See our posting about the “instant personalization” settings.

May 26, 2010 – Experts, such as these from Princeton (you have to page down to the Facebook issue on May 26), are wondering if the government needs to step in now and MAKE Facebook protect its users, since Facebook does not seem motivated to do it on their own.
May 25, 2010 – Facebook user phone numbers freely available on the Web – a “service” highlighting how easily third-parties can access Facebook users’ phone numbers.
May 24, 2010 – New Facebook clickjacking attack – Clickjacking is one of the most deadly attacks on the web, but it takes special situations to allow it. Facebook provides easy access to just those “special situations” that are needed to make the attacks possible.
May 24, 2010 – More Facebook users hit by “distracting beach babes” – Another Rogue Facebook Application (not providing a link, as all of the reports include the image that accompanied the virus). Facebook provides no advance checking of Facebook Applications, which can be built by ANYONE. They only address them AFTER they create problems.
May 21, 2010 – Fake joke worm wriggles through Facebook – No laughing matter – this is a further explanation of the clickjacking attack.
May 21, 2010 – Facebook isn’t Evil, We’re Just Naïve – an excellent analysis that you are kidding yourself if you do not understand Facebook’s motivation to make all your information public (and they view it as their RIGHT to do so).
May 18, 2010 – Huge video attack hits Facebook – another Rogue Facebook Application, possibly just a different presentation of the beach videos.
May 13, 2010 – Facebook Makes Security Changes as Privacy Controversy Swirls – Facebook, catching continuous heat about “instant personalization” made changes to their settings. Really so well done that they had to turn around and do it again May 25th.
May 13, 2010 – Facebook, the new phishing target – Facebook users have now reached 4th place on the list of the primary targets of phishing incidents on the web.
May 13, 2010 – Facebook IDs hacker – touted as a “win” by Facebook, while hunting down this hacker Facebook ignores the fact that they didn’t disprove anything and they themselves produced evidence that at least some of his claims and access to accounts was proven true!
May 11, 2010 – Yelp Security Hole Puts Facebook User Data At Risk, Underscores Problems With “Instant Personalization” – remember that? And Facebook’s position – Not our fault, this is a Yelp problem. But they are the ones that shared your information before you could stop it, so it IS their fault that Yelp had your data to lose!
May 6, 2010 – Consumer groups hammer Facebook privacy violations in federal complaint – it’s not just Security Experts that are fed up.
May 6, 2010 – Stealth installs and adware come to Facebook – Apps secretly added to profiles, it’s just so much fun!
May 5, 2010 – Facebook Security Hole Exposes Live Chats – pretty self-exlanatory, and just another of the continuous “oh we fixed it as soon as we could AFTER it happened.”

During the month of May the major browsers were all in the news with new problems: Apple Safari, Windows IE, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome, and the iPhone was identified with a couple new major problems. However, nothing matches the continuous stream of problem reports generated by Facebook.

If you have not already shut off instant personalization, including the individual apps, then you can pretty well guarantee that your personal information is already in third-party company hands. To prevent further spread, go to your Facebook Privacy Settings / Applications and Websites / Instant Personalization: Clear the automatic “Allow” checkbox that they so “helpfully” automatically SET ON for you. Then, to prevent that “oh by the way, your friends are still sharing your information” problem, go to each of the current “instant personalization” apps and individually BLOCK them. Facebook has made it a bit difficult to find them, but if you go to each of these links, and then click on the Block Application link on that page: Microsoft Docs, Pandora, and Yelp (note that Yelp has already compromised your data if it was there, as listed in the news article posting). Facebook’s advice: go to the third party company’s web site (where you will automatically share your information) and click Block Application there, AFTER you have already shared your information. Cool! Anyway, from this point forward, you have to stay up on the news about new “instant personalization” apps, because each new application is automatically ON for you, and your friends can share your information with new companies at each opportunity, until you shut it off. Isn’t that special!

We have been warning people that they need to apply a single question when deciding what information that they are going to post online. “Would my parents be comfortable with the whole world seeing this information / picture / posting?” If the answer to that question is “No!” then the information should NOT be posted online. Because, the illusion of “privacy” set aside, information posted online is visible to the whole world. So, note the final sentence of this New York Times article: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

Knowledge and caution are the keys to safety!!!

Copy protection to avoid illegal copies of malware. Does malware qualify for the terms “illegal copy”?

ByteMan Episode Seven
To subscribe on iTunes, use the URL http://www/towerstudents.com/blog/podcast

ByteMan Episode Six
To subscribe on iTunes, use the URL http://www.towerstudents.com/blog/podcast

We use the “Apple” podcast standard file format, MP4, for our video podcasts. It has come to our attention that in certain non-standard situations, Windows does not integrate fully with Apple Quicktime, and this may present itself with only the sound playing without the video image. If this happens to you, most situations are solved by selecting the Download option, which should open another window/tab and then play the video podcast normally in that new browser window. Or, as an alternative, you can use the Windows Media versions on the podcast Windows Media page.

ByteMan Episode Five
To subscribe on iTunes, use the URL http://www.towerstudents.com/blog/podcast

We use the “Apple” podcast standard file format, MP4, for our video podcasts. It has come to our attention that in certain non-standard situations, Windows does not integrate fully with Apple Quicktime, and this may present itself with only the sound playing without the video image. If this happens to you, most situations are solved by selecting the Download option, which should open another window/tab and then play the video podcast normally in that new browser window. Or, as an alternative, you can use the Windows Media versions on the podcast Windows Media page.

ByteMan Episode Four
To subscribe on iTunes, use the URL http://www.towerstudents.com/blog/podcast

In this third Episode, our hero is trying to determine how people’s personal information keeps finding its way into the hands of bad people. It is a large file, so please be patient.

ByteMan Episode Three
To subscribe on iTunes, use the URL http://www.towerstudents.com/blog/podcast