Facebook shuts down its email service

Facebook quietly ends its @Facebook email addresses due to low usage.

                               

Facebook has stopped its @facebook.com mailing service, citing low usage. Those using the email service will soon receive an email telling them that their emails from @facebook.com account will be forwarded to the primary address listed on their email accounts.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the news in a statement to the Verge, “Most people have not been using their @facebook.com email address.”

The email id's were initially launched in 2010 to streamline all communication under a single umbrella by the social networking site. Facebook announced the feature in a blog post, "It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement."

The service didn't catch up, due to the lack of a friendly interface. The Messages screen always highlighted Facebook messages, and didn't support cc's, bcc's, or subject lines. Facebook received a lot of criticism in June 2012, when it highlighted @facebook.com email addresses on profiles while hiding other email addresses. The move was intended to make user email id's private, but users thought Facebook was favoring its own email services over others. The email id's also caused many privacy issues as users could easily guess others' email id's with just their profile names.

Email forwarding is turned on by default, but users can choose to opt-out of the service by simply removing their primary email address from their account or turning it off from the account settings.

Facebook recently celebrated its 10th anniversary by Look Back videos for million of users. The minute long video highlighted a user's journey on Facebook and showed their most 'liked' and shared photos shared on the site. The video montage was appreciated by users and "proven to be incredibly popular," Facebook stated.

Why Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $19 Billion?

Popular Smartphone Messaging app WhatsApp's $19 billion acquisition by Social Network giant Facebook made Headlines this week.

While Some are applauding the move, and many other users are worried about WhatsApp’s future and their privacy after this acquisition.

Why So Serious?

WhatsApp currently having 450 million active users and processes 50 billion messages a day. Service charges a nominal service fee of $1/year, that means Facebook is buying at $42.22 per user.

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$19 Billion / 450 million users  = $42.22 per user

These figures show, obviously future revenue from WhatsApp can’t cover the acquisition cost in the short or mid-term.

"You can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product." WhatsApp founder said in a blog post.

So, What Facebook is planning for? Facebook is by far the world’s most popular social network, with over 1.2 billion users worldwide, but all WhatsApp users may not have an account on Facebook. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on his wall, "Our mission is to make the world more open and connected", that means Facebook could merge WhatsApp data with them, but Mark also said, "WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook".

"Facebook Mobile Messenger is widely used for chatting with your Facebook friends, and WhatsApp for communicating with all of your contacts and small groups of people. Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, we will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone." Mark Zuckerberg added.

Mark said,'Making them each great products for everyone'

By design, WhatsApp collects all contact information from phones and uploads that information to the company's servers. This is hugely valuable data that Facebook has apparently been after from last two years. In simple words, 'Facebook Just Bought 450 Million Phone Numbers in $19 Billion'.

WhatsApp claim that users’ messages are never stored on their server after delivery to the recipient. So we are expecting that Facebook could never dig into our private messages history, but that doesn't mean -- it will not store in the future.

Can we trust Facebook and WhatsApp?

Well, 70% users don't trust Facebook with their personal information, whereas a large percentage of users still trust WhatsApp for sharing personal information.

WhatsApp has many Security issues as well as privacy issues, but that hasn't scared off its more than 450 million users around the world.

Alternate Secure & Encrypted messaging Smartphone apps? 

If you care about your privacy a lot and don’t want to hand your communication to Facebook, you might want to look into secure messaging solutions, like - Surespot an open-source Android and iOS messaging solution and Threema, end-to-end encrypted app for Android and iOS.

What would be the next in Facebook's shopping list? A mobile handset company? 

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Finally !!! WhatsApp Acquired by Facebook

Finally, the news has struck that WhatsApp has been acquired by Facebook, and their team would be joining with Facebook.Till, now it seems that WhatsApp would work Iindependently.

Facebook Acquired WhatsApp

What Mark Zuckerberg, told "CodeKill"  in a exclusive Interview.

I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook.

Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want. WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that people around the world love to use every day.

WhatsApp is a simple, fast and reliable mobile messaging service that is used by over 450 million people on every major mobile platform. More than 1 million people sign up for WhatsApp every day and it is on its way to connecting one billion people. More and more people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with all of their contacts every day.

WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook. The product roadmap will remain unchanged and the team is going to stay in Mountain View. Over the next few years, we're going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. We also expect that WhatsApp will add to our efforts forInternet.org, our partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone.

WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community. Facebook Messenger is widely used for chatting with your Facebook friends, and WhatsApp for communicating with all of your contacts and small groups of people. Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, we will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone.

WhatsApp had every option in the world, so I’m thrilled that they chose to work with us. I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting.

I've also known Jan for a long time, and I know that we both share the vision of making the world more open and connected. I'm particularly happy that Jan has agreed to join the Facebook board and partner with me to shape Facebook's future as well as WhatsApp's.

Jan and the WhatsApp team have done some amazing work to connect almost half a billion people. I can’t wait for them to join Facebook and help us connect the rest of the world.

Stay Tuned for More Updates.

Author : Shivam Kotwalia,CodeKill 

Hacker removed Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline Cover Photo

Something unusual happened today, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline Cover Photo is removed, as shown in the above Screenshot.

Suddenly, after few hours, I got a mail from an Egyptian Hacker with nickname 'Dr.FarFar', claimed that he has hacked the Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Profile and removed the Cover Photo using a private exploit.

The hacker has not provided any technical details about the vulnerability he used, but it seems that Zuckerberg has not noticed the removed Cover Photo on his profile.

It could be possible that Zuckerberg removed his Cover Photo himself, and someone is trying to take responsibility for the changes, but I still have a positive feeling that - May be a Minor, but its a Hack!

Previously in August 2013, Palestinian programmer discovered a security flaw in Facebook that allowed him to write a post on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal timeline without his permission.

Well, we are trying to get more information from the hacker about the flaw, as well as contacted Facebook for confirmation of the hack. I will update the story shortly after getting more updates.

Stay Tuned!

Update: Hacker explained, he used the Report abuse option on Zuckerberg's Cover image, and choose, 'I don't like this photo of me' and then "I used Fiddler2 Debugger Program to edit the request" he said.

Update: Within a few hours after 'CodeKill' exclusive report, Mark Zuckerberg has finally restored his Cover image on Facebook Profile, as shown and but the company has not issued any statement to us.

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Beyond male and female with over 50 new gender options

A glimpse of some of the new options for gender on Facebook

For the first time, Facebook is letting users of its online social network identify themselves as a gender other than male and female. The basic user profile for members in the United States now includes a customizable category among the gender types that users must select, the world’s No 1 Internet social network announced on Wednesday, the day the feature became available for US members using the site’s English-language version.
Those who select that option can select up to 10 gender identifications, including “transgender,” “intersex” and “fluid.” The company said it worked with a leading group of gay and transgender advocacy organizations to come up with the selection of identity options. In all, the website is offering about 50 different terms people can use to identify their gender as well as three preferred pronoun choices: him, her or them
Until now, Facebook’s 1.23 billion members could only select male or female for their genders, which Facebook requires users to state in their profiles. Users of rival Google Inc’s Google+ social network already had an “other” option for gender.
Facebook said users also can control the audience who can view a custom choice, noting the challenges that some people may face in publicly sharing their gender identity. Users can also choose the personal pronoun to which they are referred publicly. A message on Facebook might now invite a user’s friend to write a birthday message on “their” wall, instead of “his” or “her” wall.
“We want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self,” Facebook said.

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Facebook domain hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

On the 10th Anniversary of Social networking website Facebook, the hacker group 'Syrian Electronic Army' claimed that they managed to hack into the administrator account of the Facebook's Domain Registrar - MarkMonitor.

The hacking group changed the Facebook Domain's contact information to a Syrian email address on the company’s WHOIS domain information page, as shown.

"Happy Birthday Mark! http://Facebook.com owned by #SEA" the group tweeted.

Hackers also claimed that it had updated the nameserver information to hijack domain, but the process had to be abandoned because it was "taking too much time..." whereas, Facebook spokesperson did confirm that the website's domain record email contact information had been changed.

Why SEA Targeted Facebook? Syrian activists and Hackers claimed that Facebook has been deleting pages created by dissidents and removing content as it was violating the social network’s standards, according to Facebook, and that important information about the conflict is being lost as a result.

Journalists and activists involved in the Syrian revolution said that the deletion of Syrian opposition pages by Facebook removes important data and context about the revolution there, including some crucial information about chemical weapon attacks last year.

If SEA had succeeded in updating the nameserver record for Facebook, then the millions of users could have been directed to any other defaced or malicious website.

At the time of writing, the registrant contact details were restored and Facebook confirmed that no traffic to the website was hijacked, and that no users of the social network were affected.

Mark Zuckerberg Celebrating Facebook Turning 10 Years Old

Facebook has come a long way, here’s looking at what its Godfather has to say. 

Facebook turns 10 years old and its owner Mark Zuckerberg has put up a status update telling about the years that have gone by and what’s left to come for Facebook in the coming years.

As stated on tech.firstpost.com, Zuckerberg states that, “It’s been an amazing journey so far, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. It’s rare to be able to touch so many people’s lives, and I try to remind myself to make the most of every day and have the biggest impact I can”. He also went a step further to explain an incident where he described to his friends, a short time after starting Facebook, how someone needs to connect the whole world. He said “While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections. We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today, (sic)”.

Zuckerberg said that he’s quite excited about the coming decade than the decade that just went by. He emphasized Facebook’s efforts in bringing the parts of the world that are not online yet over to the Internet. Facebook poses yet another sort of challenge i.e. of slipping numbers of teenage users.

The previous year, Facebook’s own CFO, David Ebersman, confirmed that the website was facing a problem with maintaining teen interest levels. The younger lot has been quick in moving to more private modes of communications that include apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and more importantly, Snapchat.

CodeKill

Facebook For Android Now Reads Your Text Messages!

The latest update also gives Facebook the ability to read picture messages.

In a clear breach of privacy, popular social media platform, Facebook's latest app update for Android devices allows the same to read the users' text messages. Reddit user Tony.Calileo.com noticed the change in the 'App permissions' after downloading Facebook’s latest mobile update and posted a screenshot of the same highlighting “New: Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)”. The fresh update visibly gives Facebook the ability to read both text and picture messages.

It must be noted that the update began its gradual rollout to mobile devices at the end of 2013. It has since been accompanied by complaints from majority of users citing its invasion of privacy issue.

However, Facebook counters the same by claiming the feature is used to help sync users’ phone numbers to their Facebook accounts. This in turn allows the app to automatically scan users' message inboxes for the confirmation code Facebook sends in a text for verification. “We realise some of these permissions sound scary, so we’d like to provide more info about how we use them,” Facebook wrote on its official app permissions page. The Android platform does not currently allow for the app to just look for a specific message or type of message, hence Facebook needs access to the entire message inbox since it doesn't have an alternative; claims Facebook.

Meanwhile, the update also allows Facebook to have access to users' call logs, contacts, messages. It also provides the ability to see other apps downloaded to their phones.