House fire started by de-friended Facebook friend

Imagine having an argument with your best friend on facebook. you defriend them and think that is the end of it. Well that may not be the case.

Police in Des Moines, Iowa, have arrested 30-year-old Jennifer Christine Harris  for allegedly setting her neighbor’s home on fire, as retribution for being “de-friended” on Facebook.

Nikki and Jim Rasmussen were awoken by a loud boom at around 1 a.m.,  and escaped the home just as the siding on their house began to melt. Jim Rasmussen named Harris as the prime suspect. Nikki Rasmussen and Jennifer Christine Harris had a falling out on Facebook, when a party invitation that his wife created for Harris had a high number of “declines.” After a large amount of texts and Facebook messages, Nikki Rasmussen “de-friended” Harris. They had been the best of friends before the dispute.

Police say their investigation supports the Rasmussen’s suspicions.

Jennifer Harris is a 30-year-old ADULT who quite frankly acted foolishly and as a result remains jailed on a $100,000 bond.

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Scams; Don’t become a victim to these.

It is apparent that people still become victims to scams both old and new. People loose money daily due to these scammers. they have their personal information stolen and in some cases put their online friends at risk. So here is a heads up thanks to Snopes of a few of the most common scams going around.

In Memory of Steve Jobs, Apple has decided to give away

While the “free iPad/iPod” hoax has been kicking about on the Internet for a few years, the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs in October 2011 inspired scam artists to unleash anew. Within hours of that visionary’s passing, the unwary were being tricked into lining the pockets of scam artists via the promise of free Apple goodies for those who clicked on what purported to be links taking them to the prize.

Nigerian Scam

A wealthy foreigner who needs help moving millions of dollars from his homeland promises a hefty percentage of this fortune as a reward for assisting him.

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND ‘TOP SECRET’. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

The letter continues, and  here’s how it works: Letters (or, nowadays, e-mail messages) postmarked from Nigeria (or Sierra Leone, or the Ivory Coast, or almost any other foreign nation) are sent to addresses taken from large mailing lists. The letters promise rich rewards for helping officials of that government (or bank, or quasi-government agency or sometimes just members of a particular family) out of an embarrassment or a legal problem. Typically, the pitch includes mention of multi-million dollar sums, with the open promise that you will be permitted to keep a startling percentage of the funds you’re going to aid in squirreling away for these disadvantaged foreigners. If you’re not saying “scam” by now, you should be.

Secret Shopper Scams

Employment frauds typically prey upon the gullible or the desperate whose burning desire to secure lucrative work blinds them to the scams about to be run on them. Generally, the promise of easy-to-perform labor that pays very well is held out to those disadvantaged in their search for employment by their lack of relevant job experience or education and so appears to be the answer to their prayers. Because the need to believe in such fairytale careers runs so strong, ordinary skepticism is temporarily set aside by those bedazzled by such false promises, and that little nagging “You know better than to be taken in by this” voice is silenced, thereby leaving job seekers vulnerable to being fleeced.

‘Work from Home’ Scam

If you live in Canada or the US and you have been wanting to work from home, you might be in luck. Google has now released a new ‘Work From Home Program’ that will allow Americans to work for the titan from the comfort of their own homes. To thousands of North Americans this means that they will soon have a safe and bright future working for one of the fastest growing companies in the world. In the middle of this recession this country and the world is going through, Google has been thriving and reporting profits consistently every quarter. Completely innovating the Search Engine industry in the late 1990’s, Google has had a history of development and innovation, and another one is about to come. Google has now opened it’s doors and will be hiring everyday people to work from the comfort of their own homes posting links. The way this works is Google will allow people to sign up and receive a package which will contain all the step by step instructions to get setup from home.

The Family Way

The basic set-up is that a scammer gleans just enough information about a family (e.g., names, ages, addresses, phone numbers) to be able to impersonate one of them during a brief phone call to another family member. The scammer will place a call and claim to be in some form of distress (e.g., a victim of legal problems, theft, or fouled-up travel arrangements) that has left him stranded far from home and in desperate need of someone to wire him some cash. In many cases eager-to-help relatives will promptly send money as instructed, not realizing until it’s too late that the person they’ve been talking to is an impersonator and not a genuine family member. (Grandparents are particularly common targets of this scam: They may be easily

Microsoft Impersonation Scam

Although this Microsoft impersonation scam has been around since at least 2009, in December 2010 and January 2011 it appeared to enjoy a renaissance, as reports came in of its being run in numerous countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and England.

In short, Microsoft does not contact people out of the blue to tell them there’s something wrong with their computers. Ergo, unless you’ve initiated contact with Microsoft about a computer problem you’re having, you should dismiss as frauds any phone calls, e-mails, online chat dialogues, and the like from folks who claim they work for Microsoft and have spotted something wrong with your computer.

The scammers running this type of fraud pretend they’re from the software company’s technical support department when they telephone to inform householders that their computers have been infected with a virus. Often the scam pitch begins “I’m calling for Microsoft. We’ve had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer.” The caller warns that if the problem is not solved the computer will become unusable and then offers to repair the problem.

Please use some common sense if you get calls about anything that sounds like a scam chances are it is, do some research and Ask for a name and contact number, chances are they will hang up, if you get an e-mail report it.

For most things like lotteries money-making schemes giveaways etc. If it sounds too good to be true chances are it’s a scam. 

Facebook ‘horror movie’ sounds cyber-stalking alarm

Facebook ‘horror movie’ sounds cyber-stalking alarm

October 20, 2011

Cool or an invasion of privacy?

Takethislollipop.com director, Jason Zara, on the privacy concerns with his new interactive website that uses personal Facebook content.

Facebook is becoming an ever more intrusive feature of websites, but just how much of your personal life do you give up each time you click the “Connect with Facebook” button?

The danger in exposing your personal life is being laid bare by Takethislollipop.com, a new site that turns the popular social network into a personal horror movie, which is creeping out hundreds of thousands of users across the web.

The man behind the site, Jason Zada, a director at award-winning production company Tool of North America, claims it is not an attempt to gain personal information and reassured users who were wanting to test it out that he had made “very, very, very clear decisions” not to save anyone’s details.

“We don’t save anything. There’s no session that we have or that kind of stuff. It’s just what you saw is what’s yours and that’s it. At the end of that you can watch it again but you can’t send it to anybody.”

The site takes users on a gut-wrenching journey, with an unhinged sweaty man wearing a white singlet gaining access to your Facebook account and stalking it. A video features him looking through your personal photos and friends’ wall posts – obtained when users sign in with their Facebook account – and is a demonstration of how much information people share on the web, Zada said.

At the end of the video a timer counts down from 60 minutes and a friend’s name is shown as being “next” to experience the scare. Throughout the short film various scenes use different information gained via your Facebook account to creep you out, such as your profile image being stuck to the dashboard of a car after the city where you live is displayed on Google Maps.

via Facebook ‘horror movie’ sounds cyber-stalking alarm.

Zynga unveils Project Z and more news on Mafia Wars

Zynga made an announcement on Tuesday unveiling their new gaming platform “Project Z” 

 We’re lucky to have fantastic social platforms as partners and we continue to focus on bringing more games to mobile devices and to players all over the world. What we’ve found from talking to our players is that they want to play online with friends who love the same games, and they want to connect with others who are playing at that very moment. We call that the promise of instant social, and today we’re taking a big step towards it with the announcement of “Project Z,” a new social games service from Zynga, enabled by Facebook Connect.

The Project Z website will still make use of Facebook Connect for multiplayer, however, and players will be able to swap between the two sites without affecting their game progress.

Zynga also revealed five new games: CastleVille,  Zynga Casino, Dream Zoo, Hidden Chronicles and Mafia Wars II, all of which will be available on Facebook and Google+ – and presumably Project Z when it launches.

Project Z will be its own website separate from Facebook, but you will still need a Facebook account to play the games. Zynga is only revealing that it will utilize Facebook Connect and will be interoperable so that you can start a game on Facebook and resume play at the same point somewhere else.

Another exciting tidbit of news for Zynga gamers would be that Zynga has made games available on Facebook’s mobile site. Using HTML 5 Zynga has been able to create mobile versions of Zynga Poker, Words with Friends, and Farmville to be playable on Facebook’s mobile site.

Is Mafia wars on its way out??  That is the big question right now.  Where will it fit in with the new games, well I doubt  it will. Players are already experiencing what appears to be the slow death of the game. Zynga has eliminated the Secret Stash & Crime Spree. To keep people interested they are releasing  a few new items such as fight loot. One thing they are retiring is the Get Satisfaction forum. the forum which has helped get many things done, instead Customer Support is just paying players off with reward points & loot items instead of fixing the game issues, With Zynga returning to the old style forum, which most hate.

When Zynga decided to make a new Mafia Wars game called Mafia Wars 2 they maintained that this was a completely separate game and that Mafia Wars would not be closing. Ask them now and they appear to be saying not at this time. Reliable sources in the gaming industry are privately saying they hear it will be closing in the first quarter of 2012. This is just a rumor but a rumor that could be very well be true. Zynga is in the quiet time before the much anticipated IPO so they can not comment on what games are closing or anything that has not been publically released. After the IPO we will have a better picture of what is actually going to be happening with all  Zynga games and  Mafia Wars may not the only game ending.

 

 

 

Facebook refuses to shut rape page run by schoolboy

Facebook refuses to shut rape page run by schoolboy

Philip Sherwell in New York

October 17, 2011 – 10:47AM

Controversy … Facebook has refused to remove a page about rape.

Nobody knows better than MJ Stephens that rape is no laughing matter. So as the victim of a sexual assault, she was horrified when she encountered the contents of a Facebook page full of jokes about rape and violence towards women.

But worse was to come when the young American tried to argue with people who had attached comments to a page called: “You know shes [sic] playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alleyway” – most of them teenagers and young adults from Australia and Britain.

In sickeningly explicit terms, several of them threatened her and expressed the wish that she be raped again.

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Such pages, full of ugliness, aggression and pornographic language are multiplying on Facebook, drawing lucrative user traffic to the social networking site.

Now it has emerged that one of the “administrators” of the page – users with the right to edit its content – is believed to be a British schoolboy linked to a network of hackers in Australia, Britain and America who have set up Facebook pages featuring offensive sexual and violent content.

via Facebook refuses to shut rape page run by schoolboy.

New Web Order – Nik Cubrilovic Blog – Logging out of Facebook is not enough

New Web Order – Nik Cubrilovic Blog – Logging out of Facebook is not enough.

Nik Cubrilovic, who conducted tests that revealed that when users log out, the site does not delete tracking ”cookies” but modifies them, keeping information that can identify users as they surf the internet. Facebook admitted last week that the cookies track internet activity after users log off.

10 public interest groups have asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook’s tracking of internet users after they log off. They have urged the commission to examine whether Facebook’s new ticker and timeline features increased privacy risks for users by combining biographical information in an accessible format.

Perrin Aikens Davis, of Illinois –  filed the lawsuit  and seeks class status on behalf of other Facebook users in the US. Mr Davis seeks unspecified damages and a court order blocking the tracking based on violations of federal laws, including restrictions on wire tapping, as well as computer fraud and abuse statutes.

A Facebook spokesman, said in a statement. ”We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously”

Cookies are small text files used by websites that store user preferences and the contents of online shopping carts, among other functions. When users log out websites cookies are more often than not deleted, but Mr Cubrilovic found that Facebook only altered them and they continued to to store data such as his account ID This unique identifier could be used to track logged-out users when they visit other websites that have integrated Facebook functions, such as the “Like” button, he said.  “Logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com,” “The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Now I had no issues with this but i have noticed that after logging out I can still share stuff to my wall from other sites without logging back on. Im not sure I like that, though it saves logging back in. My concern would be multiple family members on the one PC. you may wish to share something and as your logged off whose wall would it go to? Does it post to the last person who was logged on or is there an option to select the account?

 

 

Zynga; Mafia wars 2; My Review

Zynga has released Mafia Wars 2  now i have heard all the hype on this game, and a few reports from those playing it, Well curiosity got the better of me after playing Mafia Wars from its first release I just had to go see for myself if what I was hearing was true.

Well I guess I would say its a typical Zynga Product. After 6 refreshes due to white pages and half page loads I was in. first thought was well maybe it should be called Mafia Wars 2 BETA, then maybe it would run better. It was slow and jerky and tended to lock between levels.

The overall design of the game is like something you would have expected to see a few years ago, it was like going back in time. Not to mention it seemed to be a rip off of the game “Crime City” which by the way is way faster and user friendly. Once again your expected to spam your friends for everything so nothing has changed there.

In typical Zynga form is the annoying pop ups, for you to spend money now this is where you need to be careful it would be easy to click buy by accident. With bubbles popping everywhere and instructions on what to do and big yellow arrows showing where to go the game was way to busy. You will need to add people fast, so i can for see issues with Facebook over that one if your current friends dont play.

Once again your expected to spam your friends for everything. personally I had hoped this would be better than the first one and that Zynga had learnt some lessons about making sure things worked before they released them, it appears that was too much to hope for.

Some may like the game but i can see it getting old and tired fast as there is so much happening at once I think if they allowed progress at a slower rate of speed it may be more enjoyable. The constant push to build, upgrade, add, ask, and buy takes away from what could be a great game.

My overall rating on this latest venture from Zynga is 1 out of 5.

Now i understand this game is new but with Zynga’s track history for fixing things, I for one have tried it and cant be bothered with it I prefer to play in a much less stressful environment for now.

Bug reports   http://mw2.uservoice.com/forums/136510-bug-reports

Feedback  http://mw2.uservoice.com/forums/136490-feedback

Social Gaming; The Biggest Legal Con

I have been a part of social network gaming for a few years now, and the thing that strikes me now is the greed from the company’s making the games. They appear to be all about the mighty dollar and ways to make you pay. The sad thing is people do pay and some pay a huge amount. why??.

I have to admit i spent $30 on a game but that was gifted to me by my son in the form of game cards. Not because i had to be better than everyone. The thing is people spend money to make them stronger or better than others. why? what satisfaction does that bring?

Now playing these games I may not have been the strongest player but I got a lot of satisfaction knowing I got where I was on my own using strategy skills not cash. The gaming company’s make money from advertising etc. then top that up with the money people spend well they make Millions off what is essentially a free game.

One company in particular made millions off its players, they ignored their players and changed things within the game and left things go unfixed after they broke and why? Well if you think about it you will find it was all a money grab. People could not finish things as they were broken so to complete they had to spend money on the game. what incentive did this give the company to fix things?

Now for those like myself, who spent little or no money on the game walking away from the game is easy, it’s just a game, but for those who have spent Hundreds even Thousands on it well they can’t walk so easily. They have invested too much in the game to just walk away, instead they put up with the glitches and errors in the game the constant game rollbacks because of program errors. Now if your new computer performed like that you would want it fixed or your money back, but no these people just give the company more money.

Eventually as these games die in popularity they will be closed down and new ones opened, Those who spent money will have no recourse to get their money back because the spent it of their own free will. They could have walked away instead of spending money on pixels, so in reality they may have just as well flushed their money down the toilet, either way they will have nothing to show for it in the end.

Wake up people you need the money more in real life, don’t waste it, if you want to spend money on games go and buy a game don’t waste it on FREE games