If you’re jumping on the quitting-Facebook bandwagon, then have we got a website for you: QuitFacebookDay.com.

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.

An online game ban will be instituted in South Korea according to the Korea Herald. The new policies “will attempt to block underage access to online computer games after midnight in light of the rising problem of video game addiction among youth,” according to the report.

One of the policies will affect popular online games such as Barameui Nara, Maple Story, Mabinogi and 16 others by cutting off access to underage users at 12am sharp. Another policy is “the slowdown policy” where gamers will find their Internet speed dropping to 56k levels if they play for too long.

There was no mention of regular Internet connections cutting off, just online access to those games. So, the underaged gamers in question will stop playing any one of these 19 games at 12am, then either a) load up a new game, b) find a way around the block, or c) surf for porn.

Then what happens when Star Craft II releases? The original Star Craft still draws millions of South Korean gamers online, in LAN parties, and at professional Star Craft competitions and tournaments across the nation. Good luck stopping people from playing that. Its practically a national sport.

As reports of this new online game ban circulate, the example of gamer depravity and addiction that keeps getting mentioned is the story of the death of a South Korean newborn through starvation. It has been claimed that the parents’ addiction to online gaming led to their neglect of the child.

A horrible story indeed, but will this new online game ban save millions of babies of underaged parents from a similar fate? Considering the parents in the story mentioned above are 41 and 25 years old, this new ban stands to only truly aggravate and generally hack off millions of (tech savvy) South Korean teenagers, force new games into the limelight, and drive porn profits instead of curbing online game addiction or saving babies.

A mother has warned of the risk of children spending hundreds of pounds on “free” online games available through Facebook after her 12-year-old son ran up bills of more than £900 without her knowledge.

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.”

A sophisticated Trojan horse program designed to empty bank accounts has a new trick up its sleeve: It lies to investigators about where the money is going.

First uncovered by Finjan Software last week, the URLzone Trojan is already known to be very advanced. It rewrites bank pages so that the victims don’t know that their accounts have been emptied, and it also has a sophisticated command-and-control interface that lets the bad guys pre-set what percentage of the account balance they want to clear out.

But Finjan isn’t the only company looking into URLzone. RSA Security researchers say the software uses several techniques to spot machines that are run by investigators and law enforcement. Researchers typically create their own programs that are designed to mimic the behavior of real Trojans. When URLzone identifies one of these, it sends it bogus information, according to Aviv Raff, RSA’s FraudAction research lab manager.

Security experts have long published research into the inner workings of malicious computer programs such as URLzone, Raff said. “Now the other side knows that they are being watched and they’re acting,” he said.

When URLzone spots a researcher’s program, instead of simply disconnecting from the researcher’s computer, the server tells it to do a money transfer. But instead of transferring the money into one of the criminal’s money mules — people who have been recruited to move cash overseas — it chooses an innocent victim. Typically, these are people who have received legitimate money transfers from other hacked computers on the network, Raff said.

So far, more than 400 legitimate accounts have been used in this way, RSA said. The idea is to confuse researchers and to prevent the criminal’s real money mules from being discovered. Banking Trojans such as Zeus and Clampi have been emptying accounts for years now, but Finjan dubbed URLzone the first of a new, smarter generation of the crimeware.

According to Finjan, URLzone infected about 6,400 computer users last month and was clearing about €12,000 (US$17,500) per day. So it now seems that even checking your bank accounts online from time to time is not enough to make sure your money is safe. I would recommend checking it from more than one computer from time to time just in case one of your computers happens to have been infected by this new nasty trojan!

One of the latest Screen Digest reports (via mcvuk) shows that last year, Europeans and North Americans have spent around $1.4 billion for MMO subscriptions in total. That is a 22% market growth difference from year 2007 and experts at Screen digest say that despite the increased growth of the Asian online games market model where players instead of paying monthly fees buy items for money, the sector still has five more years to grow. In the report done by Screen digest, here are the basic topics covered:

• Addressable market forecast: broadband households, online active consoles
• Subscription MMOG Market Overview and Updated Forecasts
• Regional Analysis and Forecasts
• North American Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• European Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• Title Market Share Analysis
• Company Market Share Analysis
• Content trends
• The Year Ahead

A comment from Screen digest’s senior analyst and head of games Piers Harding-Rolls: “Industry commentators have for some time been using the example of the Asian online games market to proclaim the death of subscription business models in the West, praising the accessibility and flexibility of free-to-access games that generate revenue by encouraging players to make micro-transactions as part of the gaming experience.”

For now it would seem that the MMO subscription route is the way to go as the more popular games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online have millions of paying players which renew their subscriptions on a monthly basis. With these games and other like them having such a great success I can’t see them going away anytime soon. While the market could move towards more free based MMOs, I just can’t see it happening anytime soon.

And just recently a few MMOs have tried to enter the pro gaming scene with World of Warcraft leading the way. Even though there have been some bugs along the way they are trying hard to make it an even playing field for the players which is already starting to spark more interest in the competitive gaming scene. This will only lead to more people playing these games to try and get good so they can also compete, which is just bringing in more and more cash for the game.

While I am not a big fan of MMOs, I can recognize that they must be doing something right to be able to bring in that type of money from their players. Only time will tell if these business models of the subscriptions will continue to become more and more popular as they get older and newer games come out that are free to play.