facebook: security case study اللى خالع راسه يغطيها

Two days ago, when opening my facebook in the morning, i found a nice video posted by a friend about someone called marc proposing to his fiancee miriam.
WOWWW, so romantic, and by the end of the day all my profile page was one repeated post, everyone reposted the video.
number of people watched the video on youtube jumped from 9000 to 36000 in two days.
my sister, my friend Sally (which is more like an internet investigator then a simple user) and I have a question: did they ever get married?
so my friend an I spent sometime yesterday digging the facebook. and we get our answer.
BUT what this experience reveals is more then a simple answer to a question.
after one hour of digging facebook we know all of this about marc and miriam:
1- his full name: marc wassim (from the profile)
2- her full name: miriam karam (from the profile)
3- date of proposal: 3/2009 (from the video)
4- date of engagment party: 5/2009 (from the video)
5- date of wedding: 10/2010 (from the comment)
6- marc's work place: Dubai (from the video and comment)
7- their friends names (from the video)
8- marc's hobby: photography (from the comment)
9- marc's camera (from the comment)
10- scenes from his house (from the video)
11- some of his family members (from the video)
and more
how we did that: just by digging facebook profiles
marc and miriam, both set the maximum security measures for their profiles, all the personal info are hidden, no pictures were shared, ... etc
but there was one album that was for public view, this was some photos taken by marc practicing his hobby.
just by reading the comments, we knew all of this and more.
are these information too much to know about someone you don't even know? OF COURSE
just two small steps away from hacking his credit card number :)
and remind you, all these information were revealed just by going from one facebook page to another, just unexperienced simple users actions. no software, no hacking ... nothing
did marc expect this or intend to do it? of course not

but this exactly what is called social hacking: which hacking to someone's vital information using what you know about him/her: as in expecting his password to be his date of birth, his wedding date or his kid's birthday and so on

the danger i'm talking about is not silly amateur stealling girls pictures to photoshped it with naked body, i'm talking about the more deep danger: HACKING to your life

and this all starts with a simple youtube video

social media users (facebook, myspace, ... etc) now have to choose between protecting their security or enjoying the magical concept of SHARING

can't do both, because there are no 100% security measures online, it's a lie no matter what the people of facebook say

so now before sharing anything online ask yourself this question: how much information about me will this reveals?

google, what's next?

once a speaker in a seminar i attended said: later on; governments and country borders will gone and they will be only GOOGLE

History of the Internet

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Wikamania 2008: some notes

1- more then 60% of the audience carry their laptop all arround all day
2- Egyptians use HP while foreigners use Apple (smart)
3- some foreigners had this tiny laptop in a size of a makeup box
i guess they used it in the out and then later they synchronize with a bigger devices
i can't believe someone will use 8 inch screen all his life
4- the bandwidth in the BA network is 11MB (i remember mic once said something similar to me and i thought he was jocking, 11mb!! there are no standard bandwidth over 2, you must saw a wrong number, but i was wrong)
5- the egyptians (sharafona) and mobiles !!! they let the mobiles open during the session which make it very annoying, guests were going to kill the traitor if they could know him
6- as Egyptian standard behavior, we take picture with celebrity, the legendery Jimmy wales and any member of the board when asked to take picture with, they were like (me!!, why!! i'm no one, I'm just a volunteer)
7- in a break i asked Michael Snow in the lobby (sorry sir if my question looks foolish, but i see that the foundation rely totally on the community - donating, contributing - what if the community stopped doing this for whatever reason, what is going to happen to the foundation? and more important to the idea of free knowledge?)
and his answer was (that's why we make this event to know what the communicate want, and for the financial stuff, we are trying to get another support from outside the community)
8- the previous wikimania were less vital and less numbered, i guess the BA support put the wikimania event in a higher standard
9- no Egyptian news paper was interested in the whole event, in the first day a tv channel came for 5 minutes in the opening ceremony, but in the whole 3 days there was a non Egyptian tv channels interviewing the guests, in Sunday Almasry Alyoum published a silly article about jimmy wales telling it happened Saturday where his lecture was on Thursday
10- Egyptian youth were very active in the discussions
11- lot of employees attend the conference because it's a job duty (governmental IT centers, ministries representative, ...)
12- there were 2 Egyptians people which i think they were Manal & Alaa the famous MANALAA bloggers
hope similar events happen again in Alex

Wikamania 2008 - Day3 : احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

third day

the day started with a lecture about teaching the teachers the global challenges like war, poverity .... etc

and of course these courses are open courses

it wasn't that interesting

and then a break

after ...

a session about use wikis for political participation by a spanish speaker

he was talking about events happened in Spain and how demonstrations were assembled using sms, blogs, .... etc

and he was talking about how the community responded fast to this tools and acted immediately

so it was a wiki society

then i tried to attend a session about conception & misconception about wikipedia but unfortunately the session room was full and i couldn't even step in the room

so i went to the available session and it was a session about diplopedia the wiki of the US department of state

then a session about free network services: the speaker was a geek

he talked about examples for network and he mentioned facebook as a netowrk example where they stopped sharing their code because what the community have found 2 abuses at least, they were tracking users actions
he copied the lines on the screen, yeeeeeh even facebook is a bad place to hang in
:(
then it was lunch time
later a session by another IT geek (a UN developper and project manager)
he talked about little wiki they create for the kids in the poor africa who have no schools or computers
he said some interesting points such as the kids didn't care about the site usabilities basics as we know it
they just wanted a page to write in
then another great session by Florence Devouard (the Ex chair board) - 7ete set to7faaa
she was talking down to earth
what has happened last year? negative points we should fix? how community communicate in a better way?
she wasn't telling a speech she was talking ask question listen to the audience
it was like a session in a house living room
everyone talk seriously and everyone listen, trying to reach a better status for the foundation
she start by saying that everyone in the conference was talking about how wikimedia is evolving and is the good things that happened the last year, but i wanna talk about the bad thing it needs to be fix
she was honest and serious
this is - in my culture - the closed room talking, the positive point should be mentioned only but the negative should be in the dark so no one notice it
but again this conference is a window that i used to look on the other people in the other culture way of thinking and behaving
final break and then 2 sessions about people used the wiki concept in doing some application
one of them was copernicus: The Virtual
3D Encyclopedia, which was built according to 2-Layer Interface
Paradigm (2LIP). The background layer of the 2LIP-type user
interface is a 3D scene, which a user cannot directly interact with.
The foreground layer is HTML content. Only taking an action on
this content (e.g. pressing a hyperlink) can affect the 3D scene

in other way if I'm reading an article about the pyramids, then a pyramids 3d graphic will be in the background, when i hit "KING'S ROOM" word for example the background graphic will move to the inner pyramid and then to the room when i'm reading so i can see and read the information
the other session was about tagging the text in wiki (some hight techniques)
anyway
the 3 days sessions were done and then the closing ceremony time
Dr.Ismail serag Eldin talked a little
michael snow the new chair and Sue Gardner the executive director they thanked the BA, the volunteer, Florence , the organizer, ....
they talked about the next wikimania 2009 in Argentine
and it's over
GOOD BYE WIKIMEDIA
"experience I'll never forget"

Wikamania 2008 - Day2 : احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

Day 2 was overall less interesting then day 1, sessions wasn't that awesome as day one except 3 sessions were WOWWWWWW
i skiped the first session (couldn't get up in the morning at all)
i get in the second session and it was about OpenStreetMap
which is another wiki based on the wiki concept
it's about people move in the street with their GPS devices collecting data on the street, drawing map and then upload it to the site where other people can use
it's become a culture
everyone is building an application using a wiki now
and after it was a session by Dr. Usama Fayyad Yahoo!'s executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions
imagine !!!
he talked about new technologies in yahoo search engine
this was awesome
and he mentioned some interesting stats about user behaviors, and keyword usage
later i asked him about the cat and mouse war between search engine and SEO, his answer was that after the system is mature everything will be in place
the man asked some signifcant question about wikipedia too, how they will deal with the service cost in the long term
and of course he was talking about another perspectives
then lunch
and after eating i went to a session i thought it would be interesting "Free knowledge & wikimedia projects: is the law an ally?'
the speaker was a french lawyer speaking english about: how wikimedia face the legal problems of copyright and so
i didn't enjoy it much because the tone of the speaker and the old news he brougt
"wikimedia has no obligation because it's not a publisher"
another boring session about eifl open access, it's about electronic libraries and how to share knowledge among people and libraries
and the speaker said that the organization has a program here in Egypt
a final break and then another astonishing session
it was about wikimedia and libraries: the speakers were 5, 3 of the wikimedia community and 1 american college professor and librarian and another lady librarian from the BA
the question was: well wikimedia replace the library
and of course the 2 librarians thought it's not going to happen because knowledge on wikimania is from books basically and it has not every thing in books
so it means people will not find all the answers on wikipedia and they'll have to get back to books
other great point is the librarian is not about keeping books safe, but also about guide readers to the channel of information
it was clear that the people of wikipedia have not much to argue with that
well, this is what i get from this session and i was impressed by the democracy of the people
who brought - let us say people from the opposite camp - to debate
coooooool
very deep thoughts were said in this session and in the last one
the last one was by ting chen from the foundation board, it was an interactive session
people from the audience talked more then he did
he asked a question about why not every contribute with whatever he want to, so one of the audience said too much inforamtion needs filter so the good stays and the nonsense get deleted
so other people from the audience answered by how this will be done,
another filtering fan said by the experts, so michael snow new head of the board and Rhonda from the stinkyjournalism said 2 great points; first who will defines the expert, second what you may think is nonsense now may be valued after years or may be important for another one.
so the debate was wone by the good guys
and the day ends with a BA tour
we went to a new section called VISTA, it's about 3d presentation for any topic: scientific, historical, medical, .... whatever
you wear a 3d glass and you'll be IN the scene
done with the second day

Wikamania 2008 - Day1 : احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

in some olad commercial 2 cows are sitting relaxed, one asked who are we, the other answered: we are cows احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

i remembered this confident sentence by the cartoon cow: we are cows ... attending the wikimania 2008 conference
wikipedia for me was just a cool site where i can find some info when i needed fast, DONE
site with great data
but after i found out about the conference i digg a little in it
and honestly i was astonished by what i found
for more on wikimedia foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. The Foundation was created in 2003 by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia

first: it's non profit organization
second: the aim is in brief to make knowledge available for everyone free of charge
third: the foundation created a project for any thing needs to be shared; wikipedia, wikimapia, wikibooks, wikiversity, .... etc

eih ya ged3an el7alawa di

the fundemental issue here is: the free knowledge availabilty
meaning: not because you are poor can't have books to read !!!!!!!
this great issue is built by jimmy wales and now maintained by the community
another key word: the community ... wow
what community?
the wiki contributers, in other word any one writes even a single line in wiki is a contributer, translated in numbers means thousands of people all around the world
that's the idea behind it
so attending a conference about that is yuppieeeeeeeeeeee

the conference is held in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
another place believes in the open source need

thursday @ 8.45 am, people from arround the world are registering and get their name tags and a bag with (fishermen hat with wikimania logo, note, pencil, brochures, sticker and tie clips with the wikipedia logo, lunch tickets)
minister Ahmed Darwish was the speaker of the welcoming session, he talked about future and questions need to be asked and found answer for
then Florence Nibart-Devouard, very lovely lady and the former chair of the board of trustees, she talked about wikimedia foundation, how small they started and how big they become.
a young egyptian named Mohamed Ibrahim of the organizing committe said a brief speech, welcomed the audience and asked people and egyptian to envolve more.
Hoda Baraka, an egyptian college professor and the first deputy of the mcit spoked about education and wiki, well .... she had powerpoint slides about children in schools with computer labs and children with IT certificate
she compared education status in 100 years and how it evolves from the Kottab to the computer labs school and next the web 2 education where children will handle their curruiculum online
i think she was talking about the other Rrepublic of Egypt (the one in the governmental commercials where sky is blue and the land is green)
anyway
she was followed by the super speaker Dr. Ismail SeragelDin
this man is something else
every speaker prepared his speech on a power point presentation where the slide have pictures and text
he had a presentation with no text at all, he was talking about a point and showing a picture to reflect this point and then move on to another picture represents another point,
how he memorised all the points he want to talk about with the perfect order
and in fact his word was deeeeep
he compared about the BA role and the wiki, both are offering free source of knowledge as he said (to all people in all times)
and mentioned how some countries spend on wars and weapons and ignore the education or the fundemental needs of it's population

a break and i had to choose one session to attend from four are held in the same time
so i did to choose "cross culture dialogue through wikipedia - Dror Kamir"
and after the session began i found out that this man is Israeli
ya nehar eswed !!!!!!! that's how i thought
and then i realized something that this man is the most suitable for this title
he is a main contributor in wikipedia articles in arabic
he talked about how what you believe is A, others belive it's B, and how people on wikipedia try to reach consensus , new word to my ears
he made examples like (palestine / Israel - Taiwan / republic of China - Republic of Macedonia / the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
people asked him, how he describes his visit to Egypt as Israeli knowing that he may not be welcomed in some places, he said that it was easier then he expected after all it is another city with friendly people.
he said something very important answering a question about: do u reach the consensus after convincing the other or just for the things to get going?
he was very honest by saying i don't force people to be convinced and i don't care if they didn't because it's a long term process, people change their views many times along their lives and it's not just happen on talking about an article.
after the lunch break
i went to a session about the open scholarship or as i understand later, it's about medical and educational open source projects
beythay2li keda ... LOL
another session where the speaker was an egyptian linguistic, he was taking about his research on wikipedia writing, he got this result "people who write on wikipedia are linguistically skillful as PHD writers
he showed up some charts comparing the words used by the writers and so on -- very booring session
and then the lecture of the great Jimmy Wales founder of the wikipedia
he talked about freedom of speech, human rights and free culture, he was of course from time to time used china as an example - china banned the whole wikimedia sites -
he said some great statments
i want to stop here for a moment: here is a guy with a cosematic way of thinking, he created a project and let all the globe share him in it, and all this effort is non profitable
i think he deserves a noble prize for his way of thinking, he simply change the internet and the world by offering the new concepts of open source, wiki, web 2, ....etc
everything we do or use today online is a child of his product like facebook, you tube, blogs, and of course the wiki
i wonder how to be this man, have a great idea that benefit every one on the globe, seek to make it real, see it flourishing and growing and be part of the organization
wow
this man sure sleeps at night have no worry about the legacy he'll leave his children.
after this great session, there was another astonishing one by Rhonda Shearer
she was talking about the media vis wiki
she mentioned some hoax media created in the past and that in the wiki world people are modified content to make sure it's right and valid
she had some hilarious examples such a BBC news "iranina women give birth to a frog" and how this was proven a hoax and others stories
this woman was briefly saying: don't trust eveerything you read, media can manipulate the truth
in the wiki world it's impossible to happen, because people will step in and correct the fault.
coffee break and 2 sessions about wiki writing, not so interesting
except the Zotero software which makes wiki article available on your PC to modified and published by a click.
another session about inkscape SVG, very specialized session don't expect people to understand
the day end with the board panel session
wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
how people talk and think
it was a situation where the board is answering the "COMMUNITY" questions
the thing is it's a non profitable project, board have no obligation by law to offer a revenue chart or something similar
BUT
they had to answer the questions of the community and there were some questions i don't believe it would asked in a corporate company where people are by law forced to declare inforamtion
it's the difference between cultures
where we think this is mine, no one has to know anything about it
while they think that this product is belong to all, and all has the right to overwatch it
when Ahmed Zewal won the noble prize he said that the difference between the culture here and there was in the use of "i" and "we"
he was talking using the "we" referring to a team working together, not the "i"
i did, i make, i create
it's entirely a different approach,
that's the web 2 approach too
here in egypt in the IT business we did some baby steps in this direction with network community sites
it's not enough because it's not about the sharing of knowledge rather then sharing a good time online

MSN & OFFICE

Averge computer user is always afraid of changing the SW he used to work with to a new one, this may take him a while till he gets to know it better and master it
SO,
basically new versions of any SW are always for geek high tech users only which are not that many
and obvious example for it is Office
i know peolpe still having problems using version 2003 and think it's no use to upgrade to 2003 when 2000 is OK
now there's a WHOLE new version 2007, consists on the web 2.0 (let us say Spirit .. )
color themes, tabs instead of menus, shadows effects, etc..
but averge users who try it, aren't satisfied because it's not the same interface as the old versions (once a friend told me: i can't find anything .. i'm totally lost in this version)

BUT how genius Bill Gates solved this problem
check this picture

he gave a demo for the new word in the normal MSN page
SO, who didn't try it will for free
and understand the technique of the tabs before paying anything (tab3an e7na mush bendfa3 7aga aslan, fa mush far3a me3ana, law ma3gabnash 7aga nemsa7a we nenazel noss7'a tanya we 7'alas)
woow
raising my hat up for it

Etisalat

Those people make GREAT marketing ADs
they are masters of this field
i don''t know are they using indoor marketeer or a specialized marketing agent
the ad about some things are worth the wait with the pregnant woman in the background is a master piece
last friday they made another professional ad about reserving your special number, someone writes his marriage date and reserves it as his special number

I thought i want to try this;
in google: the site isn't indexed, i used "etisalat" or "etisalat egypt" to search
at the end after finding the site:

- every page loads in 20 minutes
they want to implement the slogin on the user LOL
some things are worth the wait

(P.S: nothing wrong with my DSL network)


- some of the terms that uses the monopoly tone
(I don't think these terms are valid in other countries)


5- In order to request the Etisalat Misr mobile number, one should be over 21 years of age, and shall comply with each of the steps stated herein or on the website at the time, and shall have a valid Egyptian mobile number as in the commercial Terms & Conditions stated below.
To own a mobile number i should have already owned another


8- Etisalat Misr reserve the right to change, amend, or withdraw this offer at any time without further notice to you and without any liability on the part of Etisalat Misr.
mush 3agbak eshrab men elba7r

after an hour i gave up and i didn't found the number i was looking for + i couldn't spare another hour to search for numbers

google

Is there something google dosen't already did !!!!!!!!!!!!!
the profile idea of google services is more then usefull
in one page i can get access to my gmail inbox, my blog, maps, albums ...... etc
and more
i can see the history of my google search

day 1 - keyword - result i did choose
day 1 - keyword - result i did choose
day 1 - keyword - result i did choose

they don't use cookies i believe, it 's something server side coding (i used multiple machines and one account)
so instead of redo your search you only have to take a look on your search history