Screenshot of the "Ask Question" option.

Facebook’s worst-kept secret is finally ready for its closeup: the company is starting to roll out Facebook Questions, a Q&A service that allows users to poll all of Facebook. Facebook has been inviting users to apply to join a sneak peek of Questions for months now, so we’ve seen much of this before, but this marks the first time that it will begin rolling out to users who didn’t apply for the beta program. Facebook says that this is intiitally rolling out to 3-5 million users, with plans for a broader rollout down the line.

The motivations behind the launch are clear: millions of people already use Facebook status updates to poll their friends — it’s only natural that the site would offer a dedicated mechanism to do this (and it’s also likely to be a boon for page views, especially once Questions are syndicated to search engines). But If you were hoping the new product would incorporate Facebook’s extensive privacy settings, you’ll be disappointed: everything in Questions is shared with everyone else on Facebook, and every question you ask is tied to your real name; likewise, anyone who answers will have their response tied to their account.

Questions choice on the homepage.

Of course, having all questions set to public does have one nice side effect: you’ll be able to poll from Facebook’s massive audience of 500 million users. Facebook obviously isn’t going to ask your question to everyone else on Facebook; instead, its system is going to try to analyze a user’s interests to determine who would be best able to answer your question. The service will also show the question to some of your friends, so ideally you’ll receive answers from a healthy mix of friends and experts (we’ll see how well it actually works).

You’ll be able to ask a question from a few places: the Questions tab that appears in the site’s left navigation area, the publisher that appears at the top of the page (where you typically post things like status updates), and, most interestingly, the search box. When you start typing a question into Facebook’s search box, the site will start displaying a list of similar questions that have already been asked on the site. If yours doesn’t pop up, or you really want to re-ask the same thing, you can ask it directly from the search field.

This could be a big, big deal for the site. Given its size, it won’t take long for Facebook to build up a massive amount of data — if that data is consistently reliable, Questions could turn into a viable alternative to Google for many queries. Facebook will also be integrating Questions and their answers into the Community Pages it launched in April, which already include content from Wikipedia and Facebook user status updates.

The main reason for the concern? There’s an explosion of data about to happen to the Web – thanks largely to sensor data, smart grids, RFID and other Internet of Things data. Other reasons include the increase in mobile devices connecting to the Internet and the annual growth in user-generated content on the Web.

IPv4 countdown on Twitter - less than a year to go before IPv4 addresses run out...

Currently the Web largely uses IPv4, Internet Protocol version 4. Each IPv4 address is limited to a 32-bit number, which means there are a maximum of just over 4 billion unique addresses. IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol and uses a 128-bit address, so it supports a vastly larger number of unique addresses. Enough, in fact, to give every person on the planet over 4 billion addresses!

John Curran from ARIN, the non-profit responsible for managing the distribution of Internet addresses in the North American region, told ReadWriteWeb that of the approximately 4 billion IPv4 addresses available, all but 6% have already been allocated. Curran expects the final 6% to be allocated over the coming year.

This is largely an issue that ISP (Internet Service Providers) and telecoms carriers need to deal with. However content service providers, including large-scale Internet companies like Google and Facebook, also need to ensure that the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 takes place. Curran explained that a content company like Google (for example its YouTube operation) will need to work with its ISP to transport the content via IPv6 as well as IPv4.

This transition is happening “slowly,” says Curran. But he warns that “deployment is where we’re behind.”

John Curran told us that large carriers like Verizon and Comcast have announced trial IPv6 activity. Curran also noted that new Internet of Things initiatives that use sensor networks, power grids, RFID and similar technologies, are being directed to use IPv6 and not IPv4.

There is also solid support from the big Internet companies. Curran said that Google has already put the majority of its services onto IPv6. Declaring its support for IPv6 on a special webpage, Google states that “IPv6 is essential to the continued health and openness of the Internet [and] will enable innovation and allow the Internet’s continued growth.”

In June, Google held a Google IPv6 Implementors Conference. At that event, Facebook announced that it had begun to use IPv6.

In his opening remarks to the conference, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf urges ISPs to move to IPv6, so that a “black market” for Internet addresses won’t occur.

Critics view some of the push for IPv6 as Chicken Little ‘the sky is falling’ talk. Commented @ajbraun, a self-described technology leader at Sony Ericsson, via Twitter: “We should call this “IPv6: Y2K II.” An obvious issue for 10 years, we will panic at the end and finally much ado about nothing.”

Others see a technology called NAT (Network Address Translation) as a solution – it maps multiple addresses to a single IP address, thus reducing the amount of unique IP addresses required. However this is at best a temporary solution. Google argued back in 2008 that NAT and similar technologies “complicate the Internet’s architecture, pose barriers to the development of new applications, and run contrary to network openness principles.”

Whether or not there is Y2K-style fear mongering, the bottom line is that IPv6 is a much larger platform for the coming Internet of Things. So one way or another, the move will have to be made.

Company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement today on the official Facebook blog.

“To celebrate, we’ve put together a collection of stories you’ve shared with us about the impact Facebook and your friends have had on your lives,” writes Zuckerberg. “We’re launching a new application called Facebook Stories where you can share your own story and read hundreds of others, categorized by themes and locations around the world.”

Despite the company’s recent bumpy rides through themires of privacy disputes, over the last 6 and a half years, Facebook has redefined how we maintain relationships with our connections. We here at ReadWriteWeb even had the adventure of unknowingly confusing thousands of Facebook users who thought our homepage was a radical new redesign of their favorite social network.

500 million users later, distant families and long-lost friends are reconnecting and keeping abreast on one another’s lives. I moved away from my hometown at the age of 9, but I managed to find my childhood friends on Facebook. I also have relatives that I see maybe once a year at best, but with Facebook we can stay connected – and it’s only because the network is as large as it is. Certainly, there are other social Web solutions for staying connected, but the massive scale and acceptance by users young and old of Facebook makes it the best tool we have right now.

Children growing up today don’t remember a time before Facebook – and that’s both scary and fascinating. Future generations will be more and more accepting of sharing their lives on the Internet, which has its obvious pros and cons. At the other end of the spectrum, when my generation grows old and wants to look back on our lives, we won’t need an old crusty photo album. We will simply use whatever popular device at the time that lets us flip through our life’s history as aggregated from decades of social sharing. Facebook has been at the forefront of paving the way for that future.

It has taken 77 months for Facebook to go from 0 to 500 million and the company shows little sign of slowing, even with many leaving the network over privacy issues. The truth is, there is no viable alternative yet, but perhaps Google or those four students from N.Y.U. can change that.

The one question everyone is asking, however, is why would Facebook close down a venture that sells imaginary, low-to-no overhead items for real-world money?

Facebook’s product manager for games and credits Jared Morgenstern wrote in a blog post that “Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts. We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the ‘Like’ button and the Wall.”

The Facebook Gift Shop

All Facebook’s Nick O’Neill suggests that Facebook is simply getting serious about the virtual goods market. Instead of fake teddy bears, however, the company is setting its sights on applications. O’Neill points to Facebook’s acquisition of NextStop as the company positioning itself in the mobile application provider space.

Inside Facebook’s Justin Smith comes to a similar conclusion, saying that we’re witnessing a symbolic moment when Facebook “decided that it doesn’t want to be in the business of creating virtual goods for users to buy” but instead the platform on which they sell those goods and the creator of the currency with which they sell them.

The question still lingers – could virtual gift cards and flowers really have taken that much in the way of “product development efforts”? I can’t imagine so, in relation to the nearly pure profit the gift shop must have offered. It did, however, give the impression that Facebook’s Credits were only for those who were into the idea of throwing away money at things that didn’t actually exist.

The closing down of the gift shop looks to us like a concerted effort to overhaul the image of Facebook Credits. Up until now, Credits have been used primarily for virtual gifts, with the recent addition of games and in-game items. I can’t imagine it will be long before Credits are used to purchase apps, real-world items like tickets to events and on-site advertising.

Speaker at the Facebook Conference

Facebook could face fines of tens of thousands of euros under privacy laws. The social networking firm confirmed it had received a letter about the action. ”We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority.

Mr Caspar said he had received a number of complaints from people who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends. He accused Facebook of saving private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.

Switzerland is also reported to be concerned about the use of third-party data. Facebook has until August 11th to formally reply to the legal complaint against it. The California-based company told the BBC in an email that it was “currently reviewing (the complaint) and will readily respond to it within the given time frame”.

“Millions of Germans come to Facebook each day to find their friends, share information with them and connect to the world around them,” wrote spokesman Stefano Hessel.

Facebook has nearly 500 million users worldwide but according to figures by ComScore is only the fourth biggest social network in Germany.

This is not the first time the social networking site has landed in hot water with data protection officials. At the beginning of the year, Canada’s privacy commissioner launched an investigation into the site following complaints about privacy policies.

Facebook Mission Statement

And back in May, Facebook faced a storm of criticism for the way it handled members’ data after unveiling new privacy settings. A number of US senators made public calls at the time for the company to rethink its privacy safeguards. Consumer Watchdog said it was not surprised that Europe was driving this latest legal action against Facebook.

“There are much stronger privacy laws in Europe than here, where privacy is viewed as a consumer protection issue as opposed to a fundamental human right,” the group’s John Simpson told BBC News.

“We see that a number of Silicon Valley companies don’t really understand how seriously privacy issues are taken in Europe and they will continue to run afoul of data protection laws there. I also think there is a growing reaction in the US that we should beef up our privacy laws along the lines of those in Europe.”

Germany has some of the world’s most stringent data-protection laws, while the Hamburg Data Protection Authority has a reputation for taking possible privacy breaches by internet companies seriously.

Google Street View Car

It was the first to launch an investigation into search giant Google for intercepting personal data from unsecured wireless networks while gathering photos and data for its popular Street View project. That investigation is still going on, although last week Google said it was close to handing over the data it had collected to German officials.

A number of other countries have also launched investigations while more than 30 states in the US are considering pooling resources to investigate whether Google broke any laws.

Kuan Yong, Senior Product Manager for YouTube, explained how the feed is created.

“This feed is based on your YouTube settings and preferences, including content from your subscriptions and videos your friends are sharing on Facebook (assuming you’ve connected your YouTube account to your Facebook account).”

Two data sources – your YouTube info and your Facebook sharing – seem insufficient to get at an approximation of something as complex as a person’s taste. Here’s hoping they add in additional sources, such as Twitter accounts and feed readers.

Meanwhile on the handheld front, YouTube’s also pushed live a new mobile site. New touted features include a more touch-friendly UI, further incorporation of the main site’s elements such as favorites and ratings, and a generally speedier existence. YouTube also promises to work at bringing update parity across its desktop and portable kin, “unlike native apps which are not updated as frequently” (come on, tell us how you really feel, guys). Since the TV season is in a bit of a lull anyway, might as well grab your iPhone, Android device, HTPC remote, laptop, or whatever other screen you have and play catchup with your viral videos.

Facebook's New Auto Face Detection

Facebook has unveiled new features to the site, which are designed to make the tagging of photos easier. Speaking about the new face-recognition tech in a blog, Sam Odio from Facebook says about the updates: “People love tagging their friends and family in photos, but we’ve heard that it can be a tedious process.

“You now can add tags with just a couple of clicks directly from your home page and other sections of the site, using the same face detection technology that cameras have used for years.”

Essentially this means that you don’t have to manually add an image box to faces to tag them, as Facebook will now automatically ‘see’ the faces. Those who are worries that they are automatically going to get tagged smoking and boozing at the work’s party, don’t be, it will recognise your face as an, er, face but you still have to manually add a name to the mug.

Odio knows a lot about this sort of tech as until a few months ago he was part of Divvyshot – a photo-sharing service which was snapped up by Facebook. The company was bought to make Facebook’s photo service better, so the addition of better tagging should be the first in a long line of tweaks.

Here is an piece of the writeup about it on the official facebook blog:

We’re constantly working on making Facebook better, and one area where we’ve been spending a lot of time is on photos.

Coming to Facebook two months ago from Divvyshot (a tiny little photo startup) I was amazed at how much people are using Facebook Photos. Ninety-nine percent of people using Facebook have uploaded at least one photo. More than 100 million photos are uploaded every day. That’s insane.

Despite this, we know Facebook Photos can improve. You’ve told us so, and we hear you.

If you upload a photo today you may or may not have the ability to use this new feature and if you don’t… please try not to panic, it should be out and available to everyone very soon!

According to security firm Sophos, hundreds of thousands of users have already fallen for this new “likejacking” trick thanks to the clever and tantalizing linkbait the spammers use to entice people to click their links. For example:

“LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE.”

“This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!”

“The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School.”

After clicking through on a link, victims don’t get to see the promised content, but rather a blank page reading “click here to continue.” This page contains the clickjacking worm (Troj/Iframe-ET) embedded via an invisible link. Click anywhere on the page and the message is posted to your profile and News Feed, allowing the worm to further its spread.

This particular exploit is made possible by way of Facebook’s new “like button” and its associated developer code. According to the Like Button documentation, the buttons can be customized with meta data that includes things like the title of the webpage, the name of the Web site and the URL of a picture for the page. By customizing these fields, spammers and hackers can easily create links that are, in fact, malicious “likes.”

The popularity of this particular attack vector is not surprising. Soon after the launch of the Facebook like button, it has been reported on its potential as a threat, noting how incredibly easy it is to create like buttons that link to anything on the web – even pages you have never visited.

It was only a matter of time before spammers and hackers started exploiting this weakness for their own purposes. (Frankly, many are surprised it took this long.)

The problem has to do with the overly simple way Facebook has implemented the “like button” feature. Non-developers can plug a URL into a wizard that generates code which can be copied and pasted anywhere on the Web. Like buttons created this way or manually, via handwritten code, will function properly even if they point to a webpage that’s on a different domain from the page where the button is being hosted.

Kyle Bragger, a Web entrepreneur who just launched Forrst, an online community for developers and designers, warned Facebook users of “like fraud” back in April by way of personal blog post. To circumvent potential likejacking attempts such as these, he created a Facebook “like” bookmarklet which safely “likes” the page you’re on, allowing you to feel secure that you’re actually liking the real thing and not some shady linkbait. (Or likebait, if you will).

If you’ve been hit with this likejacking attack, the best you can do is remove the like from your profile and delete the post from your News Feed. You might want to apologize to your friends with a Facebook status update, too.

Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook office.

This morning in a letter published in the Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the barrage of criticism that has been directed toward the site since its set of announcements at f8. The key message: Zuckerberg says that with respect to its privacy controls “[Facebook] just missed the mark.”

The letter isn’t particularly apologetic — you won’t find words like “sorry”, “fault”, or “mistake”. Instead, it’s more of an acknowledgment that Facebook has heard the criticism and will be responding to it. Soon, Facebook will be rolling out a new set of simplified privacy controls and an easy way to “turn off all third-party services”. Here are some key quotes from Zuckerberg’s letter:

We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible.

We have also heard that some people don’t understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don’t want. I’d like to clear that up now. Many people choose to make some of their information visible to everyone so people they know can find them on Facebook. We already offer controls to limit the visibility of that information and we intend to make them even stronger.

The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.

None of this should have come as a surprise to anyone at Facebook. I’ve been hinting about the looming backlash for months. Not because I’m especially prescient, but because it was really obvious to anyone paying attention. Facebook made a gamble, and it hasn’t worked out very well. At least for now — expect them to try to push the envelope again in, oh, about six months. Hopefully users will be better educated about their privacy and how to control it when that time comes.

Clicking the link will take you to what seems like a Facebook application which then tells you that your video player is out of date – and encourages you to download a file.

If you do, then the same “video” plus link gets posted using your avatar to al your friends on Facebook -– meaning it is spreading virally.

It’s not clear at present whether Facebook has acted to halt it. You should, however, expect that it will mutate in the coming hours/days (depending on how determined the virus writer is), so it might not be exactly that message or video frame. The key element in the attack is that it tells you to download a file.

At Sophos, Graham Cluley notes that:

“Judging by the number of messages posted on Facebook, thousands of people received this attack. If you were one of them, you should scan your computer with an up-to-date anti-virus, change your passwords, review your Facebook application settings, and learn not to be so quick as to fall for a simple social engineering trick like this in future.”

The file seems to install a piece of adware called Hotbar, which thus generates revenue for the malware writer. (About Hotbar: “displays a dynamic toolbar and targeted pop-up ads based on its monitoring of Web-browsing activity. The toolbar appears in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. The toolbar contains buttons that can change depending on the current Web page and keywords on the page. Clicking a button on the toolbar may open an advertiser Web site or paid search site. Hotbar also installs graphical skins for Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Outlook Express. Hotbar may collect user-related information and may silently download and run updates or other code from its servers.”)

Microsoft is, separately, strongly encouraging people and companies to stop using Internet Explorer 6, using the argument that “you wouldn’t drink 9-year-old milk, so why use a 9-year-old browser?”

Though aimed at the Australian market (possibly IE6 has a higher prevalence there due to some geographical quirk), the arguments for abandoning IE6 are stronger than ever, and have been repeated many times – not least on this site (the browser that won’t die, why the NHS can’t get its browser act together). And of course it is widely believed – though so far not confirmed – that IE6 was the vector for an attack against Google by Chinese hackers at the end of last year.

If you’re not sure whether you’re sufficiently protected in what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you’d like.

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings on a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.

The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on github. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will “never see your Facebook data” and will “never share your personal information”. The scanner operates entirely on the client-side in the user’s browser, it says.

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmark
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google’s App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.

The site asks that “if you agree that Facebook doesn’t respect you, your personal data or the future of the Web” then you may want to join in quitting Facebook on May 31, the date it has declared as the official “Quit Facebook Day”.

The site is the creation of systems designer Matthew Milan and technologist Joseph Dee, who say that for them, “it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions”. Milan writes that they “just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.”

Facebook has been facing yet another backlash after announcing further changes to its privacy policy during its f8 developer conference last month. Many users take issue with the social network’s now-default opt-out inclusion of its users in new features and services and “How do I delete my Facebook account” has become a top search suggestion on Google.

But while Milan and Dee quote a number of sources on what alternatives there might be to Facebook, the reality is that few exist. We’ve all heard of Diaspora now, but do we really believe that the future of social networking lies in an alternative that needs users to have their own server and install code?

Milan has an amusing take on what he’ll do instead of continuing on with Facebook:

At this point I’d rather use 4chan to connect with my family and friends than Facebook. It might be full of pictures of prolapsed anuses and Japanese cartoon porn, but at least it has tripcodes and a healthy dialog (based in action, not words) around the evolving nature of online identity and privacy.

Milan also remains, well, realistic about Facebook’s more than 400 million users, saying that he doubts that his act will compel many others to leave, but that it will show that he cared about his data. He also writes that “when there’s a market need, it’s not long before better options appear” and “the best thing to do is to contribute to that need – and that’s what Quit Facebook Day is about.”

Sources asked Milan if he had anything to add about why he was quitting Facebook and he said “I want to reiterate is that privacy is not why I’m quitting FB – Privacy is a symptom of a set of larger issues, but for most, it’s the easiest to understand.”

The site has only been up for a couple of days, but as of right now, it has nine people signed up to quit.

If you’re ready to make the jump, simply go to QuitFacebookDay.com and enter your Twitter handle, if you have one. Otherwise, you can enter your email address and, if quitting Facebook is something you’ll need a reminder about, then QuitFacebookDay.com will send you one.

Will you make the commitment? Will you contribute to that need? While I do not agree with many of Facebook’s actions, there’s one simple reality that I look to – all of my friends are on Facebook and until that changes, that’s likely where I’ll stay.

Apparently the Board Member, investor Jim Breyer, has had his Facebook account suspended over the spam. “Users whose accounts have been compromised are put through a remediation process, where they must take steps to re-secure their account and learn security best practices,” a Facebook official told leading financial industry blog PEHub yesterday, “This is what happened with Mr. Breyer’s account.” If Facebook becomes all the more awash in scams and spams, this may be a key symbol of when the tide turned and it became too much.

In as much as Facebook has brought push-button publishing and social graph technology to hundreds of millions of people around the world for the first time – this is a big challenge the company is going to have to deal with in order for its service to have maximum, long-lasting impact on our culture.

Can Facebook kill the spam? Facebook does have a unique advantage over email, the company points out. When a message from a source is discovered to be spammy, the company can zap it system-wide all at once. Apparently that’s only proven so effective so far, though.

If every social network rises and falls, though, effectively tackling this problem may be important to protecting the Facebook user experience from “pulling a MySpace.” When the problem reaches the very top of the company, it may be time to be concerned.

MySpace took big steps to kill spam years ago, but not until it was too late and the company’s reputation was set. Can Facebook save itself from a similar fate? We’ll see.

1)    Your fan kicks into overdrive when your computer is idle
This can indicate that a program is running without your knowledge and using a fair amount of resources. Of course this could also be a bunch of Microsoft updates being installed. Another problem that can cause the fan to kick in like that is excessive dirt in the computer or a failing CPU fan.

2)    Your computer takes a long time to shut down, or won’t shut down properly
Oftentimes malicious software has bugs in it that can cause a variety of symptoms, including long shut down times of a failure to shut down. Unfortunately, operating system bugs and conflicts with legitimate programs may cause the same symptom.

3)    You see a list of outbound Wall posts you didn’t send on your Facebook page (see below)

There are few reasons other than malicious software or having your account hacked that would cause this problem. If you see this happening, you definitely want to change your password and make sure you computer is not infected. Best to make sure your computer is not infected before changing your password!!! Don’t use your Facebook password on multiple sites!!!

4)    Programs are running very slowly
This can be a sign that hidden programs are using a lot of your computer’s resources. This also can be a sign of other problems. On Windows systems if there are 10,000 files or more in a single directory it can really bring a system to a crawl.

5)    You cannot download operating system updates
This is a symptom you cannot ignore. Even if it isn’t a bot or other malware, if you don’t keep your system patched your computer probably will get infected.

6)    You cannot download antivirus software updates / visit vendors’ websites
Malware often tries to prevent antivirus software from running or being installed. An inability to update your antivirus software or visit the vendor’s web site is a pretty strong indicator of malware.

7)    Internet access slows to a crawl
If a bot is using your computer to send massive amounts of spam or participate in an attack against other computers, or to upload or download a lot of data it can make your internet access very slow.

8)    Your friends and family have received e-mail message from you that you did not send
This can be a sign of a bot, other malicious software, or that your webmail account has been hacked.

9)    You receive pop-up windows and advertisements even when you are not using a web browser
While this is a classic sign of adware, bots can install adware on your computer. You definitely want to get this problem taken care of.

10)    Windows Task manager shows programs with very cryptic names or descriptions (the highlighted line is the example)

Using task manager requires some skill and research. Sometimes legitimate software uses cryptic names as well. An entry in task manager is generally not enough to identify a program as being bad. This can help you find bad programs, but many additional steps must be performed to validate you findings. Killing processes and deleting files or registry entries because you “think” it is a bot or other malware can result in the inability to even boot your computer. Be very careful of making assumptions and acting on them.

Although this doesn’t cover everything that could mean you are part of a botnet, this is a good list of the major signs you will see, and means you need to get your computer cleaned ASAP!

Those are three examples of how Facebook is moving quickly to make the Internet one big personalized social network, setting up the Palo Alto firm as the default communications platform for what some observers are already calling Web 3.0.

The possibilities are exciting to marketers and Web site operators – and alarming to digital privacy advocates.

“Facebook wants to be the center of the social Web,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for the research firm eMarketer Inc. Whether the company succeeds, “we’re going to have to wait and see,” she said. “The biggest question to me is whether consumers and companies are going to want to cede the social Web to Facebook. And maybe some privacy concerns will come out that we haven’t even thought about yet.”

Last week at its developers conference in San Francisco, Facebook Inc. introduced an ambitious plan to export the Facebook experience to all Web sites, using “social plug-ins” like a new “Like” button to link news stories, restaurant reviews, movie data, product information and other content to a Facebook user’s network.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision of linking the “social graphs” of the more than 400 million Facebook users to the rest of the Internet, creating an efficient, interconnected Web of social interactions.

Companies jump in:

Numerous companies are already on board with the plan, including Yelp, CNN, the New York Times, IMDb, Time Inc., Fandango, the National Hockey League, USA Networks, Levi Strauss, Univision and ABC-TV.

They hope that tapping into a beehive of social activity yields a wealth of customer data that leads to more product sales or advertising opportunities. And combined with Facebook’s growing reach into the Web, “marketers realized they needed to fish where the fish are,” Willamson said.

Job searches:

For job search firm Simply Hired Inc., integrating Facebook into its Web site with just a few lines of computer code will provide useful tools for job seekers, said Dion Lim, the Mountain View firm’s president and chief operating officer.

Once a Facebook member signs in, photos of Facebook friends are displayed, and the site automatically finds listed jobs for each of their employers. Simply Hired can also tap the visiting Facebook member’s profile for interests or fan pages and suggest jobs available in those fields.

“What’s so compelling is that the information we are leveraging is creating high amounts of utility for the user,” Lim said. And, he added, “you can opt out at any moment.”

Facebook’s frequent changes to its pages or policies always lead to complaints. That happened in December when the company said it was changing privacy settings to give members more control over their information, even though critics said the opposite was true. This time, some members set up a fan page to criticize a new Instant Personalization setting installed in all members’ profiles to control information accessed by the social plug-ins.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the fact that Instant Personalization is by default set to share user information and is time-consuming to change.

“Your friends could be giving away information like your name, your gender, your community interests and pages to the Web sites they chose to interact with,” Opsahl said.

Opting out:

Opsahl posted a detailed video showing the exact steps needed to opt out of allowing Instant Personalization access, including separate actions needed to block applications like Microsoft Docs, Pandora and Yelp.

“There appears to be a number of people out there who think they’ve opted out, but they have not completed the process,” Opsahl said. “What people want and need is to have control over their information.”

Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense group recently spotted Kirllos selling Facebook user names and passwords in an underground hacker forum, but what really caught their attention was the volume of credentials he had for sale: 1.5 million accounts.

IDefense doesn’t know if Kirllos’ accounts are legitimate, and Facebook didn’t respond to messages Thursday seeking comment. If they are legitimate, he has the account information of about one in every 300 Facebook users. His asking price varies from $25 to $45 per 1,000 accounts, depending on the number of contacts each user has.

To date, Kirllos seems to have sold close to 700,000 accounts, according to VeriSign Director of Cyber Intelligence Rick Howard. Hackers have been selling stolen social-networking credentials for a while — VeriSign has seen a brisk trade in names and passwords for Russia’s VKontakte, for example. But now the trend is to go after global targets such as Facebook, Howard said.

Facebook has more than 400 million users worldwide, many of whom fall victim to scams each day. In one such scam, criminals send out messages from a compromised account, telling friends that the account’s owner is trapped in a foreign country and needs money to get home.

In another, they send Web links that lead to malicious software, telling friends that it’s a hilarious or sensationalistic video.

“People will follow it because they believe it was a friend that told them to go to this link,” said Randy Abrams, director of technical education with security vendor Eset. Once the malware gets installed, criminals can steal more passwords, break into bank accounts, or simply use the computers to send spam or launch distributed denial of service attacks. “There’s just a plethora of things that people can do if they can trick people into installing their software,” he said.

Kirllos’ Facebook prices are extremely cheap compared to what others are charging. In its most recent Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec found that e-mail usernames and passwords typically went for between $1 to $20 per account — Kirllos wants as little as $0.025 per Facebook account. More coveted credit card or bank account details can go for much more, ranging between $0.85 to $30 for credit card numbers to $15 to $850 for top-quality online bank accounts.

It’s called “Friends, Tags, and Connections.” In short, this section is about the data on Facebook that you can’t actually control. You can make it harder to find, and even hide it from your profile, but you can’t remove it entirely.

Here’s how Facebook explains this:

Friends, Tags and Connections covers information and content that’s shared between you and others on Facebook. This includes relationships (shared between you and the person you’re in the relationship with), interests, and photos you’re tagged in. These settings let you control who sees this information on your actual profile. However, it may still be visible in other places unless you remove it from your profile itself.

Content included under this section includes friends, family members, relationships, photos you’ve been tagged in, your current city and hometown, and ‘Things I like’ (formerly known as Fan Pages). If you think about it, it makes sense — whenever you’re somehow associated with a piece of content, be it through a friend connection or a photo tag, it’s possible that someone will discover that content through your friend’s profile, even if it isn’t on yours. In fact, many of these settings have existed for years, just under different portions of Facebook’s privacy panel, so it’s a good thing that Facebook is pointing out that they can’t actually be hidden.

But that doesn’t mean people are going to understand what Facebook is talking about when it says things like “These settings only control the information people can see on your profile. This information, such as your Pages and list of friends, is still public, so it could appear elsewhere…“

It’s no secret that Google is a giant. But, do people realize just how big they really are? Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and eBay all have over 50,000 servers, though their exact numbers aren’t made public. Google, by comparison, is estimated to have over 1,000,000 dedicated servers, accounting for over 2% of the servers in the world. The graphical representation below allows one to truly understand just how unbelievably huge Google is (especially compared to the other major tech giants). Get your scroll-wheel ready and take a look.

(click to enlarge the graph)

The woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, discovered last month that her son had spent £905 on FarmVille. He had emptied his own savings account of £288 and had used her credit card to the tune of £625 to pay the bills.

FarmVille, one of the most popular games on Facebook, allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting crops, trees and livestock. New users are given virtual coins to set up their farm, and the revenue from matured crops can be used to maintain it. But those who are desperate to progress more quickly can buy extra virtual coins using real cash.

The mother said: “The first use of my card was on 14 March. I discovered it on the 29th and the card was stopped at that point. Any transactions after that date were already in the system, so what I thought was a £427 spend turned into £625 over the next few days.

“The total spend is about £905, but the credits are still rolling in. Facebook and [game creator] Zynga will not refund anything as [the son] lives in my house. Facebook has disabled his account and Zynga has unhelpfully suggested I use password protection on computers in the future.”

She contacted her credit card company, HSBC, but was told she would only qualify for a refund if she reported her son to the police and obtained a crime number. “He would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider,” she said.

She added that her son was “very shocked” when confronted with the amount he had spent, but it was clear he knew what he was doing. “When I asked him why he did it he said that they had brought out ‘good stuff that I wanted’.”

She does not blame Facebook, Zynga or HSBC, saying that her son was the one using the card and is entirely at fault. But she added: “I do think they need to shoulder some responsibility in this business and put systems in place to stop this happening again. The fact that he was using a card in a different name should bring up some sort of security and the online secure payment filter seems to be bypassed for Facebook payments.”

A spokeswoman for HSBC said that had the credit card been used on a gambling site it would have started alarm bells ringing for “unusual usage”. But because the card had been used to buy Facebook credits HSBC did not consider the transactions to be suspicious, even though £625 was spent in just two weeks.

Michael Arrington, founder of the Techcrunch blog, criticised Zynga last year for “monetising” the game, and warned that people who didn’t have access to a credit card to buy extra virtual money could use “pay by mobile” companies instead.

The indebted 12-year-old has not used his mobile to pay for virtual money, his mother said, but only because his older brother lost all his credit buying a ringtone a couple of years ago.

“We sound terribly technologically unaware don’t we? I wouldn’t mind but I am always explaining that all of these online offers, ringtones and games are a scam designed to take money off stupid people. Kids know best though.”

That’s just one of the concerns I have about the proposed changes, due to go into force this month, that Facebook attempted to slip by users over the weekend. Here’s a few of the highlights that I feel are worth mentioning:

1. I object to the idea that Facebook will now store my payment account numbers from now on unless I explicitly bar it from doing so.

If you make purchases through Facebook, the service will store a copy your payment account number information in its database unless you opt out. Currently Facebook can only store those numbers with your explicit consent. Given the poor job the financial services industry has done protecting credit card and other consumer payment account data this would seem to be a very bad idea.

To change this users will need to go to their My Accounts page, click on the Payments tab, go to Payment Methods and click the “manage” hotlinked text.

2. Facebook will be more generous in sharing information about me with third-party web sites and applications.

Language removed: “You can choose to opt out of Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect altogether through your privacy settings.”

Added: “When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites…”

3. The proposed Facebook privacy policy changes were deliberately announced, quietly, over a weekend, when few would notice.

The notice, which I received this morning, was dated March 27th. In addition, once I clicked through and read the proposed changes the notice – and any links to the proposed changes, – simply disappeared from my Facebook page. I was unable to find it on the privacy policy page nor by searching the site. Fortunately I had downloaded a PDF copy of Facebook’s proposed privacy policy changes before closing the page.

Facebook still has very much a “doors wide open” approach to privacy – and that door is getting wider. It gives new users less restrictive privacy settings by default. Facebook itself describes quite nicely why you should set your privacy settings very conservatively – and think twice about anything you post or do on Facebook:

“Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users.”

For those who didn’t want to read through everything, the short version of this post is: Nothing you post on Facebook is ever, truly private.