Facebook denies it’s to launch branded phones with HTC

Of the estimated more than 350 million people who log on to Facebook each month, the social network provider says 250 million use mobile devices.


Facebook has no plans to launch Facebook-branded phones with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, it said today, following reports that it planned to launch an official tie-up next month.

“This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programming interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way,” said Dan Rose, head of business development at Facebook.



London business newspaper City A.M. had reported that HTC would unveil two new Facebook-branded mobile phones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month, in a story that was widely picked up in other media.

“The rumours around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown,” Rose told journalists at a company event in London. Asked whether the device would be Facebook-branded, he answered: “No.”

Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users a month access the social network on mobile devices.

HTC was the manufacturer of the first Google-branded phone, the Nexus One.

Facebook admits its third-party developers have mishandled private data

In what could be potentially damaging to a company already being criticized over its privacy issues, Facebook admitted late Sunday that it had knowledge of developers passing information called user ..

‘The Social Network’ opens in NY to buzz, controversy

Billed as an exhilarating, visceral tale about the founding of Facebook, “The Social Network” gave the opening of the New York Film Festival on Friday an aura of anticipation and a touch of controversy.

The film has attracted widespread attention with its assertion that it tells the true story of the birth of the website — which now boasts more than 500 million members and is worth tens of billions. Yet, it is based on a book criticised for its reporting methods.

One of the most talked about films of the year, “The Social Network” was transformed into a movie by Hollywood heavyweight director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin. It has brought an unusual pizzazz to the 17-day film festival, which typically emphasizes the art of cinema over Hollywood-style premieres.

Eisenberg arrives at the premiere of ''The Social Network'' in New York, September 24, 2010





“This movie is absolutely a true story, but with the catch that people disagree about what the truth was and the movie takes no position on what the truth is. It presents everybody’s story,” Sorkin, best known for his TV hit “The West Wing”, told Reuters. The movie opens across the United States October 1, telling the rags-to-riches tale of how Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was transformed from an intelligent, socially awkward Harvard University student to the hottest property in Silicon Valley for creating the online community.

It intersperses scenes of depositions taken for lawsuits by Zuckerberg’s former best friend and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, as well as by Olympic rowing twin brothers and former Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

Both lawsuits resulted in undisclosed large settlements.

Zuckerberg, now 26, is not expected at Friday’s premiere. He refused to cooperate with the film and told Oprah Winfrey on her chat show on Friday, “It’s a movie, it’s fun” but his life was not so dramatic.

Now worth US$6.9 billion (RM21.33 billion) according to Forbes, Zuckerberg announced a US$100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey schools on Friday, deflecting some media attention from the film’s premiere.

ZUCKERBERG, PRICKLY & SMART

Zuckerberg also refused to cooperate with the book upon which the film is based, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires — The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.” Some critics blasted it as frivolous for featuring too much narrative and not enough fact.

The movie stars 26-year-old Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Facebook CFO Saverin, and Justin Timberlake as Napster creator and Internet wunderkind Sean Parker. None of the characters are portrayed in an altogether positive light.

Fincher, know for such hit movies as “Fight Club,” Se7en” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” said he knew the film would be controversial when he took it on, but he refused to do a “cuddly” portrayal of Zuckerberg.

“I knew it was controversial,” said Fincher. “I like the fact that he is prickly and smarter than everybody and makes no apologies for it.”

Fincher declined to say if he views the movie as a true story or a work of fiction, saying only that fact-based movies have to take the perspective of certain characters.

Whether fact or fiction, early reviews have been good. Critic Todd McCarthy said of the movie, “Everything about it is rich.” And the quick-witted and speedy dialogue of Sorkin’s script has garnered early Oscar chatter.

Fincher said the film addressed wider themes of friendship, loyalty, jealousy and power.

“It’s not the story of a website, it’s the story of a time and a place and the friendship, a bunch of dreamers and a bunch of people who saw what the future was going to be like, and tried to capitalise on it and the acrimony that broke out between them,” said Fincher.

Facebook notches up 500million members... that's eight per cent of world's population

Popular: Facebook now has half a billion users, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg, which is eight per cent of the world's population

More than 500 million people have joined the social networking site Facebook, the company's founder has announced.

It means almost eight per cent of the world's population use the tool to connect with friends, family and colleagues.









Student: Facebook.com's mastermind, Mark Zuckerberg, created the website while at Harvard University

The 'important milestone' comes only months after Facebook announced that 400 million users were active on the site.

The company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said: 'As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them.

'This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world. Now a lot more people have the opportunity to stay connected with the people they care about.'

To mark passing the 500 million figure, the company is launching a new application from today known as 'Facebook Stories' which will encourage people to upload their real-life stories to share with others.

Recently Mr Zuckerberg said the company is likely to reach the billion-user mark but technology bloggers are sceptical and have suggested the current figure may be a peak.
The company - which is based in Palo Alto, California - now employs more than 1,400 people around the world.

The website, which was originally created for college students to keep in contact with one another, was launched in 2004 by Mr Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin in their dorm room at Harvard University.

Now it is one of the busiest websites in the world - people spend 500 billion minutes a month trawling through the site.

The average member has more than 130 friends and creates 70 pieces of content each month.

In the last five months it has gained more than 100 million unique users - a member who returns to the site more than once in a month.

The large number of users, and the information they post about themselves online, has made the website vulnerable to criticism over its privacy settings.

Online security experts, internet users and the European Commission lambasted the company over alterations of the privacy settings which made it more difficult for users to keep their personal information private.

Recently Facebook, which says privacy is a 'top priority', launched a new 'simplified' setting to enable users to easily safeguard their data.

The rapid growth of users has come as bad news to other social networking sites such as Bebo.

The website, which was launched in 2005, was recently saved from the axe after AOL sold it to Criterion Capital.

It has 4.4 millions members in the UK who were responsible for generating well over half of the social networking site's 1.9 billion page impressions a month.

Online rumours are speculating that web giant Google is planning to take a step into the social networking market and could launch its own site in the near future.

Pakistan lifts Facebook ban after page removed

Supporters of a Pakistani religious party hold a rally against an Internet Facebook page, in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, May 30, 2010. Pakistan government ordered Internet service providers to block the social networking site amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The banner bottom reads "government take immediately action against Face Book and boycott Norwegian and Swedish products




Supporters of Pakistani religious party Tanzeem-e-Islami participate at a rally against a Facebook page, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Saturday, May 29, 2010. Pakistan government ordered Internet service providers to block the social networking site amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant slogans during a rally against an Internet Facebook page, in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, May 30, 2010. Pakistan government ordered Internet service providers to block the social networking site amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Placard on center reads "we are servants of Prophet Muhammad".


Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, a top information technology official said.

The move came almost two weeks after Pakistan imposed the ban amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.


Supporters of Pakistani religious party Tanzeem-e-Islami listen to their leader at rally against a Facebook page, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Saturday, May 29, 2010. Pakistan government ordered Internet service providers to block the social networking site amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Placard on front right reads "Disconnect relations with America and connect with God"

"In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL," said Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan's information technology ministry, referring to the technical term for a Web page.

Facebook assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future," Malik said.

Officials from the website could not immediately be reached for comment. They said earlier the contents of the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" page did not violate Facebook's terms.

The page encouraged users to post images of the prophet to protest threats made by a radical Muslim group against the creators of the American TV series "South Park" for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.

Pakistan blocked Facebook on May 19 following a ruling by one of the country's highest courts. The Lahore High Court reversed its ruling Monday because of Facebook's response, paving the way for the government to restore access, Malik said.

The government will continue to block some Web pages that contain "sacrilegious material," but Malik declined to specify which ones.

The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.

Bangladesh also decided to block Facebook on Sunday but said it would restore access to the site if the offensive material was removed.

It is not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger. Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.

Anger over the Facebook controversy also prompted the Pakistani government to block access to YouTube briefly, saying there was growing sacrilegious content on the video sharing website. The government restored access to YouTube last week but said it would continue to block videos offensive to Muslims that are posted on the site.

Twitter and Facebook website got crashed. FAQ DoS Attack

-In a clear and simple way, this Cisco graphic shows the relationship of the parties in a DDOS attack. -


At 9 a.m., millions of users of Twitter.com found themselves unable to access the microblogging Web site, the modern version of the telephone party line through which more than 40 million people announce what they are doing, reading, eating and thinking at any given moment.

Undaunted, the rejected Twitterers trooped to Facebook.com, the social networking site that has more than 200 million users, which has "status updates" that mimic Twitter feeds. But before users could begin to type, "Is sad that Twitter is down," a terrible and panic-inducing discovery: Facebook was down, too.

Kathleen Loughlin, a spokeswoman for Facebook, also cited a denial-of-service attack, which she said "resulted in degraded service for some users." She added that no user data were at risk during the attack and promised that Facebook was "continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."

"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial-of-service attack," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the official Twitter blog. "Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as . . . Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now."

The first big DDoS attack, in February 2000 took down some of the Web's most popular sites for hours, including Yahoo, CNN, eBay, Amazon.com, Buy.com, and E*Trade. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation promptly held a news conference to discuss the disruption to the Internet and eventually tracked down the perpetrator, 15-year-old "Mafiaboy," after he bragged about it to friends online.

Mafiaboy was most likely trying to get attention, like script kiddie hackers do when they deface Web sites. Other attackers have different agendas. For instance, there are politically motivated DDoS attacks, such as those involving Russian and Georgian sites last year. Estonia sites were attacked in 2007. Meanwhile, the origin of recent DDoS attacks targeting U.S. government sites and sites in South Korea remain a mystery.

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Twitter users were unable to log in for several hours after the social networking site became the victim of a cyber attack.

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What's a denial-of-service attack?
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is any effort designed to interfere with access to a Web site or Internet service. A common method of attack involves flooding a target server with so many communications requests that legitimate traffic can not get through. This can shut down or slow down the site temporarily.

Web sites aren't the only things that can be targeted in DoS attacks. Unplugging someone's computer is a very basic type of DoS attack.

What's a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack?
Because Web sites are built to handle a lot of traffic, it can take millions of simultaneous communications requests to have enough affect on the performance of the server for an attack. In a DDoS attack, tens of thousands or even millions of computers are used to send traffic to the target site all at the same time and repeatedly."It's a bit like 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time--nothing can move."

What's a botnet?
The hijacked PCs that are used in a DDoS attack comprise a botnet. The individual computers are called "bots," "zombies" or "slaves" and are controlled remotely by the "master" attacker. The attacker relays instructions to the bots via a command-and-control server, typically using IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Botnets are also used to distribute spam. Some newer botnets, like one created by a version of Conficker, relay instructions via peer-to-peer.

How many bots are needed to take down a Web site?
The number depends on how much resources, servers and bandwidth, the target site has. It can take 25,000 to 50,000 bots to cripple a typical site and as few as 10,000 or less for a small Web site, according to Kevin Stevens, a security researcher for SecureWorks' Counter Threat Unit.

It's difficult to know exactly how big any particular botnet is and guesses vary widely. For example, estimates of the Conficker botnet ranged from 500,000 PCs to 10 million.

What kind of damage can a DoS attack do?
A DoS can make a Web site completely inaccessible to anyone for a period of time, like the most recent attack did with Twitter. Or it can be equivalent to a hiccup, slowing down page loads or affecting only part of the site.

Sites that aren't in the direct line of fire can also be affected. For example, if a company that is attacked is hosting images or content that is fed to other sites, those other sites may have trouble. So many sites feature Twitter updates that it's likely some of those associated sites were impacted when Twitter was down and the ancillary site's requests to get updates were ignored.

How can a DDoS be prevented or stopped?

In 2001, the White House was able to thwart a DDoS attack that was programmed into the code of the Code Red virus by moving the site away from the targeted IP address.

And in 2005, Microsoft sidestepped a DDoS that was going to be triggered by PCs infected with the Blaster virus by killing the targeted IP address.

A company can reduce its risk by buying plenty of servers and bandwidth, and hosting content on backup servers. Companies can also limit the number of connections that the Web server allows at any one time and set the firewall to block certain types of data that are used in DDoS attacks, said SecureWorks' Stevens.

What can individuals do to prevent their computers from being used in a DDoS attack?

To keep malware off a computer, people should install the latest operating system and application patches, update their antivirus and other security software, consider using auto-updates for browsers and be careful about opening up attachments and visiting Web sites.