“We’ve spent the last couple of weeks listening to users and consulting with experts in California; Washington, DC, and around the world,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said.

“The messages we’ve received are pretty clear. Users appreciate having precise and comprehensive controls, but want them to be simpler and easier to use.”

Facebook contended that members like new programs rolled out at the California-based Internet hotspot but want easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information with third-party applications or websites.

Read more…Facebook plans to make privacy easier | News.com.au

Dave Tollner, who won the inner Darwin seat of Fong Lim for the Country
Liberal Party at the last election, caused outrage after he wrote on
his page that itinerants were “parasites terrorising innocent citizens”.

He said that he was “sick to death” of them and warned that “the fun will
be over for these parasites on the very day we get a Country Liberal
government in the Territory”.

Many people left angry messages on his page, one going so far as to accuse him of advocating
“genocide”. However, there were just as many messages of support.

Mr Tollner’s Facebook page was suspended for two weeks and has only recently come back online.

However, within minutes of the site functioning again  a left-wing political activist posted a cartoon of a Ku Klux Klansman.

Mr Tollner said that he did not expect such a strong reaction from his
comments, adding: ”Political correctness has never been my strong
point.”

He accused Labor activists of lobbying Facebook to shut down his profile page.

However, the man who posted the Klansman cartoon on the page is a Greens supporter.

Justin Tutty said the cartoon was Patrick Starfish from the Sponge Bob Square
Pants children’s television show drawn as a Klansman.

Read more about Dave Tollner’s Facebook woes at ntnews.com.au.

Read more…Dave Tollner suspended from Facebook over ‘offensive attack’ on Aborigines | Herald Sun

Read more…The dangers of social networking sites such as Facebook – TECH.BLORGE.com

The rise in popularity in social networking could allow authorities to spot users at risk and offer help, researchers believe.

Researches from New Zealand’s Victoria University say they have devised a program that scans posts to identify key words that people aged between 18 and 24 are using.

A high proportion of key words could mean that the blogger is at risk of depression, suicide, self-harm or harming others, the researches believe.

“Our technology picks up words or phrases such as ‘depressed’, or ‘I don’t want to live any more’ or ‘I want to kill somebody’,” Dr Tiong-Thye Goh said.

“We analyse the database of phrases and rank them according to frequency of use – if certain key words are used a lot it is likely that the particular person may be emotionally depressed.”

Read more…Suicide prevention for social networks | News | News.com.au

The Swiss woman said she could not work in front of a computer as she needed to lie in the dark, but was then seen to be active on Facebook.

Her employer, insurer Nationale Suisse, said in a statement the action had destroyed its trust in the employee.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” it said.

The unnamed woman told the 20 Minuten daily she had been surfing Facebook in bed on her iPhone and accused her employer of spying on her and other employees by sending a mysterious friend request which allows access to personal online activity.

Nationale Suisse rejected the accusation of spying and said the employee’s Facebook activity had been stumbled across by a colleague in November, before use of the social network site was blocked in the company.
Read more…Sacked for Facebook surfing while sick | News | News.com.au

Internet fraudsters are using “social engineering” - teens are
tricked into opening emails or links containing viruses that can then
track key strokes – including account log-in details, federal police
said yesterday.

The social engineering scam begins with amalgamation of information children reveal on social networking sites.

Broadband bandits “spear phish’” – conning kids into believing they are a friend via a personalised message.

If the child responds, the criminals install malicious software, or “malware”, which contains the key-logger.

“MySpace,
Facebook … there are hundreds of these sites (on which young) people
are posting a lot of personal information without taking the relevant
precautions,” AFP national co-ordinator of high-tech crime operations Peter Sykora said.

Read more…Internet criminals target families | News | News.com.au

Users of Facebook, the popular social-networking website, have been targeted by hackers and cybercriminals attempting to access their user profiles and steal valuable data.

The site has been hit by five security breaches in the last week, and experts have warned that hackers are now looking to exploit the trust implicit within social networking to commit identity theft and other cyber crime.

Many of the security breaches take the form of rogue applications. Facebook allows people to develop and write games and software to run on the site, but these applications do not need to be approved by Facebook before they are made available for people to download. High-tech thieves have started to take advantage of this loophole to create fake applications that contain malicious software.

Web savvy Christians are putting a new twist on a old religious tradition — giving up something you enjoy for Lent.

It’s one thing to forgo things you’ll never really miss — like vegetables or jogging. It’s another thing entirely to swear off the lifeblood of your digital social life. But that’s what many college students are doing by taking a break from Facebook posts , Twitter tweets and MySpace messages.

Hundreds of Facebook users have joined “Giving up Facebook for Lent” groups on the site, replacing the photos on their profiles with boxes announcing they will be gone for the next six weeks.

Facebook users are being urged to be wary of third-party apps after it was revealed hackers have launched another hoax program designed to steal social networker’s login details.

Sophos says that the ‘F a c e b o o k – closing down!!!’ app sends bogus emails to users’ contacts, claiming they’ve been reported “for violating our Terms of Service”. The message continues: “This is your official warning! – Click here to find out why you were reported!”.

However, any web user clicking the link will give hackers access to their profile and personal information. Clicking the link also forwards the fake message each user’s friends.

“Fans of Facebook will no doubt be aware that the site has been under scrutiny over its terms of service, and these latest attacks are designed to take full advantage of that,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

The Internet-tracking firm released social-networking website rankings that show MySpace slipped to second place during the course of the past year while micro-blogging service Twitter catapulted to third place from 22nd.

News Corp-owned MySpace saw approximately 810 million visits in January, while Twitter was visited 54.2 million times, according to Compete.

“No surprise here,” a Compete reader using the online name Bauer said in a comment viewable Wednesday at a chat forum at the US firm’s website.

“Facebook has evolved much better and always has something new to offer. I don?t get Twitter though, I don?t think people care to read live updates on what percentage of my burger I?ve eaten.”