Facebook fixes bug in Midnight Delivery service

January 1, 2013

San Francisco, Jan 1: Facebook sidestepped a privacy gaffe by fixing a flaw that made it possible to snoop on private New Year's Eve messages sent using a "Midnight Delivery" service.

Facebook took "Midnight Delivery" offline temporarily to patch a vulnerability pointed out by Britain-based blogger Jack Jenkins.

The new feature, which lets people prepare digital messages in advance and have them automatically delivered to Facebook friends the moment the year 2013 arrives, was back in action.

"I have just checked, the bug/oversight has now been fixed," Jenkins said in an update to his blog time-stamped 1435 GMT.

"I don't know how a site like Facebook can continue to take these kinds of risks."

Jenkins outlined in his blog a way to get into Midnight Delivery messages by tinkering with characters in URLs, essentially manipulating electronic address data.

The privacy slip came less than a week after the older sister of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg tripped on the social network's privacy settings, landing in the midst of a debate about "online etiquette."

Randi Zuckerberg, who launched a Silicon Valley themed online reality show after quitting her job handling Facebook public relations, kicked off the controversy after a family photo intended for friends went public.

The picture showed Mark Zuckerberg in a kitchen with family members dramatizing reactions to messages sent with a freshly launched "Poke" feature at the California-based online social network.

Poke lets people send messages that self-destruct in what is seen by many as a spin on popular smartphone application Snapchat.

Randi Zuckerberg posted a copy of the family photo to Facebook for the eyes of close friends only, but evidently it was also shared with friends of those tagged in the picture due to privacy settings at the social network.

That meant the fun photo popped up in the news feed of someone outside Randi Zuckerberg's circle, who then shared it on popular messaging service Twitter.

From there, the photo went viral -- much to Randi Zuckerberg's chagrin.

"Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly," Mark Zuckerberg's elder sister said in a Christmas tweet. "It's not just about privacy settings, it's about human decency."

The comment sparked heated debate at Twitter and other online forums, where a vocal contingent saw poetic justice in the Zuckerbergs being exposed by the way the social network handles the privacy of users.

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News Network
May 6,2020

Hyderabad, May 6: Away from city lights, two hours before Sunrise, people in India and across the world can witness Annual Meteor Shower called Eta Aquarids till May 28.

Observed since time immemorial, Meteor shower are commonly known as shooting stars which are nothing but dust flakes of comet/asteroid entering earth atmosphere.

This Annual Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower peaked on Wednesday at 02.30 am on Wednesday whereas presence of Full Moon was an obstacle outshining bright streaks of lights of this meteor shower zipping across the South Eastern sky.

As this meteor shower is active till May 28, people can still watch this celestial spectacle in early morning every day, Planetary Society of India (PSI) Director N Sri Raghunandan Kumar interacting with UNI said.

As per International Meteor Organization (IMO), 50 meteors per hour are expected to be seen on day of peak today. And this number would vary as days pass on till May 28 while earth passes through dust cloud of comet debris in its orbit.

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Agencies
February 17,2020

Google on Monday announced it is gradually winding down its free public Wi-Fi Station programme currently available at over 400 railway stations in India, and will work with the Indian Railways and Railtel Corporation to help them with existing sites so they can remain useful resources for people.

Google launched its Station initiative in India in 2015 to bring fast, free public Wi-Fi to over 400 of the busiest railway stations in the country by mid-2020.

"We crossed that number by June 2018 and implemented Station in thousands of other locations around the country in partnership with telecommunications companies, ISPs and local authorities," Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Payments and Next Billion Users, Google, said in a statement.

"Over time, partners in other countries asked for Station too and we responded accordingly. We're grateful for these partnerships, especially with the Indian Railways and the Government of India, that helped us serve millions of users over the last few years," he added.

According to Google, the decision to shut Station has been taken keeping the affordable mobile data plans and mobile connectivity in mind that is improving globally including in India.

"India, specifically now has among the cheapest mobile data per GB in the world, with mobile data prices having reduced by 95 per cent in the last 5 years, as per TRAI in 2019," said Sengupta.

The Indian users consume close to 10GB of data, each month, on average, according to reports.

"Our commitment to supporting the next billion users remains stronger than ever, from continuing our efforts to make the internet work for more people and building more relevant and helpful apps and services," Sengupta noted.

Global networking giant Cisco last year teamed up with Google to roll out free, high-speed public Wi-Fi access globally, starting with India.

The first pilot under the partnership was rolled out at 35 locations in Bengaluru.

Sengupta said that in addition to the changed context, the challenge of varying technical requirements and infrastructure among our partners across countries has also made it difficult for Station to scale and be sustainable, especially for our partners.

"And when we evaluate where we can truly make an impact in the future, we see greater need and bigger opportunities in building products and features tailored to work better for the next billion user markets," he said.

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Agencies
March 16,2020

While Google is still working on a coronavirus screening and tracking website, Microsoft Bing team has already launched a web portal for tracking COVID-19 infections worldwide.

The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country.

The COVID-19 Tracker currently lists 168,835 as total confirmed cases, 84,558 active cases, 77,761 recovered cases and 6,516 deaths.

There are at least 3,244 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the US and at least 61 deaths.

"Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, was quoted as saying in a ZDNet report on Sunday.

An interactive map allows site visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases and related articles from a variety of publishers.

Data is being aggregated from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Microsoft announced the website two days after US President Donald Trump said Google has begun working on COVID-19-related portal for US citizens.

Google's website is being built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on healthcare services.

"More than 1,700 engineers are currently working on the site", Trump said during a press briefing last week.

The tool will triage people who are concerned about their COVID-19 risk into testing sites based on guidance from public health officials and test availability.

Initially, there was some confusion on Google's coronavirus portal but the company later announced that it is "partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk, and testing information."

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