News Alert: Indians are Creating Jobs for Poor People of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan

Indians are creating jobs for poor Balochs in Pakistan. That is how they helped in 1971 through the creation of Bangladesh.
"New Delhi had also made a remarkable effort to help the people of Pakistan in 1971," an Indian historian said. "We are currently involved in providing vocational training and jobs to a large number of unemployed poor men in the Pakistani province of Balochistan." 
Source: Times of India

News Alert: NATO Attacks are a deliberate act of punishment of Pakistani army

 

Ahmad Qureshi speaks loud about the NATO air strikes inside Pakistani territory.

News Alert: Pakistan Responds to NATO Attacks

Pakistani officials decide to ask Americans to evacuate Shamsi Airbase in Pakistan in 15 days.
Source: PTV

News Alert: Pakistan stops NATO Supplies.

Highest Pakistani officials are sitting in Islamabad to discuss about the reaction to NATO attack last night. Defense Committee has decided to stop all NATO supplies till further notice.

News Alert: NATO Forces Attack Pakistan

News Alert: NATO Forces attacked Pakistani post 300 meters inside Pakistani territory on Afghanistani border last night. 24 Pakistani soldiers dead and 30 are reported injured including 2 officers.

Spam Emails Raise Concerns over Hotmail Privacy

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very surprising call from one of my friends. He asked as since when I had started to send spam mails from my Hotmail account.

I asked in return that how many he had received? And he replied, "More than a dozen..." And finally I ended up with an apology and explaining to him that this could have happened due to some malware hitting my PC.

But this was an absolute shocker for me!

As I am not a frequent Hotmail user, I seldom check my sent items. And this time it was full of sent emails that I myself had not sent and could not even imagine sending. It was more than embarrassing to have those scam mails sent to all of my contacts, including family, co-workers, some old friends and colleagues and God knows who else.

Assuming that it was some kind of trojan or virus, I scanned all my system, but found nothing. Important question for me was not to find about that trojan/virus but that while I logged in to all my accounts every once in a while including Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail, why in particular this trojan was able to get access to my Hotmail account? It could also play around with my Yahoo or Gmail accounts but it did not. Instead, it used Hotmail to send those 100s of emails which eventually ruined my respect and I had to provide explanation to a few of my close friends and colleagues.

Imagine the possibility of damage that little trojan can cause. If it can access my Hotmail to send some scam pharmacy emails, it may be able to read all my emails and send them to any third party. It may even cause some hackers to send those mails to any terrorist groups and create havoc for a person like me. A whole bunch of possibilities and breaches that anyone can imagine!

And on the whole, it makes me conclude that Hotmail is more prone to privacy intrusions than other service providers and Microsoft must take drastic measures to keep Hotmail email addresses safe and secure. It has to take Hotmail privacy seriously for Windows users.

How to Delete Your FireFox 8 Browsing History?

Although I recommend using CCleaner for a proper cleanup of your system, if you do not have CCleaner or any other utility, here is how you can delete your browsing history from FireFox 8 menu.

1- On File Menu, click on Tools > Clear Recent History

Following Form will pop up.

Delete FireFox 8 Browsing History

In Time range to clear drop down menu, select everything.

Delete FireFox 8 Browsing History (Everything)

Once you press "Clear Now" button, you will be able to delete the FireFox 8 history from the browser successfully. But for better results and safety, download CCleaner software for fixing your temporary files and registry problems. You may have a look at my earlier post titled "Free Tool for Your Internet Privacy" to find a link to download the free software.

Cloud Computing and Your Privacy

Cloud computing is among the hottest selling concepts in today's computing world. But when it comes to protecting your online privacy, you should better give a thorough reading to privacy policy of the provider.

Following document from Microsoft provides a set of very concise considerations for anyone to set forth before opting for any cloud computing service.

Cloud Computing and Privacy

How to make your Facebook Settings Private?

A nice video tutorial by Karen from MyBusinessPresence.com about how to make your Facebook Settings reasonably private.

How can Facebook Track User Behavior?

Facebook aka FB has been under high criticism in recent days regarding its user tracking and privacy policy. And while I explained an earlier accidental experience in my previous post about Facebook and Internet Privacy , here is the technical explanation of the situation.

When a user visits Facebook, 2 types of cookies are saved on to user's computer.
1- Browser cookie
2- Session cookie

While browser cookie is responsible for getting information about a user's first visit on the website, session cookie is used to store user data regarding login details.

Now, this is not a problem. Being a PHP developer, while I also use cookies to store basic session information on users' machines and than later use them to allow users to have the facility to not to log back in every time, it really helps to build a better user experience.

But, the problem lies with all the other 3rd party websites having "LIKE" button or Share on Facebook plugin with them. Each time a user hits a "LIKE" button, entry is stored in the cookie. So, users are even tracked off-site while not being on Facebook. As there are probably millions of websites having "LIKE" buttons, we can say that any social media geek is tracked through all those websites without being noticed.

For now, there is little information on how Facebook uses this data. But it can collectively lead to a complete profiling and personality analysis of the user. As long as Facebook uses this data to track plugin performance, it can be acceptable, but as soon as the social media giant starts using this data to profile its users, it starts to get ugly.

And the problem again lies with cookie tracking. What do you think about Facebook using your personal information in an unwanted way? I think it is already happening. May be not on a massive scale - but they are playing with your privacy that you leaked yourself. Do you agree?

Did Facebook Kill my Privacy?

What is the definition of privacy in today's internet world?

Facebook and Privacy: It may be something more than Cookies

This is shocking!

Whenever someone used to ask me about Facebook and privacy, I used to answer that what was wrong with it. How anyone could expect privacy while being on Facebook when he/she opted to put all his/her private information on the website. And the reaction used to be like "Yeah you do not know the definition of privacy".

I just have a personal opinion. I consider privacy as some thing about me that is only shared with in me. Well that is quite an ideal scenario that can only exist in theory.

Anyway, getting back to the point. Here is a simple experiment that revealed something quite interesting about Facebook privacy problem to me.

I bought this very laptop from an old friend of mine. He actually spends a lot of time online and loves reading blogs and technology news (I think he hates my efforts on blogging). Before handing it over to me, He deleted his personal data, temporary internet files and deleted his history/browser cache. He even uninstalled the Firefox that was installed on this machine prior to this version that I am using right now. And when he was sure that nothing had been left behind, he handed it over to me. I later had to ask him to get me Firefox for the system as I loved it. He installed the version 4 again and told me to update it when I have enough time. I agreed but I never had the chance to update it.

However, yesterday while browsing a website, I stumbled upon a shocking revelation that although I was yet to sign in to my Facebook account on my fresh laptop, I had that website's FB app recognize me as my friend and in fact it was inviting me to post a comment through my friend's FB account.

This reveals to me that there is something more than cookies used by Facebook to store users' information and later identify them. I am not sure but I am again of the thought that FB apps are still a big threat to privacy and that FB is using illicit tactics to track users on internet. So if you want to stay private, may be staying a little away from Facebook will help.

How to Keep Your Internet Privacy in Your Own Hands?

Have you ever heard the phrase? On internet, if you are not paying, than you are the one being sold...
It looks quite strange but is very true. There are tons of companies and websites that offer you free information or products and track your online behavior in return. They follow you wherever you go and find your interests to target ads or other information according to your interests.

But you cannot do much about that. For example you may not stop going to Google.com even if you find that it is tracking your internet browsing behavior. You may not stop posting on Facebook even if you find that it is dangerous to post your images and information on the website due to recent privacy concerns. You may not stop using Hotmail, even if you know how Microsoft is trying to find information about your OS and other system data.

But there are some online tools that reduce your risk of exposure to user tracking and increase your anonymity on internet.
For instance, if you want to stay anonymous and protect your privacy online, you should opt for the following way outs.
1- Try to use proxies. Anonymous proxies are the best.
2- Try to use SSL connections. Any URL starting from https:// reflects that you are browsing a secure connection.
3- Try to use search engines which store less user information or delete them after a small time rather than using search engines that have their servers cloaked with the user data.
4- Regularly delete your offline data and internet cookies from your system hard drive. This will ensure that minimum communication takes place between you and your cookie host.
5- Are you in habit of using "Facebook Connect"? I recommend not using it for any untrusted website. It will fetch all of your information from your Facebook account and create a serious privacy problem for you.

Cookies from Hell Can Breach Your Internet Privacy

Cookies are often referred to as essential tool for swift user experience as they can be used to store vital information about a user.  Cookies are small (very small) files stored on user's computers. These files are created by server side scripts and normally are used to enhance user experience.
However, they also add 007 factor to your online experience. Any website can gain necessary and required information about your online behavior, browsing history, bookmarks, information you exchange on internet, through the use of cookies.
I know it looks spooky! But it is true...
Sample information stored by Amazon.com cookie can look as follows:

session-id-time 954242000
amazon.com/ session-id 002-4135256-7625846
amazon.com/ x-main eKQIfwnxuF7qtmX52x6VWAXh@Ih6Uo5H
amazon.com/ ubid-main 077-9263437-9645324 amazon.com/

 This is sample of an information that is stored upon browsing amazon website.
However, just for a second, imagine the possibility of using Javascript to write
the value of every URL you visit on the internet and than accessing this information through my cookie?
Sounds dangerous... So do not forget to delete cookies on regular interval to control your internet privacy yourself.

Using VPN to Maintain Your Internet Privacy

Internet Privacy has by far become one of the hottest topic around in recent days. Giants like Google and Facebook have been highly criticized lately for their nature of user tracking. In fact Google has been dubbed as one of the top 3 data mining companies in the world. However, you can feel comfortable that this tracking by Google does not get into bad hands. And Google's usage is probably restricted to their own tracking of malicious users and ad serving purposes.

But if you are still not comfortable about anyone snooping on you (rest assured there will be someone though), you can try the following tool for anonymous surfing.

Hotspot Shield

Free Tool for Your Internet Privacy

I have been engaged with PCs and computers for quite some time now. But the pace of technology and development techniques outsmart me. While you can be tracked easily by websites and other malicious users during your online sessions, following free tool can help you stay a bit private on internet.

Not only it deletes your browser history, cache and cookies, it also fixes your registry errors. So, if you are using IE, Mozilla or Opera, keep an eye on your offline data through this amazing tool and make sure your internet privacy remains in your hand through regularly erasing browser history, cookies and temporary internet files.

Download CCleaner Free