Blogs

Facebook has recently announced clearer privacy settings which appear to be 'one click' away from wherever the user is on the site. It remains to be seen whether these new changes are merely a case of giving with one hand and taking with the other, a charge directed at Facebook in the past over adopting an overzealous default-on policy instead of allowing users the choice of opting-in to new features. Cynics might suggest that the recent controversial revised Terms of Use of Facebook-owned Instagram is exactly this. The widely publicised outcry surrounding Instagram which led to a partial retraction of the changes still leaves much to be desired on the privacy front, as the Electronic Freedom Frontier (EFF) highlights. What is...

I've found some quite nice tweak for resizing taskbar buttons. I'm surprised that none of tweak programs added this feature. Please note: Use it on your own risk. I can't guarantee is it going to work properly. This is for XP only! Enter following into notepad: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] "MinWidth"="450"Save it as Taskbar.reg (make sure you've selected "all files (*.*)" in File Type). When saved, double-click it, yes and then OK. You'll only have to log off and log on to take the effect. When you login, open some window. If done properly, it should be extended. You an change the size. To change it, you only have to change 450 to another value. In screenshot...

More and more software releases incorporate the 'recommended' or preset option to install a browser toolbar, for instance the Java, Skype or Nero installer have such things. A user who will just click forward will install these toolbars, which eventually result in dozens of installed toolbars. In some cases these toolbars even get installed if the user chooses to not install them. A couple days ago I looked into my brother in laws fathers computer, he had about a dozen IE toolbars installed he did not want or know about since he even wasn't using the IE. To wrap it up, most of these toolbars are completely useless for the user. Their purpose is in most cases to promote a search engine such as google, yahoo or ask. These pay the...

That iOS devices like the iPhone are permanently storing location data has been all over the press last week. This video demonstrates how our tool AlpAlyzer (named after the iPhone default password "alpine") helps in locating and visualizing this data. YouTube video The tool itself has not been released yet, since we need to test it on more devices. Anyone willing to contribute their location data file for further research please contact us. And of course, if you have old iOS devices you no longer use, feel free to donate them to Safer-Networking ;) Story on wired.com Story on CNN For Mac users: iPhone Tracker Background: iOS devices like the iPhone do have a local file, in SQLite3 format, that stores location data associated with...

Thread says more than me. http://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17786 http://www.betaarchive.com/screenshots/index.php?load=Windows%208%20Build%207850/ I've additionally managed to install Spybot 2.0 on it, no problems except some... You'll see.

I've just uploaded and updated FileAlyzer 2 release. Key features of this update include: Support for files > 2 GB VirusTotal sample analysis integrated Problems on reopening files solved Opening an already open file will bring existing window to foreground GUI is now Unicode Hashes tab allows selection of hashes and has been sped up Download

I hope you will forgive me that i prefered to wrote in german. But my basic- & schoolenglish is verry bad. Ich wollte den Verantwortlichen von Sbybot ("search & destroy") in deutsch danken :bow: ! Meine Muttersprache ist zwar italienisch, aber ich kann mich im Namen von vielen anderen europäischen User auch bedanken :yes: . Mein Dankeschön gilt auch dem sozialen Engagement von Spybot. Viele wissen nämlich nicht, dass einige Millionen ALG-2 Empfänger gar nicht in der Lage wären große, aber auch kleine Summe zu spenden. Und da die Spenden auf freiwilliger Basis beruhen und selbst die die nicht spenden werden wie jeder andere behandelt und kommen so in den Genuss einer der besten "free" Schutzsoftware. Und wenn ich eins versichern kann...

I'll start the talk about the user interface with error messages, where our conclusion from 1.x was that we did not stay true enough to a very important concept. Well, proper error dialogs are rarely encountered anywhere, but that should not be an excuse. A good error message should have three purposes, possibly four: Inform the user that something went wrong in terms he understands. Make suggestions how to correct the problem. Provide information that may help customer support trailing the source of the problem. Offer those users who want to understand a background. You'll often find one, and sometimes two of these in an error message, but very rarely all three in a language and structure that's adjusted to the users situation...

While discussing jailbreaks with developers who use tracking modules in their iPhone software, and those who create such tracking modules, I came across the accusation that jailbreaks are heavily used for installing pirated software. As one who jailbroke his iPhone on the first day he received it (yes, it's legal), I felt like defending the need to jailbreak the iPhone for useful and quite legit purposes. So here's a list of my top apps for jailbroken devices: PrivaCy - in fact, my number one piece of software from Cydia (the software that manages repositories of software for jailbroken devices) is a small extension that appears within the iPhones settings and allows me to block the tracking modules of Flurry, Medialets, Mobclix...

I recently installed Facebook on my iPhone, and now it sends me the usual Facebook events about new comments, status updates, wall posts, etc... except it does not send them for my account, but for someone else's. I tried to find out whose privacy Facebook is violating by sending me his or her messages, but couldn't so far. I also couldn't find an email address to contact at Facebook about this, and didn't want to register in one of their many places that still do not exactly fit into this category. Maybe someone from Facebook can contact me when reading this, otherwise we'll have to deal with the iPhone Facebook application as spyware, since it spies on someone else for me even though I don't want it.

Today I am going to be taking a look at Digsby, the app that puts all your instant messaging, email and social networking in one interface! When I first heard about Digsby I immediately thought "Wow, that sounds useful" and installed it Digsby is made for people (like me!) who can't be bothered to go over to different sites to check their email and social networking Instant Messaging Digsby makes instant messaging so simple, especially if you have multiple accounts. You just add your account type (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber and even Facebook Chat :p:), enter in your details, then chat You can log into all of these accounts simultaneously, (I have 3 MSN accounts and a Facebook account on at the same time) which makes...

I downloaded the latest release of iTunes - version 8, last night. This release has been long overdue as iTunes has been stuck on version 7 since 2006. Unfortunately, this latest version of the popular music player (running on Vista) is still buggy, bloated and slow like in previous versions. The addition of a feature called 'Genius' what looks for music that 'go well' with the song that you are playing, was useless for me because it required that you have an iTunes store account. Before the release I was actually looking for an desktop music player replacement for iTunes and this release only hastens my search. Apple needed to do something drastic, and I don't think this enough - Just adding new 'shiny' visualisers isn't enough...

With the recent escapade of the change of Facebook terms [Consumerist Article]...then no change...then plans of change in the future...,the issue of privacy is once again brought to the front of our minds. I recently read an article that revealed how people use Facebook to extort money off others. All it involves is creating a fake profile, adding people to your friend list (and also their friends because people are more likely to trust you if you have their friends aswell), socialising using information from their wall and finally the "drop" - asking for money to meet up or for some other crazy untrue request. IMO I think the blame should not be put only on the scammers but on the people who are misguided enough to add them in the...

It seems that right now VirusTotal is overloaded with 12,000 files which causes you to wait forever (over 1 hour actually). The possible cause is that someone is probably trying to attack VirusTotal using botnets... although i'm not sure. As you can see, it started at 22 o'clock and keeps going... It seems that W32/RAHack causes this problem... This is right now updated list of detections: 2010.04.24 00:31:27 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:27 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:16 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:16 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:15 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:15 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:15 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:04 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:31:04 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:30:58 W32/RAHack 2010.04.24 00:30:58 W32/RAHack...

I've made my own channel on YouTube. It will be mostly showing a few threats, glitches, crashing and some random stuff. Channel link: http://www.youtube.com/user/TomKTW If you have YouTube account, subscribe if you like it...

I was able to sign in on morning, but since 12 o'clock, I'm unable to sign in. However,I was able to sign in only once, but I had to log off because I had to go home. This problem is affected to every instant messenger which uses Windows Live ID for Messenger. How did it happened? I was browsing the net usually and safely. All of sudden, WLM popped-out something like this: WTF!? Okay, it shoud be easy to sign in again... but sign in FAILED. I was only able to sign in at that time when I've by some reason changed password into same password, it worked, but it failed again to sign in and password changing didn't made any success... So, I've tried to check does Messenger even knows that my password is incorrect. I've typed wrong...

Just something I just came across while exploring 'net. :crowned: (and no, that logo ain't an image, it's a proper ASCII work of art!)

I just yesterday stumbled across an interview with Symantecs CEO John W. Thompson in German engineers magazin VDI-Nachrichten. On the topic of a fake passport for "Elvis Presley" passing controls at an airport in the Netherlands, he suggested:"Vorstellen kann ich mir da bereits eher - jetzt in Bezug auf das Internet -, dass man auf Basis des Leumundes eines Anwenders vorgeht. Man schaut, was ist das für ein Anwender, welche Seiten hat er besucht, welche Gefahr geht von ihm aus? Auf Basis dieser Infos lässt sich dann ein Profil erstellen und Unternehmen können darauf entsprechend reagieren." Translated into English, he said he could imagine, in regards to the Internet, that decision could be made based on the reputation of users. One...

My first blog. I hope it's okay. I've been looking for this game a long time. A simple 3D block world, a ball (made of marble, of course) and a few bonuses and which every game should have at least fun. Marble Arena has it. And at least it's free unlike other similar games. In this picture you can see the playground (First run Level Map). Every new start of game begins here. You can do some training here by collecting stars (they'll reappear again) and improve some skills. Although at start you can get confused for moving the marble and camera, you could get it on. Another part of playground. Nice waterfall castle, don't you like it? When you go into water, you'll be quite slow because water has low gravity. There are 22...

I have already talked about full blown video converters on this blog, but what if you just want to quickly and easily convert videos to format that your iPod supports (MP4)? I've found DVDVideoSoft's Free Video to iPod Converter fulfils this need well. The application is extremely simple to use. You just browse for the files you want to convert, or just drag a whole bunch of them into the 'Input files' area, then select what device and video setting preset you desire and click convert. As an iPod Classic (6th Gen) owner, I found the video/audio quality presets to be very well balanced. Even using the 'Economy' preset produced video acceptable for most. The program is also very quick at encoding your videos; you can even change...