Now Facebook Is Using Your Location To Suggest New Friends

Facebook suggests new friends by tracking your location, here is how you can stop this creepy thing

Next time you see a suggestion from Facebook to make a local bully your friend, you should know that Facebook has been snooping on you using the location. Facebook suggests new friends who may be your enemies or anti-socials from your area and this may sound very creepy to a privacy loving citizen.

Facebook in the recent past has been in the news for invasion of privacy of its users. According to a report from Fusion, Facebook shows you “people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported and many other factors.”

If you have got location services enabled for Facebook on your phone, the company can use that data to generate “People You May Know” suggestions, which is partly based on where you are and where you have been. In other words, Facebook tracks the location of your smartphone to suggest “People You May Know” as friends.

“People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported and many other factors.” The Facebook spokesperson further added, “Location information by itself doesn’t indicate that two people might be friends. That’s why location is only one of the factors we use to suggest people you may know.”

So, for instance, if you and others have the Facebook app installed, and you all hang out at the same places – such as someone who went to college with you, or someone that shops at the same target, or as a nearby cafe or your apartment block – Facebook will gather your locations, put them together and suggests you friends accordingly.

The only way to avoid this is to check the privacy settings on your smartphone. Most of us have Facebook set to “always,” but in reality it should be set to “never” if we don’t want them to do some scary stuff. However, note that your smartphone won’t be able to suggest nearby events or notify you when a friend is nearby if you change it to “never.”

Users are Switching Back To Android Smartphones From iPhones

Reasons why Android smartphone users go for iOS and then come back.

OS vs. Android has always been a burning topic for debates all over the internet. There are numerous users who have changed their Android smartphone with an Apple iPhone and later regretted their decision. In this article I’ll point out the reasons for which Android users switch to iOS and the problems they face after it.

Okay! First lets discuss about exciting features of Apple devices:

1. Retina Display

A display having pixels density more than 300 PPI(Pixels Per Inch). Apple used the term “Retina Display” for its such displays. It was said that the visual quality offered by retina display will be beyond amazing. It is true, whether you’re watching a movie, playing a game, reading a document or doing any task with your phone, the display will make working with your Apple device a visual delight.

2. Smooth Operation

Yes! This is definitely an attractive “feature” of Apple phones and tabs. When we compare an Android device and an Apple device having similar hardware( RAM size, Processor cores etc), we quickly find out that Apple device performs far much smooth than the Android device. Android users can be seen often complaining about how installing a new game converted their phone into a brick, Apple users seldom face such situation.

3.Camera

The camera of Apple devices is always ahead of the time. That said, an Apple phone or tab having a camera of specific megapixels will always beat the Android phone or tablet having same megapixels. Thanks to the big aperture of the camera lens, decent extra features and better image processing offered by Apple.

This is not it. The list is pretty long but I’ve mentioned the major factors only. Now lets have a look at what actually comes along these features which we get for paying large amount of extra money.

1. No Expandable Memory

Actually it is expandable on iCloud only. And since Android users get used to having an option of increasing the memory just by buying an SD card, it is not easy for them to handle this surprise. So, they have limited memory, the additional stuff can be put on iCloud, which is a paid service itself.

2.Nothing can be Customized :

Customization is almost nothing in Apple phones when compared with Android ones. Google works extensively on its UI to make it attractive and flexible at the same time. Users can personalize their phones on drag-n-drop basis. Although Android devices too have some restrictions but the extent is very different between these two.

So, if you want the freedom to change things at a level similar to Android, you’ll need to jailbreak your Apple device.

3.The Sliders are Annoying:

If you need to lower brightness in your Android, you just open the brightness status bar and put your thumb to the desired place and the brightness is set to that level. But in Apple you have to put your thumb on the slider and then slide it to the desired position, this is damn irritating for an ex Android user.

4.Price is always Sky High:

And no one knows why Apple never worked on providing affordable phones to its users. And the price always depletes to its half in two years. Most of the iPhone lovers are seen to buy an iPhone just after two or two and a half years after its launch.

Well, these were the points one needs to keep in mind while switching. Above all Apple phones and tabs are amazing in their quality. And Android is affordable yet amazing.

Now you can Create,View & Upload 360-degree photos on Facebook

Tutorial For Uploading, Checking and Viewing The Awesome 360-Degree Photos On Facebook

Facebook has now officially introduced support for 360-degree photos, an immersive photo that allows you to view and upload 360-degree photos on your News Feed. The feature called “360-de Photos” allows Facebook users to capture a panorama or 360-degree photo on their smartphones, using either the native camera app or a third-party app, and then post it to their Facebook News Feed.

In other words, all you need to do is capture a panorama image and post it like a normal photo. Facebook has its own feature to make it a 360 degree image. There’s also 360-degree video, where you’re inside a moving sphere rather than a static one.

Last month, Facebook announced that 360-degree photos would arrive in the News Feed. By introducing this feature now, Facebook is looking to increase its user base by dragging the average consumer into virtual reality, as they hope that many of the people may find this feature very useful. This new feature is available in smartphone as well as desktop.

In the official release, Facebook product manager Andy Huang wrote, “Along with 360-degree Photos from your friends and family, you can discover stunning new 360-degree Photos on Facebook from public figures, publishers, and other organisations. 360-degree Photos give you the ability to take the stage in front of 100,000 fans with Paul McCartney, get behind-the-scenes access to the Supreme Court via The New York Times, visit the International Space Station with NASA, and more.”

It is very simple to create, view and upload 360-degree photos on Facebook. In this article, we help you get accustomed to the new feature.

To create a Facebook 360-degree photo, you will need to take a panoramic photo using an iPhone, iPad, Samsung device, 360-enabled camera, or using various apps. Once you have taken a panoramic photo using one of the above options and uploaded it to Facebook, it will automatically be converted into a 360-degree photo.

However, keep the following points in mind:

• You can upload a 360-degree photo the same way you would upload any other photo.
• If you upload a panorama that’s wider than 100 degrees, it will automatically be converted to a 360-degree photo. You can only upload a single 360-degree photo at a time on Facebook. (You can also upload a 180-degree panoramic photo).
• Not all panoramic photos you take from your smartphone or camera will be converted to Facebook 360-degree photos.

You can use one of the following devices or apps to take your own 360-degree photos.

Following camera’s support 360-degree photos

• Ricoh Theta S
• Giroptic 360 Cam
• Samsung Gear 360
• LG 360 Cam
• IC Realtech ALLie
• 360Fly
• Panono

You can use your iPhone or iPad support for 360-degree photos

• iPhone 4S or newer
• iPad mini 2 or newer
• iPad Air and iPad Air 2
• iPad Pro

You can use your Samsung Galaxy Phones

• Samsung Galaxy S5 or newer
• Galaxy Note 2 or newer

Photo Sphere Apps or Devices: Take a panorama using Street View, Google Camera, Cardboard Camera or Theta S.

Image-Stitching Software: The final option to create a 360-degree photo is to use image-stitching software like PTGui.

How to upload a 360-degree photo on Facebook?

Uploading your finished 360-degree photo to Facebook is as simple as uploading a normal photo.

Open the Facebook app (make sure you are using the latest version of Facebook for Android and iOS) > tap the status tool > select Photo/Video > select your photo > tap Post.

You can also view the 360-degree photos from the Desktop version of the social media website. In addition, you can also view 360-degree Photos on the web with Chrome, Safari or Firefox.

How to watch a 360-degree photo?

All 360-degree Photos in Facebook are marked with a compass icon on the right side of the image. This will help you to view the image from every section. You can either view the 360-degree photo by dragging your finger across the photo or moving your phone to see the full 360-degree view.

Simply tap the photo to view the 360-degree photo in fullscreen and enjoy the awesome 360 degree vista.

Things You Should Know About Iphones & Ipads 'Jailbreaking'

What is Jailbreaking, How does jailbreaking work? Why do jailbreaking? Jailbreaking of iPhones and iPads explained

You may have heard from your friend who owns an iPhone saying that he has jailbroken it. You may have wondered what actually is jailbreaking. Lately, the term “jailbreaking” has been doing the rounds of the internet. While it may sound like a vague illicit term, it has nothing to do with breaking out of prison. You may have heard of iOS. Consider Apple’s iOS ecosystem to be a jail and to escape it using a hack is jailbreaking. To know the detailed explanation of what is jailbreaking and its uses, read on…

What is jailbreaking?

Jailbreaking is basically used in connection with the iPhone, the most ‘locked down’ of the mobiles on sale today. iOS jailbreaking is the process of removing software restrictions imposed by iOS, Apple Inc’s operating system, on its devices including the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and second-generation Apple TV. Jailbreaking is done by using software exploits, and it permits root access to the iOS file system and manager, so applications, extensions, and themes unavailable through the official Apple App Store can be downloaded.

In general, Jailbreaking in general means breaking the device out of its “jail.” It allows you to install apps that haven’t been approved by Apple, customise the interface in various ways, and generally make iOS.

While Apple naturally wants all its users to run safe apps and stable software, jailbreakers select to take a little more risk for a little more control over their devices. The term is also used in reference to various other devices, from Android smartphones to Kindle e-readers.

A history of jailbreaking

When it comes to computer science, a jailbreak comprises removing restrictions of some kind in the software on a device. The term first became prevalent in regards to the iPhone. It is a hack that gains access to areas of the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad that users are not supposed to mess with. Typically, this is an immediate prelude to either installing cool programs, unlocking the handset for use with another cellular network, or both.

Since it first appeared, the term “jailbreaking” has been used to refer to adapting the code on several other devices, from phones to games consoles. There’s no one fixed definition, so people sometimes use it to talk about putting custom software on mobiles or removing DRMrestrictions on movies.

It’s closely connected to terms like “cracking” (software) or “rooting” (phones). The latter process is a little bit like the Android version of a jailbreak, getting around protections put in place by manufacturers to install alternative mobile OSes like CyanogenMod. These terms are sometimes interchangeable.

Jailbreaking is still most often used in reference to iPhones: iOS jailbreaking started as soon as the original iPhone became available in July 2007 and as of June 2016 has continued into the present day. Apple has responded with updates to iOS patching exploits and with new hardware. In order to apply a jailbreak, you will have to generally pause automatic iOS updates.

One of the reasons for jailbreaking is to expand the feature set limited by Apple and its App Store. However, with iPhone apps now given more access to the OS, jailbreaking is rarer than once it was, and majority of the people won’t even think of doing it. However, if you actually want to control the way your iPhone looks and works, it’s relatively simple to do and won’t cost you anything… although there are disadvantages.

The results of jailbreaking

In general, jailbreaking give you more charge over your device: for instance, installing your own screensavers on a Kindle, or adding extra icons to the iPhone home screen dock. Instead, of Amazon or Apple or anyone else, you become the ‘administrator’ of your device with all the appropriate rights.

You can install any app from the Cydia store after a jailbreak as far as the iPhone is concerned. A good example of this would be retro gaming emulators that are excluded by Apple from its own app store, as they let you play older computer games without buying the original copies. However, it is freely available on Cydia.

You can make changes to numerous aspects of the iOS interface, replace Safari and Messages with alternative default apps, and so on. In contrast, you will no longer be able to receive automatic updates for each new version of iOS directly from Apple. In this case, you will be required to wait for the appropriate hack from the jailbreaking community.

Since, you have more control over your device there are security risks too as well as on all the apps that run on it. Jailbreaking also allows software piracy, so apps and games can be distributed for free. Basically, you are entrusting the developers of all the apps you install rather than Apple.

Most iPhone security scares only affect jailbroken phones because they don’t have the same security measures in place as standard iOS. So, the decision is entirely yours if you think it is worth taking the risks for that extra flexibility. However, at the same time, you also need to watchful if you are thinking about jailbreaking a device.

How a jailbreak works

A jailbreak basically ‘unlocks’ a device to give it skills beyond those allowable by the manufacturer that made it. Usually, forums and sites by hacking communities who want to promote unlimited device use provide jailbreak code for free.

Currently, much to Apple’s annoyance, the legal status of jailbreaking is unclear in most countries; while many prohibit tampering with digital locks they tolerate jailbreaks that do not infringe on copyrights. You will definitely void the warranty on your phone if you jailbreak though, which means if something goes wrong you have absolutely got no safety net to fall back on.

While most jailbreaks come with desktop tools and full instructions to apply the new code, it will also be helpful if you have some technical knowledge as well. As mentioned earlier, new updates from Apple (or Amazon or whoever) usually stop jailbreaks from working, so you will have to frequently disable automatic updates along the way.

Finally, if you are making a decision to get into the world of jailbreaking, you may have to be prepared for a little bit of trial and error. Also, it would be advisable to do some research online and get to know the pro and cons of jailbreaking before plunging in.

WhatsApp Likely To Be Banned In India For Aiding Terrorists

Supreme Court To Hear Plea For Banning WhatsApp In India

Facebook owned WhatsApp is facing a major legal test in India, which is its prime market and has the most users from the world. The popular cross-platform messaging App is being sued by a RTI activist for aiding and abetting terrorists who wants Indian Supreme Court to ban it.

The Indian Supreme Court will be examining whether WhatsApp should be banned following a Public Interest Litigation filed by Haryana based RTI activist Sudhir Yadav.

Yadav PIL petition claims that ever since WhatsApp started to enable its every message with 256-bit encryption since April, it cannot be broken into and that is abetting terrorist who pass on important messages through it.

“Even if WhatsApp was asked to break through an individual’s message to hand over the data to the government, it too would fail as it does not have the decryption keys either,” Yadav said in his petition.

Yadav’s PIL states that the Indian authorities would need 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,935 key combinations in order to break the WhatsApp encryption and that is pretty impossible even for a supercomputer.

Yadav said that before approaching the Indian supreme court, he had approached the Indian telecommunications watchdog, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Ministry of Communications and IT for banning WhatsApp but had not received any reply.

The apex court is now scheduled to hear his public interest litigation (PIL) petition on 29 June. Given Indian Supreme Court’s record in dealing with PIL’s, Yadav’s petition may be headed to dustbin but there is a chance that the Supreme Court may call top WhatsApp officials to depose before it or hand over the encryption keys to Indian authorities.

15-Year-Old Windows XP Refuses to Die Despite Windows 10 Push

Windows XP was launched no less than 15 years ago, but shockingly, it continues to be one of the most-used desktop operating systems around the world, and statistics show that it still won’t go away too easily in the coming years.

Support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014, and despite Microsoft’s warnings, users who were still running it at that time refused to upgrade. And what’s worse, many are still doing it these days, despite the fact that Microsoft launched Windows 10 and pushed so hard for everyone to adopt it.

A quick look at market share figures shows that Windows XP not only didn’t lose too many users when Windows 10 launched, but it even gained more, managing to improve its score for two consecutive months. As compared to May 2015, Windows XP only dropped approximately 4.5 percent, which is extremely low for an operating system that no longer receives updates.

What happened when Windows 10 launched?

One year ago, Windows XP was running on 14.60 percent of desktop computers in the world and gradually dropped until it reached 11.72 percent in July, the same month when Windows 10 officially got to see daylight.

In August, however, Windows XP recovered to 12.14 percent and then jumped to 12.21 percent the next month, before eventually starting to decline once again in September.

The drop continued until January 2016, when Windows XP once again managed to increase its share from 10.93 percent to 11.42 percent, thus going back to the same level as six months before.

In the last few months, Windows XP has continued to lose market share points, but it does it at the slowest and most painful pace possible. It dropped from 10.90 percent in March to 10.63 percent the next month before eventually going down to 10.09 percent in May.

Without a doubt, it’ll take many more months until Windows XP disappears completely, but these stats also show that Windows 10 still can’t make a difference no matter how hard Microsoft is trying.

Still using Windows XP? Here's how to update it and gain all the features it's missing

This is a 1.2GB ISO file that offers XP users a wealth of "missing" features sorted into categories such as Support, Applications, Games, Multimedia, PowerToys, Downloads, Hidden Options, TabletPC and Media Center.

View the screenshots below to see some of the features it can add to XP.

You can download the Missed Features Installer5 -- MFI5 for Windows XP and 2003 now.

Top 5 Linux Commands to prevent network connectivity issues

These five helpful networking commands to monitor connectivity issues on Linux PCs

Linux is everywhere and nearly all Linux distros need network connections to offer their services. Network connection failures is one of the major headaches if you are using a Linux based PC or a system. Because if your network fails, all other services will fail and you will be left with a dud system.  For this reason, the administrator must have the appropriate tools and commands to analyze and troubleshoot network connectivity.

Here are five most helpful Linux networking commands to ensure continuity.

1. ip

ip is known as the Swiss Army knife of Linux networking commands because of its ability to work with subcommands. It is designed to work with ip link, to manage and monitor the network link, ip addr to manage IP addresses and ip route to manage the routing table. As a Linux professional you can use ip link show, ip addr show or ip route show to see the current link state, and address configuration, such as router configuration. To go beyond that, use ip addr add dev eth0 10.0.0.10/24 to temporarily assign an IP address to the eth0 network interface.

For more advanced users, ip has advanced options setting as well. You can use ip link set promisc on temporarily sets a network interface to promiscuous mode, allowing it to capture all packets sent on the network — not just packets addressed to its own media access control address. The ipcommand and its subcommands work well for troubleshooting connection issues, but everything done with this command will disappear after rebooting your machine.

2. tcpdump

Tcpdump is another very popular Linux networking command to analyze network activity. This packet sniffing command captures traffic that goes through a specific network interface. If you run it without any arguments, such as in tcpdump -i eth0, the command will reveal large amounts of packets passing by. Another common option is to use -w, as in tcpdump -i eth0 -w packets.pcap, which writes the result to a file that admins can analyze later using the Wireshark utility.

3. Wireshark

Most of Linux users know Wireshark utility, which is also popular with hackers and security researchers. Wireshark is a graphical tool allows you to analyze and sniff network packets. While tcpdump dumps network traffic on the stdout, admins can use Wireshark to click through network communication streams within a convenient graphical interface. This versatile tool can perform a live packet capture, but also can read in a capture file that was created with another tool, such as tcpdump.

4. ethtool

ethtool is for advanced Linux users. If you’re working with traditional physical network cards instead of interfaces in a virtual machine, you’ll like ethtool. This tool allows Linux users to monitor and set different properties of the network card. For example, use ethtool -i eth0 to find hardware-related information about your eth0 interface, orethtool -S eth0 to get usage statistics on packets received and sent through that interface. The command ethtool -p eth0 will cause the LED on the back of the network card to blink, which is a useful notification to swap cables on eth3, for example. But before doing so, verify that you’re working on eth3 instead of another network interface.

Remember, ethtool is dependent on drivers which you use so you may not always receive useful information.

5. ncat

In olden days, Linux users used Telnet to make connection to a specific port in various distros. Ncat or netcat is a replacement for this old telnet utility.

Admins, for example, can use ncat somehost 80 to establish a connection on port 80 to a host named somehost, but ncat has more advanced capabilities, as well, such as establishing a connection between two hosts. Use ncat -l 4444 to have ncat listen on one host, and use ncat hostname 4444 to make a connection to that port from another host. By itself, that isn’t very useful, but using that connection in a pipe creates more options. For example, use ncat -l 4444 > somefile on one host andecho hello | ncat hostname 4444 on the other host, which will send the output of the command over the network to write it in a file on the other host.

If you use anyone of the the above utilities, you can troubleshoot your networking problems with ease. If you use a different utility to monitor your network traffic, kindly mention the same in comments for other readers.

Things You Should Not Do To Avoid Getting Banned On Facebook

 You should know what all is banned on Facebook to avoid getting banned

We should all agree that Facebook is a whole new different type of ecosystem than what we usually encounter. Its members are normal people, activists, freedom fighters, drifters, drug addicts, politicians, etc. and keeping your sanity and posts within the realms of what is allowed is a big job.

We have had 3 students livestreaming their sexacapes on Facebook, a student livestreaming a movie premier earlier. But what caught everybody’s notice was a recent murder of a 28-year-old Chicago man was captured live on Facebook. One minute the man was hanging out with friends and livestreaming on Facebook. The next, there are sounds of gunshots and screaming. Watching this gruesome spectacle on Facebook raises questions about how can the network giant allow such livestreaming.

He was shot Wednesday night, and yet Facebook hasn’t pulled the video from its platform, which begs the question: Why not?

According to Facebook, the video doesn’t violate its community standards because it doesn’t believe the video celebrates violence. According to the Facebook gods, its falls under a different category: Raising awareness. Therefore instead of removing those types of videos, Facebook marks them with a user warning.

Now consider another post in which an ISIS sympathizer killed a police commander and livestreamed it earlier this week. Facebook immediately pulled off that video. As said above, it is really a thin line which you have to adhere to prevent getting banned or suspended.

Facebook’s community standards are broken into eight categories, including attacks on public figures, bullying and harassment, sexual violence and regulated goods. But exactly what it allows and when isn’t clearly defined and may rest solely in the hands of someone at Menlo Park.

The community standards state that it “aims to find the right balance” to keep people safe, encourage respectful behavior, acknowledge cultural diversity, and empower people to control what they see in their feeds.

But you should remember that while a video of a murder is OK by Facebook’s standards, showing a woman’s nipple isn’t. The company does, however, “always allow” photos of women showing post-mastectomy scarring or actively engaging in breastfeeding. Although some genuine breastfeeding posts have been removed. More so before 2014, moms had been complaining that their breastfeeding pics were removed. In 2014, Facebook relaxed its breastfeeding policy a bit to allow for these types of non-sexual images.

However that took considerable effort and a hashtag movement, #FreeThe Nipple, which brought Facebook’s attention to the banning of female nudity on sites like Instagram and Facebook.

Facebook does allow nude paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nudes — but sometimes it gets it wrong. Facebook has in the past removed many paintings which it deemed as gross including an artwork depicting Donald Trump’s babydick. Similarly a Facebook post by Lee Rowland of the ACLU was removed because it contained a photo of a nude statue. Facebook’s head of policy management Monica Bickert later accepted that the photo didn’t actually violate Facebook’s policies but was just a mistake.

Facebook draws a hard line on selling prescription drugs, marijuana, firearms and ammunition– which it says are prohibited on the platform.

But you are allowed to post photos of, say, yourself smoking marijuana out of a bong.

Facebook, like other online communities, relies on a mix of user reports and internal moderation to flag inappropriate or illegal content.

That means Facebook has 1.65 billion people helping enforce its standards — but what’s considered “appropriate” is far from universal.

Guess What: iOS 10 has already been jailbroken

 

Apple’s iOS 10 successfully jailbroken even before it is released to its users

iPhone users eagerly await any news of iOS jailbreak because it allows them to escape the clutches of closed door Apple ecosystem and install their own Apps. However it has seldom happened that a jailbreak has been released even before Apple had released a closed beta of its operating system.

This is happening now as iH8sn0w, the iOS hacker, who developed Sn0wbreeze and iFaith, has successfully jailbroken the early build of iOS that were out for developer accounts and also has a video to prove it. Only at the start of this week, Apple had unveiled its beta developer edition of iOS 10.

A few days ago iH8sn0w hinted that he had a jailbreak for iOS 10 when he tweeted that Cydi worked fine with iOS 10. However, the hacker can now be seen in the video with a successfully jailbroken iPhone 5 running Cydia on iOS 10 with no reported crashing “for now?”

The video also shows the jailbreak running on a 32-but device, which is also teasing the verbose mode. It can be assumed that his jailbreak depends on his older iBoot exploit, which allows devices to be jailbroken for life. However, this could help other jailbreakers accelerate development of a jailbreak that works across all devices, even 64-bit one such as the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus.

However, there is no clarity as to whether the video released by iH8sn0w was to show that it is possible to jailbreak iOS 10, or to keep for his own research and usage purposes rather than issue it to the public.

On the other hand, many are still desperate for an iOS 9 jailbreak, as iOS 10 approaches this fall. The last major release was in October last year, when the Pangu Chinese team launched its popular tool for iOS 9.0-9.0.2 – one that many people are still using and as a result, are stuck on iOS 9.0.2.

While there is still no real jailbreak for the latest public release of iOS 9.3.3, we might have to wait until iOS 10 is officially released to the public before being able to install the jailbreak.

Now You Can Send SMS with Facebook Messenger

 

Here’s how you can send SMS from Facebook Messenger for Android smartphones and tablets

Are you a Facebook Messenger addict? Do you miss sending SMS to Android smartphone from Messenger? Well, then there is news that you can rejoice. Facebook Messenger has now reintroduced the support for SMS text messages on Android smartphones from Messenger. In other words, Facebook Messenger can now officially send and receive texts as your default SMS client on Android smartphones.

Confirming the announcement, David Marcus, Facebook Messenger Vice-President wrote on his page, “A lot of Android texting apps didn’t keep up with the evolution of messaging, so we felt like we truly had to make Messenger the best SMS client for Android. As a result, in addition to having a fully integrated app for all your messaging, you’re now able to send voice clips, stickers, and even share your location over SMS on top of standard texting features. You will now also enjoy all the things you’ve come to love about Messenger for all your messages, including chat heads and more.”

Technically, this is not the first time Facebook Messenger gained SMS integration. The feature was removed due to a lack of use in 2013. However, with the latest update for SMS integration, Facebook has made it clear that it wants Messenger to be the default messaging app across Android platform. Integration with Facebook Messenger also promises a richer SMS experience with the ability to send voice-clips, stickers, etc. However, while all users will be able to receive SMS messages sent from Facebook Messenger for Android, they won’t be able to send back any stickers, voice messages or locations unless they are also using Facebook Messenger.

Facebook says that iOS doesn’t currently support app permissions for accessing text messages, although the SMS recipient can be on any platform.

Further, to protect privacy, Facebook does not process your SMS or store your conversations through its servers, only on the phone. Facebook says: “SMS in Messenger doesn’t send, upload or store your conversations on Facebook servers. All messages are sent and received via SMS”. Facebook also won’t merge your SMS threads into Messenger threads with the same person, as it could cause chat timeline chaos if you have mistakenly ended up Messengering and SMSing with someone at the same time.

Here’s how you can SMS from Facebook Messenger:

1. Open Messenger. Then Click On The Profile Button On The Top Right

It will take you to this page with all of your profile settings.

2. Scroll Down To See If You Have A SMS Button Under Notifications & Sounds

If you do, click on the SMS button and slide the blue dot to make Messenger your default SMS application. If you don’t have the SMS button, then proceed to Step 3.

3. Go To The Google Play Store To Check For An Update

If your phone has received but not yet installed the update, you will see an option to update the app in this window.

4. Once You Are Able To Update, Go Back To Steps 1 And 2.

This will finally enable the option on your phone. Then proceed to Step 5.

5. Open Messenger And Text As Usual

Once you have made Facebook Messenger your default SMS program, your Facebook Messenger messages will appear in blue within the app, while your SMS messages will appear in purple. In either case, starting a conversation works the same way as always: Either tap an on-going conversation to add to it, or tap the “write” button, choose your recipient either by phone number or Facebook name, and text away. Regular text message fees apply.

So, what are you waiting for? Just go and explore. SMS support has already been rolled out as part of version 75 of Facebook Messenger.

Meet the youngest developer attendee of Apple WWDC

 

This Indian-origin girl is the youngest developer at Apple WWDC

They say big things come in small sizes and this hold true for Anvitha Vijay.

Anvitha Vijay, a nine-year-old Indian-origin girl who develops educational applications for children, was one of the youngest attendee that Apple selected to attend the WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.

Vijay is attending the annual WWDC’s event this year as part of Apple’s scholarship program, which gives free tickets to developers around the world who build applications for Apple devices. She had applied for the scholarship online. This event is quite a huge opportunity for developers and coders worldwide, being able to attend it is dream come true for Anvitha Vijay.

She now dreams of meeting the tech giants CEO Tim Cook. “It’s my dream to go to WWDC and meet Tim Cook,” she said.

She has already built two iOS apps for iPhone and iPad. Out of 350 recipients this year, 120 are students under the age of 18, Fortune said, adding that the number of women who applied for the scholarship tripled this year, and this year, 22 percent of scholarship winners are women, which is an increase from last year.

Vijay, who lives with her parents in Melbourne, Australia, at the age of seven realized that her piggy bank did not have enough money to hire a developer to make her an app. Therefore, she decided to teach herself how to code. Vijay spent a year watching free coding tutorials on YouTube and the web, and learned how to program.

“Coding was so challenging. But I’m so glad I stuck with it,” she said.

Vijay’s apps were inspired by her toddler sister, who was learning how to talk and identify animals. Her brainchild was the Smartkin’s Animals app, which uses sounds, and flashcards to help teach children 100 different animal names and sounds. She later developed a similar interactive iOS app for children to identify and learn colors.

“Turning an idea for an app involves a lot of hard work. There are so many components to building an app, including prototyping, design and wireframing, user interface design and then coding and testing,” she added. She is already working on her third iOS app. This will help kids her own age set goals, Fortune explains.

The WWDC 2016 conference hosted by Apple has kicked off yesterday and will be held until June 17 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.

A student tricked 17,000 coders to run his imperfect script

How a college student fooled 17,000 professional programmers into running his sketchy script

It is a well known fact that hackers and cyber criminals thrive on charm more than technical expertise. This was once again proved when a German university student got 17,000 coders from governmental and military organisations to run his malware laden code with his charm. Luckily the malware laden code wont do much harm as this was part of an experiment.

University of Hamburg student Nikolai Philipp Tschacher was conducting an experiment as part of his bachelor thesis. He was testing whether he could fool coders using to run his program using a variation of a decade-old attack known as typosquatting

Tschacher used the variation of typosquatting and uploaded his code to three popular developer communities and gave them names that were similar to widely used packages already submitted by other users. During his experiment which spanned over several months, Tschacher’s imposter code was executed more than 45,000 times on more than 17,000 separate domains. Even more surprising is that as many as half the downloaders who were seasoned coders themselves, gave Tshacher’s code all-powerful administrative rights. Two of the affected domains ended in .mil, an indication that people inside the US military also downloaded and ran his script.

“There were also 23 .gov domains from governmental institutions of the United States,” Tschacher wrote in his thesis called “Typosquatting in Programming Language Package Managers. “This number is highly alarming, because taking over hosts in US research laboratories and governmental institutions may have potentially disastrous consequences for them.”

Typosquatting technique has been used by hackers and cyber criminals since the dawn of Internet era. The technique has its roots in so-called typosquatting attacks, in which attackers and phishers registered domains such as gooogle.com, appple.com, or similarly mistyped names that closely resemble trusted and widely visited domains. When end-users accidentally entered the names into their address bars, the typos sent their browsers to malicious imposter sites that masqueraded as legitimate destinations while pushing malware or trying to collect user passwords.

Another variation was introduced by security researcher Artem Dinaburg in 2011. He called his techniqueBitsquatting and it worked similar to typosquatting but relied on users to enter a wrong domain name, which then capitalised on random single-bit errors made by computers.

Tschacher based his attacked on Bitsquatting. He first identified 214 of the most widely downloaded user-submitted packages on PyPI, RubyGems, and NPM, which are community websites for developers of the Python, Ruby, and JavaScript programming languages respectively. Once he had identified most popular packages, he upload his untrusted code to the websites and gave them names that closely resembled the 214 packages.

Tschacher’s script also provided a warning that informed developers that they may have inadvertently installed the wrong package. But before it did, the code sent a Web request to a university computer so he could keep track of how many times his untrusted code was executed and whether administrative rights were given.

As Tschacher hoped, his experiment was a success with the sketchy code being downloaded by as many as 17,000 users from military and governmental background. It was executed as many as 45,000 times which may give you a idea how charm can still fool users to run unwanted scripts.