Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Widget Installs Zango Spyware
BaCa writes "A malicious Facebook Widget actively spreading on the social networking site ultimately prompts users to install the infamous "Zango" adware/spyware. The tremendous success and lightning fast expansion of Facebook empowered the social networking giant with an impressive user base. Needless to say, in a digital world where web traffic equals money, such a user base attracts spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers like honey would attract flies."
All the apps are terrible. Asides from their 'myspacesqueness', they also release your entire profile & friends to an unknown entity. Facebooks TOS is bad enough, but atleast you have a sense of who your dropping all thoughts of ownership or privacy too.
'caring' - imageogram
Think MySpace only it looks like a corporate website c.1999 instead of a Geocities page c.1996. Oh, and with pointless activities.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
While the tag "shitattractsflies" is somewhat amusing when describing (as an aside, Facebook started exclusively on college campuses some 5 years ago, now), I think the more insightful tag would be "peopleattractshit".
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Don't voluntarily install untrusted executable files! Period! There is no vulnerability without the user thinking that they want what's inside.
Facebook has nothing to do with the existence of this vulnerability. In fact, the browser-based app model explicitly is nice because of the sandbox effect, where such apps are very limited in what they can touch on your local machine. But when you convince people to break out of that sandbox by installing a local app, you can certainly kiss your computer goodbye.
--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital electronics.
If you aren't the last person, you're not by much.
/limit/ my online exposure, not enhance it, so of course I created a fake account.
/do/, that I can see. You are supposed to join "networks", but there weren't any that seemed interesting to me.
I only went and checked it out a few weeks ago, after not being able to stand all the hype any longer.
I can't figure out what it's for. I've said as much here on Slasdot before, and was told that basically it's a mechanism to find/keep in touch with friends.
It's kind of like "classmates.com", except it's free.
I went and tried it out. First of all, they want you to use your real name. Like you noted, your "private stuff". Myself, I am seeking to
Once you have an account, there is very little to actually
I don't have any long lost friends to look up, and the couple of names I did plug in didn't get any hits. All of the people currently in my life that I want to keep up with I currently keep up with by other means, like email, telephone, or face-to-face.
I still don't understand the appeal of these "myspace" and "facebook" social web sites. What they really look like to me is an html-based web page creation utility, that allows people to create a personal web page without having to pay a hosting fee.
Since most ISPs these days give you a 5MB or so space where you can make a little web page if you want, I don't know why people don't just use that, except I guess they don't know how to make web pages. So MySpace, Facebook, etc., are like mini web-page software wizards to help you make a web page. Since all the web pages are centralized on one "server", they are thus also easily searchable / linkable.
If I wanted a web page to post things about myself, I'd go register a domain and some web hosting services and make one. I guess Facebook and MySpace are for people who don't want to go to the trouble.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
They let the highschoolers and world in.
The reason it's like a second grade class room is because majority of users are of that mentality now. Just look at most of the "groups" now. Maybe they existed and I didn't notice before but all my groups were rather sane, now they're "IF U JOIN THIS GRUP WORLD PEACE WILL START!"
I've been on facebook since the beginning. And every minor improvement seemed to rock. They added photos. I was able to share photos in one place with most of my friends. I could invite friends over to a party with out having to e-mail every one. Yes, sometimes in college you don't get the opportunity to SEE all your friends every day.
And then the flood gates opened. The Developer thread was flooded with "HEAY I LOVE FACEBOOK CAN U MKE IT SO MUSIC PLAYS LIKE MYSPACE." People would kindly remind them that the whole thread was FOR developers. People could make 3rd party apps and it seemed pretty good because all the 3rd party apps were external. Then came the day that they let those 3rd party apps on everyones website. Then it just went to hell.
Thankfully Grease Monkey and scripts like:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/11992
This exist.
Which is why I maintain 2 accounts. My 'professional' account. Uses my work address. All my college friends and people I know well. You can't find it anywhere. You can't search for it by name. Even if you know me I have to add you. Then my "Hi I just met you at the bar and I'm going to add you" account. Basic info. Searchable. Etc.
Let me give you an example of a "casual friend". You know that guy at the bar who tells you about his band, and it sounds cool, but you don't want to get his phone number or give out yours just so you can check out their next show. The solution here is he can just tell you what his bands myspace is, or facebook, or whatever, and you can get the info there. No need for feigned friendships when you find out his band sucks.