A British woman described how she was gang raped for two hours in a Thailand hotel by men who then phoned her mother to demand money.
The 23-year-old claims she was assaulted by a group of Swedes and Thais in a room near Patong Beach, in Phuket, after agreeing to go back for a party.
In a sickening phone call, her attackers told her mother back in Britain that they would rape her again unless they received money. A friend described how the men placed a hood over her head and then laughed as they phoned her mother.
'She had gone back to the room with a Swede,' she added. 'But inside there were five others, including three Thais.
'She was raped and then one of them demanded her mother's phone number. There was laughter as one of the gang members told her mother that unless she sent money, her daughter would be raped again.
'Afterwards she went to find the Embassy official. I don't think she could even remember her attackers and I guess she was drunk.'
The woman had overstayed her visa and was working illegally, which both carry jail terms. She had got a job on the island after answering an advertisement for 'Time-Share' sales staff but quickly became penniless after earning little commission.
It is understood that Embassy officials arranged for her medical examination, but afterwards decided it would be hopeless to attempt a prosecution. She has now left the country.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We can confirm we gave consular assistance in this case.'
In the case of sex attacks on Britons abroad the FCO is able to offer much more help than in other distress cases. They will accompany victims to police, arrange medical treatment and examinations, and can even arrange instant loans for flights, and deal with immigration issues.
Senin, 17 Januari 2011
Beckham: "I Couldn't Have Bedded Hooker..."
The statement, filed in London on Friday states that the 35-year-old footballer has never even met Bosnia-born prostitute and claims that the allegations have caused ‘severe emotional distress including extended humiliation, embarrassment, anger and worry.’
He denies the allegations and states: ‘All the allegations made about me by Irma Nici including foregoing allegations, are completely false. I have never met Irma Nici, much less solicited an act of prostitution with her of with anyone else.’
The signed legal document refutes 26-year-old Nici’s claims that David met and slept with her and another prostitute in a New York hotel in August 2007 and says that the footballer has never even stepped foot inside the hotel.
Nicci’s claims, published by In Touch Weekly magazine in October state that the LA Galaxy footballer paid her $10,000 in cash but Beckham’s legal statement adds that he doesn’t carry around thousands of dollars in cash when he travels.
The statement which offers a comprehensive insight into David Beckham’s life as a footballer outlines how on the night Nici claims to have slept with him in New York, he was having a deep tissue massage in the hotel where his LA Galaxy team were staying.
‘As it is custom when I arrive at a hotel on a road trip before a match, a massage therapist came to my hotel room within a few hours after I checked in to give me a massage.
‘I recall that the therapist did not leave my hotel room until the very early morning on Friday August 17. My security team was with me before, during and after the massage.
‘After the therapist left, I went to sleep.’
Nici has also claimed that she met with the football star during his trip to London in September 2007 but David, who is currently training with Tottenham Hotspurs, was visiting his father in hospital after he had suffered a heart attack, according to the document.
David rubbishes claims he has spoken to Nici on the phone when he was in New York and she was in London and states that not only was he never in New York but that ‘at no time did I contact Ms Nici by telephone, including 2007, regardless of where I was at the time.
David has filed a £16.5million libel law suit against In Touch magazine and its publishers Bauer, following the publication of an issue entitled ‘David’s Dangerous Betrayal’ on October 4, 2010. The five-page declaration which is signed by the footballer comes just a week after Victoria and David announced they are expecting their fourth child.
Remove Your Address and Phone Number from Your Facebook
Danielle Piscak, 22, stands with her Facebook page on a monitor behind Friday, Jan. 14, 2011, in her Parkland, Wash. , living room. Piscak was one of dozens of women in the U.S. and England whose personal information was gleaned from Facebook and then used to hack into e-mail accounts by George Bronk, who lives in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights. Bronk, 23, would then send nude pictures of them to everyone in their address book.
A security expert is warning users of Facebook to remove their home addresses and mobile phone numbers from their profiles as the website now gives third parties access to that information.
The social networking site announced in a blog post at the weekend that it would give developers of applications access to the contact information of users who install their apps.
"These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs," Facebook's Jeff Bowen said.
"Please note that these permissions only provide access to a user's address and mobile phone number, not their friend's addresses or mobile phone numbers."
But Sophos security expert Graham Cluley, in a blog post on the firm's site, questioned the move.
"You have to ask yourself – is Facebook putting the safety of its 500+ million users as a top priority with this move?" he said.
"It won't take long for scammers to take advantage of this new facility, to use for their own criminal ends."
Cluley offered the advice that users should remove their home addresses and mobile phone numbers from their Facebook profiles.
"I realise that Facebook users will only have their personal information accessed if they 'allow' the app to do so, but there are just too many attacks happening on a daily basis which trick users into doing precisely this."
He said "shady app developers" would now "find it easier than ever before to gather even more personal information from users".
"You can imagine, for instance, that bad guys could set up a rogue app that collects mobile phone numbers and then uses that information for the purposes of SMS spamming or sells on the data to cold-calling companies," he said.
Facebook's Australian public relations firm was contacted for comment on Sophos's advice. It did not respond in time for publication but referred this website to the blog post announcing the move.
The social networking site announced in a blog post at the weekend that it would give developers of applications access to the contact information of users who install their apps.
"These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs," Facebook's Jeff Bowen said.
"Please note that these permissions only provide access to a user's address and mobile phone number, not their friend's addresses or mobile phone numbers."
But Sophos security expert Graham Cluley, in a blog post on the firm's site, questioned the move.
"You have to ask yourself – is Facebook putting the safety of its 500+ million users as a top priority with this move?" he said.
"It won't take long for scammers to take advantage of this new facility, to use for their own criminal ends."
Cluley offered the advice that users should remove their home addresses and mobile phone numbers from their Facebook profiles.
"I realise that Facebook users will only have their personal information accessed if they 'allow' the app to do so, but there are just too many attacks happening on a daily basis which trick users into doing precisely this."
He said "shady app developers" would now "find it easier than ever before to gather even more personal information from users".
"You can imagine, for instance, that bad guys could set up a rogue app that collects mobile phone numbers and then uses that information for the purposes of SMS spamming or sells on the data to cold-calling companies," he said.
Facebook's Australian public relations firm was contacted for comment on Sophos's advice. It did not respond in time for publication but referred this website to the blog post announcing the move.
Kamis, 13 Januari 2011
Toy Salesman Raped 96 Kids
Police say an Indonesian toy salesman has admitted to raping at least 96 boys. The 34-year-old man was arrested last week in the capital Jakarta after a complaint was filed by the parents of one of the alleged victims.
Police investigator Reynold Hutagalung says the suspect confessed during interrogations to raping at least 96 boys between the ages of 13 and 17 over the last two years.
Hutagalung says most of his victims were street kids found hanging out at train stations. Hutagalung says the accused, a father of four, could face 15 years behind bars if found guilty.
Police investigator Reynold Hutagalung says the suspect confessed during interrogations to raping at least 96 boys between the ages of 13 and 17 over the last two years.
Hutagalung says most of his victims were street kids found hanging out at train stations. Hutagalung says the accused, a father of four, could face 15 years behind bars if found guilty.
IBM and Samsung Collaborate on Chip Research
IBM technician Asia Dent, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. , tests two multi-chip modules that will each power one of IBMs new zEnterprise System mainframes. Each ceramic module forms the central processing unit of the new computer and packs 96 of the worlds fastest microprocessors (5.2 Ghz) together to give the new mainframe 60 percent faster performance than its predecessor
US computer giant IBM and South Korean electronics titan Samsung on Wednesday announced they will begin working together on ways to make better chips for smartphones and other gadgets.
Samsung researchers will team with scientists at the IBM Semiconductor Research Alliance in New York State to create computer processor “solutions that are optimized for performance, power consumption, and size.”
“Collaborative innovation will be critical if the semiconductor industry is to continue driving new forms of consumer electronics and new methods of computing,” said IBM microelectronics general manager Michael Cadigan.
“That’s why we’re excited to have Samsung scientists working with us at the most fundamental stages of the R&D process.” The companies are striving to develop chips to power a high-performance generation of “smarter, connected and more mobile” devices.
Global Economy Could Return to The Dark Days of 2008 Crisis
The World Bank warned Wednesday the global economy could return to the dark days of the 2008 crisis, with slowing growth and rising commodity prices. After the recession in 2009 and the 2010 rebound, the multilateral institution said, 2011 is expected to be a year of deceleration.
In its latest projections, the bank estimates global growth of 3.3 percent this year, after 3.9 percent in 2010. Emerging and developing countries were expected to expand 6.0 percent, down from a 7.0 percent pace in 2010, the bank said in its latest Global Economic Prospects report.
But that was more than double the 2.4 percent rate expected to be clocked by high-income countries this year, slowing from a 2.8 percent rate in 2010. Still the overall pace of growth is too weak to give the recovery solid traction, the World Bank said.
“Unfortunately these growth rates are unlikely to be fast enough to eliminate unemployment and slack in the hardest-hit economies and economic sectors.” In addition, “serious tensions and pitfalls persist in the global economy, which in the short run could derail the recovery to differing degrees,” it warned.
Threats that could derail the recovery include the eurozone financial market crisis, volatile capital flows and the rising prices of commodities, including food and fuel, the 187-nation institution said.
The World Bank expressed particular concern about rising commodity prices, including food and fuel, driven by loose monetary policies in the developed countries and solid demand in the emerging economies.
“Although real food prices in most developing countries have not increased as much as those measured in US dollars, they have risen sharply in some poor countries,” the World Bank said.
“And if international prices continue to rise, affordability issues and poverty impacts could intensify.” “We are very concerned about the rise in the food prices... We see some similarities with the situation in 2008, just before the financial crisis” Hans Timmer, the bank’s director of development prospects, said at a news conference.
In 2008, oil prices surged above $147 a barrel in July, then fell to nearly $30 six months later. Currently around $92 in New York, oil prices are above the bank’s estimate of $85 a barrel on average in 2011, compared with $79 in 2010.
Commodity prices excluding oil were expected to dip 0.1 percent in dollar terms. The 2008 scenario of soaring food and oil prices amid slowing growth, which had revived the word “stagflation,” would likely be avoided, the World Bank said, as long as supply follows the rhythm of demand.
“The situation is also slightly different from 2008, because first of all in the grain markets, the stocks are much larger than the tight situation then, and also, it (the market) is much more localized, much more diverse” than for the industrial commodities, Timmer said.
In 2008, a powerful surge in commodity prices was abruptly snuffed out by the bankruptcy of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September. Asked how conditions would be different this time, the economist said he hoped that supplies would respond to demand.
“You have there still large stockpiles, which were not available in the crisis of 2008, but clearly we are in an upward trend,” he said.
“And the consequences for people and individual countries can be serious."
In its latest projections, the bank estimates global growth of 3.3 percent this year, after 3.9 percent in 2010. Emerging and developing countries were expected to expand 6.0 percent, down from a 7.0 percent pace in 2010, the bank said in its latest Global Economic Prospects report.
But that was more than double the 2.4 percent rate expected to be clocked by high-income countries this year, slowing from a 2.8 percent rate in 2010. Still the overall pace of growth is too weak to give the recovery solid traction, the World Bank said.
“Unfortunately these growth rates are unlikely to be fast enough to eliminate unemployment and slack in the hardest-hit economies and economic sectors.” In addition, “serious tensions and pitfalls persist in the global economy, which in the short run could derail the recovery to differing degrees,” it warned.
Threats that could derail the recovery include the eurozone financial market crisis, volatile capital flows and the rising prices of commodities, including food and fuel, the 187-nation institution said.
The World Bank expressed particular concern about rising commodity prices, including food and fuel, driven by loose monetary policies in the developed countries and solid demand in the emerging economies.
“Although real food prices in most developing countries have not increased as much as those measured in US dollars, they have risen sharply in some poor countries,” the World Bank said.
“And if international prices continue to rise, affordability issues and poverty impacts could intensify.” “We are very concerned about the rise in the food prices... We see some similarities with the situation in 2008, just before the financial crisis” Hans Timmer, the bank’s director of development prospects, said at a news conference.
In 2008, oil prices surged above $147 a barrel in July, then fell to nearly $30 six months later. Currently around $92 in New York, oil prices are above the bank’s estimate of $85 a barrel on average in 2011, compared with $79 in 2010.
Commodity prices excluding oil were expected to dip 0.1 percent in dollar terms. The 2008 scenario of soaring food and oil prices amid slowing growth, which had revived the word “stagflation,” would likely be avoided, the World Bank said, as long as supply follows the rhythm of demand.
“The situation is also slightly different from 2008, because first of all in the grain markets, the stocks are much larger than the tight situation then, and also, it (the market) is much more localized, much more diverse” than for the industrial commodities, Timmer said.
In 2008, a powerful surge in commodity prices was abruptly snuffed out by the bankruptcy of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September. Asked how conditions would be different this time, the economist said he hoped that supplies would respond to demand.
“You have there still large stockpiles, which were not available in the crisis of 2008, but clearly we are in an upward trend,” he said.
“And the consequences for people and individual countries can be serious."
A Minute away from Your Desk 'Can Reduce Risk of Heart Attack'
Getting up from your desk to go and speak to your colleagues – instead of emailing them – reduces the risk of heart attacks, research shows.
Those who take short breaks away from their seats – lasting as little as a minute – at regular intervals throughout the day are less likely to be overweight and have high blood pressure. They also substantially reduce the risk of potentially fatal cardiovascular diseases.
Researchers found that people who are on their feet for short periods which add up to more than two hours a day tend to have smaller waists and lower blood pressure. They studied the habits of 4,757 adults over the course of a week.
Each participant wore an accelerometer, a small device fitted to the hip to measure how much time they spend walking and running. Their waist size, blood pressure and the level of C-reactive protein in their blood, which is often high in people at risk of heart disease, were also measured.
The researchers, from the University of Queensland in Australia, whose study is published in the European Heart Journal, found that those who took the most breaks had waists up to 4cm smaller than those who were more sedentary.
Those who take short breaks away from their seats – lasting as little as a minute – at regular intervals throughout the day are less likely to be overweight and have high blood pressure. They also substantially reduce the risk of potentially fatal cardiovascular diseases.
Researchers found that people who are on their feet for short periods which add up to more than two hours a day tend to have smaller waists and lower blood pressure. They studied the habits of 4,757 adults over the course of a week.
Each participant wore an accelerometer, a small device fitted to the hip to measure how much time they spend walking and running. Their waist size, blood pressure and the level of C-reactive protein in their blood, which is often high in people at risk of heart disease, were also measured.
The researchers, from the University of Queensland in Australia, whose study is published in the European Heart Journal, found that those who took the most breaks had waists up to 4cm smaller than those who were more sedentary.
People in Love Feel Less Pain
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love."
It's been more than 2,500 years since the Greek playwright Sophocles wrote those words, but scientists have now proved that being in love can actually reduce pain. And they've also shown why.
Love may tap into some of our oldest brain pathways, making us feel so euphoric that we ignore pain, according to a recent study at Stanford University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The scientists found that students in love felt less pain while staring at a picture of their significant others. In addition, love acted through the same brain pathway as several strong painkillers and addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
Studying the effect of love on these pathways might not only tell us more about love itself but could also help us find ways to treat both pain and addiction.
"It was a nice connecting of the dots between what we understand of the neural systems of love and what we understand of the neural systems of pain," said Dr Sean Mackey, chief of the pain management division at the Stanford University School of Medicine and one of the study's researchers.
Love acts on the same brain systems as any intensely rewarding experience, such as winning the lottery, said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at SUNY Stony Brook who collaborated with Mackey.
Aron has been a "love researcher" for 30 years, but he never thought to study pain until he attended a big neuroscience conference five years ago in Washington, and shared a hotel room with Mackey.
"Sean and I really hit it off," Aron said.
As he and Mackey discussed what brain pathways each studied, they realised they were talking about the same ones, and decided to study the interaction between love and pain.
In July 2007, the researchers started recruiting Stanford undergraduates for their study.
"It's the easiest study I've ever recruited for," Mackey said.
They put up fliers around campus, and "within hours we had a dozen couples knocking on our door".
Sara Parke, a Stanford undergraduate and research assistant in Mackey's lab at the time, said numerous students would approach her to ask about the study.
"Our participants were some of the happiest people that you'd meet," she said, noting how excited they were to see neuroimages of their brains in love. "They had all these questions: 'Am I in love?'
'Is my partner in love?' 'How much in love?' Are we going to be together forever?"'
Having so many volunteers allowed the scientists to screen for those who described themselves as intensely in love and also scored highly on a "passionate love scale," a standardised measure of romantic feelings.
Additionally, the group only considered students who had been in a relationship for nine months or less, to get those with the strongest romantic feelings.
It was a good thing the eight women and seven men picked for the study were as happy and excited as they were, because the next step was to subject them to "a very intense, acute pain experience", said Jarred Younger, a Stanford assistant professor who conducted the study while a post-doctoral researcher in Mackey's lab.
To inflict pain, the scientists used a heated probe on each student's hand, and slowly increased the temperature until the pain became intolerable. Students rated their pain on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being "no pain at all," and 10 being "the worst pain imaginable."
The researchers then generated pain levels of zero, four and seven while students lay inside a brain scanner looking either at a picture of their significant other or of someone they found equally attractive.
Students felt a lot less pain when they stared at their partner's picture. And the more time students had previously said they spent thinking about their partners, the greater their pain relief.
Students who spent more than half of the day thinking of their significant others experienced three times more pain relief than other participants, Younger said.
Parke remembered one participant who was just wildly in love with his partner.
"His answers to the love questionnaire were hilarious," she said. "He picked the maximum level on every single answer."
That student experienced the most pain relief, Parke said.
He and his partner have now been together for several years, and "they're still really enthusiastic about each other," she said.
But participants also experienced pain relief while performing distracting word association tasks, thinking of responses to questions such as, "What are some sports that don't use a ball".
Previous studies had shown that such distractions could reduce pain.
When the scientists compared brain images from the love and distraction tasks, "the results were very exciting," Mackey said.
"Love engaged all the regions that we were hoping that it would engage. But even better, it clearly demonstrated that it works in an entirely different way than distraction."
Mackey likened the brain to a stereo receiver, with multiple amplifiers such as love and distraction. How we perceive pain depends on how high the volume is on these amplifiers, and they can work independently of each other, he said.
Unlike distractions, love acted through a reward pathway that's "a really old, reptilian, early evolutionary part of the brain", Mackey said. And there's a good reason we have it, to override pain. Without a way to do that, we would stop doing things if they caused even the slightest twinge
.
Understanding these powerful reward pathways could help develop pain medication with fewer side effects, or find behavioural ways to treat pain.
"I could just prescribe a passionate love affair for all my patients every six months," Mackey said with a laugh. But a more realistic way for them to reduce their pain would be for them to "get out there and do something new and fun", he said.
But the researchers point out that romantic love isn't always a good thing.
"If it's not reciprocated, it's tragic," Aron said.
Whom you fall in love with is very random, and rejection in love is a major cause of suicide and depression, he said. But even when it's reciprocated, "our great archetype is Romeo and Juliet", Aron noted.
Love acts through the same reward systems as other addictive substances, and letting these systems run wild is dangerous.
That's why we normally rely on other parts of our brain to keep them in check, Mackey said, regardless of what the addictive substance is. "For me it's dark chocolate," he said.
"For some people it's passionate love."
It's been more than 2,500 years since the Greek playwright Sophocles wrote those words, but scientists have now proved that being in love can actually reduce pain. And they've also shown why.
Love may tap into some of our oldest brain pathways, making us feel so euphoric that we ignore pain, according to a recent study at Stanford University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The scientists found that students in love felt less pain while staring at a picture of their significant others. In addition, love acted through the same brain pathway as several strong painkillers and addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
Studying the effect of love on these pathways might not only tell us more about love itself but could also help us find ways to treat both pain and addiction.
"It was a nice connecting of the dots between what we understand of the neural systems of love and what we understand of the neural systems of pain," said Dr Sean Mackey, chief of the pain management division at the Stanford University School of Medicine and one of the study's researchers.
Love acts on the same brain systems as any intensely rewarding experience, such as winning the lottery, said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at SUNY Stony Brook who collaborated with Mackey.
Aron has been a "love researcher" for 30 years, but he never thought to study pain until he attended a big neuroscience conference five years ago in Washington, and shared a hotel room with Mackey.
"Sean and I really hit it off," Aron said.
As he and Mackey discussed what brain pathways each studied, they realised they were talking about the same ones, and decided to study the interaction between love and pain.
In July 2007, the researchers started recruiting Stanford undergraduates for their study.
"It's the easiest study I've ever recruited for," Mackey said.
They put up fliers around campus, and "within hours we had a dozen couples knocking on our door".
Sara Parke, a Stanford undergraduate and research assistant in Mackey's lab at the time, said numerous students would approach her to ask about the study.
"Our participants were some of the happiest people that you'd meet," she said, noting how excited they were to see neuroimages of their brains in love. "They had all these questions: 'Am I in love?'
'Is my partner in love?' 'How much in love?' Are we going to be together forever?"'
Having so many volunteers allowed the scientists to screen for those who described themselves as intensely in love and also scored highly on a "passionate love scale," a standardised measure of romantic feelings.
Additionally, the group only considered students who had been in a relationship for nine months or less, to get those with the strongest romantic feelings.
It was a good thing the eight women and seven men picked for the study were as happy and excited as they were, because the next step was to subject them to "a very intense, acute pain experience", said Jarred Younger, a Stanford assistant professor who conducted the study while a post-doctoral researcher in Mackey's lab.
To inflict pain, the scientists used a heated probe on each student's hand, and slowly increased the temperature until the pain became intolerable. Students rated their pain on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being "no pain at all," and 10 being "the worst pain imaginable."
The researchers then generated pain levels of zero, four and seven while students lay inside a brain scanner looking either at a picture of their significant other or of someone they found equally attractive.
Students felt a lot less pain when they stared at their partner's picture. And the more time students had previously said they spent thinking about their partners, the greater their pain relief.
Students who spent more than half of the day thinking of their significant others experienced three times more pain relief than other participants, Younger said.
Parke remembered one participant who was just wildly in love with his partner.
"His answers to the love questionnaire were hilarious," she said. "He picked the maximum level on every single answer."
That student experienced the most pain relief, Parke said.
He and his partner have now been together for several years, and "they're still really enthusiastic about each other," she said.
But participants also experienced pain relief while performing distracting word association tasks, thinking of responses to questions such as, "What are some sports that don't use a ball".
Previous studies had shown that such distractions could reduce pain.
When the scientists compared brain images from the love and distraction tasks, "the results were very exciting," Mackey said.
"Love engaged all the regions that we were hoping that it would engage. But even better, it clearly demonstrated that it works in an entirely different way than distraction."
Mackey likened the brain to a stereo receiver, with multiple amplifiers such as love and distraction. How we perceive pain depends on how high the volume is on these amplifiers, and they can work independently of each other, he said.
Unlike distractions, love acted through a reward pathway that's "a really old, reptilian, early evolutionary part of the brain", Mackey said. And there's a good reason we have it, to override pain. Without a way to do that, we would stop doing things if they caused even the slightest twinge
.
Understanding these powerful reward pathways could help develop pain medication with fewer side effects, or find behavioural ways to treat pain.
"I could just prescribe a passionate love affair for all my patients every six months," Mackey said with a laugh. But a more realistic way for them to reduce their pain would be for them to "get out there and do something new and fun", he said.
But the researchers point out that romantic love isn't always a good thing.
"If it's not reciprocated, it's tragic," Aron said.
Whom you fall in love with is very random, and rejection in love is a major cause of suicide and depression, he said. But even when it's reciprocated, "our great archetype is Romeo and Juliet", Aron noted.
Love acts through the same reward systems as other addictive substances, and letting these systems run wild is dangerous.
That's why we normally rely on other parts of our brain to keep them in check, Mackey said, regardless of what the addictive substance is. "For me it's dark chocolate," he said.
"For some people it's passionate love."
Baby Boy Drowns While Mother’s On Facebook
People’s addiction to Facebook can have some disturbing consequences, like the case of Shannon Johnson. The 34-year-old in Fort Lupton, Colorado faces an arraignment tomorrow for her son’s death last September. He drowned while she was playing Cafe World on the social network.
Actually, she was multitasking on Facebook, checking a friend’s status and sharing videos, in addition to playing Cafe World, while sitting in the living room, according to an ABC news affiliate in the Denver area.
She told police that her son had been playing in the bathtub for ten minutes, during which time she’d checked him once. After a three minute stretch in which she couldn’t hear him play, she went to the bathroom to check and discovered him floating sideways with his face down. She grabbed the boy out of the water and heard gurgling.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen more violent deaths related to Facebook, including many instances of people getting angry about online postings. But the tragic death of the one-year-old in the Denver area brings to mind one of the most trafficked posts of all time on All Facebook: The mother who killed her baby for crying during a FarmVille game.
Both of these mothers had such deep addictions to social games that their children’s lives were lost as a result. Granted, the Denver mother was simply negligent, while the FarmVille murderess had more serious problems.
Actually, she was multitasking on Facebook, checking a friend’s status and sharing videos, in addition to playing Cafe World, while sitting in the living room, according to an ABC news affiliate in the Denver area.
She told police that her son had been playing in the bathtub for ten minutes, during which time she’d checked him once. After a three minute stretch in which she couldn’t hear him play, she went to the bathroom to check and discovered him floating sideways with his face down. She grabbed the boy out of the water and heard gurgling.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen more violent deaths related to Facebook, including many instances of people getting angry about online postings. But the tragic death of the one-year-old in the Denver area brings to mind one of the most trafficked posts of all time on All Facebook: The mother who killed her baby for crying during a FarmVille game.
Both of these mothers had such deep addictions to social games that their children’s lives were lost as a result. Granted, the Denver mother was simply negligent, while the FarmVille murderess had more serious problems.
WARNING: Avoid ‘What’s New On FarmVille’ Page
A slightly novel twist in this particular rogue application: It asks you to create a post for your wall about the app. After you click “publish,” the message intended for your own wall also goes onto your friends’, and the next screen presents you with the bait and switch: The offer of 200 Farm Cash.
The page asks whether you’d like to accept the reward, and if you click “yes,” then a menu of six different surveys shows up in the next window. All possible choices are exercises in trying to wheedle your personal information. Completing any of the questionnaires supposedly enters you in a drawing for the previously promised Farm Cash.
And while you’re completing the questions, the application has the opportunity to download malware onto your machine, like our friends at Facecrooks said when they first pointed out this scam last night. So if you or one of your friends has been expsed to this application, be sure to uninstall it from your Facebook profile using the security settings in the upper-right hand corner of your screen.
INFOGRAPHIC: We Are Obsessed With Facebook
One in every 13 earthlings use Facebook actively, says a set of inforgraphics rendered by SocialHype and Online Schools.
Most of it appears to recast already available statistics, but we dig how the title of the work invokes the name of the recent CNBC documentary The Facebook Obsession. If you want to see an even larger version of the infographic than the one below, click here to go to the Online Schools site. What do you think of the message the creators are presenting here?
Most of it appears to recast already available statistics, but we dig how the title of the work invokes the name of the recent CNBC documentary The Facebook Obsession. If you want to see an even larger version of the infographic than the one below, click here to go to the Online Schools site. What do you think of the message the creators are presenting here?
You Don’t Know One-Fifth Of Your Facebook Friends
The average Facebook user doesn’t know one fifth of the people listed as friends on the site.
That statstic, which the blog ShinyShiny says comes from GoodMobilePhones, jibes with what most of us have observed on Facebook. People tend to put out friend requests and accept them more generously than real-world friendships actually form.
Many folks consider large friends lists as a sign of success; nd there is some truth to the belief that increasing the number of contacts you have can expand your networking toward finding a better job, significant other, sale item and so on.
The most cited reasons that participants in the GoodMobilePhones survey gave for staying friends with people they didn’t actually know were politeness, with 54 percent, and the desire to look more popular, with 34 percent.
The flip side of supersizing your friend list is that casting a wider net can expose you to more opportunities for contracting malware, viruses and spam. This risk doesn’t seem to cross enough people’s minds as they go befriending on Facebook.
We could easily reduce our security risks by deleting that 20 percent of contacts on our lists who we don’t actually know. But perhaps we could do even better by considering deletions of up to 80 percent of the people listed as our friends on Facebook.
The opposite of those we don’t actually know, meaning those we’d consider our real friends, also account for one in five out of the average Facebook user’s contacts, according to the GoodMobilePhones survey. The remaining three-fifths are acquaintances, folks we don’t really talk to.
All of this data confirms something most of us already know intuitively, but it doesn’t seem like something people want to change. Deleting 20 to 80 percent of one’s contacts takes a lot of time, given how the average user has about 100 Facebook friends, going on more like 500.
Many folks consider large friends lists as a sign of success; nd there is some truth to the belief that increasing the number of contacts you have can expand your networking toward finding a better job, significant other, sale item and so on.
The most cited reasons that participants in the GoodMobilePhones survey gave for staying friends with people they didn’t actually know were politeness, with 54 percent, and the desire to look more popular, with 34 percent.
The flip side of supersizing your friend list is that casting a wider net can expose you to more opportunities for contracting malware, viruses and spam. This risk doesn’t seem to cross enough people’s minds as they go befriending on Facebook.
We could easily reduce our security risks by deleting that 20 percent of contacts on our lists who we don’t actually know. But perhaps we could do even better by considering deletions of up to 80 percent of the people listed as our friends on Facebook.
The opposite of those we don’t actually know, meaning those we’d consider our real friends, also account for one in five out of the average Facebook user’s contacts, according to the GoodMobilePhones survey. The remaining three-fifths are acquaintances, folks we don’t really talk to.
All of this data confirms something most of us already know intuitively, but it doesn’t seem like something people want to change. Deleting 20 to 80 percent of one’s contacts takes a lot of time, given how the average user has about 100 Facebook friends, going on more like 500.
Facebook Reinstates Memorable Stories Feature
Facebook users had gotten a brief yet inadvertent sneak preview of ”Memorable Stories” on December 16, but now the feature is back for real, at least for some users.
Coinciding with this reinstatement of Memorable Stories, the home page now offers the status update box atop the news feed as a default setting. We can’t tell whether that change is a cause, effect or part of the return of the application that highlights the best of one’s past status updates, but it makes sense to encourage more updates.
Although the preview of Memorable Stories last month was unintended, it seems like that has added to demand for the application, or at least piqued people’s curiosity. We wonder what additional work Facebook might have done on the app, since the sneak peak.
However, maybe Facebook would’ve been better off Memorable Stories live instead of pulling it. An application highlighting the best of one’s status updates does see more germane to an end-of-year launch than mid-January. Sure, the new year has just begun, but by now people want predictions for what’s to come in 2011. Somone ought to develop an application that uses your most memorable status updates to predict what you will post in the next 12 months.
Coinciding with this reinstatement of Memorable Stories, the home page now offers the status update box atop the news feed as a default setting. We can’t tell whether that change is a cause, effect or part of the return of the application that highlights the best of one’s past status updates, but it makes sense to encourage more updates.
Although the preview of Memorable Stories last month was unintended, it seems like that has added to demand for the application, or at least piqued people’s curiosity. We wonder what additional work Facebook might have done on the app, since the sneak peak.
However, maybe Facebook would’ve been better off Memorable Stories live instead of pulling it. An application highlighting the best of one’s status updates does see more germane to an end-of-year launch than mid-January. Sure, the new year has just begun, but by now people want predictions for what’s to come in 2011. Somone ought to develop an application that uses your most memorable status updates to predict what you will post in the next 12 months.
Is Friending Parents On Facebook A Good Thing?
Teens have dreaded their parents’ presence on Facebook for about as long as both groups have had profiles on the site, but statistics released today suggest an interesting symbiosis for the two on social media: better preparing for college admissions tests.
A Kaplan Test Prep Company survey of high school students found that 38 percent said they would have put more effort into studying for college admissions tests if parents could track their progress in the same way that many of today’s schools provide real-time grades online to families.
It looks like the test prep company is sussing out whether and how to provide progress reports to students’ families via Facebook. The idea makes sense, especially given how the positve social pressure on the network can help boost performance. However, dynamics between teens and their folks make things challenging.
Importantly, the study found that 35 percent of the teens who have parents on Facebook aren’t friends with them. Of those, 38 percent say they have ignored friend requests from their folks. That data might make Kaplan want to figure out a way for students’ families to securely access the progress reports regardless of online friendship.
Of the 65 percent of teens that have parents on Facebook who are also their friends, 16 percent say that the online friendship was a parental requirement for allowing the teens to create their own profile.
Regardless of whether they’re friends on Facebook or not, 82 percent of the teens said that their parents are involved in the students’ academic lives.
A separate Kaplan survey of 973 high school students who said their parents were on Facebook found that 56 percent of the respondents said they give full profile access to their folks, nine percent gave limited access (meaning parents are on the friend list but can’t see much), and 34 percent gave their parents no access.
Perhaps Kaplan’s plans for posting students’ progress reports on Facebook could include educating teens and parents about the privacy settings. That way, more high school students could find a way to have their folks as Facebook friends but ones who could only see the test prep progress and none of the other content on the kids’ profiles.
A Kaplan Test Prep Company survey of high school students found that 38 percent said they would have put more effort into studying for college admissions tests if parents could track their progress in the same way that many of today’s schools provide real-time grades online to families.
It looks like the test prep company is sussing out whether and how to provide progress reports to students’ families via Facebook. The idea makes sense, especially given how the positve social pressure on the network can help boost performance. However, dynamics between teens and their folks make things challenging.
Importantly, the study found that 35 percent of the teens who have parents on Facebook aren’t friends with them. Of those, 38 percent say they have ignored friend requests from their folks. That data might make Kaplan want to figure out a way for students’ families to securely access the progress reports regardless of online friendship.
Of the 65 percent of teens that have parents on Facebook who are also their friends, 16 percent say that the online friendship was a parental requirement for allowing the teens to create their own profile.
Regardless of whether they’re friends on Facebook or not, 82 percent of the teens said that their parents are involved in the students’ academic lives.
A separate Kaplan survey of 973 high school students who said their parents were on Facebook found that 56 percent of the respondents said they give full profile access to their folks, nine percent gave limited access (meaning parents are on the friend list but can’t see much), and 34 percent gave their parents no access.
Perhaps Kaplan’s plans for posting students’ progress reports on Facebook could include educating teens and parents about the privacy settings. That way, more high school students could find a way to have their folks as Facebook friends but ones who could only see the test prep progress and none of the other content on the kids’ profiles.
Facebook Paid $8.5 Million For FB.com
The social network’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg had first revealed the purchase itself, but not the price, during the November 15 press conference announcing the new messaging platform. Today Reuters reported that the purchase price of $8.5 million.
The news wire obtained the price information from the annual meeting of the Farm Bureau in Atlanta today, where officials said the organization earned $8.5 million on the sale of “a couple of domain names,” but were not allowed to identify the buyer. This suggests that the transaction included at least one additional web address besides FB.com.
The Farm Bureau continues to use fb.org for its Internet address, and may own as many as four dozen domain names related to farming, according to Reuters. The article didn’t spell out any of these additional addresses, nor for that matter, what URL(s) Facebook might have received in addition to FB.com.
As for the price, $8.5 million may seems steep when regarded only as something for internal use by employees; call it a legal expenditure and the amount makes a lot more sense, part of Facebook’s overarching strategy of pre-empting domain name squatting and trademark infringement. Assuming the Farm Bureau passed on most of the proceeds of the sale to agricultural concerns that need the money, that makes the whole transaction a win-win.
WARNING: Don’t Click On ‘Facebook Will Shut Down’
Facebook spokespeople and media outlets have dispelled the bogus reports of the site shutting down in March, but that hasn’t stopped one survey-spammer from creating a scheme based on the myth.
A rogue application calling itself “Social Network Close Down – February 15″ has been spamming walls and newsfeeds asking people to click on a link for updates about an official closure of the site allegedly happening a month earlier than the humorous myth published by the Weekly World News on Saturday. Props go to our friends at Facecrooks for noticing this survey scheme first.
This particular scheme leads to a survey that presents itself as having a focus on social media, but the questions turn out to have more general marketing focus. Answering them lines the spammers’ pockets with commission fees, wastes your valuable time and opens you up to receiving more lots more spam.
And while you click through screen after screen hitting you up for more personal data to inform product pitches, the application posts three times on your profile: one in your status update and two on your wall. As luck would have it, no spam goes up on any of your friends’ walls.
Delete this application’s posts from your status ad wall to protect your pals from accidentally stumbling into this spamware. Then you’ll want to uninstall it from your profile by clicking the security settings in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.
A rogue application calling itself “Social Network Close Down – February 15″ has been spamming walls and newsfeeds asking people to click on a link for updates about an official closure of the site allegedly happening a month earlier than the humorous myth published by the Weekly World News on Saturday. Props go to our friends at Facecrooks for noticing this survey scheme first.
This particular scheme leads to a survey that presents itself as having a focus on social media, but the questions turn out to have more general marketing focus. Answering them lines the spammers’ pockets with commission fees, wastes your valuable time and opens you up to receiving more lots more spam.
And while you click through screen after screen hitting you up for more personal data to inform product pitches, the application posts three times on your profile: one in your status update and two on your wall. As luck would have it, no spam goes up on any of your friends’ walls.
Delete this application’s posts from your status ad wall to protect your pals from accidentally stumbling into this spamware. Then you’ll want to uninstall it from your profile by clicking the security settings in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.
Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs Come Under Fire On Facebook
In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Facebook’s marketing director Randi Zuckerberg discussed how people used Facebook to react and talk about the shooting outside of a Safeway store in Tucson last Saturday, when a gunman shot 20 people, killed six, and left Democratic
Representative Gabrielle Giffords badly injured in the middle of her public meeting with constituents.
Within 12 hours after the shooting, about 3 million people had mentioned State Representative
Gabrielle Giffords in their profile status in some capacity, while about 2 million mentioned “Tucson” or “Arizona.” These were big numbers even by Facebook standards, indicating that the news “touched a chord” with the American public. These numbers are probably significantly below the actual figures, given than Facebook can only take public status updates into consideration (only users who explicitly let anyone see their wall posts can be counted).
As for what the trending topics on Facebook were during the weekend, it wasn’t Giffords who took the top spot, but Sarah Palin, with “hundreds of thousands” of Facebook users asking: “Is Sarah Palin to blame (for Tucson tragedy)?”
It is the political implications behind the shooting that has drawn attention to a map Sarah Palin posted on her website and her Facebook page about a year ago, which literally “targeted” 20 House Democrats who despite belonging to districts where Republicans had won, they had voted in favor of the new health care bill. Giffords was one of those. Here is a look at the map, via FireDogLake:
The controversy is not, of course, whether Palin is directly linked to the shooting or if she condoned it, but rather if she has contributed to the feeling of polarization and violent speech that is becoming more and more common in the political landscape as of late. Sarah Palin turned to Facebook as well to state her condolences to Giffords and the rest of the victims of the attack.
Other “trending” topics this past weekend, according to Zuckerberg, were whether we should put more resources “towards mental health” in this country (the gunman is supposed to have had a history of mental illness), and if “heated issues like immigration contribute [the Tucson] event.”
You can watch Zuckerberg discussing Facebook users’ reactions surrounding the tragedy here.
WARNING: Don’t Click Suge Knight Posts
The latest spamware spreading across the social network appears to have two different names, Tupac Murdered and Suge Knight Killed Tupac. Both promise videos you’ll never see and only lead you through a series of clicks to a survey that earns the spammer a commission if you complete the thing.
This spamware appears to have gotten started during Friday happy hour over at Facebook, a time that seems to give the spammers an advantage: Even after our friends at Facecrooks pointed out this scheme last night, it’s still spreading unchecked.
Have you seen this particular spamware show up on your friends’ walls or newsfeeds? Has anyone reported it to Facebook yet?
No, Facebook Will Not Shut Down On March 15th
This weekend a rumor about Facebook shutting down began spreading thanks to a false article created by Weekly World News, a company which is also reporting that Alien spaceships will attack earth in 2011.
Facebook posted a status update on its page Sunday afternon saying, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down, so we’ll keep working away like always. We aren’t going anywhere; we’re just getting started.”
Weekly World News published a story on Saturday saying Facebook would shut down March 15th and people couldn’t access anything stored in their accounts after that. If you still question whether that story has a humorous intent, take a look at the other items linked nearby: “Young Adults Moving Into Nursing Homes,” “Mike Tyson Pigeon Fetish,” “Droids Help Kids Cheat,” and “Alien Spaceships to Attack Earth in 2011.”
Nonetheless, people have been taking the story about Facebook very seriously. It’s gotten more than 6,000 comments, mostly consisting of fans begging Zuckerberg to have a change of heart. One commenter wrote:
Have you read the article, and are you surprised by the reactions to this article?
Facebook posted a status update on its page Sunday afternon saying, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down, so we’ll keep working away like always. We aren’t going anywhere; we’re just getting started.”
Weekly World News published a story on Saturday saying Facebook would shut down March 15th and people couldn’t access anything stored in their accounts after that. If you still question whether that story has a humorous intent, take a look at the other items linked nearby: “Young Adults Moving Into Nursing Homes,” “Mike Tyson Pigeon Fetish,” “Droids Help Kids Cheat,” and “Alien Spaceships to Attack Earth in 2011.”
Nonetheless, people have been taking the story about Facebook very seriously. It’s gotten more than 6,000 comments, mostly consisting of fans begging Zuckerberg to have a change of heart. One commenter wrote:
What am I going to do without FB…I spend most of my down time conversing with FB friends…I have a full time job, three children, and a husband…I don’t have the time to hang out or see family and friends. I talk to family and friends that I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. This is definitely not a good idea. I’m crushed to hear this…People who believe the Weekly World News article have created a group on Facebook, already 2,000 strong, to stop the site from shutting down. We’ve also noticed other people are posting links to the story, and a number of them include comments suggesting some people really have gotten the joke after all, while others question whether the article is true.
Have you read the article, and are you surprised by the reactions to this article?
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