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Facebook Opens Up YOUR Inbox and the Email You Send to Others for Data Mining

While this was announced last month, nobody really noticed it until this week. Facebook has created new features that allow developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data. In addition to the content of your email, it allows applications to make note of who are the recipients of a mail thread, and the time and date of the emails.

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Facebook: We Have 300 Engineers and We’re Making Money

Facebook announced earlier this week that they had passed the 300million user mark, and that they are making money or, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it this week, they are cash flow positive. Put another way, Facebook is raking in the revenue.

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Facebook Apps Gone Wild – Rampaging Phishing Facebook Applications Stealing Usernames and Passwords

A plague of rogue Facebook applications that are stealing user credentials – such as usernames and passwords – has been sweeping Facebook in the past week. The phishing Facebook apps work the same way that many other applications do – including sending an email to your Facebook friends, with links to click on, and when you type in your username and password, BAM! Your login credentials have been stolen.

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The Story of Tracy Turkish Brooks, Her “Other Pussy”, and Her Hacked Facebook Account

By now you may have read about how Tracy Turkish Brooks and her “other pussy” had an embarrassing Facebook moment when she – supposedly – posted a very steamy note to “Michael”, and accidentally published it for the world to see instead of sending it via private Facebook email. The post, which was real enough, read “Thank you too, Micheal, I had a great time as well.I’m glad you enjoyed my OTHER pussy ;). I must admit, I haven’t had sex in a while, so getting mounted by such a strong and powerful man was a pleasant surprise after so many long months of …abstinence. I hope this message doesn’t scare you off, I just wanted you to know what a wonderful time I had with you.You are permanently invited to “the love cave between my legs”” However, while the post was real, by all accounts, the person who posted it was not Tracy Turkish Brooks – rather, her Facebook account was hacked.

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Facebook Sued Over Privacy Concerns

A group of Facebook users has sued Facebook for violation of their privacy, and privacy law in general. The group, which includes two children under the age of thirteen, an actress, and a professional photographer, have sued Facebook in California Superior Court, alleging that Facebook’s practices violate California online privacy laws which make it illegal to reveal users’ private data for commercial gain.

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Facebook Acquires Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor Along with FriendFeed

While the Internet is all abuzz about how Facebook and Friendfeed have just announced that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed, the bigger coup may be in that in the doing, Facebook has effectively acquired FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, and Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh.

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How to Unfriend Someone on Facebook

Hey, it happens. There are any number of reasons why you may want to “unfriend” someone from Facebook – that is, remove them from your friends list. It isn’t necessarily personal, in fact it usually isn’t. Perhaps you don’t really know the person that well; perhaps you or they use Facebook primarily for business and your uses of Facebook don’t jive. Or perhaps they overuse the Facebook invitation process or the sending-you-cute-non-existent-items-via-Facebook process. Whatever the reason, it’s perfectly acceptable to remove somebody from your Facebook friends. But how do you unfriend someone on Facebook? It’s actually pretty simple, once you know how.

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Use Facebook and Gmail? Your Gmail Password May be at Risk!

If you use Gmail, and also use Facebook, it can be very easy for someone to password crack and access your Gmail account using Gmail’s recover password retrieval feature. This is because Gmail’s access password recovery feature allows anybody to guess the answer to your “forgot password” reset security question. And if the answer to your forgotten password reset security question happens to be information easily gleaned from your Facebook account (or some other social network information), then password hacking your Gmail account is as easy as typing in that password protection answer. (And we use the term “password protection” loosely.)

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Class Action Lawsuit Against Facebook for Click Fraud and Overcharging Advertisers

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook, alleging that Facebook is charging advertisers for more clicks than their ads actually receive, and also that Facebook is not doing enough to curtail click fraud which is resulting, the lawsuit says, from competitors clicking on an advertiser’s Facebook advertisment in order to use up their allotted clicks and run up the advertiser’s Facebook advertising bill.

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Researchers Use Facebook and Other Social Network Data to Hack Social Security Numbers

As online society becomes ever more social, and cares ever less about personal security, the phrase “social security” seems more than ever an oxymoron. Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly brought home than in this week’s announcement by researchers at Carnegie Mellon that they have cracked the social security code, and were able to predict with frightening accuracy many social sercurity numbers (SSN). In many cases, their hack was aided by information gleaned from such social networking sites as Facebook.

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Starbucks Giving Away Free Pints of Ice Cream via Facebook Right Now

Yes, it’s true. Starbucks is giving away free pints of ice cream, via Facebook. How it works is that, through the Star bucks Facebook application, you can send a certificate for one free pint of Starbuck’s icecream to a Facebook friend. To send a free Starbucks free ice cream, just follow the following easy steps. (Sorry, you can’t get the free pint for yourself – you’ll have to have a friend send it to you!)

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Facebook Says “Yes” to Holocaust Deniers, “No” to People with Odd Names

Facebook has found itself in the rather unusual (some would say “indefensible”) position of booting from Facebook people with odd or unusual names, while refusing to boot pro-Nazi groups who deny that the Holocaust ever happened (so-called “Holocaust deniers”).

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The White House Gets a Twitter Account, Facebook Page, and MySpace Space

Proving that it really wants to be the hip Internet administration, the WhiteHouse now has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a MySpace Page. Check out the Whitehouse Twitter account, Whitehouse Facebook account, and Whitehouse MySpace account here.

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Facebook Using YOUR Updates and Info in Facebook Social Ads Advertising

It’s one of Facebook’s dirty little secrets, even though it’s been publicly available information for more than a year. Facebook takes information that you post, and sells it to advertisers who can use it in ads that are displayed to your friends. For example, if I posted “Eating Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream”, Ben & Jerry’s could then show an ad to all of my Facebook friends saying “Anne is eating Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream – shouldn’t you too?” The service is part of Facebook’s “Facebook beacons” service for advertisers, and the ads in which your Facebook info is displayed are called “Facebook Social Ads”. And if you don’t explicitly opt out of them, then you are fair game.

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Criminal Defendant Acquited Over Arresting Officer’s Facebook and MySpace Remarks

Gary Waters is one lucky perp. Already on parole for a burglery rap, he was arrested for gun possession, and went to trial. And then, he was acquitted because of comments that the arresting officer Vaughan Ettienne had made on Facebook and MySpace.