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New Facebook Feature: Reply by Email to Status Comments!

Facebook quietly implemented a brand new feature this week – and it’s a feature that many of us are very happy to see! While there was no official announcement, yesterday people started seeing this in the email notifications of comments to their Facebook status: “New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this status.”

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Web “Suicide Machine” Service that Helps You Unsub from All Social Media Gets Cease and Desist from Facebook

The so-called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – a service provided by Moddr that lets you delete all of your social media accounts at once (or as they put it, “delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego”) – has certainly gotten the attention of Facebook. It started with Facebook blocking the IP addresses of the social networking suicide machine and similar services, however now Facebook has taken the much more aggressive action of sending the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine a Cease and Desist letter. Which means that Facebook is prepared to sue someone for helping people who don’t want to be on Facebook close their Facebook accounts.

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Privacy? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Privacy, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

It’s no secret that Facebook regularly has its share of privacy issues, many of which are their own doing. Now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given a talk in which he says, in effect, “Our users don’t want privacy.”

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How to Get the Old “Status Update” Feed Back on Your Facebook Homepage

Sick and tired of Facebook’s new and “improved” News Feed on your home page? Even their “Live Feed” not cutting it for you? Want the old-style ‘status updates’ back? Here’s how to give that “News Feed” and “Live Feed” the boot, and get those good old status updates back.

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Fake Facebook Email Such as for “New Login System” One of Many Facebook Scams

If you get an email that supposedly comes from Facebook com, directing you to follow a link to your Facebook login page (for example, to use the “new login system”), ask yourself “Does this link really go to my Facebook login page?” Then check by hovering over the link, to see where it really goes. Odds are good that it will go to a fake Facebook log in URL, not to the real Facebook sign in link. This is an effort to steal your Facebook log in password, and as more people hack Facebook, create a Facebook virus, or perpetrate a Facebook imposter scam or other Facebook scams, you will find more and more of these in your inbox. Many Facebook problems and Facebook risks can be avoided if you are careful about clicking on links in email; for example, if Facebook used email to try to get you to do something with your Facebook profile, then you will see that same message waiting for you if you simply type “facebook .com” in your browser, and login to your Facebook profile directly instead of clicking on the link. If that message isn’t waiting for you in your Facebook inbox, then you know you just dodged a Facebook hack that was trying to steal your login Facebook credentials. (For more Facebook help and information go here.)

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Fugitive on the Run Craig Lynch, a/k/a Craig ‘Lazie’ Lynch, Taunts Authorities via Facebook

Craig Lynch, also known as Craig Lazie Lynch (not sure why it’s “Lazie” instead of Craig Lazy Lynch) escaped from Britain’s Hollesley Bay Prison more than 3 months ago, on September 23rd. Still on the lam, he hasn’t gone underground – in fact, far from it. In fact, Craig Lazie Lynch has been driving British law enforcement mad by regularly updating his Facebook profile, taunting authorities and building a huge following of fans in the process.

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New Facebook Privacy Settings Confounding, Consternating, and Concerning

We’ve received rafts of concerns about the newest Facebook Privacy Announcement and the new Facebook privacy policies – and even about Facebook’s privacy policies policies (like the policy of forcing you to revisit their privacy policies repeatedly, and requiring you to confirm what appear to be new settings or keep your “old settings” without giving you a chance to see or understand what your “old settings” were to start with).

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Google Search Results for Your Name Reveal Your Facebook Friends Even If Your Facebook Privacy Settings Restrict Your Profile!

Now this is new! If you have a Facebook account, searching for your name in Google will turn up not only a link to your Facebook page, but includes a list of your friends, as well! And that’s even if your privacy settings on Facebook are set to disallow public access, such as the “only My Networks and Friends can see my profile and personal info” settings.

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Woman Denied Insurance Coverage Based on Facebook Profile Pics

Nathalie Blanchard had been out for a year-and-a-half on paid long-term sick (disability) leave following a diagnosis of severe depression. That is, until her insurance company, Manulife, got a gander at the pictures she’d posted to Facebook, which showed a smiling Natalie Blanchard at a Chippendales (male strip) bar, at a birthday party, and on vacation at the beach.

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Grand Jury Convened Over Facebook Poking Arrest

In case you hadn’t heard of the Facebook poking arrest that happened last month, Shannon D. Jackson was arrested for ‘poking’ Dana Hannah on Facebook – meaning that Jackson used the Facebook “poke” function to “poke” Hannah which, while perhaps rude, childish, and annoying, doesn’t usually rise to the level of an arrestable offense. However in this case, it is alleged that the poke violated the terms of a protection order (think “restraining order”) which Hannah had in place against Jackson. Now the whole thing has been referred to a grand jury.

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Example of Real Facebook Ad Mentioning a Friend Who is a “Fan” of the Advertiser

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately (stay tuned for our upcoming story on the woman who was arrested for poking someone on Facebook!), and there is increasing awareness over just how intrusive and invading of their users’ privacy many of their money-making practices are, such as using their users (you and your Facebook friends) in their Facebook advertising. Here’s a real-life example of someone being used in Facebook ads, and information on how to opt out and stop Facebook from doing it to you.

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Facebook Status Update Enough to Release Suspect from Jail

A 19-year-old New York man has been released from New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail after a court agreed with his Facebook alibi that he couldn’t have been robbing two people at gunpoint while at the same time posting a status update to Facebook from his father’s house, twelve miles away from the scene of the crime.

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Facebook to Allow Profiles of Dead Users to Remain Live with Facebook “Memorializations”

Facebook has announced a policy of allowing the profiles of deceased users to remain up, as a sort of “memorialization” or tribute to the user.

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“Kill Obama” Poll on Facebook Pulled, Investigated by Secret Service

Sometime in the past week somebody created and posted a poll on Facebook asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. The poll asked “Should Obama be killed?” The answer choices were “yes”, “no”, “maybe”, and “if he cuts my health care.”

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Facebook Steals Major Feature from Twitter – Reach Out and @Someone

Microsoft isn’t the only company to be stealing things from rivals this week. And it appears that the data from your Facebook inbox isn’t the only thing that Facebook is mining. This week we discovered that Facebook has apparently cribbed Twitter’s famous @username protocol for getting someone’s attention.