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Facebook new app update let them record sound & video from your phone, at any time, without your consent
Posted by MrMaybeNot
For me this is where they stepped over the line. Facebook came out with an app update today on Android and when I looked at the new permissions this version request over the previous ones, I noticed that by updating, you consent to let Facebook use your microphone and record with your camera anytime, without your confirmation. I know I won’t be updating, but how many millions will?
Picture from my Android TV box: (same thing was asked on my phone)
CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
CIA Director David Petraeus unwinds with some Wii Golf, 2008. Photo: Wikimedia
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.
“Items of interest will be
Facebook Now Has 104,857,600 GB Of Your Personal Data Stored On Its Servers
Facebook users take for granted just how much of their personal data is surrendered when they sign up to the site and liberally share their lives on the popular social networking platform. But for the interested user, the numbers are here. According to the S-1 filing made by Facebook in anticipation of its IPO, a whopping 104,857,600 GB of data is stored on Facebook servers at any one time.
That number was written in the SEC filing as 100 Petabytes of data, but most people of course don’t even know what a Petabyte is or how to gauge its size in relation to something else. Thanks to the fine folks over at TechCrunch though, a visual representation of the figure was created. The simplest way they found to put the number in perspective was to compare 100 Petabytes to the number of Toshiba 320 GB hard drives it would take to accommodate the overall number of bytes. Turns out in order to store 100 Petabytes of data; you would need 312,500 Toshiba hard drives.
Now some people may think Facebook is showing off, but when you really think about it, 845 million active users are bound to have lots of ‘stuff’ to share. And sharing and storage is one in the same where Facebook is concerned.
Should Facebook delete very old shared data from their servers? Let us know your thoughts below.
Official List Of Words Feds Monitor On Social Networking Sites
The Feds have been forced to release their social network monitoring manual, which contains the list of words the government watches on social media and news sites.
Earlier the Huffington Post reported on the Feds have been forced to give up their list of words they monitor on Facebook, Twitter, and comments being posted on news articles so I compiled that list below.
Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News
Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling “sick?” Told your friends to “watch” a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government “pork?”
If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in “Mexico” or a shopping trip to “Target,” the Department of Read more…
India Bans Army From Using Social Networks
The contemporary soldier has to operate in a very sophisticated setting, using some of the latest technology, but many armies around the world are quite selective about which bits of technology they allow their soldiers to use.
One case in point is the Indian Army which has taken the rather broad and somewhat harsh approach of banning entirely, the use of social media and social networks by its soldiers. The reason given for the wholesale ban is the typical “security safeguards” excuse, and many in the blogosphere are simply not convinced by it. Although there hasn’t been an official confirmation from the Army, sources close to the situation say that the ban is effectively immediately and will affect the 36,000 officers and 1.3 million regular soldiers that currently make up India’s armed forces.
The ban means that once you a soldier is enlisted in the Indian Army, he or she is not permitted to even have Read more…
‘Deleted’ Facebook photos still viewable THREE YEARS later
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook: Site users claim that 'deleted' photographs persist on the site for up to three years, accessible by anyone with a link to them
Deleted Facebook photos don’t disappear but can still be accessed by anyone with a link to the images themselves.
The company admits that its systems ‘do not always delete images in a reasonable period of time.’
The news is liable to be a shock to users who’ve relied on the delete function to remove embarrassing photos from office parties or nights out.
Deleted images vanish from ‘normal’ views of the site – ie if you log in to Facebook and look on somebody’s photo page, they won’t be visible – but remain visible to anyone with a direct URL link to the picture.
That means that if, for instance, a picture has been circulated by email, the image will still be there for anyone who clicks the link.
Facebook has repeatedly promised to ‘fix’ problems with the systems it uses to remove photographs, after users pointed out that images tended to persist after deletion.
Not all deleted pictures are affected, but a significant percentage.
Technology site Ars Technica reports that a picture of a naked toddler supposedly ‘removed’ in 2008 was still visible as of February 2012.
Site readers reported campaigns of harassment using Read more…
Congress Could Make Facebooking at Work a Felony
“Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet.” That’s what The Wall Street Journal‘s Orin Kerr thinks the latest cyber-security legislation will lead to: An assault on checking Facebook at work. Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which would seek tougher sentences for digital offenses. As more of the world moves online, so has crime. And legislation needs to adapt. But, does the latest updates to the bill target the right cyber criminals?
No, regular folk are in danger. The way the law is worded, it Read more…
Analysts raise alarm on Facebook expansion of facial recognition technology
The expansion of Facebook’s facial recognition technology into Australia has raised privacy and security concerns, with local analysts warning information accumulated by the social networking giant could be used for malicious purposes.
In a statement on its blog on Tuesday, Facebook announced it had launched the feature beyond North America into most countries. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of tagging friends in photos.
The technology scans new uploaded photos and determines if the faces in these new images resemble those in previously tagged photos. If they do, the feature will suggest friends to tag. Previously, users had to tag photos manually, without suggestions.
According to the social network’s blog, more than 100 million photos per day are uploaded to Facebook and the goal of the feature is to Read more…
“Suicide” Comet Storm Hits Sun—Bigger Sun-Kisser Coming?
The sun-kissing comet Ikeya-Seki, as it appeared in the dawn sky in 1965.
Photograph by Victor R. Boswell, Jr., National Geographic
Andrew Fazekas
Published January 17, 2011
A recent storm of small comets that pelted the sun could herald the coming a much bigger icy visitor, astronomers say.
Since its launch in 1995, NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, orbiter has captured pictures of 2,000 comets as they’ve flown past the sun.
Most of these comets are so-called sungrazers, relatively tiny comets whose orbits bring them so near the sun that they are often vaporized within hours of discovery. (See a picture of a sungrazer spied in October.)
The sun-watching telescope usually picks up one sungrazer every few days. But between December 13 and 22, SOHO saw more than two dozen sungrazers appear and disintegrate.
Seeing “25 comets in just ten days, that’s unprecedented,” Karl Battams, of the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. “It was crazy!”
According to Battams and colleagues, the comet swarm could be forerunner fragments from a much larger parent comet that may be headed along a similar path. And such a large icy body coming so near the sun would result in a spectacular sky show.
Sun-Kissing Comet “Granddaddy” on the Way? Read more…
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