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Kid Racks Up $1400 Debt in FarmVille

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 7, 2010
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 195 words

Oh dear — looks like it’s time to add FarmVille to the list of internet addiction scares after a 12-year-old UK boy has amassed £905 in FarmVille debt. About £288 of that came from the boy’s own savings, while £625 was billed to his horrified mother’s credit card. The debt — which is equivalent to about $1400 USD — was racked up in all of about two weeks’ worth of gameplay. In the popular casual Facebook game, players can spend real money to accrue virtual currency and items. It’s a business that’s booming enough to garner the game’s developer Zynga an estimated valuation as high as $5 billion. ...

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Rogue Toolbars Serve Up Facebook Phishing Pages

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 3, 2010
  • Reading Time: 3 min
  • Word Count: 436 words

There are a number of Toolbars out there in the wild with a nasty sting in the tail for anybody using them to login to Facebook. We’ve seen two of these so far; it’s possible there are more. Promoted as toolbars that allow you to cheat at popular Zynga games such as Mafia Wars, they appear to be normal at first glance with a collection of links to various websites and other features common to this type of program. ...

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Social media is exposure for password guessing

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 3, 2010
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 139 words

The Inquirer security news site were reporting that the 25-year-old arrested by French police for hacking a Twitter data base and accessing U.S. President Barak Obama’s account guessed the admin’s password. The unemployed man, who went by the handle “Hacker Croll.” is not a genius, the news site concluded. “Apparently it was a doddle to do. He simply guessed people’s passwords by working them out from information on their blogs or online pages they had created about themselves,” it said. ...

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Sharing vs. your privacy on Facebook

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 3, 2010
  • Reading Time: 5 min
  • Word Count: 958 words

Facebook is, by its nature, a social experience. But as the undisputed king of social networking expands ways for its users to interact, it’s raising more questions about how much of their information is made available to people they don’t know. In some cases, users may not even realize it’s happening. One example is the hundreds of thousands of developers approved by Facebook to create games, quizzes and other applications. Some of those developers are able to access basic information about users after a Facebook friend has started using their application. ...

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Giant Facebook database destroyed amid legal threat

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 3, 2010
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 265 words

New Scientist is reporting that a massive database culled from the public profiles of 210 million Facebook users has been destroyed before its anticipated — and controversial — release to researchers. Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer, reluctantly deleted the data after Facebook threatened legal action, saying he could not afford to fight a lawsuit. He said Facebook was not aware that such information was available and that the flaw is being patched. ...

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Facebook Scam Targets Whole Foods Shoppers

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: April 2, 2010
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 249 words

Whole Foods, a popular health and organic grocery chain, is the subject of a new Facebook scam that phishes for users’ credit and other personal information. A deluge of fraudulent Facebook Pages are popping up that promise a limited number of users Whole Foods gift cards. These Pages are accruing thousands of fans and siphoning off sensitive and lucrative data. The groups offering Whole Foods gift cards are in no way affiliated with the supermarket; rather, con artists are using the Pages to uncover important personal and financial information from users via a bogus credit assessment. After giving the requested information, users watch their computers crash as their identities are completely exposed. ...

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Facebook AV

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 30, 2010
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 142 words

Does a Facebook-specific antivirus application sound like a good idea? Maybe not. One of our analysts saw this particular application claiming to be an antivirus wreak havoc on his Friends list. Of course, there is no such thing. Once installed on one Friend’s account, this application tags 20 Friend into a picture such as the one below: If a Friend looking through the photos then clicks on the app’s (apparently randomly generated) link, they’ll see this: ...

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New social media? Pay to play online games with women?

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 25, 2010
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 351 words

“Dirty” or “Flirty” Ok. It’s an old formula for a successful business: pay girls to have fun with you. This time the schtick is getting on-line gamers to pay $8.25 (US) to play an online game with a female for 10 minutes. The women get to keep 40 percent. The site is GameCrush. It just opened last night and it seems to be a success (screen shots below.) “GameCrush is being touted as the first social site for adult gamers with the women online able to set their gaming mood to either ‘flirt’ or ‘dirt’, IGN reports. _ _ “The men online are known as Players and the women as PlayDates and Players pay to play while PlayDates get paid to play. _ _ “Players browse PlayDate profiles — of which there are currently 1200 — view photos and even chat with girls for free.” _ _ “At the moment it only supports Xbox 360 and some games on the GameCrush website. GameCrush plans to support PlayStation 3, Wii and World of Warcraft.” ...

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become a fan of Omid on Facebook

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 22, 2010
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 164 words

You are invited to become a fan of Omid’s Network on Facebook. Those of you who already have a Facebook page; all you have to do is become a fan to view the Omid fan page in its entirety. But to participate fully you must join Facebook. If you do not already have a Facebook profile you will still be able to view photos and basic information (but c’mon, you know you have wanted to jump on the Facebook bandwagon – here’s a good reason why.) ...

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Screenshots of the latest Twitter phishing attack

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 22, 2010
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 156 words

Today there’s a phishing run underway in Twitter, using Direct Messages (“DMs”). These are private one-to-one Tweets inside Twitter. The messages look like these: If you follow the link, you end up to a fake Twitter page: If you mistakenly give out your credentials, the attackers will start sending similar Direct Messages to your contacts, posing as you. The ultimate goal of the attackers is to gain access to a large amount of valid Twitter accounts, then use these account to post Tweets with URLs pointing to malicious websites which will take over users computers when clicked. ...

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