Facebook Instant Personalization

A outdated message is circulating these days on the Social Netwoking site Facebook. This message informs the user about the “Instant Personalization” settings in Facebook  that will share Facebook data with non Facebook websites. Message looks like:

Reality:
According to the message, a new FB privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” is set to be enabled “between today and tomorrow”. The message warns the user that the particular setting will be automatically enabled and, will result in sharing your information with non-Facebook websites. The message also describes how to disable this setting but also warns that if your friends do not disable it too, than your information will still be shared via their accounts.

“Instant Personalization” is real and its implementation has raised privacy concerns for Facebook users in the past. To explain it, let us take an example. Say, if you visit a site “Trip Advisor” (a partner of Facebook) while logged into Facebook, then you will be able to see which Trip your Facebook friends have searched about or get recommendations about trips based on your previous visits. Below is the list of Facebook Partner sites, with which this works, if enabled:

However, the claims in the  message that “Instant Personalization” is “new FB Privacy Setting” and will be switched on “between today and tomorrow” are  not at all true.

In reality, “Instant Personalization” was first implemented to many users way back in April, 2010 and then was rolled out to other users in next couple of months. It is also false that, if you disable Instant Personalization on your profile but your friends do not, than also your information will still be shared outside. This can be confirmed from Facebook following message:

Being on the faulty side, Facebook has rightly being criticized for implementing the feature with “enabled” as default option for many users. So might be the case that many users might not have noticed about it in the past. In any case, disabling “Instant Personalization” is easy:

Go to “Privacy Settings” of your Facebook Profile.
Click “Edit your settings” in the “Apps and websites” section.
Click the “Edit Settings” button in the “Instant Personalization” section. A popup window may appear that provides more information about Instant Personalization. Click “Close” to exit this window.
Untick “Enable instant personalization on partner websites” and confirm the change as prompted.
Once the feature is disabled, your information will no longer be shared with the partner websites.

So finally, we can say though the information is valid, but not completely as per the validity. For the users who have still got it enabled can switch it off, and can inform there friends too, but with accurate details and not like the one being circulated.

Latest Facebook Email Spam

An email which claims to come from Facebook, notifies you about 1 Lost message on Facebook and gives you a link to recover the lost message.
Message looks like:

Reality:
With the increase of number of users in Facebook, increasing are the number of spam emails, hoax status and fake chain messages. This is just an addition to the list, but might make more number of people victim of this, being send as email. Reality is Facebook has yet, never send anyone such email with lost message link. If one click the link, he is directed to one or other website showing ads and survey(products purchase) too, depending on there location. In some casesm it take the user to fake login page (phising) too. This email is nothing more than spam, just delete it and inform others too about it. One funny thing to prove about it is, check spelling of “receive” in the above screenshot its is “recieve”, so spammers forgot to have a dictionary check over here.

Won Microsoft Lottery of One million Great British Pound (GBP)

An email claiming that: the “lucky” recipient has won a million Great British Pound(GBP) dollars in an international online lottery organized by the Microsoft Corporation. It says winners were selected through draw.  It ask you to reply back to them with certain details of yourself.
The email looks like:

Reality:

The claims in the email are totally fake. There is no lottery like that and the message does not originate from Microsoft at all as the email claims. A recipient who falls for this scam and submits the requested details will soon be asked to pay advance fees which will be required(as per there sayings) before the winning amount can be released. They will say that the fees cannot be deducted from the prize money because of legal reasons. If the victim falls into this and send the required fees, he will most likely receive requests for more money until he runs out of money or finally realizes that this is scam. Due to the international inclusion of people(scammers) in this there are less chances in recovery of amount. So, in any case just avoid falling into any such trap. When you dint participated in any lottery how can you win the same and these kind of scams has been in news for many years, so you do not be the next person to fall into this. Just be safe and keep others informed about the same.

Get Free McDonald Gift Voucher

A message on Facebook claims: that users who attend an event and invite there 50 friends and complete few offers  will receive a free $100 or Rs.5000 Gift Voucher from McDonalds. Message looks like:

Also an event with same claim is: active and you might be getting an invite to attend such event by your one or other friend. So it means they have fallen into this and now you might fall into it if you too believe in the claims. The eent page will look like:

The look of the event page and the post might be different as many such events and post are in circulation, but there claims will be almost similar and totally fake.
Reality:
All the claims made by the post and event are totally fake as no such giveaway has been started by McDonalds anywhere in the world. If you go and click the link you will in addition to inviting your friend list(and exposing them to the attackers) try to complete few offers which will grab your useful details or leave some harmful trojans back into your system. You will “NOT” get any Free voucher by being a part of this for sure, so stop circulating this and also stop inviting your friends and thus stop further spreading of these fake post and events. We would like to thanks our active member Neha Goyal for bringing to our notice about this spam. Stay safe.

Google Maps for Samsung Wave and Bada

Hello friends.now  there is 3rd good news of this week. 
Google maps for bada has been launched: This version is compatible with Samsung wave s8500 , s8530 , wave 533 . During my test the application ran very smoothly.

The highlighting features of this version are:
Navigation (Beta) Get free, turn-by-turn GPS navigation with voice guidance for driving or walking directions.
 Places with Hotpot Find nearby places with the Places icon. You can also rate the places to get personalized recommendations from users like you.
 3D Maps New! Explore the map in 3D. With two fingers, drag down to tilt and see 3D buildings where available; twist to rotate (on supported devices). 
However one flaw I noted was that it did not change orientation with screen. This although is a java version but it has been modified by well known Bada dev.- dery35rt to make it run smoothly in bada for wave series of phones.
Google Maps 
This is a limitation of bada phones that u can`t download rar files. u have to use ur pc/ mac to download this google maps app.
you need to unrar the above file on your computer and then you can install google maps on wave phone.

1. download the file on your pc
2. open the file on pc using winrar
3. inside there are two files ( one jar ,other jad)
4. copy these to your bada phone
5. now browse file on your phone and open the jad file . this ill install the file..