google+.

Screenshot, click on the image to see bigger version.

There are few improvements yet to be done:

• One can add to the circle, but can not remove. Being able to modify the circle would be great.  
• Zooming into Circles (does Google+ have that feature?)
• Nice animation features of Google+ are missing. But is OK.

All of the comments above becomes irrelevant once I learn that it was an overnight project (phew!).

Informed via techcrunch
The source is available at:
https://github.com/voloko/facebook-circles

From Like button to Recommend in Facebook

It might already be there on the air.

Facebook's Like button can be generalized to create some product called "Recommend".

Say, if you liked apple, orange and banana, you may also like mango... How about strawberry?

Similarly, if you liked a blog post or article tagged as "politics", then you may also like another post with the "world news" tag in it.
Something like that.

I know that Amazon already has it. I am not sure if Facebook has it.

One could also scan the user's cache to recommend the items from their history. Sounds intrusive? Well, did not you (already) give up the idea of anonymity by Liking it??  If you liked google's adsense, you will (also) probably like this idea.

Change your Facebook's Privacy setting... again!

Facebook does it again.



Facebook / Account / Privacy Settings / Applications and Websites / Instant Personalization / Uncheck Allow

When attempted to unselect ...

Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application.

Wow!!!

Facebook New Layout

Finally, I got the new layout released into my account.

I like this new layout except for the fact that they have taken my most favorite button under the "account" section. Guess which one is it?
Yep: LOGOUT!
The compelling new feature of this one are the reinforcement of sending messages... I call it Facebook Email.
Similarly, Facebook chat is more handy. Notification was kinda eyesore... It can be more irritating now if they put red stuff to highlight it.
Search is there... (ohh at the top!) but it is still not the big thing in facebook... YET. :P
I really appreciate Facebook for not putting "my-space/yahoo" kind of irritating ads and also for not tuning personal ads (see this one on how they really can).

old versus new layout.

Facebook Hacked?

Just for a moment, I think it was.
My history shows that I was actually redirected to hacked page...

I landed on the page with various offers...

while trying to get out of the page I had another prompt:

Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?
Would you like more information?  Call 1-877-215-0994
Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the current page

How to un-friend and report fake profile in Facebook

Recently, I found a fake profile on Facebook. 
Few months back I thought it was not an issue because s/he had only few friends made from the fake profile, pretending to be someone else. But, at this moment I can see that more than 12 dozen people have fallen into it.  I talked with many of them... so far no one knows who is this guy on Facebook whom they are friend with. I am quite surprised to see how lightly people take making online friends. No wonder why scams happen all the time!

No one seems to have evaluated the risk factor in making friend with a fake person. The most interesting factor seems to be the "Mutual friend". They accepted this fake guy because they thought this has mutual friend with their friend whom they personally knew!  So, the effect propagated. I had also fallen into the trap of making friend with this fake guy. But once alarmed by some random post, I withdrew it.
Now, the fake profile is talk of the town.  
So the current question is how to report or block the fake profile.

Facebook policy does not allow you to be the friend and yet report it.
So, one has to un-friend first and then report. Here are the screenshots.

Beware of fake profiles!
Once they are under your skin, you can be under trouble!

Facebook: Privacy issues

I have come across numerous buzz about the Facebook's ever changing Privacy Policy.
Obviously, there are many users whose profiles settings are auto adjusted without their knowledge. The setting is changed based upon their usages. Making them available to the highest bidders. No wonder if your profile info and pictures appear in the Bing (Microsoft partner) or Google in near future.

I would like my Facebook profile be shared with only friends and to some extent friends of friends. Why would some random people have access to my profile?
I noted that access to my pictures were made public. I have changed it. Some other items were also changed, which I have changed back to old settings.

Another thing I came across was the fact that friends (who plays games, even if I do not) could share my info.

The conclusion flying around is:

Facebook wants to quitely present you to the highest bidder!

If you do not want be indexed in search engine:
Go to Settings>>Privacy Settings>>Search>> then UNSELECT the box that says 'Allowindexing'.

Don't want friends exposed?
Hide friends list:

Recommended:

• http://gawker.com/5426176/facebooks-great-betrayal

• http://www.facebook.com.../group.php?gid=27233634858

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/4413483/Networking-site-cashes-in-on-friends.html

• http://gawker.com/5427422/blocked-on-facebook-gawker-facebook-privacy-guide

• http://gawker.com/5428155/the-facebook-privacy-settings-youve-lost-forever

Facebook Privacy update: Why invade my privacy?

Leave my privacy settings alone!

Can a bank change privacy setting to let people see daily transactions?