Facebook Message

Facebook wrote:

It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement. It’s not that those other messages aren’t important, but one of them is more meaningful. With new Messages, your Inbox will only contain messages from your friends and their friends. All other messages will go into an Other folder where you can look at them separately. If someone you know isn’t on Facebook, that person’s email will initially go into the Other folder. You can easily move that conversation into the Inbox, and all the future conversations with that friend will show up there.

So how will you find the “Other” folder?

1. Log-in and go to your profile.

2. Click on “Messages” on the sidebar. This will open your inbox and show all your messages. Also, this will prompt “Other” folder to appear below “Messages”.

Where Facebook Hides Messages

3. Click “Other” and you will see the rest of the messages you probably haven’t read yet.

Did you just miss an important message?

My Turf Ads

According to Myturfads website:

MyTurf is the only company that unites the geographic presence of local internet providers with advertisers and publishers to deliver hyper local, high value ad content.

Whether you’re a Publisher, Internet Provider or Advertiser, MyTurf puts you in better control of your turf, by directly linking you to the local consumer.

Unlike other so called, hyper local services that have to rely on consumer privacy invasive methods, MyTurf’s AdValue Platform dramatically improves the accuracy and value of consumer online advertising by delivering relevant, meaningful hyper localized content without compromising privacy.

So basically, the wireless ISP provider allowed MyTurf ads to strip out all Adsense units on my sites and to overlay their own. MyTurfads claims that it will localized and deliver relevant ads, which is not true. All ads that appeared on my “education” blog is about Proactive products. Adsense used to give much more relevant ads!

Is this legal at all? Why is MyTurfads reaping the fruits of my websites’ contents? All the high traffic I get is useless if MyTurfads, which I do not have an agreement with, is getting all the ad clicks — yes, getting a free advertising space!

Google Adsense monetization goes down the drain if all wireless ISP providers will allow companies like MyTurfads to intercept the ads.

What do you think of this?

Sample Chitika Map

Chitika Maps is free to use!

I will be implementing the new feature soon. Check out the demo here.

Facebook Spam Attack

According to Graham Cluley, a consultant with Web security firm Sophos, said that “explicit and violent” images included not just hardcore porn but photoshopped images of celebrities, including teen pop star Justin Bieber, in sexual positions; “extreme violence;” and at least one image of an abused dog. Oh, was there a naked grandma as well?

Labeling them as spams took time as I had to do it one by one. I had the feeling that friends on my list were clicking the links from their walls and unknowing to them, the links with offensive content will be shared to their friends’ walls. With friends numbering to over 2000, imagine how many times I have to delete each popping porn-and-gore spam.

According to USA Today:

At the center of these sort of attacks is a technique called clickjacking. These fake links pose as regular Facebook posts, often coming from friends we would normally trust to only post good links. When clicked, a JavaScript command is executed, causing a user’s computer to perform a program that spreads the link even farther.

These posts can do more than spread on Facebook. They often come armed with malware, which is dropped on the user’s computer when clicked.

Malware can often perform other dangerous tasks on our computers such as gaining access to our personal information and passwords.

Who perpetrated the attack? Facebook did not comment on the people responsible for it.

Just this week, posts around Facebook have been circulated that the Filipinos were behind the spam links and pornographic materials.

Mark Zuckerberg – CEO of Facebook released an online statement regarding the spreading porn pics and spams. Released November 16, 2011 9PM Pacific Time Zone.

The porn attacks originated in the Philippines and are being published by Filipinos all over Facebook, our experts here at Facebook are doing everything they can to stop it from spreading any further (outside the Philippines) and to eliminate the porn and spam threat completely which have been causing other Facebook users ‘a hard time’. Filipinos should also be vigilant and report any spam links and pornographic materials. 41% of Facebook members around the world are aged 12-17 years old, we cannot be exposed to this kinds of things through Facebook. If this continues and more spams keep being posted, we will have no choice but to ban Philippine users from using Facebook. We at Facebook will not tolerate outlandish behavior and indecency.

Please be reminded that this has to stop, Filipinos!

But this message is a complete hoax. Mark Zuckerberg has made no such statement.

PCWorld reported that Facebook already identified the attackers but they never divulged the name/s.

In a statement released to media outlets, Facebook said that its dedicated enforcement team “has already identified those responsible and is working with our legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow.”

If indeed the attack originated from the Philippines, I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg will foolishly ban the entire country from using the social network and lose over 23 million Filipino users. The Philippines is at no. 7 in terms of the most number of FB users (23,446,700 as of April 2011) among over 200 countries.

So to those who ever read the hoax message, please do not repost it. The problem is, there are so many ignorant (sorry for the word) Filipinos who don’t do a quick search first and instead easily reposting the message on their walls. This of course could lead to alarm and unfair blame.

Please DO NOT REPOST THE FAKE MESSAGE! Instead, post how your friends could get rid of the spams.

I don’t think Facebook has completely eliminated the issue. I just saw one naked lady on my FB wall this morning.

If in case you get the porno pictures, click the arrow to the right of the post and choose “report story or spam.” Let Facebook know about it.

And one last thing, never ever click a link or a picture when in doubt — even if it comes from a friend. If you can’t help it, private message your friend first and clarify the validity of the link or picture. It is better to be safe than be a sorry victim of a spam.

widgetbucks scam?

I tried accessing my publisher’s account today via Widgetbucks.com. But the site does not exist anymore. It’s totally gone on Google search.

I am pretty sure I had few bucks unclaimed from Widgetbucks for showing ads on my blogs. I guess I just have to donate the money to them.

What do you think happened to Widgetbucks? I don’t remember receiving a message saying that they suck and had to shut down the site.