Facebook’s timeline to fraud-a-geddon?

If you use Facebook you've probably heard of Timeline, a "new" feature that replaces the "traditional" profile page. However, you may be confused by Timeline–I know I am–and confusion could make you the target of a growing number of Timeline-related scams. As of January 3rd, the watchful folks at Inside Facebook were reporting 16 Timeline-related scam pages which had "collectively gained more than 71,000 likes…These pages are among the top search results when searching Facebook for “timeline."
Why am I confused by Timeline? Well, I keep hearing that all Facebook users are going to have to use Timeline, but I'm not using it yet. That's why I called it a "new" feature. Some people have been using it for a while but it is currently optional for most people and some of them–like me–have opted not to use it yet. When you do opt to use it, there is no going back to the previous profile arrangement. At least, that is my current impression based on what I have read so far.
As I understand it, the day is coming when every Facebook user will have to use Timeline. I'm thinking that day is when the confusion will really snowball because a lot of people will decide they don't like Timeline and wonder to themselves: Can I remove Timeline? And the scam artists and click-jackers are getting ready for that day, offering bogus links on Facebook that promise Timeline removal.
For example, here you can see one such bogus Facebook page that wants you to click Like before continuing. In fact, the page is all about "liking" and one of the steps it requires in the 100% bogus process of Timeline removal is a grid of 45 Like buttons you must click.
After several other steps, including inviting all your friends to like the page, you get this message: "Wait For Few Days Your Reuest Will be forwarded To The Timeline Office" (original wording and capitalization).
Hopefully nobody out there believes there is a Timeline Office…
So far, Facebook has not been able to keep up with the policing of these scams. As I write this I see no warnings on the Facebook Security page about claims to deactivate Timeline, and nothing I've read on facebook.com makes it clear that the feature cannot be removed. Unless Facebook changes its mind and makes Timeline optional, the bottom line is that you will have to live with it and avoid the temptation to click on links promising to help you deactivate, remove, or disable Timeline; they are just not worth the risk.
Note: There are some legitimate web pages out there that describe a method of Timeline removal that worked when Timeline was in beta and linked to an app, but that method no longer applies. Also, you can trick Facebook into not showing you the Timeline by using an older web browser, or by telling your current brower to emulate an older browser, for example with the Firefox User Agent Switcher. However, this does not disable Timeline or remove it, and it does not prevent other Facebook users from seeing the Timeline view of you.

Artical from the US ESET page written by Stephen Cobb

Security has got to be the most important part of your IT services get a checkup from Kingstar Services and Eset.

The Death of E-mail?

Barely a week goes by when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t in the news promoting a new feature on his social networking website. His most recent high-profile, controversial statement came in November last year. He branded email “slow and formal” – while promoting a revision to the Facebook messaging system, of course.

Hyperbole or fact? Is it time to move away from email altogether? We all have lots of options for communication, and Facebook is just one of them. Social media has broadened the scope of online interaction beyond anything Ray Tomlinson could ever have imagined when he first inserted an @ symbol in an email address in the early 1970s. Internet chatting has become more sophisticated with services like Twitter and Skype, and VOIP services are taking over from traditional telephony. Nowadays, Grandma and Granddad think nothing of video chatting with grandkids or tapping out messages on hand-held touchscreen devices.
Each type of online messaging has its purpose and place in our digital world. (Hopefully) nobody would apply for a job as a lawyer from the messaging system in their Facebook account. You also probably wouldn’t arrange a teleconference with a tweet. When Mark Zuckerberg claimed email was dying, he was wrong. Zuck’s rant against email was met by scepticism right across the board, and his subsequent ‘reinvention’ of messaging wasn’t quite the revolution he perhaps hoped. Why? People like to use systems they understand.
Email may have a formality, but it’s now just as normal as posting a letter in the mail.
Email is 40 years old and still going strong: it’s a powerful tool in business because it’s fast, it’s cheap and data can be archived and retrieved with ease. Email can be used to transmit documents and files as well as text, and in 2012 it’s more secure than it ever has been. Spam filtering is ever more sophisticated and virus monitoring is robust and reliable. Tools like Hosted Exchange allow us to free email from small, local servers and instead harness shared resources in powerful data centres. The BlackBerry was instrumental in bringing email from the desktop to the mobile device, and now almost all of us check our emails on smartphones, tablet PCs and even our games consoles thanks to cloud technology.
Facebook may handle as many as 4 billion chat, SMS and email messages a day between its 750 million users, but the use of email dwarfs it: in 2010, estimates placed the number of emails sent per day at around 300 billion. (OK, a vast majority of those are junk, but Facebook isn’t innocent in that regard either.) We have come a long way from the early days of ARPANET when emails were a few lines of ASCII on a green and black computer screen, but low cost, accessibility and speed of transmission will ensure email has a long life yet.


Artical taken from Claire Broadley's Blog from Message streem a services Partner with Kingstar Services Ltd