These spectacular images of the Earth are the most true-colour images of the entire world released to date, according to Nasa scientists.

Photo: NASA

Via BBC News

From space, you can’t even tell we exist.

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A while back I wrote an article called Flash Cookies: The Silent Privacy Killer, which was one of the first main stream articles to expose Adobe Flash LSO objects as a privacy threat, much like browser Cookies are.

The article got a lot of attention from Slashdot and many independent privacy blogging sources and it looks like some of it has paid off!

Today I noticed in my latest Alpha Build of Google Chrome (Dev build 5.0.335.1) that the Privacy Settings section now has a direct link to Adobe’s hard-to-find privacy settings, which allows you to clear your LSO’s or Adobe Cookies.

To me this is the first step into forcing Adobe to provide an API so that browsers can clear Flash cookies and other Flash cache information directly from the browser.

I commend the Google Developers for recognizing the risk of Flash cookies and helping to bring their existence out into the open! Also, still no links or functionality from Internet Explorer, or FireFox. Hopefully they’ll follow the Chromium Project’s lead!

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Here’s some illustrations that might help to clear this up.

Thoughts?

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Wait… no I wouldn’t.

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At one point or another we’ve all been asked to take a quiz, play a game, contribute to someones farm, or help a lost sheep find a new home. But did you know that most of these popular applications are 3rd party applications, in which Facebook has no control over their content? Facebook Applications Are Dangerous!

What you need to know:

• Anyone can be a Facebook Developer
  • The Facebook application process starts when a person such as myself, a business, a felon, or other living-with-his-mother basement dweller gets the bright idea to create a “Which Harry Potter Character are you?” quiz. They navigate to developer.facebook.com and sign up to become a developer. Information gathered is minimal. They don’t need to pass a background check, be an actual company, or be in the United States. If I recall correctly (and admittedly, I may not) all that is required is what is already in your Facebook profile.
• There is no Approval process for Applications
  • Once an application is written, Facebook does not review it’s source code or in depth content. Whether it is profanity-riddled, full of bugs, or chock full of advertisements, Facebook does very little to review an application. Your application is briefly reviewed for content when it is listed in the Facebook Application Directory.
• Facebook Applications have access to almost all of your profile data and statuses
  • One of the biggest motivators for writing a Facebook application (Aside from wanting to share your amazing quiz with the world, of course) is that you gain incredible access to peoples private Profiles. By default, Facebook developers can access all of your status updates, comments, your links, your posts, your photos, your friends list, your name, your birth date, your hobbies, your religion, and virtually anything else that you have listed in your profile. A few of the things that aren’t open by default: E-mail address, phone number.
  • Facebook Developers can save and store all of the information collected in their own database. Or, in their basement, on CD’s, in a laptop bag left on a bus, or virtually anywhere else they want. Once you’ve authorized an application, they can permanently store your information off site, away from Facebook, anywhere they want. Including their home.
• Facebook Applications can contain viruses and/or spyware
  • Despite what the URL indicates at the top of the page, Facebook applications are loaded from different websites. Developers most provide their own web site hosting and bandwidth for their Facebook application. When someone accesses an application, Facebook will actually go and access that website, and provide content to the Facebook user directly. In other words, Facebook is a proxy for other websites. But the process is transparent. Most applications appear to be coming from Facebook, when 90% of the time Facebook has gone to the developers website, grabbed their content and files, and served them to the Facebook user. Do you see the problem here? A Facebook developer can easily embed malicious Spyware or viruses into their Facebook application. Facebook then retrieves those malicious items when it retrieves the rest of the Application, and unknowingly provides them to the user.

How can I protect myself?

I’m glad you asked! First and foremost, don’t use Facebook applications! But if you’re like most people, that answer simply isn’t good enough.

Don’t approve every application that presents itself – research it first!

1. Before clicking Allow, check out the applications Rating, located here:

2. Check out an Application’s Page and wall to see what other people are saying.

• Click on the name of the application (To the left of the Star rating, above).
• Check out the Wall (Filtered by just fans)

If an application has negative reviews, ratings, or wall comments… Stay away! It’s not worth it! You’re Dumbledore, I swear!

Keep your friends from giving away your information!

Let’s say you read this article and decided to stop using Facebook applications all together. You’re safe now, right? Wrong!

If your friend authorizes an application that you have refused to use, Facebook will give that application all of your information, along with every other friend your friend has! In other words, one indiscriminate friend can easily give away every one of his friends private information by simply authorizing an application.

To stop it, limit what information Facebook gives to applications your friends use.

1. Navigate to http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=applications&field=friends_share

Note: If this link is changed or unavailable, you can always naviate to Facebook > Privacy Settings > Applications and Web Sites > What your Friends can Share about you {Edit Settings}

2. read the paragraph there, which better explains why your friends can so easily sell you out

3. Remove the check from every checkbox listed, and click save!

Now, even if your friends don’t care as much as you do, they still wont’ be able to sell you out like they have been.

Aside from avoiding Facebook 3rd party applications all together, this is about all the information I can muster on protecting yourself. Have any additional information? Please comment!
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The state Assembly is scheduled to vote on a resolution Thursday calling for a statewide “Cuss Free Week,” to occur annually during the first week of March. If approved, it would go to the state Senate for a final vote on Monday.

via Plainview Daily Herald > AP Headlines.

You would think that with California’s economy being almost completely bankrupt, there would be more pressing issues to work on.

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The Hartman Personality Profile also known as The Color Code, created by Dr. Taylor Hartman, divides personalities into four colors: Red (the power wielders), Blue (the do-gooders), White (the peacekeepers), and Yellow (the fun lovers). Although different groups of people have different demographics, the general breakdown suggests that Reds comprise 35% of the population; Blues 35%; Whites 20%; and Yellows 20%.A 45-question test assesses one’s color.

I recently wrote a fun online version of the Hartman Personality Profile that allows you to see your Personality Color, chart it, and easily share it via facebook.

Take the test here!

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Well, at least someone has.

If you inspect the HTTP headers for several of the Facebook AJAX calls, you’ll see that someone came in today when they didn’t want to:

We’re sorry, Mr. Facebook Developer. We understand.

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Now you can copy and paste your text wherever you needed!

The tool uses javascript to take any word, sentence, or other string of characters and simply reverse their input. It was written with jQuery.

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Unfortunately, the AOL PFC is a proprietary file format for archiving e-mail and can’t be read by Outlook or most other common mail viewers.

That’s where PFC Viewer comes in. At one point in time, a savvy developer created a java-based PFC viewer that would inspect the contents of an AOL PFC file and let you get access to all of your old e-mail without installing the client. Sadly, his original website and code went missing, but through some determined investigating of my own, I was able to found the source and original release.

Download Link: http://www.imasuper.com/myuploads/2009/12/pfcview.jar

Download the JAR file and double-click to open. Then navigate to File > Open and open your PFC. And there’s your old email.

The original PFC Viewer was released under the MIT software license, which allows me to provide a download link to the application here without cause for license violation.

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