Social Networking sites - Security Issues

A large number of us are using social networking site and enjoy our Cyber space. Not onlydoes it make connecting up and networking easier, it is a great source of  fun and entertainment too. Although social networking sites are generally a safe place to interact with friends and acquaintances, most of us are unaware of the dangers lurking in these site.

How many time have you clicked on a nifty application in a social networking site, applications like fortune cookies, birthday greetings, gift a coke, etc. etc., and you have been given a choice of the application wanting to access your data and needing your permission? We generally provide the go ahead - without actually knowing the consequences. Most of these applications are maybe safe, but there is a possibility there may be a 'rouge' application lurking out there for your click, which may set a trojan(rogue program) in your system 'with your permission' and thereafter transmit data like credit card info, passwords or maybe simple data. There are enough such applications out there - so much so that the FBI has collaborated to set up the 'Internet Crime Complaint Centre' in the US of A. Trend shows that tough cyber laws has not been a deterrent, as long as careless users like us don't bother.

Keep these simple suggestions in mind to protect yourself while navigating the Internet:

• Adjust website privacy settings. Some networking sites have provided useful options to assist in adjusting settings to help protect your identity.
• Be selective when adding friends. Once added, contacts can access any information marked as viewable by all friends.
• Limit access to your profile to only those contacts you trust with your personal information.
• Disable options, such as photo sharing, that you might not regularly use. You can always enable these options later.
• Be careful what you click on. Just because someone posts a link or video to their wall does not mean it is safe.
• Familiarize yourself with the security and privacy settings and learn how to report a compromised account.
• Each social networking site may have different procedures on how to handle a hijacked or infected account; therefore, you may want to reference their help or FAQ page for instructions.

My unheralded IIT-ian Friend

The day brought cheer - not in the form of yet another holiday, but by a heart warming article in a recent edition of the Indian Express (27 Sep 09) of a dear friend of mine Prof. Preeti Ranjan Panda (Read all about him here). The article 'A Matter of Choice' has the tag lines

"After he quit his $1,20,000 job in the Silicon Valley, Panda can still afford family vacations, if not in Europe anymore than in Kasauli, but his favourite sports skiing and hiking must be relegated to memory"

 and

"At a time when IIT Professors are on strike demanding a pay hike, The Sunday Express meets former IITian who took the academic root back to IIT"

Today when we are clamouring for fat pay-checks, promotions, recognition (read hundreds of articles/views/post where my brethens cried hoarse when there was no press coverage for martyrs!!!), Preeti Ranjan comes as a breath of fresh air, an inspiring young Indian who goes about his duty with dedication without a whimper.

And of course, I wrote back to Preeti Ranjan:

"I am proud of you!!! You choice of career and dedication is itself an achievement!! I am honoured to have crossed your path, and its a privilege knowing you and your family! Money, position, Ranks don't mean a thing if one can't do ones calling!!! I am envious of your courage of conviction! Just hope I too get some inspiration. And the article is very nicely written too!!"

Linux: All things about Cows...

Recently a friend (Ishan Karve) of mine introduced me to nifty small script/ program called 'cowsay' which has makes life on the Linux command terminal interesting and amusing. Pity, Windows users won't be able to use it.

It is basically a ASCII cow which  moooos...... to you interesting quotes (when linked with the 'fortune' program) or you can make it say un-interesting things as shown below (when used alone!!) :-
__________________________
< My name is Gantayet >
 ----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||--------w |
                ||     ------||

The program developer Tony Monroe mentions that he decided on this ASCII cow mooing as cows were quite popular in his life!!! Wow! And I thought only Indian revered cows!! He says: "ASCII cows have been wandering in herds around the net for a long time, bringing good will and unnecessary bovine humor to all who meet them"

You can check out the cows grazing on the Internet at this linked site: Canonical list of cows

The program is pretty easy to install - just get the package from Tony Monroe's cowsay site  or if you are on a Debian system (like Ubuntu, Mint etc), just do a 'sudo apt-get -i cowsay' at your command prompt. Post that you can directly run cowsay from the terminal giving it some text to moo about like 'cowsay My name is foo' or pipe fortune quotes like 'fortune | cowsay' at the terminal screen.

Coming to the interesting part: The COW ASCII image has many variation which can be invoked by the -f option to cowsay  (cowsay -f ) . To know what are the options available, just do 'cowsay -l'. This will list all the options availablewhich is pretty interesting. Ok, the options are :

apt beavis.zen bong bud-frogs bunny cheese cower daemon default dragon dragon-and-cow elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep ghostbusters head-in hellokitty kiss kitty koala kosh luke-koala mech-and-cow meow milk moofasa moose mutilated ren satanic sheep skeleton small sodomized sodomized-sheep stegosaurus stimpy supermilker surgery telebears three-eyesturkey turtle tux udder vader vader-koala www

And if you use 'cowthink' instead of 'cowsay', you will get a thinking moooo :-)

Here is an examples when I ran 'fortune | cowsay -f :

fortune | cowsay -f tux
_______________________________________
/ You'll be called to a post requiring    \
\ ability in handling groups of people. /
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
   \
    \
        .--.
       |o_o |
       |:_  / |
      //       \ \
     (|          | )
    /'\_       _/`\
    \___)=(___/


And this Option is interesting ;-) 'fortune | cowsay -f sodomized'
____________________________________________
/ Increased knowledge will help you now. \
\ Have mate's phone bugged.                     /
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
      \                _
       \              (_)
        \   ^__^       / \
         \  (oo)\_____/_\ \
            (__)\           ) /
                ||---------w ((
                ||            ||>>

 Pretty interesting, yeah??