Facebook users press delete

Facebook users start to deactivate their account due to fatigue and privacy concerns.

FACEBOOK is facing a rapid decline in numbers as users start to ‘unplug’ themselves from the social networking site.

Fatigue, boredom and privacy concerns are blamed for the global exodus.

Local Gladstone resident Gillian Ashe said she deleted her Facebook profile over a year ago as she became bored with the site and the constant drama it caused.

“It just causes too much drama, just problems you don’t need in life,” Ms Ashe said.

“I have considered getting Facebook back just for family but I decided against it – I really don’t even miss it.”

Ms Ashe said she has never really been an active Facebook user.

“Even when I had Facebook I only really checked it briefly at night and usually just to look at the photos.”

More then 100,000 people reportedly deactivated their account in the UK this May and another six million users were estimated as pulling out in the United States.

Australia was one of the first nations to jump on the Facebook bandwagon but with people deactivating their account in growing numbers it seems Australia will follow suit of the UK and US.

However, while Facebook starts to decline other social networking sites such as Google+ has attracted 25 million users in less then two months.

Even current Facebook users have showed their dislike for the site with an ‘I Hate Facebook’ page which has already attracted over 3000 likes.

Deleting you Facebook is simple and your profile can be reactivated at a later date if you change your mind.

Simply log into your account and go to your account settings in the top right hand corner of the page.

Under the ‘security’ side bar there will be a link to deactivate your account where you will need to enter your reason for deleting your profile.

Facebook will then remove your profile from other users but you can reactivate your account by logging into Facebook using your previous password and email on the homepage.

To learn more head to www.facebook.com. 

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Rattled by cyber attacks, govt to tighten grip on Net

Private messages of millions on social networking sites, such as Facebook, could be monitored and stored on a big-brother database, according to new plans being mulled by India to bolster its cyber defences.
Indians moved up two slots this year to become the world’s third-largest

Facebook community, according to insidefacebook.com.

According Milind Deora, the minister of state for information technology, the department of telecommunications has now been asked by the home ministry to ensure “effective monitoring of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter”.

With 10,315 hacking attempts in 2010, India is seeking to deploy a raft of stringent and — possibly unpopular — measures to monitor the web. All new government websites will be audited for cyber security prior to hosting and the process would cover existing sites too.

Citing recent trends, official say they anticipate increasing assaults on cyber security by foreign hackers, particularly from Pakistan and China.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, such incidents have jumped 303% between 2008 and 2010.

An Achilles’ heel is the use of popular e-mail services, like Hotmail, by the government’s 3.1 million employees to send and receive often sensitive data. “This exposes official information to foreign servers,” cyber law expert Pawan Duggal said.

The move to monitor social networking sites could be tricky. Google — in a confidential memo to the government in May — quietly protested a set of draft rules as “too prescriptive”. The rules required websites to remove “objectionable content”, including third-party content.

The news has outraged free-web advocates. “We can’t have a leash like this without involving Internet companies,” said a media executive representing a popular website, requesting anonymity.

An official cited the European Union’s Data Retention Directive, which proposes that service providers in member states store data from social sites for one year.

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