Technology Mania : Social Media

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Friday, April 21, 2017

Offensive WhatsApp and Facebook posts can land group administrators in jail

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Think twice before becoming administrator of a group on WhatsApp or Facebook as one is liable for prosecution if any rumour or fake news is circulated on it. Social media platforms allow a person to create a group on which members can share views, photographs or videos. Concerns have been raised about social media misuse as fake news, morphed photographs and disturbing videos with fabricated local narratives can easily be circulated that can trigger tension and even communal rift in an area.

In a joint order issued by District Magistrate Yogeshwar Ram Mishra and Senior Superintendent of Police Nitin Tiwari, it has been made clear that any factually incorrect, rumour or misleading information on a social media group could result in an FIR against the group administrator. “There are several groups on social media which are named on news groups and also groups with other names which are propagating news and information which is not authentic. These are being forwarded without cross checking,” it said.

Considering this issue, directives are being issued to social media groups, WhatsApp and Facebook group administrators and members, the order said. There are over 200 million WhatsApp users in India. It directed that social media group administrators should be ready to bear the responsibility and ownership of the groups. The administrator must include only those members who are personally known to him or her. If any statement is made by a group member which is fake, can cause religious disharmony, or rumour, the group admin must deny it on the group and remove the member from the group, the order said.

“In the event of inaction from the group admin, he or she will be considered guilty and action will be taken against the group admin,” it said. Such a post must also be reported to the nearest police station so that action can be taken against the member under the law, it said. The order, issued yesterday, says while freedom of expression on social media is important, it also comes with a responsibility. Varanasi is the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The administration has directed that no statement or post which can hurt religious sentiments should be forwarded to any other group or person else legal action will be taken. It also directs that case under cyber crime law, Information Technology Act and IPC will be filed in case of violation of these guidelines. The order also makes it clear that orders of the Supreme Court and various high courts will be considered while initiating action. It needs to be seen how Varanasi police which is facing severe staff crunch implements such an order as WhatsApp and social media are not limited to the boundaries of the district.

Publish date: April 21, 2017 8:43 am| Modified date: April 21, 2017 8:51 am

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Twitter will now allow brands to request and share their location data with users using direct messages

Representational image

Microblogging site Twitter has launched a new tool that allows brands to request and share location data with users via direct messages in order to provide better customer service, the media reported on Tuesday. “It is no longer about social marketing teams, but core customer care teams [that are responding on Twitter]. Companies are running a serious business here and looking for help in scaling it,” Ian Cairns, product manager, Twitter was quoted as saying to VentureBeat.

Users have complete control over this new feature, the brand manager will get user’s permission to receive location data to direct users to the closest store, the report said. This new feature is available through Twitter’s developer programme to its partners offering customer service tools for brands. It can also be used in a customer interaction, within an automated message, or anywhere else.

Location data is also one of the most recent update to direct messages for brands. Support for location data comes days after Facebook announced that live location could be shared with friends and contacts within its Messenger app. This comes right after Twitter lost its head of Asia-Pacific business Aliza Knox after she decided to move on after a near-five year stint. Knox built out Twitter’s presence in Asia with an office in Singapore that currently spans nine locations with over 100 people on the payroll.

Publish date: April 4, 2017 3:16 pm| Modified date: April 4, 2017 3:15 pm

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Twitter has updated its character limit as it stops counting usernames in replies

Image Credits: REUTERS

Giving its over 300 million users more room to reply to other people’s tweets, Twitter has announced that it will not count usernames towards a 140-character limit. “Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your Tweet’s 140 characters,” Sasank Reddy, Product Manager at Twitter, said in a blog post late on Thursday.

With this change, Twitter has simplified conversations. “Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself, so you have more characters to have conversations,” Reddy posted. You can tap on “Replying to” to easily see and control who’s part of your conversation.

“When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet,” the post further read. Last year, media reports said that Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet longer – even in 10,000 characters – than its traditional 140-character limit. The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has and has become part of the product’s personality.

Publish date: March 31, 2017 11:11 am| Modified date: March 31, 2017 11:24 am

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

WhatsApp will notify you when someone screenshots your chat on next 5th February

Whats app

California.- Jan Koum, the CEO of WhatsApp announced that the next version of the application is going to include the option of being notified if someone screenshots your conversation. This is an option requested by a lot of users lately, and according to him “after all these years, we’ve reached the conclusion to add it”.

“The functioning is simple, just like the blue tick: You will have the option activated by default. If it’s checked, you’ll be notified if someone screenshots your conversation, and others will be notified if you screenshot theirs. If it’s unchecked, no one gets notified”, stated Koum.

Some users are pissed by this feature, but it’s not that bad at all.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hints at a ‘tweet edit’ function for the microblogging site

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of both Square and Twitter. Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff / 30 Dec 2016 , 13:00

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has hinted that the ‘edit’ functions to edit mistakes may soon be coming to the platform. Dorsey started an impromptu Twitter town hall with the users last night asking them about the most important things that Twitter can improve or create in 2017. He posted his thoughts about the edit feature as a response to the tweets asking for the implementation of the feature.

He pointed out that the company was looking into the request since a long time and that the feature is “def needed” for all the users to improve the platform as a product.

Dorsey responded to users by asking for suggestions on how to implement the feature because of the complexities involved in adding the feature. He asked if the users need a 5-minute window to correct the mistakes done while tweeting or the edit anytime implementation better for the users.

Dorsey did point out that anything beyond a time window based edit feature would require tweet ‘revision’ history so that users can check what the original tweet was in case any troll tries to take the conversation out of context. One Twitter user suggested that the edit function should be rolled out for users with verified Twitter accounts. Dorsey clarified that the feature would roll out to all the users and not just the ones with verified accounts.

Even though he identifies edit feature as one of the most requested and important things on the platform, the discussion does not automatically mean that the feature is confirmed. There is no official confirmation at the moment, but the discussion itself is better than a situation where users think that Twitter is not taking their feedback into account. This comes right after the company launched 360-degee live videos on Twitter and Periscope.

One interesting conversation in the Twitter town hall was the interaction between Dorsey and Bored Elon Musk, a parody account of Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk. Bored Elon Musk suggested verifications for parody accounts to which Dorsey replied with “boring”. Bored Elon Musk quipped with “Multiverse Twitter access for seeing tweets from yourself and yourself and yourself” as an improvement by Twitter. Dorsey responded with humour that “now we’re talking”. Not Jony Ive jumped in to approve of the ongoing interaction with a classic “+1”.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Legion: Here’s how to keep your online accounts safe from malicious attacks by hacker groups

Representational Image

By Aditya Madanapalle / 13 Dec 2016 , 10:25

The hacking group Legion seems to be going after high level targets, in a campaign similar to the one executed by OurMine. The Legion group does not seem to be as sophisticated as OurMine, because they are choosing targets from an already compromised data, instead of deliberately finding ways to take down marks of interest. There are some elementary safety precautions that you can take to secure yourself against attacks by groups such as Legion.

One of the OurMine takedowns of Mark Zuckerberg’s social media accounts compromised Twitter and Pinterest at one go. Zuckerberg apparently used a “dadada” as the password, even though Zuckerberg is safe enough to physically put a tape over the webcam of his laptop. Being paranoid is a good idea when it comes to information security, and every additional security measure helps, even if it is a bit of tape. The main takeaway from the attack is to use different passwords for different accounts.

Paranoia is a security feature

The leaked passwords used by Vijay Mallya in the hack showed that he had taken this precaution to a certain extent. A number of base text strings were used, with variations added on top. Now someone who has access to these base strings and variations can attempt to guess passwords for new accounts. It is important to constantly cycle passwords for critical accounts, and not share the same passwords across services. Variations might be simple to remember, but it is more secure to have completely different alphanumeric strings.

Lastpass is a password manager that works across platforms.

Keeping track of multiple usernames and passwords can be daunting, a secure password manager such as LastPass is better than saving your passwords in a notepad file in your email inbox. The mobile application available on iOS and Android allows users to store their passwords behind the biometric security offered by a fingerprint scanner. One common mistake is to write down your passwords on a sheet of paper, it is worse to list all your usernames and passwords on a single sheet of paper.

Constantly cycling passwords protects users from compromised dumps. If a service offers two factor authentication, it is better to activate it to prevent hostile takeovers to accounts. Most popular email, social networking and content distribution platforms support two factor authentication. Another vector of attack is through the secret questions set at time of account creation. Do not key in the actual answers to the questions, as someone who knows users personally can guess the answers. Instead use obscure questions, as well as hard to guess answers, even if a known person attempts to takeover your account. Guessing the answers to the secret questions is one of the most common ways accounts are compromised.

Haveibeenpwnd shows which data breaches contain your data.

It is a good idea to check if any of your accounts have already been compromised. Haveibeenpwned is such a service that allows users to check if their email addresses or usernames are compromised in any of the large well known data dumps. These are large dumps of login credentials farmed from compromised third party sites.

The site will let you know in which dump your credentials appear, and you can take steps to safeguard that account. There is also a mention of what details were compromised in the particular hack. Users can sign up to be alerted when their accounts are compromised in future hacks. Checking the site periodically is a good idea to keep your accounts safe.