Items tagged with social
Some people look to their horror movie collection for a good scare, but others can just look at the realities of privacy invasion online. We're continually being tracked by companies all over the internet that use collected information for targeted marketing. This goes beyond simply seeing an ad for something you freely posted about or even searched online, but ads that come out of nowhere that seem to perfectly target you. The more you post on your social media accounts, the more information is technically out there about you. Facebook is arguably one of the biggest breach of privacy offenders on the planet, having disclosed numerous security breach incidents over the years - and especially...
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Earlier this year, Facebook came under fire when it was discovered that the company let a ton of user information fall into the hands of marketing companies. It's hard to say how that incident will affect Facebook in the long-run, but what we do know is that the aftermath has already led to the creation of a new feature. Around the time the Facebook security debacle went down earlier this year, users who were previously sent messages by company founder Mark Zuckerberg discovered that those messages were suddenly missing. As it happens, someone in charge decided to unsend those messages, which is a clear misuse of power, especially as users themselves don't have access to such functionality. After...
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If you use Facebook Messenger, hate malware, and always click on links you're sent without a second thought, then you're going to want to exercise more caution moving forward. A new strain of malware has been making the rounds since March, and depending on how you view things, the effect of "Nigelthorn" is somewhat smashing! This latest malware is named after the Nigel Thornberry character in the popular The Wild Thornberrys cartoon, and while it might seem like an odd choice, it was done because the malware works by exploiting the 'Nigelify' browser extension that changes pictures into an image of the character. Other extensions are affected as well, but not with the same reach as Nigelify....
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Facebook has been embroiled in an almost obscene amount of controversy this past week, as governments begin to ask the social networking giant how a third-party firm managed to acquire comprehensive details on 50 million of its users. A year ago, the idea that Facebook was abused to steer the US election could have been considered a conspiracy, but now, it's widely believed to be likely. Not long after this story originally broke, there was an immediate uptick in the number of people deciding to close or delete their Facebook account. Before long, #DeleteFacebook became a trending hashtag, and it's growing momentum. For a regular user to delete their Facebook account, it may not seem very dramatic....
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Feel left out not seeing advertisements in Facebook's Messenger? Don't fret: that's going to be changing real soon. Following what Facebook touts as being a successful test in Australia and Thailand, the social media giant is planning to expand advertising in its Messenger service to the rest of the world. For advertisers, this is a great move, although the verdict remains out as to whether or not it will cause Messenger fans to revolt. In an example provided, it appears that the advertising never appears inside of chats, but will instead be nestled in the contact list screen. Located here, the ads wouldn't be too intrusive - especially not to the extent they would be if they broke up one of...
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For the first time in its history, Facebook has overhauled its mission statement, reflecting the social network's major focus on building communities. Originally, Facebook's mission was "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected", whereas now, it's "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together". The differences might be subtle, but Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is focused on making sure his social network is the best it can be for communities. It needs to be a place that people can gather with others of similar interests, a place to learn different perspectives, and a place to give people support. It could even be...
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Over the last handful of months, Facebook has been working aggressively to tackle some important issues with the service, some of which are mere annoyances, and others more severe in nature. On one hand, for example, the company aims to eradicate "fake news" from our feeds, and on the other, it's putting into place measures to help detect suicidal users. Another major issue Facebook is going to be focusing more effort on is live video used for malicious or upsetting content. This news follows an incident last month where an elderly gentleman had his life cut short by someone dealing with his own issues in a truly disgusting way. The video of the murder stayed on the service for a couple of hours,...
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When you're doing battle with the biggest social network in existence, it's pretty difficult to make sure that you're always offering your customers fresh functionality to stay ahead of the pack - which has been Snapchat's modus operandi for quite some time. Just a month ago, Facebook copied Snapchat's Stories feature, and mere weeks later, it copied Snap's ability to add a variety of filters to your Stories. At some point in the future, Facebook should be bringing the ability to add 3D objects to the videos you share, as Snapchat has just unveiled the feature today. A quick, but great example of its use can be seen in this video (a static image like the one above doesn't do the feature...
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With so many online communication tools allowing you to conduct group calls, it's really quite surprising that Facebook has yet to catch up - at least on the desktop side. This past spring, the company updated its Messenger mobile app to support group calling, but for when actual work is getting done, chances are good people are in front of their computer rather than on-the-go. Well, this grand omission is soon to be rectified, as Facebook has begun testing the group calling waters with its desktop Messenger app. Group chats are nothing new on Facebook, but they do have limited use when you can't talk to the users in the group, so as to expedite the conversation. As of the time of writing, the...
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If you're a fan of Sony's PlayStation Communities feature, but have been left a little perturbed by the fact that Sony somehow has never integrated the functionality into one of its mobile apps: you can now relax. The company today released iOS and Android versions of an app specifically-tailored to those who participate in any PS community. There's something we should warn you about up-front: this is yet another app specific to the PlayStation 4, joining PS Messages, the simply-named "PlayStation", and a few others. It'd be amazing if Sony were to ever combine all three of these apps together, because it's not as though keeping them separate results in faster performance in each. Nonetheless,...
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It's been quite some time since malware-laden images have been a major security issue, but the risk is still out there. The attack vector has been exploited recently through a couple of leading social networks: Facebook and LinkedIn. The attack, named "ImageGate" by researchers at Check Point, takes advantage of misconfiguration in these two social networks to make it so that when an image is loaded into a browser, it'll automatically download to the machine. This is similar to going to a download page where after 5 seconds, the download will begin. The difference here is that the downloaded file is infected. An unfortunate thing with this sort of attack is just how many people could fall victim...
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This past weekend, we talked about how Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg were planning to combat the "fake news" problem we've likely all seen on a regular basis. This comes hot on the heels of Donald Trump becoming president-elect, as it's a no secret that this political season has been rife with misleading headlines and information. Well, Zuckerberg isn't immune to irony, and has just been hit with what might be his biggest dose. In the very post where he talks about his company's plans to eradicate fake news, two blatantly fake news posts could be found right beside it: What makes this truly ridiculous is that these ads were paid, and Facebook is supposed to give the a-OK to all ads...
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If you're responsible for creating advertising campaigns for a website or a Web service, you need the confidence that you're going to see a good return-on-investment. To gauge that, you're going to listen to the promises of the company or site that hosts the advertising platform. Unfortunately, those promises are sometimes inaccurate - even if it's by accident. Such is the case with Facebook. The world's largest social network has just admitted to fudging up the view counts of videos used for advertising, though it insists that no one has been ripped off. The crux of the problem is that Facebook counted a video as a "view" for a mere three second watch. It's safe to assume that in three seconds,...
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For a number of great reasons, WhatsApp is an instant message client worth using. It can be used on your mobile device, or on the desktop (through the mobile device). It's reliable, fast, and best of all, secure. A couple of months ago, we learned that Facebook deployed always-on encryption in the app, making an already great chat client even better and more secure. Well, let's back things up just a tad. While WhatsApp does in fact use end-to-end encryption, and there's no fault there, an iOS researcher discovered a gaping flaw: deleted chats are not actually deleted (hmmm, that sounds familiar). To the user, deleting a WhatsApp conversation will give the impression that it's actually deleted,...
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Have you ever noticed that when a service becomes almost incomprehensibly large, it can begin to care less and less about what people think about it? Some might feel that way about Facebook, a company that time and time again has forced changes on its users that haven't been very well received. A major example of this in recent years has been with the forced transition to Facebook Messenger, something that caused thousands of users to give the app a 1-star rating for. Simply put, people were not happy. As that move happened a couple of years ago, we don't hear too much about the hate anymore, much like we don't hear much about the angst held towards Google for shutting down Reader. It could be...
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While much of the autonomous buzz right now revolves around vehicles, the ever-evolving world of technology will see many other sectors become automated in the future -- including simple things like customer service. The problem, of course, is that most businesses can't invest in advanced 'chatbots', either through purchasing a solution from another vendor or developing it themselves. That's where Facebook wants to help. The social media giant already offers a number of tools to businesses, but according to a leak, it will unveil chatbot and Live Chat solutions at its upcoming F8 developer conference. When launched, these chatbots will run through Facebook Messenger, a piece of software that...
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During what should have been an ordinary Friday night in Paris, Islamic State terrorists ambushed a handful of locations to take the lives of more than 120 unfortunate souls. Instantly, and naturally, news of the attack hit the Web, with information and updates trickling down through a number of different services, including news and social media outlets. The effects of these events are far-reaching. France has tightened up its borders, and for the first time in a decade, declared a state of emergency. This isn't just affecting people in Paris, but the multitude of people who were planning to enter the country this weekend. In an effort to help you make sure that your loved ones are safe, Facebook...
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What a week it's been for reddit fans. We reported late last week that protests were being held in support of beloved admin Victoria Taylor who was fired seemingly out of nowhere. Over the weekend, protests became so severe that those who didn't know what was going on found out quick enough. In fact, these in-your-face protests resulted a in petition supporting the firing of CEO Ellen Pao being signed by well over 100,000 people just over the weekend. Given the hoopla, and not to mention the fact that CEO Ellen Pao spoke to other media since July 2, you'd be correct in thinking that it's taken an awful long time for an official statement right inside of reddit to be made. While it was beginning...
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It's been quite a month for reddit, and not in a way that paints a pretty picture for the site's future. For months now, many vocal users of reddit have discussed their distaste with the site, especially following the arrival of new CEO Ellen Pao. From the outside, it appears that she knows little about running this kind of business, and recent legal matters have made people wonder how reddit hired her in the first place. And then, the banning of the Fat People Hate sub-reddit happened, just under a month ago. Under new rules, reddit promised to close down sub-reddits that were, in effect, houses of hate. While I don't feel bad that people who live their days hating on other people lost a sub-reddit...
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It's not often that Facebook rolls-out features I consider to be useful, but it's hard to argue that suicide-prevention features it launched last month are good, or are at least backed by good intentions. The easiest-to-use feature is to flag a post as being made by a suicidal person, at which point Facebook will contact the person at next login, and offer them ways to get help. If the situation is dangerous, Facebook might decide to contact the person's local police. That's all fine and dandy, but people must realize that these features aren’t meant to be abused. A San Mateo man learned this the hard way; he threatened to hang himself on his Facebook wall, at which point someone (a...
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As a result of a new deal between Google and Twitter, we'll soon be seeing tweets pop up in Google searches just like all other results, if the content is relevant. For Twitter, this is a big move to help bring more people to the site, and generate more pageviews for advertisers, while for Google, it improves its spidering in order to provide more relevant results. Prior to this deal, Google had to spider Twitter like most other sites, which doesn't give it the accuracy or speed that the company aims for. While it might catch wind of a popular tweet at some point, it's unlikely to be snatched and turned into a search result too quickly. This partnership will improve that vastly, allowing Google...
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According to new reports, Twitter is planning to roll out its long-rumored native video feature in just a couple of weeks. The company's goal isn't to compete with the likes of YouTube, though. Instead, the company is aiming to get people to come back to the service more often, and given the enormous popularity of Twitter-owned Vine, its potential is great. Up to this point, those who've shared video on their Twitter profiles have had to paste it in from a competing platform, or from Vine. The problem with Vine, though, is that its clips are limited to 6 seconds. According to Re/code's sources, Twitter's planning to test the waters with regards to allowed video...
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