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Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

November 10, 2009

The Self-Destructing Worm: Crawling into an iPhone Near You!

Within a few days of publishing an article entitled “The iPhone is the worst phone in the world“, the iPhone self-destructing worm came into play. Is Flora Graham clairvoyant? Or is it just that the iPhone is simply going downhill just like any other ex super-hyped, highly-priced technological device about to hit the gutter?

Around 8 months from posting her article: How I learned to stop worrying and love the iPhone, Flora Graham brutally attacks the iPhone in terms of dropping calls, data gaps, poor overall design, relatively short battery life and so on. I am curious here: What brought about this hate after what seemed to be a deeply entrenched “love” relationship built on trust and respect for the phone’s features and the tools it provides?

Ikee iPhone Wallpaper

Ikee iPhone Wallpaper

Personally, I never was interested in buying an iPhone; the Blackberry was more appealing to me due to its highly facilitated and flexible access to e-mails. However, I keep up with the latest technology news and reviews and have never yet, up until the past week, come across such negative reviews about the iPhone then all of a sudden, boom, the iPhone’s fairly good reputation starts heading down hill!

“The 21-year-old hacker, Ashley Towns, has written a worm – a type of self-replicating computer program similar to a virus, that changes the iPhone’s wallpaper to show a picture of 80’s pop singer Rick Astley and displays the message “ikee is never going to give you up“.”

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, to what extent are we really safe with technology? And how long can we depend on our phones and even computers to keep our information intact and safe from hacks, spam and / or theft?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts down below :)

Filed under: Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 8:47 pm

October 31, 2009

Google Social Search: What a criminal wants? [video]

Last week, Google announced its experimenting with a new social search feature. The feature simply combines your Twitter, Facebook, Google (…etc) contacts and friends and includes their photos, updates and entries in your search results.

Besides the immediate “this is interesting and should be useful” thought, it got me wondering, do we really want that? Think of it from this: without the option of having each and every update of your friends searchable, people were complaining about others “stalking” them on Facebook and MySpace. Imagine now, when instead of just inferring information from the bits and pieces everyone posted, you can actually search for whatever you want to learn about.

Imagine a thieve looking for an easy target to steal with 1000 “friends” on Facebook and 10,000 Twitter followers. A simple “vacation+from” search on Google, limiting it by time, would get him all “friends” out of town. Now, we can agree that the user who posted the “I’m on vacation from-to” online is an idiot, while Google is just making it easier to track all of that.

Below is the video introduction of Google’s social search experiment. Let us know your thoughts.

Filed under: App Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 5:05 pm

October 12, 2009

HOW TO: Protect Your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook from Hackers!

Hotmail

Hotmail

Note: If you have a Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL account, it’s advisable to change your password now!

Last week, about 10,000 Hotmail user accounts and passwords were posted on a developer’s forum. The accounts listed were the ones starting with the letters A and B hinting that this is just a snippet from a bigger list of accounts that have been compromised.

To further freak out webmail users, another list containing a cocktail of about 30,000 Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL user’s accounts was leaked later on during the week.

So how did they do it?

Apparently, people are still not able to tell the difference between an authentic website and a phishing website. Most of the compromised accounts on the list were obtained using fake websites that ask for your login and password to authenticate your account. While campaigns educating the user on how to better protect himself or herself from phishing scams have been running nonstop for the past 5 years, they can’t be blamed for falling for such scams.

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Tips and How To’s, Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 4:51 pm

September 9, 2009

Social Media Accused of Turning Users to Targets… Who’s to Blame?

Is it always fair to blame others for our mistakes? Since the introduction of Web 2.0, why is social media being held responsible for almost every little thing that goes wrong in our lives? To what extent do our ignorance and negligence play a role in making us targets to many different types of undesirable situations, such as theft and so on?

A brief intro…

Precisely 2 days ago, I came across the following article entitled “Burglars using Facebook, Twitter to find targets“. My first initial reaction, naturally, was: Oh my God! Social media is seriously a threat; its usage disadvantages are way more than the benefits one reaps from using it!

It took me some time to reassess and reevaluate the topic and look at it from a different point of view. Then, a while after, I remembered a line from a previous Thoughtpick article entitled “How Safe Are You? Privacy and Risks in Social Networks”, and I quote: “Think about it this way, what would be the effect of putting a neon sign on your front lawn saying “On vacation till the 25th””!

Is Social Media Guilty as Charged?

Is Social Media Guilty as Charged?

Different scenarios, same outcome!

Let’s take the following scenarios:

  • Scenario 1: You leave your wallet somewhere, on the table, in a crowded place. You come back and find it missing. (Who’s to blame?)
  • Scenario 2: You forget your car keys inside your car for a whole night. The next morning, you come back and oops, your car is gone. (Who’s to blame?)
  • Scenario 3: You tell everyone you know on Facebook or Twitter that you’re leaving on vacation and you’re worried about your little kitty that will be staying home alone and you come back to an empty house laced with yellow police tape. (Again, who’s to blame?)

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 2:07 pm
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