Posts Tagged ‘Orkut’
Safeguard Your Orkut Profile
With the spread of social networking came a whole lot of security concerns, especially for those who’re actively involved and have a good amount of their personal information stored online. Orkut, being a slightly older social network, has been known to have quite a bit of nefarious activity going on. If you wish to secure yourself and your online avatar on Orkut, here are a few tips to do so…
Secure your Password
The easiest way for someone to access all of your information is to gain your password. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, never use Orkut or any other social networking software at a cybercafe you’re not familiar with (or if possible, don’t use it at ANY cybercafe). It’s really easy to install malicious programs such as Key-Loggers that record your keystrokes and allow people to phish for your login details easily at such places. Needless to say, never enter your login details into a third party site and always look for the line https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?… in your URL while logging in.
Orkut’s known for spam from autobots and random “fraandsheep” requests. Be vigilant and don’t accept friend requests from every Tom, Dickwinder and Hari that sends one your way.
Set your Privacy Settings
In Orkut’s Privacy settings (which comes under ‘My Settings’) the last box allows you to set privileges or rights for what kind of content of yours is accessible to fellow social networkers. If you wish your scrap book, videos, testimonials or photos to be private, set them to allow “only friends” or “only friends of friends” to view them. This ensures that not every troll out there has access to your profile. If you wish to take it a step further, you can set it up so that that only friends of friends, or only people who know your email address can send you friend requests.
Accept Friend Requests Cautiously
Orkut’s known for spam from autobots and random “fraandsheep” requests. Be vigilant and don’t accept friend requests from every Tom, Dickwinder and Hari that sends one your way. In fact, its a good idea to check someone’s profile before you accept their request, to ensure they’re not the social degenerate or sexually frustrated low-life that would creep you out.
Beware of Unofficial Mail
Every now and then you’ll come across some fishy looking email in your inbox, telling you that you need to ‘reconfirm’ your details (i.e. password) in order to continue using Orkut. Ignore any such mail and block those that send it. There are loads of people out there who come with with legit looking mailers and/or websites that ask you for your login details, please beware of them and trust only the main site with your account details.
Downloading Files for Orkut = Bad!
A lot of unofficial sites offer supposedly “powerful applications” that are nothing but stacks of Trojans and key-loggers. Don’t download anything but official Orkut applications to ensure that you don’t get screwed over.
Ensure your Password’s not easy
Last but not the least, please ensure that your password is everything but easy to crack. Keeping it a variation of your name and/or your last name is downright retarded; please refrain from doing so. Using a mix of alphabetical and numeric characters is a great idea. Most of the time we get lazy and decide to keep it something that’s easy to remember, which, in most cases, is easy to crack too. Keep a difficult password and remember it! If your memory sucks as much as mine does, write it down in a diary you own, or any other place that’s only accessible to you.
MySpace to Lay Off 30 Percent of Staff
MySpace, the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said it will cut 30 percent of its staff to lower costs as it struggles to stay popular in the face of rising competition. MySpace will be left with about 1,000 employees, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. The company declined to say how many people work at the service, but the percentage suggests that about 400 people will lose their jobs.
The cuts, which were presaged in several blog reports in recent weeks, are the biggest move so far by new management at the social network and an attempt, it said, to return the service to a “start-up culture.” “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered by our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” MySpace’s new chief executive, Owen Van Natta, said in the statement. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace.” News Corp named Van Natta as CEO in April. He replaced Chris DeWolfe, one of MySpace’s co-founders. News Corp’s new digital media chief, Jonathan Miller, said MySpace “grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace.” The layoffs will happen across MySpace’s operations, though many of its employees are based in Los Angeles. A company spokeswoman declined to say when employees will learn that they are losing their jobs.
MySpace is facing increasing competition from social network Facebook. Facebook and Twitter, a website that lets people tell others what they’re doing, are surpassing MySpace in buzz and popularity in the technology and media worlds. The job cuts came the same week as the number of Facebook users in the United States surpassed those of MySpace for the first time, according to Web measurement company comScore. Facebook’s edge was narrow, with 70,278,000 unique visitors to its website in May versus MySpace’s 70,237,000. Still, the change marks a key triumph for Facebook. MySpace’s U.S. user numbers have fallen since October 2008. Worldwide, Facebook had more than 307 million unique visitors in April, according to comScore, the latest month for which data was available. MySpace had more than 123 million. MySpace forms a large part of Fox Interactive Media, a News Corp unit that houses several of the company’s digital operations. The unit, which people in the media business call “FIM,” recently called off a move into a large office building in Playa Vista in Los Angeles. MySpace also is facing the likelihood that an advertising deal with Google Inc that brought it $300 million a year over three years will be renegotiated on terms that will be far less lucrative to the social network when the original contract expires in 2010.
Tweets Can Spell Trouble in Divorce Cases
Anu Sharma, 30, suspected that her husband was lying to her every time he cited urgent business tours to stay out of the house. One day she finally got proof in the form of a tweet. The next day, she filed for divorce, using the tweet as evidence.
When it comes to fighting a divorce case, tweets are not necessarily sweet. Your status message on social networking websites can even be used as secondary evidence in court cases.
Legal experts say tweets and messages on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut can reveal one’s state of mind; therefore they can be taken as secondary evidence in legal matters. This clause comes under the IT Act of 2000, amended in October last year.
Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer, said: “The IT Act of 2000 was primarily legislation promoting e-commerce and the concept of social networking was not even heard of then. Thus, this clause was incorporated because of the widespread use of microblogging and social networking sites.”
“This trend is catching up now, specially in divorce cases, although it started only last year,” Duggal told IANS.
Citing Anu Sharma’s example, Duggal said: “Her husband used to give her excuses that he was going out on business tours. But instead he would meet friends and socialise. Finally, he was caught when on one of his ‘so called’ business tours, he tweeted: ‘Having a great time with friends over beer, I am in town, come over and join me.’
“Tweets and status messages are usually taken up as secondary evidence. And they are as important as the primary ones,” Duggal told IANS.
He said even an angry tweet or status message like, “I hate my wife”, if produced in court as a printout or screen shot becomes secondary evidence.
“Any written word available in the public domain can be used under this Act. A statement like this can be used on grounds of mental cruelty,” added Duggal.
Agreed Karnika Seth, attorney at law firm Seth Associates who specialises in cyber crime.
“There are couples who are filing for divorce on reasons which could not have been proved before, but with tweets and status message updating several times a day, it works as additional evidence, often making adultery easy to prove,” Seth told IANS.
She also added that many people used to hire private detectives, but this had become a new way of finding the truth.
“In one such case, a man had e-mailed threatening messages to his wife. His IP address could be traced, but the message was not digitally signed, thus the messages were taken as a secondary evidence and a divorce case was filed.”
Seth said a numeric address or domain name given to a website to track it is called IP address. Digital signatures are specially designed icons or even one’s original sign encrypted on the e-mails are the two criteria on the basis of which primary or secondary evidence is distinguished.
According to her, blogs and chat messages can also be used as evidence.
As the clause is only a few months old, no specific statistics is available yet on how many people have used tweets or status messages in legal matters.
Maninder Walia, researcher with the website Cybersmart, feels the act curbs people’s freedom of speech and thoughts.
“The idea behind this act is to control the ever expanding cyber crime which is a threat to national security. But when it comes to freedom of speech and thoughts, this act may be a hindrance,” he said.
Walia feels if a person writes on his or her status message about drinking a lot or something similar, this could also be presented as evidence tagging him or her as an alcoholic in court.
He feels social networking sites are easy interaction platforms, hence things written as tweets, status messages in good humour or otherwise should not be put under the scanner.
“The law needs to pinpoint what kind of information should be used as evidence and in what cases. The act should be reviewed; the internet is moving fast, the law should not lag behind technology,” he said.