Saturday, January 29, 2011

Are you safe on Facebook?

From:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/28/are-you-safe-on-facebook/


Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Woman Runs Over Cousin Because of Spurned Friend Request

From:
http://www.allfacebook.com/woman-runs-over-cousin-for-spurned-friend-request-2011-01

Posted by Jackie Cohen on January 26th



A spurned Facebook friend request became the center of a family feud that led a Long Island woman to literally drive over her cousin with a minivan.

The driver, Melanie Spanopoulos, actually hit her cousin twice with the vehicle after learning that her relative, Giselle Penagos, had gotten in contact with a man on Facebook who’d denied Melanie’s friend request, according to the New York Post.
Spanopoulos was charged with assault yesterday and released on a $20,000 bail. Penagos had to undergo emergency surgery for a shattered pelvis and broken leg on Monday. An unidentified man rescued her that morning and rushed her to her father’s house in Queens. A local policeman told the Post that if the unnamed good Samaritan hadn’t picked her up she could have gotten hit by another driver. Or she could have died of exposure because the temperature was close to zero.
Spanopoulos learned that Penagos gotten in touch with the guy on Facebook while the two women were driving home from a bar; he’d accepted Penagos’ friend request after denying one from Spanopoulous. She pulled over the van to focus on arguing, and Penagos got out. Peagos refused to get back into the vehicle, and Spanopoulos leapt out of the car and started wrestling with her cousin. Then Spanopoulosgot back into the minivan and ran over her cousin once, put the vehicle in reverse and hit Penagos a second time.
Now Facebook itself didn’t cause this conflict, but rather allowed these two girls to attempt to contact the gentleman when they might not have otherwise. Jealousy really started this family feud, and it’s very likely the girls may have had spats in the past that would have increased tensions between them. It’s tragic how frequently people overreact to things involving the social network and get violent.
Unfortunately, the more entrenched the social network gets in people’s daily routines, the more emotional people seem to get about the site, and they’re not always expressing happy feelings.  Other than continuing to release statements expressing regrets and cautions on how to use Facebook, I can’t think of anything the company could do to prevent these violent incidents from happening and risking unwanted negative publicity. Do you have any ideas on how to address this problem?

Facebook selling user content to advertisers

From:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20029593-17.html

January 26, 2011 


by Don Reisinger



Your Facebook content may soon find its way into ads on the social network.
Facebook unveiled details yesterday about a new advertising initiative called Sponsored Stories. The effort allows advertisers to find mentions of their brands--either through Places check-ins, recommendations in a news feed, likes, or actions in a Facebook application--and repurpose them as advertisements on the site.

Facebook said that if a person currently checks in at a respective company's store or "likes" a brand page, the action often gets lost amid all the other content that a user's friends may see. Sponsored Stories solves that problem for advertisers by plucking valuable content from user news feeds and making it more readily noticeable to others.
The Sponsored Stories, which kicked off yesterday for Facebook's "premium" advertisers, will be labeled and viewable only to the content creator's friends, Facebook noted. The service will respect a person's privacy settings. However, Facebook users won't be able to opt out of the service. That's somewhat surprising, since Facebook users can modify their inclusion in the company's existing Social Ads by letting their social actions be includedin a marketer's ad on the site and be shown to friends--or opt out.

In a video, Facebook talks up the word-of-mouth aspect of Sponsored Stories. The company said that people want to know what their friends care about and that friends' opinions have more authority than a simple ad from a company trying to market its products.
"When we make decisions about the products we want to buy, the places we want to go, we're basically looking for cues from our friends about what those things should be," Facebook product manager Kent Schoen said in the video. "And all of us aren't out there trying to market ourselves or trying to influence people to go somewhere or do something. But the reality is when we make a decision, we're looking for information. And we want that information to come from people we trust."
Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn between Sponsored Stories and Twitter's Promoted Tweets. At first glance, they are somewhat similar because they both use content on the respective social networks. However, unlike Sponsored Stories, Promoted Tweets feature content created by marketers, which is then advertised on the site.
Even without help from Sponsored Stories, Facebook's advertising revenue continues to grow by leaps and bounds.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20029593-17.html#ixzz1CAQF3AdI





Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20029593-17.html#ixzz1CAPxpmEP

Monday, January 17, 2011

Online Creeper Forwards Nude Pics to Women's Contacts

From:
http://dns.tmcnet.com/topics/internet-security/articles/135423-online-creeper-forwards-nude-pics-womens-contacts.htm

January 17, 2011


 

In this undated photo provided by the California Attorney General's office, George Bronk is shown.  Bronk admitted using personal information he gleaned from Facebook to hack into dozens of women's e-mail accounts across the nation and overseas. The California attorney general's office says the 23-year-old would scan the e-mails for nude and seminude photos and videos that he often forwarded to the victim's entire e-mail address book.


By Juliana Kenny


If all the hubbub surrounding Facebook’s (News - Alert) security andrecent consequences of posting inappropriate pictures on the Internet hasn’t dissuaded you from harboring nude ones of yourself, this story will.



A 23-year-old guy named George Bronk actively monitored certain women’s Facebook profiles and activity in order to hack into their email accounts and forward nude pictures of them to all of their contacts. He has since admitted to that act in addition to possession of child pornography, computer intrusion, and false impersonation. Bronk is originally from California, but his victims reside all over the United States and the UK.
Bronk’s strategy included monitoring wall posts and notes thereby discovering what the victims’ answers to security questions were. He was able to breach their email accounts, and then proceed to forward nude and seminude pictures of them to all of their contacts. Once he had their email account passwords, he also gained access to their Facebook profiles and posted the pictures there.
Bronk will be defended in court by Monica Lynch, who cites his cooperation with the investigation as reason to be lenient with his sentence. She stated that Bronk was simply immature and is a “23-year-old boy going on 15.” She went on to note that he is now fully aware of his infringement upon the law, “He's accepted full responsibility. It's a tragic situation.”
But the prosecutors say that Bronk was in full knowledge of his errors and deserves six years in prison for his crimes. His defense has surely been compromised by the seven other felonies he admitted some of which are mentioned above. Bronk even went so far as to threaten one of his victims so she would send him more explicit photos.
One of his victims in Connecticut contacted the police who were able to trace his activity to California. California officers obtained a warrant and searched his computer discovering 172 emails with incriminating images of his victims. This breach of email security once again brings to light the security issues Facebook has been dealing with, and calls for tighter controls.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Murder-Suicide Tied to Facebook Post

From:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/pamela-and-aaron-sevey-mu_n_807354.html

 01-11-11 11



On Monday afternoon, a Colorado Springs woman posted on her Facebook wall that she'd caught her husband in bed with another woman. Less than an hour later, police responded to what was later declared to be a murder-suicide at the couple's home.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reported on Monday evening that Aaron Sevey, a decorated Iraq War veteran had died of multiple gunshot wounds. A coroner ruled that his wife, Pamela Sevey, died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound.
KRDO in Colorado Springs reports that Pamela Sevey posted on her Facebook wall at 3:10 PM that she'd caught her husband in bed with another woman. According to 7News in Denver, she posted the following: "just walked in on my husband in bed with another woman. Real nice." Police received a 911 call less than 30 minutes later.
A family friend of the Seveys, the well-known detective and bail bondsman Bobby Brown, told KRDO that the couple had been experiencing marital woes for some time.
The couple leaves behind 16-year-old twins.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Man Poses as Dead War Hero to Meet Girls on Facebook

From:
http://www.switched.com/2011/01/10/dylan-sorvino-poses-dead-war-hero-roberto-sanchez-facebook-meet-girls/

by Amar Toor on January 10, 2011


If you're a spectacularly average guy looking for love on Facebook, you could spend some time meticulously crafting your profile with Photoshopped self-shots, or quirky interests, in an attempt to make yourself seem more handsome and/or interesting than you really are. Or, if you have absolutely no soul whatsoever, you could just pretend that you're a dead soldier, and use someone else's heroism as your digital pick-up line.

That, believe it or not, is the exact tactic that a guy known as "Dylan Sorvino" employed to "meet" several women on Facebook. Instead of filling out his profile with information about himself, Sorvino assumed the identity of Sgt. Roberto Sanchez (pictured), a 24-year-old Army Ranger who, in 2009, was killed in Afghanistan after five tours of duty. (Sanchez was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.) The impostor collected photos of the soldier to use as profile pictures, and even advertised himself as a chiseled guy that grew up in New York, studied law, and joined the Army to fight for his country in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With his disguise intact, Sorvino would then play poker on Facebook, looking to friend female players. Upon making a connection, the fraud would use his false military credentials to start online affairs. After months of courtship, he would typically write about his impending deployment, which provided him with an easy excuse for never meeting any of the women in person. "Tomorrow night is my crew's last Iraqi patrol and we start packing up," Sorvino wrote in one e-mail to 37-year-old Carolyn Hinz, from Minnesota. "I've been warned by command not to discuss my departure due to national security so we have to keep this talk to a minimum."

Hinz, like many others, fell for the ploy. "He had all these plans of getting dinner, going to the movies, going dancing," she said. "I was really excited. The guy was good -- he blew my mind." It helped that Sanchez was easy on the eyes, too. "I was a sucker for a cute face," Hinz explained to the New York Post. "It was a very cute face. Too bad it was someone else's face."

Sanchez's family eventually became aware of the scam, thanks to a woman who recognized their son's photo on Sorvino's Facebook page. A group of Sanchez's friends soon confronted the clown, and, on Thursday, he finally decided to delete his account. Sorvino's troubles, however, may be far from over. Posing as a war hero on Facebook may constitute a direct violation of the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which expressly prohibits claiming false military awards. Several of Sanchez's supporters have already contacted both Facebook and the FBI, in the hopes of pursuing further legal action.

Legal implications aside, Sorvino's actions have already re-opened fresh wounds within the Sanchez family, and have wreaked emotional damage that may be impossible to quantify. "This guy went on the Ranger battalion Web site looking for a fallen soldier to use," Wendy Holland, Sanchez's mother, told the Post. "My son died for this country. How can anyone do that? It's so heartless.

Sarah Palin "Crosshairs" Map: Still on Facebook!

From:
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/01/sarah-palin-target-list-still-on-facebook/

January 10th, 2011



It turns out that Sarah Palin's controversial list of "targets" in the 2010 elections, which included U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, is still on Facebook.
Giffords was shot over the weekend and is in critical condition.
No one thinks Palin was responsible or even indirectly to blame for the act of lunacy committed by Jared Loughner, but she been getting flack for her fiery rhetoric and apparent gun imagery in the wake of the shooting.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Facebook scammers depend on your trust

From:
http://heraldnet.com/article/20110101/BIZ/701019903/0/COMM0604

ORLANDO, Fla. — Facebook is the latest hot spot for swindlers in search of new victims.

And the world’s most popular social-networking website can be a gold mine for such crooks, experts say.

Scams on social-media sites are much the same as the ones you may have received as e-mail, said Kevin Johnson, a consultant for Secure Ideas, which does security research.

“The big difference in the (social-networking) scams is the level of trust that the users have,” he said. “People trust them more than they trust e-mail.”

Over time, we’ve become leery of unusual e-mails with strange links, but many people’s ingrained suspicions of e-mail scams have not carried over to Facebook. The social network tries to keep track but isn’t responsible for everything on its site.

Cybercriminals on Facebook today come cloaked as real friends sending messages asking you to wire them money in a foreign country or posting a note on your wall with a funny video that’s really a dangerous link.

Facebook Makes Life Easy For Drug Dealers

From:
http://gothamist.com/2011/01/04/facebook_makes_life_easy_for_drug_d.php

Considering it was used by college kids for the first few years of its existance, is it any real surprise that Facebook has been a great tool for international drug rings? Luvman Allison has been indicted by Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn after allegedly using Facebook to arrange a heroin delivery through JFK Airport. The Ghanaian native allegedly "explicitly discussed the methods he uses to covertly transport narcotics" over the website, so clearly he's not too familiar with their lax privacy settings.