Facebook spam: Man accused of sending 27 million fake messages
August 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
The accused “Spam King” was in the can –- at least briefly.
Sanford Wallace was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Jose on Thursday and turned himself into the FBI. His alleged crime? Sending 27 million bogus messages via Facebook, compromising about 500,000 user accounts in three separate waves, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
This is how the paper described it:
Each time, the 43-year-old Las Vegas resident hacked into then-Palo Alto-based Facebook’s computer network and sent spam programs to users of the popular social networking site, the indictment said.
He got past the site’s spam filters and infiltrated real accounts, logging on as strangers and posting the spam messages to their friends’ walls. That way, people would log onto Facebook and think their friends sent them a link to a website.
Although such messages often look fishy, some users would invariably click on the link — such as “gayestprofile.com” — and enter their name and password on the ensuing site. Wallace would log in as a new user and send out more spam, and he would get paid each time he drove traffic to the spam site.
Facebook officials said they spent a lot of time and money fixing the system to prevent future attacks.
The FBI investigated for two years, according to the Mercury News. Wallace was indicted on July 6 and was released on $100,000 bond after a hearing Thursday.
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– Maria L. LaGanga in San Francisco
Photo: A screen shot of a Facebook page. Credit: Thierry Roge / Reuters
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Germany asks Facebook to disable facial recognition
August 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
CBR Staff Writer
Published 05 August 2011
Hamburg commissioner for data protection and freedom of information raises privacy concerns
Germany has asked social networking company Facebook to disable its recently introduced facial recognition feature and also to delete any previously stored data, citing data protection laws.
Facebook had introduced the feature last December. It said that facial-recognition technology made it easier for people to tag photos of friends.
It had said, “When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software — similar to that found in many photo editing tools — to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in.
“We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.”
The company had said that users could opt out of the feature.
Facebook had said, “If for any reason you don’t want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings…Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually.”
However, security firms and privacy campaigners have called it a data collection campaign.
Hamburg commissioner for data protection and freedom of information John Caspar raised privacy concerns in a letter to Facebook.
Caspar said Facebook has collected a huge data adding that the opt-out option misled users as data still remains with Facebook.
A Facebook spokesman in Berlin told The New York Times that the company met all obligations under European laws.
The spokesman said, “We will consider the points the Hamburg Data Protection Authority have made about the photo tag suggest feature but firmly reject any claim that we are not meeting our obligations under European Union data protection law.”
