Facebook, Twitter turning into a criminal hub

Facebook, Twitter turning into a criminal hub

Washington, February 4: Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are turning into a criminal hub where gang members make threats, boast about crimes, share intelligence on rivals and network with people across the country.

Investigators are increasingly monitoring these sites to track gang activity.

According to law enforcement officials, gangs are making greater use of Twitter and Facebook, where they sometimes post information that helps agents identify gang associates and learn more about their organisations.

"You find out about people you never would have known about before," Discovery News quoted Dean Johnston with the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, which helps police investigate gangs, as saying.

"You build this little tree of people," Johnston added.

Tech-savvy gangsters have long been at home in chatrooms.

"They will even go out and brag about doing shootings," Johnston said.

Source: zopag.com

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Japan PM starts tweeting, launches blog

Japan PM starts tweeting, launches blog

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has launched a blog and started using Twitter in a New Year bid to reach out to the public at a time when his ratings have tumbled.

Hatoyama began using the microblogging service Twitter and launched a fully fledged blog, both in Japanese, starting Friday.

"Happy New Year everyone," he said in his first tweet, stressing that he had written it himself. "My target is to send one tweet a day for now until I get used to it."

San Francisco-based Twitter, which has won tens of millions of users with the service that allows people to pepper one another with 140-character or less messages, launched its Japanese service last April.

In his blog, titled Hato cafe, Hatoyama said: "I started this blog as a first step to burying the gap between people and politics as well as changing this country together."

He also uploaded to the blog a picture of his office roof against a backdrop of blue winter sky, explaining that he took the picture with the camera on his mobile phone.

The Twitter account is http://twitter.com/hatoyamayukio, while his official blog is at http://hatocafe.kantei.go.jp/

Support for Hatoyama's cabinet has dipped below 50 percent for the first time according to major opinion polls released last month. Voters criticised his lack of leadership and a funding scandal.

In his blog he apologised for the political funding scandal that has embroiled a former aide, saying: "I gave a lot of trouble to many people last year. Listening to the people's voice, I want to do my best to fulfil my duty."

Prosecutors indicted Hatoyama's former aide, Keiji Katsuba, in late December for allegedly misreporting millions of dollars of donations, but did not indict the prime minister due to a lack of evidence.

The indictments came after a difficult first 100 days in office for the political blue-blood, whose August election victory ended more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule in the world's number two economy.

Source: Yahoo NEWS

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More Attacks Expected on Facebook, Twitter in 2010

More Attacks Expected on Facebook, Twitter in 2010

Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can expect more attention from cybercriminals in 2010, according to a new report (PDF) released Tuesday by McAfee Labs. Also at risk are users of Adobe Systems products including Acrobat Reader and Flash. And move over Microsoft; the security firm predicts that Google’s Chrome OS will “create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.”

The company also anticipates smarter and more dangerous Trojans that “follow the money,” as well as a “significant trend toward a more distributed and resilient botnet infrastructure that relies much more on peer-to-peer technologies.”

In a recorded interview (scroll down for audio) David Marcus, McAfee Labs‘ director of security research and communications, said that he expects “an explosion of Facebook and other services targeted by cybercriminals.” In addition to malware like Koobface that spreads among Facebook users’ friends list, Marcus expects an increase in rogue Facebook applications.

“When you click yes to ‘do you want to allow this application to access your Facebook account,’ you’re giving that application access to all the data in your Facebook account,” he said. Facebook vets the third-party applications that it distributes, but rouge developers are finding other ways to get people to install unauthorized apps.

“A lot of the spammers and scammers will send fake Facebook application requests to users’ inboxes,” he said. Marcus recommends that you only install apps from within Facebook by clicking “browse more applications” in the Facebook application installer.“

Twitter vulnerabilities
According to McAfee, Twitter is vulnerable mostly because of URL-shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com. There’s nothing wrong with Twitter or these services, but when you click on a shortened URL you have no idea where you’re going until after you get there. I would like to see a URL-shortening service that vets each URL for security and rejects those that are potentially dangerous. Twitter, according to the McAfee report is “also serving as a control vehicle for botnets.”

Criminals are now being more surgical in their attacks, singling out individuals and corporations as targets. The report points to the 10-month investigation of “GhostNet,” which McAfee Labs describes as a “network of at least 1,295 compromised computers in 103 countries” that “primarily belonged to government, aid groups, and activists.” The malicious code was delivered by e-mail with subject headings related to the Dali Lama and Tibet, according to the report.

The report also sites “a very targeted wave of attacks against the management of major companies,” as well as attacks carried out against “journalists from various media organizations, including Agence France Press, Dow Jose and Reuters based in China.”

Adobe products and Google Chrome vulnerable
Adobe products, especially its Acrobat Reader and Flash, are likely to replace Microsoft Office as the No. 1 software target, according to McAfee. It’s nothing they’ve (Adobe) done wrong,” Marcus said. “The bad guys go where the masses go” and because of the increasingly widespread use of Adobe products, “that tends to be what the bad buys will start looking to exploit. It really is nothing more sophisticated than that.”

Criminals are infecting PDF files and leveraging exploits in the opening of PDF documents, according to Marcus.

“Instead of viewing a PDF you’re actually taken to a website that downloads some type of malware to your machine.” Adobe plans to patch a critical hole in Reader and Acrobat on January 12.

There is also concern about Google’s Chrome operating system, which is expected to be officially released in 2010. Chrome, which will run Web-based applications, is likely to be vulnerable to attacks in HTML 5–the newest version of the hyper-text markup language that, says the report, “holds all the promises that today’s Web community seeks–primarily blurring and removing the lines between a Web application and a desktop application.”

McAfee also warned of banking Trojans with “new tactics that went well beyond the rather simple keylogging-with-screenshots” that were used earlier. Trojans now use rootkit techniques to hide on a victim’s system to disable antivirus software.

“Often the victim’s computer becomes part of a botnet and receives malware configuration updates,” the report said.

Cause for optimism
The report did end with some optimism, calling 2009 a good year for law enforcement. In November 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted nine individuals “from Russia, Moldova, and Estonia who were allegedly responsible for $9 million in customer payroll data compromises at RBS WorldPay.”

The year also “saw the conviction of the infamous “Godfather of Spam,” Alan Ralsky of Michigan, and his criminal syndicate, which was responsible for generating a significant portion of the world’s unsolicited e-mail,” McAfee said.

“You started to see that not a lot of resiliency was built into some of those botnets, they were taken down, and poof they disappeared for very long periods of time,” Marcus said. He said he thinks “the bad guys will learn from that and build in some redundancy,” but he remains optimistic. “The good guys and regular users are getting tired of getting exploited and we’re finally starting to see more offensive and aggressive take downs of botnets…we’re starting to see people wanting to take back the Internet.”

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10422760-238.html

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Social Media Marketing With Twitter – An Introduction

Social Media Marketing With Twitter – An Introduction

As a business owner, you have likely heard of social media marketing. You may even have been curious enough to investigate it. And you may have been overwhelmed by the many options available to you. Between Digg, Delicious, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all of the many others, it is difficult to know where to start.

Twitter is one of the newer entries in the social media marketing field. Launched in 2006, it has become an enormously popular way for people to connect and keep in touch. Like any form of social media, it has also attracted businesses keen to get on the bandwagon of social media marketing.

Using Twitter as a Marketing

Twitter is often referred to as a micro-blog. Instead of posts, you write “tweets” of 140 characters or less. You can follow other users with similar interests, and they can follow you. Each time you add an update, all of your followers receive a message. They can choose to respond or not.

As with any social media marketing site, using Twitter requires you to be involved. You need to follow and be followed. You also need to provide information of value to the people who follow you. One example is links to your blog or other relevant information on your site.

Using Twitter for marketing does take time (as does any attempt at social media marketing). You need to build a community of followers and engage with other users to create credibility. To make links, you have to have something interesting to share with people, which means you need to spend time creating enough current, relevant, interesting and (occasionally) thought-provoking content for your followers to read.

Tips for Using Twitter as Part of Your Online Marketing

There are some basic rules to follow when using Twitter for marketing. In fact, many of these rules apply to other social media sites too, like Facebook.

Do not spam or engage in hard selling. Remember to be sociable and offer information of value. Blog posts on the benefits of your product or services, interesting conferences or professional development opportunities that are coming up – these are good examples.

• Always link back to your site or blog. That is why you are doing this in the first place.
• To get followers, put a link on your site or blog inviting people to follow you on Twitter. Twitter provides the code for a “badge” that you can drop into your Website or blog.
• Search Twitter for likeminded users/businesses and see who they are following. You may be interested in following the same users.
• Follow the lead of those who came before you. There are users with hundreds of followers. Check out what they are tweeting about so you can get ideas.

Use Twitter as Part of a Detailed Social Media Marketing Strategy

Of course, if you are using social media for marketing, you need to have a comprehensive plan. To create a plan like that, you may need help from a search engine marketing consultant. In addition to tweeting on Twitter (which can eat up a lot of your time) you need to have a schedule for blogging and writing articles to link to.

As part of this strategy, develop a plan for your content. Don’t throw any old thing up there just to have something to link to. A consultant can show you how to create compelling copy that makes your blog, articles and Website work with your social media marketing, so that you are drawing traffic through as many channels as possible.

Source From: homebasedblogging.com

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7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter

7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter

By Xavier Lur

With over 54 million users worldwide and close to 7 billion tweets being posted, Twitter is the world’s most popular micro-blogging platform, fueled by smartphones and online bursts of 140 characters. 2009 is the year of Twitter. It soared to lofty heights over the past year, all thanks to the active presence of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey. The San Francisco-based Internet company isn’t a social networking website like Facebook or MySpace. Instead, the main focus of Twitter is about real-time information of the things you care about — work, industry, company, news.

2010 will be the revenue year of Twitter. The micro-blogging juggernaut will focus on generating revenue in the year ahead, and may explore options including an initial public offering. “2010 is really going to be the revenue year. I don’t know if we’re going to be profitable, but we have plenty of time,” said co-founder and creative director Biz Stone during an Oxford University event in November.

Today, I’d like to share with you guys ‘7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter‘. Enjoy and don’t forget to tweet about this post!

1. The Journey of a Tweet

Timon Singh from NGONews has created an infographic which shows the journey of a Tweet and how it evolves from a simple 140-character long message to a Google news story.

2. The Many Users of Twitter

Ordinary people use Twitter to share with their friends and co-workers what they are doing; bloggers, Internet marketers, and businesses use Twitter to promote their articles/products; politicians use Twitter to garner support; celebrities use Twitter to stay in touch with their beloved fans, and spammers use Twitter to send unsolicited messages.

Inspired by Guy Kawasaki, “The Many Users of Twitter” is an infographic designed by the folks at NGONews. According to Guy Kawasaki, there are six types of Twitter users – Newbie, Brand, Smore, Bitch, Maven, and Mensch. So which one are you?

3. Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter

Designed by Burson Marsteller, the “before Twitter” infographic shows that time is necessary for the information to spread before its arrival on Twitter. On the other hand, the “after Twitter” infographic reveals the changes of the information circulation with the development of the use of Twitter.

Before Twitter

After Twitter

4. Facebook VS Twitter

Although one is a social networking websites whereas the other is a micro-blogging platform, but both have been ruled as “arch-rivals”. The “Facebook VS Twitter” infographic depicts the exponential growth of the two websites.

*The statistics are outdated, but at least it’s worth taking a look.

5. More Truth About Twitter – Twitter Stats

Based on surveys and statistics, InformationIsBeautiful has designed an infographic that shows the percentage of active and non-active Twitter users; the number of people out of 100 whose tweets are pointless babble, and when are the peak days and hours.

6. The History of Twitter, So Far

In July, we gathered information from various sources and compiled the list of “The History of Twitter in pictures“.

However, Manolith has done a better job in telling the story of Twitter by squeezing a long-form blog post into an attractive infographic that puts some key moments of the service’s history in visual form.

7. Le Twitter Hack

Apparently, Twitter needs better security. The “Le Twitter Hack” infographic shows a timeline of events regarding the July’s Twitter attack.

Credit: techxav.com

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