Tag: Social Networking

Yahoo Messenger Will Shut Down In July

It’s the end of the line for Yahoo Messenger.  As of July, it will be no more, marking the end of an era.

The announcement comes just six months after AIM (the old AOL messaging program) was shut down.  The first major messaging programs from the early days of the internet will soon be a thing of the past.

Users will have six months to download their chat histories from Yahoo Messenger. If they  haven’t gotten what they need by then, they’ll lose their chance forever.

It probably won’t come as a major blow to most people.  Although it used to be one of the most popular and widely used communications programs, its popularity has slipped markedly in recent years, to the point that there’s little justification in continuing support for it.

The company had this to say on the matter:

“We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind.  As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.”

Currently, the company has no direct replacement for Messenger.  The closest match would be a group messaging app called “Yahoo Squirrel,” which is currently in beta.  Users interested in the new tool can request an invitation at squirrel.yahoo.com.

For the rest of us, Yahoo Messenger’s loss isn’t likely to cause problems from a business perspective. This, along with Microsoft’s retirement of the venerable MS Paint, serves as a reminder that the internet is growing up.  Many of the tools we’ve used and taken for granted for years are now fading away.  It’s a brave new world.

Information On 48 Million People Leaked Through Massive File

File this one away under self-inflicted wounds.  It has recently come to light that a company called LocalBox left a massive data file vulnerable on a cloud server.  The data file was more than a terabyte in size and contained detailed psychometric profiles of more than 48 million people.

LocalBox describes itself as a combination of personal and business data search service, but most of their revenue comes from the creation of psychometric profiles created by mining data from a wide range of publicly available sources (social media, public records, and the like).  On the company’s website, they describe themselves as being “the First Global Customer Intelligence Platform to search, combine and validate deep business and people profiles – at scale.”

According to the UpGuard Cyber Risk Team, they got confirmation from Ashfaq Rahman (LocalBox’s co-founder) that the data file was placed on a mis-configured cloud-based storage system.  The misconfiguration left the file vulnerable. The file included names, dates of birth and physical addresses culled from sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zillow (a popular real estate site), and more.

UpGuard researchers had this to say about the incident:

“In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle, the importance of massive sets of psychographic data is becoming more and more apparent.  This combination of information begins to build a three-dimensional picture of every individual affected–who they are, what they talk about, what they like, even what they do for a living–in essence, a blueprint from which to create targeted persuasive content, like advertising or political campaigning.  If the legitimate uses of the data aren’t enough to give pause, the illegitimate uses range from traditional identity theft, to fraud, to ammunition for social engineering scams such as phishing.

The data gathered on these people connected their identity and online behaviors and activity, all in the context of targeted marketing, (i.e., how best to persuade them).  Your psychographic data can be used to influence you.  It is what makes exposures of this nature so dangerous, and also what drives not only the business model of LocalBox, but of the entire analytics industry.”

Terrifying indeed.

All Twitter Passwords Exposed, Change Your Password Now

Twitter shot itself in the foot recently but is working hard to get out in front of the problem.  According to a recent blog post, the company experienced an issue with its hashing routine – a process which masks user passwords, making them virtually impossible to crack.

Because of the issue, user passwords were stored as plain text on an internal log file.  The company found the bug on its own, conducted an investigation and found no evidence that anyone discovered the log file and appropriated it.  Although they gave no indication as to how many user passwords the log file contained, they nonetheless urged all of their 330+ million users to change their passwords immediately as a safety precaution.

This could have been far worse for the company, had the log been discovered by a diligent security researcher, or worse still, by a hacker.  Even so, it’s a fairly damaging bit of news that’s sure to cause at least some lost trust with its growing user base.

If you use Twitter, you should definitely take the company’s recommendation to heart and change your password immediately.  As ever, when you do, the best thing you can do to help yourself is to be sure you’re not using the same password on Twitter as you use on other websites you frequent.  That way, even if your password is compromised, the damage will be limited to your Twitter account only.

An even better solution would be to use a password safe, which securely stores the passwords of the various sites you frequent. Although even this step doesn’t provide bullet-proof protection, as password safes are by no means immune to hacking.

Diligence and vigilance are once again the keys.  Keep your passwords secure and change them often.

Facebook Is Adding New Features, Including Dating 

At this year’s F8 Developer’s conference, Facebook announced a raft of changes and updates it will be rolling out later this year.  Some are fun, others practical, but they’re all interesting.  Here are the highlights:

Get Ready for “FaceDate”

This announcement is interesting. Not so much because the idea of using Facebook to meet someone is new, but because of what the announcement did to the stock prices of existing companies.

The new feature will look and feel a bit like Tinder, with a few important caveats:

  • Your FaceDate profile will be separate from your Facebook profile
  • The app will not match you with your existing Facebook friends
  • Your existing friends will not see, or even know about your FaceDate profile (unless you tell them, of course)

Facebook fanatics will no doubt love this feature, but the news caused the stock prices of two online dating companies to fall sharply. These included Match Group (parent company of Match.com) tumbling 22 percent, and IAC (parent company of both Tinder and Match Group) falling 16 percent.

Third Party App Review Starting Up Again

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company suspended its third-party app review.  That is re-opening starting Tuesday, so by the time you read these words, app review should once again be in full swing.  The major change here is that the company will now require business verification for apps that need access to specialized API’s or extended login permissions.  Apps asking for basic profile information only will not be subject to this new requirement.

Real Time Language Translations In Messenger

A long-anticipated feature addition, the company is taking a cautious approach here.  When the feature is initially rolled out, it will only translate English-Spanish conversations, with additional languages added incrementally.  In addition to the translation feature, the messenger interface will also get some tweaks and improvements.

“Clear History” Feature Being Added

This one is aimed specifically at the lingering privacy concerns Facebook’s CEO was recently grilled about when he appeared before Congress.  In a bid to increase user privacy, Facebook will now allow its users to see the apps and websites that send Facebook information when in use, and allow users to turn off Facebook’s ability to store that data.  It’s a good first step, but it remains to be seen how helpful it will be in terms of increasing user privacy.  There’s no good way to know that until we get the opportunity to see the new feature in action.

All in all though, a productive conference, with a number of interesting changes ahead.