Posts for 'Updates' Category

Beat Account Hijackers by knowing your last login time! This comes out to be of a great surprise to all the Orkut users. Orkut has recently rolled out a new feature, which allows you to see your last login time. This feature will not only help us to control our Orkutting habits(just joking) but will also prevent us from account jacking!

Suppose that someone hacks your account (god forbid!) and logins through your username and password. If the person would be considered only a bit intelligent, he won't change your password and will try to misuse your account! There comes the trap for the person from Orkut!

Read the complete story

Google's social networking site Orkut has introduced what it describes as a "safety filter" that automatically filters out adult content such as sexually suggestive phrases or images.The filter has been introduced in India, and is turned on by default for users in the country. Google plans to introduce it in other countries in the next few weeks, said Rahul Kulkarni, product manager at Google India, on Thursday.

The new filter screens for content that may not violate Orkut's community standards for objectionable content, but which users may not want to see, Kulkarni said.Orkut is offering the filter as there is always a gray area as to what is considered as unacceptable adult content, which will likely vary from country to country or from one household to another, Kulkarni said.

Read the complete story

The cutting edge in technology has enabled cross-cultural communications with online communities gaining prevalence among the masses.The mediums which have been exploited to attract the online users are forums, blogs, podcasts, message boards, wikis and vlogs.

The social networking sites which have promoted the growth of online communities and have gained the utmost attention are Orkut, MySpace and Facebook apart from the other social media clubs like SEMPO and DFWIMA.

Read the complete story

Yahoo has agreed to work with Google and MySpace to promote a common set of software standards to make it easier to create applications for Internet social networks, the companies announced Tuesday.

The companies said they are forming a non-profit OpenSocial Foundation to promote the OpenSocial software standards that Mountain View-based Google announced in October.

"Before OpenSocial, if a developer built a 'favorite photos' application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site," the companies said in a press release.

"OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common 'plumbing' that lets social applications run on many different Web sites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the Web sites."

Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms for Sunnyvale-based Yahoo, predicted that OpenSocial "will fuel innovation and make the Web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users."

Promoting OpenSocial makes sense for the three companies, according to Gartner Research analyst Ray Valdes, who tracks social networks.

Read the complete story

The city has not limited its interests just to cycles and hosiery. It seems Ludhiana has welcomed the internet bug with open arms.
According to the latest data, there are nearly 800 communities on Orkut which are related to Ludhiana in some or the other way.

The communities range from Sarabha Nagar market to those of various schools, from coffee lovers of Ludhiana to those who love Ansal Plaza.

Then there are the shady ones like Beautiful Ludhiana girls, night life@Ludhiana, Ludhiana dating and cool friends Ludhiana.

There is a community on Ishmeet, Art of Living, Ludhiana rappers, Book Club and Sardari Club.

The cheekiest of the lot is undoubtedly a community called Risky Drivers of Ludhiana.

Jasmine Khurana, who is a regular visitor in cyberspace, says, “I am hooked. I study in Delhi but some of the Orkut communities keep me updated on what is happening in my hometown”.

Says Sandeep Jain, a student of St Thomas Public School, “These communities are just the right way to stay in touch with all my schoolmates”.

And what about those who are not registered on any of the communities.

Read the complete story

Online social networks have been a fad for some time now. But, before you leave some more smart scraps on the global social networks, beware of the bugs. The pesky malicious mails and spams have hit the social networking sites and could potentially sour your relationship (both online and offline!) with that someone special in the virtual world.

Your love for scrapping and watching videos Orkut, a social networking site, may end up sending malicious mails from your login to anyone. A worm named Scrapkut is fast targeting Orkut users.

Taking note of the problem, the cyber security wing of the department of information technology (DIT) has suggested all Orkut users refrain from downloading any links posted on Orkut. A malicious scrap message is posted to victim’s scrapbook containing a fake link to YouTube video looking as if it is from a known member of its friend list. When the victim clicks on the link, it’s redirected to some malicious website which prompts you to download the file “flashx_player_9.8.0.exe” disguised as a flash upgrade. And the victims whole system comes under the virus attack. The active Orkut virus was tracked on Friday last week while other viruses have been active on several other social networks for a few weeks now.

Read the complete story

While millions continue to log into social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook to make friends and socialise, a small but growing number of individuals are also logging on to share not only their personal problems but also to find solutions for them.

Social networking sites are are increasingly taking the shape of the new age online 'agony aunt'.

"Orkut has been a great strength of support for me. I had lost all faith in destiny till I logged on to a kidney transplant community where people with similar problems pepped me up by writing down their experiences," says Sarath Kumar from Hyderabad.

Sarath, who is looking out for a kidney donor for himself adds, "They were people who told me what to do, what all precautions I should take and even suggested names of some good doctors that I could get in touch with."

The popularity of such networking sites turning out to be the agony aunt can be gauged from the hundreds of help communities that have been set up, be it from complex issues like kidney transplants, blood cancer to much smaller issues like teenage heart breaks.

Not only do these communities attract a large number of members who indulge in periodical discussions to offer help to the one seeking, many also take part in these discussions as non members.

Read the complete story

You know you are one important social-networking site when hacker write a worm just for you. Judging by this logic, Orkut is more than special, with a second worm roaming now free between the site's users. Dubbed W32.Scrapkut, the worm uses active code injection to spread between victims and their friends on Orkut. It all starts with a malicious scrap posted to the victim’s scrapbook, with a link to a YouTube video.

The soon-to-be-victim clicks the link and then he is prompted to install what it looks like a flash player upgrade (“flashx_player_9.8.0.exe”), from an external site. When installed, the file injects malicious Javascript code into their next active Orkut web session and the malicious scrapbook entry is sent to all his friends.

At present time, over 13,000 users have already been infected, and the numbers more than likely to go much higher if Google (the owner of Orkut) doesn't step in with a quick fix.

Last December, another worm made it into the accounts of over 655,000 Orkut users before Google could take care of it.

An analysis on the W32.Scrapkut is available on Symantec's site. According to it, you need not worry for the time being, as the malware seems to be interested only in spreading itself.