Facebook data leak and a Durga pooja pandal

If social media gives you a privacy scare every now and then, here's another news that has surfaced about a Bulgarian blogger who purchased a data leak of 1.1 million facebook users for just $5, which consists of facebook user profile URL, their complete names and facebook emails.

On the surface it does not look like much of a sensitive data leak, however the price at which has got sold is what should be the worrying factor, possible impact of such data being leaked is listed below:

• Send more convincing phishing emails, using the Facebook user’s profile URL, first and last name, and login email, to obtain more information.
• Use a password cracker to discover the user’s Facebook password to accompany the login email, allowing them to hack the account and discover more information.
• Use the name and login email together to reconstruct the user’s actual identity.

The person who sold all the information was reportedly collecting information via Facebook and Twitter apps from the past 6 months, comprised of details of users from US, UK, Canada and Europe. Facebook has already begun investigating this incident and has mentioned that it stands committed in its efforts to safeguard user data and would continue to investigate this individual who tried scraping user data.

Read more about this here

Back home in India, during this years Durga pooja in a town of Suri from West Bengal a facebook user spotted a pandal made with a Facebook page design, if you take a close look at the image it looks to be a very detailed and creative representation (Original article source and image credit: http://lighthouseinsights.in)

Feature - Monitoring of children's online activity by Parents in Asia

An article from Asia Media Forum has brought out an interesting study on how parents in Asia monitor online activity of their children in the cyber world, a UN report has proved that globally children across the world are spending more time living a sedentary life where they are also spending a good amount of time online on the internet, Internet is fast evolving medium of communication and for parents at times it becomes difficult to catch up the technological advancement in order to monitor the online activity of their children.

The report states that parents in general monitor the online activity of children mostly in the age group of 6-9 years and as they grow up they gradually move away from tracking it frequently just because the Generation ME does not like to get policed by their own parents and also as the parents age, technology becomes more tricky thing to handle for them.

In India 2/3rd of the population that accesses internet does it from outside normally from cybercafes or at workplace, teenagers and kids in India are equally exposed to the vices of the web as kids across the globe are, and Indian parents apart from the younger lot, most of the times find it difficult to identify what's wrong and what''s right for the kid to do on the internet, also these kids are increasingly becoming of their own identity on the web, Avatar's, socializing with peers much early than where our generation began.

You can read more on this here (courtesy: ipsnews.net)