28 replies to this topic

[Darrel Manson]

and hitting the x is only temporary - they keep coming back as suggestions.

[Jason Panella]

Christian, on 17 November 2009 - 04:50 PM, said:

I'm still a Facebook novice, but am posting with a bit more frequency this week.

Today's discovery: Facebook "suggests" people I might want to be friends with -- people who have friends in common with me. But I don't really know these people. So I go to the "x" box to try to clear the suggestion. I click the "x" ... and the suggestion is immediately replaced with a suggestion of someone else I barely know, but who has friends in common with me.

Will the web never end? Is it possible to pull up my Facebook page without being prompted to make "friends" with someone else?

I've learned to tune those suggestions out. Who knows, though — you might find someone on there that you know and actually want to be friends with. I've discovered a few people that way.

[John Drew]

For those of you who play games through Facebook, a tale of terror...

FarmVille user runs up £900 debt

Quote

A mother has warned of the risk of children spending hundreds of pounds on "free" online games available through Facebook after her 12-year-old son ran up bills of more than £900 without her knowledge...

...She contacted her credit card company, HSBC, but was told she would only qualify for a refund if she reported her son to the police and obtained a crime number. "He would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider," she said.

[CherylR]

Baal_T, on 13 May 2010 - 01:41 PM, said:

For those of you who play games through Facebook, a tale of terror...

FarmVille user runs up £900 debt

Quote

A mother has warned of the risk of children spending hundreds of pounds on "free" online games available through Facebook after her 12-year-old son ran up bills of more than £900 without her knowledge...

...She contacted her credit card company, HSBC, but was told she would only qualify for a refund if she reported her son to the police and obtained a crime number. "He would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider," she said.

Sounds to me like a kid who got hold of his mom's credit card, not a FB game issue. The games themselves are free--but they try to entice you to spend money on things to upgrade your farm/cafe/whatever. I've played/play the same game--it was a great stress reliever when my brain was shot from school--and I've done it without spending real money. (now that I've graduated, those same stress relievers are now just an annoyance.)

The game itself isn't the issue; I think it's more of a kid not seeing a problem using his mom's credit card w/out her knowledge. And if she did know, then she has no one to blame but herself.

[Peter T Chattaway]

[SDG]

Peter T Chattaway, on 27 October 2010 - 11:48 AM, said:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUyrMVkRTlI"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=eUyrMVkRTlI[/url]

So is this a Firefox-only issue? Or is it only in Firefox that there's a third-party extension patching the issue? What about platform -- are Windows and MacOS equally vulnerable?

[Peter T Chattaway]

SDG wrote:
: So is this a Firefox-only issue? Or is it only in Firefox that there's a third-party extension patching the issue?

The latter, I believe.

FWIW, I believe this video was created in response to the recent release of Firesheep, a Firefox extension that makes it really easy to see the other accounts on your network. But the problem would exist with or without Firesheep. (I don't know if it's quite the same thing, but note how Google recently revealed that it had collected lots of passwords and e-mails with its Google Street View cars.)

: What about platform -- are Windows and MacOS equally vulnerable?

No idea.

[Cunningham]

SDG, on 27 October 2010 - 12:15 PM, said:

Peter T Chattaway, on 27 October 2010 - 11:48 AM, said:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUyrMVkRTlI"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=eUyrMVkRTlI[/url]

So is this a Firefox-only issue? Or is it only in Firefox that there's a third-party extension patching the issue? What about platform -- are Windows and MacOS equally vulnerable?

The OS X is just as vulnerable as Windows. It's not technically an OS vulnerability that Firesheep exploits as much as a vulnerability in the way most "secure" websites work. There's a really good writeup on the whole Firesheep fiasco here, which includes measures you can take to protect yourself (the easiest and least technical of which is not to access private sites on open networks).

[Overstreet]

If you use Facebook, you should read this. For your own safety.