Internet

Facebook users have been warned to watch out for bogus links in messages that appear to be from friends. While Facebook appears to be on top of the problem for now, it's an approach that could lead to personal data being siphoned off, or computers ... locked. The problem was highlighted by security researcher Bart Parys who became aware of the problem this weekend after a tip-off from a friend. It involves Facebook messages which appear to consist only of an image but are actually a type of file called SVG (scalable vector graphics). 'YouTube' Video Next Step In Scam Normally such ... (view more)

Facebook has denied claims that it allows racial discrimination in advertisements based on houses and jobs. A lawsuit may come down to interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. The lawsuit is filed against Facebook and "up to 9,999" unnamed ... co-defendants, though that appears to be a legal procedural move. It says Facebook has violated both the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act. The legal action follows an investigation by "public interest journalism" group ProPublica, which bought an advertisement aimed at house buyers to check out claims of racial bias. Test Ad ... (view more)

One in five people say social media posts have changed their minds on political issues this year. But many of those changes have been to a negative position. The statistic comes from the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys Internet users on ... their online activities. It found that 20 percent of the social media users it questioned in its latest study said they have changed their minds about a social or political issue because of something they saw on a social media service, while 17 percent said they have changed their minds about a specific candidate. (Source: washingtonpost.com ) In ... (view more)

Facebook has blocked plans by a British insurance company to use customer posts on Facebook to help determine motor premiums. Admiral Insurance claims no customers would have lost out from the policy. The plan was for customers to give the insurer ... automated access to their Facebook posts (but not photographs) to help decide whether to offer discounts. It would have been aimed mainly at young drivers who had no insurance history to show if they were safe or dangerous drivers. Language Could Indicate Risk Factors The precise details of the algorithm to figure out risk are confidential, but it ... (view more)

Yahoo has blocked users from automatically forwarding incoming emails to an account with a rival provider. Many are interpreting it as an attempt to stop users jumping ship after revelations of a major security breach. The forwarding feature is ... pretty much a standard feature across the webmail industry, and means users can change from one account to another without having to worry about missing out on an important message during the switchover. Officially Yahoo says the feature is only temporarily disabled. It says the move was planned in advance and is to allow it to work on a range of ... (view more)

North Korea has just 28 websites, an audit has revealed. It includes sites for education, travel and cookery. What information was already known about the secretive country showed that it has its own Intranet: a restricted, internal network that ... appears to be the only information accessible to the few North Koreans with access to computers. However, the country does have a few sites on the worldwide Internet, all with addresses ending in .kp in the same way that many Canadian sites often end in .ca. Until now, nobody was sure exactly how many such sites existed. Full Domains List Exposed Like ... (view more)

Facebook users in the US may be able to find out if the site thinks they are conservative- or liberal-leaning. It's a side-effect of a new tool that makes it easier to influence advertisements which appear on the users' newsfeed. As reported ... recently, Facebook recently added new options which allow users to indicate that they don't want to see advertisements in the news feed related to specific topics. The new changes come as Facebook also prepares to roll out additional measures to prevent ad-blocking software from working on the site. To view the settings, users can visit their ... (view more)

Facebook says it will stop ad-blocking software from working on its website. It says ads are a core part of using Facebook, but will give users more control over which ads they see. Andrew Bosworth, who heads up Facebook's advertising division, ... announced the move in a blog post and followed up with comments to the Wall Street Journal. In the post, he accused the makers of ad-blocking tools of accepting money from advertisers to let their ads through, rather than block them. According to Bosworth, that's a sign ad-blocker makers don't always have the user's best interests at ... (view more)

Amazon is testing video advertisements that are specifically created to meet the viewer's interests. They may prove effective, but will also raise privacy concerns. The ads will appear on non-Amazon website and, as often happens with third-party ... ads, will be based on what the system knows about the user. This often involves using cookie files stored on a user's computer to track the websites they visit and deduce their interests. Several companies already run video ads that are tailored to a user's interests, but this generally involves picking a subject and then selecting a pre- ... (view more)

Facebook is to let users send messages which cannot be read by anyone other than the recipient. It's also continuing to work on a feature that allows users to send temporary messages which self-destruct. The new feature is referred to as end-to-end ... encryption . That means it's set up in a way that, even if the message is intercepted, it can't be read by anyone other than the recipient. This is done by maintaining the encryption from the sending device to the receiving device, regardless of the route it takes across the Internet. Secure Shell (SSH) , which is commonly used to connect a ... (view more)