Want to complain about text spam? There's an app for that

Text message spam is a growing annoyance, but -- until now -- you've had to jump through hoops to combat it.

Fighting text spam got easier by leaps and bounds on Wednesday when Android app PrivacyStar added a free-to-use feature, which will help users file formal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission directly from their smartphones. The app provides a simple and easy way to voice discontent with the federal agency, and it requires little more than a single tap to do so.

When it comes to spam, asking the sender to remove you from a list -- whether for phone, text or email -- does not always end with you being removed from said list. And, up until recently, there were few authoritative bodies people could complain to and expect meaningful change.
In 2011, the FTC began a campaign to actively combat spammers, which included a new complaint line. Having a way for consumers to fight spam has become crucial: Text message spam rose by 45% in 2012, totaling more than 4.5 billion text messages, according to PrivacyStar CEO Jeff Stalnaker.
The app is currently available in the Google Play store. While many of its existing features, such as call and text screening and blocking are limited to paid subscribers to PrivacyStar, the ability to file complaints does not require a subscription.

Facebook highlights privacy protection for minors on Graph Search

(CNN) -- As Facebook continues the slow rollout of a tool to let users search out others by using common interests or other personal information, the site emphasized Thursday that minors will get special privacy protections.

Graph Search capitalizes on Facebook's massive bank of data about its users, or "social graph," to seek out friends, or other users who have made their information public, using information about them.

So, for example, you could seek out friends who "like" director Quentin Tarantino to make an invite list to see "Django Unchained" Friday night or remind yourself which of your friends are over 21 and live in Austin, Texas, to do some bar-hopping while you're in town.

But privacy advocates are worried. While Graph Search won't show you any information that you couldn't see otherwise, it does pull all that data together in one place in a way that could have some creepy uses.

Say, searching for the names of girls who attend a certain middle school.

Facebook unveils upgraded search tool

That's the sort of thing Facebook aims to prevent.

Details including birthday, school, hometown and current city will only be available about users under 18 to their friends and friends of friends. And friends of friends will only be able to see them if they, too, are under 18.

"What we really wanted to do was try to identify things that could be even more sensitive for minors -- that would identify them by their age and location," Nicky Jackson Colaco, Facebook's manager of Privacy & Safety, told CNN Thursday. "Those kind of things are more sensitive and we wanted to really make sure they had an even more restrictive experience."

Of course, she noted, the extra protections only kick in if minors are honest about the age they give to register for the site.

"This is true across Facebook. It's really important to us that minors represent their real age," she said, urging parents to make sure their children are doing so. "If they tell us they're 25, they're not getting these protections and a lot of other protections we offer."

Separate from Graph Search, Facebook already limits some content posted by minors to "Friends of Friends" only, even if the young user has made it public. The site's minimum age is 13.

The tool was announced last month by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The new search feature lets you draw connections between people, their profile information and their interests on Facebook. In theory, it's a good recipe for finding recommendations for doctors, businesses, products, TV shows or bands.

It can also be used to find people that fit a specific profile, such as "men over 30 who live in Cleveland."

Users will be able to seek out people who aren't their Facebook friends using the tool. But the only information they'll see are things that a user has posted as "public" to the site.

Graph Search currently has only been made available to a handful of early testers. But some of them have used it in ways they say raise privacy concerns.

British tech blogger and "gadget geek" Tom Scott created a blog called "Actual Facebook Graph Searches." While some are humorous (people who like both the anti-gay marriage Focus on the Family and openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris) others suggested something more troubling.

For example, he shows a search for family members of people of Chinese descent who like Falun Gong, the religious movement banned in China. Or one for Islamic men living in Tehran, Iran, who are romantically interested in other men. (Homosexuality is illegal there).

The searches could then be refined to see photos of the users, their friends and places they've worked.

Facebook has emphasized privacy settings to keep such information from being publicly visible and said they're continuing to fine-tune the tool as it rolls out.

In December, Facebook overhauled it's privacy controls, adding a handful of features while simplifying and clarifying how existing features work.

Security flaw allows snoopers to access locked iPhones

CNN) -- The passwords on iPhones can be hacked, giving someone the ability to make calls, listen to your recent messages and tinker with your contact list, according to a new video posted to YouTube.

The apparent security flaw is shown on an iPhone 5 and can be exploited on phones running Apple's iOS 6.1, the most recent version of its mobile operating system, and some earlier versions.

The technique was posted by a Spanish-speaking user with the account name "videosdebarraquito," who has posted other videos that show what appear to be ways to tweak settings on the iPhone. CNN is not linking to the video, which was published January 31 but recently discovered by tech bloggers.

It involves using another phone placed nearby to make a call to the phone, canceling it, then answering with the targeted phone and fiddling with the power button.

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According to the user who posted the video, it can't be used to access other parts of the phone. And he urged anyone who used it to play nice.

Use the bypass "to joke with your friends. To do a magic show. To win a harmless bet among friends in a PUB. Perhaps, to retrieve a phone number in case you don't remember the password, or just to be warned that exists," the user wrote.

"Use it as you want, at your own risk, but... please... use responsibly, do not use this trick to do evil !!!"

The company said Thursday that it's at work on the problem.

"Apple takes user security very seriously," said spokeswoman Trudy Muller. "We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update."

The folks at tech blog The Verge tried out the technique, and said they were also able to access photos on the phone by attempting to add a photo to a contact. They were able to access an iPhone 5 that was running iOS 6.1 in the UK, they said.

Similar bugs have been pointed out in previous versions of Apple's mobile operating system. Usually, the company issues a quick update to fix the problem.

Android dominated smartphone sales in 2012

CNN) -- Android continues to dominate in the battle to be the top smartphone system in the world, thanks in part to Samsung, which reigned as the top phone manufacturer for 2012.

Android grew its already significant chunk of the smartphone market to 68.8% last year, while Apple's iOS operating system stayed comfortably in second place with 18.8% of smartphone shipments, according to new stats from research firm IDC. Together, the two operating systems accounted for 87.6% of all new smartphones in 2012, leaving struggling competitors BlackBerry and Windows far behind.

It's no surprise that Android has surged so far ahead of iOS. There are are thousands of Android handset models in every size and at every price imaginable, while Apple has released only six versions of the iPhone. Apple sold 130 million smartphones last year, according to Gartner.

"Even with the Apple Maps debacle, iPhone owners were not deterred from purchasing new iPhones," said IDC research manager Ramon Llamas in a statement.

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Locals dominate China smartphone market

Samsung takes a bite out of Apple

Apple released one new iOS phone in 2012, the much-anticipated iPhone 5. However, according to Gartner it was previous iPhone models, which dropped in price enough to make them a more appealing option in emerging markets, that accounted for much of Apple's smartphone success. Even though Apple's sales are growing, IDC points out that its year-over-year growth is actually slower when compared with the rest of the smartphone market.

Samsung sold 384.6 million phones in 2012, only 53.5% of which were smartphones, according to Gartner. Chinese phone maker Huawei climbed to the No.3 smartphone vendor spot in the final quarter of 2012. Nokia has been struggling and 2013 will be a key year for the company. Its fate is largely tied to that of Windows Phone 8, which runs on Nokia's latest Lumia phones.

Both BlackBerry and Windows are compteting to win over smartphone customers with their new offerings. BlackBerry just released its long-awaited new smartphone operating system and two new handsets in January, and Microsoft debuted its Windows Phone 8 update at the end of 2012. BlackBerry must persuade its existing users to make the upgrade and win back some large companies, which were previously its biggest customers.

Unlike BlackBerry, Windows Phone 8 unveiled its new products and marketing campaign early enough to make some progress last year. Though it only made up 2.6% of the smartphone market in 2012, it did grow its number of shipments an impressive 98.9%, according to IDC. BlackBerry plummeted 36.4% from the previous year, but we'll have to wait and see how its latest products do in the fresh year.

Overall, the number of phone sales in 2012 actually dropped 1.7% from the previous year, the first drop since 2009.

"Tough economic conditions, shifting consumer preferences and intense market competition weakened the worldwide mobile phone market this year," Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement.

Facebook hacked, social media company says

(Reuters) - Facebook said on Friday that it been the target of a series of attacks by an unidentified hacker group, but it had found no evidence that user data was compromised.
"Last month, Facebook security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack," the company said in a blog post. "The attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised."
The social network, which says it has more than one billion active users worldwide, added: "Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well."
Facebook's announcement follows recent cyber attacks on other prominent websites. Twitter, the microblogging social network, said this month that it had been hacked, and that approximately 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.
Newspaper websites including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have also been infiltrated, according to the news organizations. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting their coverage of China.

Most Facebook Users Have Taken a Break From the Site, Survey Finds

Facebook is the most popular social network in America — roughly two-thirds of adults in the country use it on a regular basis.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t get sick of it.
A new survey by the Pew Research Center‘s Internet and American Life Project, conducted in December, found that 61 percent of current Facebook users admitted that they had voluntarily taken breaks from the site, for as many as several weeks at a time.
The main reasons for their social media sabbaticals were not having enough time to dedicate to pruning their profiles, an overall decrease in their interest in the site, and the general sentiment that Facebook was a major waste of time.
About 4 percent cited privacy and security concerns as contributing to their departure. Although those users eventually resumed their regular activity, another 20 percent of Facebook users admitted to deleting their accounts.
Of course, even as some Facebook users pull back on their daily consumption of the service, the vast majority — 92 percent — of all social network users still maintain a profile on the site. But while more than half said that the site was just as important to them as it was a year ago, only 12 percent said the site’s significance increased over the last year — indicating the makings of a much larger social media burnout across the site.
The survey teases out other interesting insights, including the finding that young users are spending less time overall on the site. The report found that 42 percent of Facebook users from the ages of 18 to 29 said that the average time they spent on the site in a typical day had decreased in the last year. A much smaller portion, 23 percent, of older Facebook users, those over 50, reported a drop in Facebook usage over the same period.
Facebook’s biggest challenge revolves around figuring out how to continue to profit from its rich reservoir of one billion users — and a large part of that involves keeping them entertained and returning to the site on a regular basis. Most recently, the company introduced a tool called Graph Search, a research tool that promises to help its users find answers on everything from travel recommendations to potential jobs and even love connections.
Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which conducted the survey, described the results as a kind of “social reckoning.”
“These data show that people are trying to make new calibrations in their life to accommodate new social tools,” said Mr. Rainie, in an e-mail. Facebook users are beginning to ask themselves, ” ‘What are my friends doing and thinking and how much does that matter to me?,’ ” he said. “They are adding up the pluses and minuses on a kind of networking balance sheet and they are trying to figure out how much they get out of connectivity vs. how much they put into it.”

ASUS Pocket Router – New Age For Personal Routers

If you have ever been somewhere with a group of people and had a single Ethernet connection in the room you were working on, you completely understand the need to share that connection. You can carry around a small switch with you, but then you have to also carry around the associated network cables so that everyone in the room can make a connection. With every mobile device and laptop having WiFi, it makes things much simpler. But carrying around a WiFi Network switch is too large of a device given the shrinking size of devices. Today’s Personal routers are much smaller, but are still large enough to add weight to what you are carrying.
Enter the Asus Pocket Router with a specific name of WL-330NUL and a claim to being the World’s Smallest Router. And given that it is the size of a USB memory stick, they do have an extremely small wireless router. Operating as a USB 2.0 device, it can handle 10/100 Mbps WiFi connections and is perfect for those of us who are truly mobile and have a need to share a connection with others. Or to turn an Ethernet connection into a WiFi connection so you are not tethered to the wall. This small device is going to be a must have for all of us.

Comparing Intel Core i5 vs i7

For many consumers shopping around for a new desktop or laptop PC, one of the biggest considerations is the type of processor, and the two most often in contention are the Intel Core i5 and Core i7. Discounting Core i3 (mainly found in budget systems) and AMD processors (another article entirely), the difference between Intel Core i5 and Core i7 can seem daunting, especially when the prices seem so close together once they're in completed systems. We break down the differences for you.
Price and Marketing
Simply put, Core i5-equipped systems will be less expensive than Core i7-equipped systems. Intel has moved away from the star ratings it used with previous-generation Core processors in favor of a capability-driven marketing message. Essentially, the Core i7 processors have more capabilities than Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs. Core i7 will be better for multi-tasking, multimedia tasks, high end gaming, and scientific work. Core i7 processors are certainly aimed at people who complain that their current system is "too slow." Spot-checking a system like the midrange Dell XPS 8500 desktop, you'll find the Core i5 about $150 less expensive than a similarly equipped Core i7 system.
Core Confusion
For the most part, you'll get faster CPU performance from Core i7 parts than Core i5. The majority of desktop Core i7 CPUs are quad-core processors, while many mobile Core i5 processors are dual-core. This is not always the case, as there are mobile dual-core Core i7 processors, and likewise several desktop quad-core Core i5 processors. Then of course you'll see the rare six-core Core i7, which are usually found with the desktop-only Extreme Edition top-of-the-line models.
The Core nomenclature has been used for several generations of CPUs. Nehalem and Westmere use three-digit model names (i.e. Core i7-920), while Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs use four-digit model names (Core i7-2600). Thankfully, unless you're shopping the used PC market, you'll find Sandy Bridge processors in closeout systems and budget PCs while you'll find Ivy Bridge processors in most new PCs. The essential takeaway is that to get better performance in each generation, buy a processor with a higher model number (e.g., a Core i7-3770 generally has better performance than a Core i5-3450).

Twitter's Vine app gets adult rating on Apple store

ine - Twitter's new video clip sharing app - has had its age rating increased to 17+ on Apple's store, the highest option.
The software had previously been rated suitable for 12-year-olds.
It follows complaints that some of its six-second segments were pornographic.
Blogging service Tumblr and photo-sharing service 500px have also seen their iPhone and iPad apps boosted to the maximum age rating over the past fortnight.
Vine is not yet available for Android, but Google Play rates its 500px app as having a "high maturity" content rating, while Tumblr is marked as "low maturity".
Technology news site The Verge was first to note the change in Vine's status.
The app had previously made headlines after one of its Editor's Pick showed a couple engaged in a sexual act.
Shortly after the clip's selection it entered the app's "popular now" list, signalling it was one of the product's most viewed videos. Twitter later apologised, blaming "human error".
It has also deleted some of the offending accounts, but Vine does not vet material before it goes online.
The incident came a week after Apple had blocked 500px's app from its marketplace "for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines".
It returned to the store a few days later after adding an in-app button to let users alert the service to inappropriate pictures.
Child safety Developers must fill out a checklist alerting Apple to any issues with their software before it issues a rating and makes their software live.
Its guidelines state that apps qualify for its highest rating if they involve "sexual content, nudity, alcohol, tobacco and drugs".
Apple tells its customers they must not download an app if they fall below the stated age limit - but users can click away the warning message.

  500px's app was briefly banned from Apple's iOS store

In Android's case developers rate their own software, although the firm reserves the right to change their suggestion.
Google's guidelines state that apps which "focus on suggestive or sexual references must be rated high maturity", but again it does not prevent under-18s from installing any app.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the issue highlighted parents' responsibility to check how smartphones were being used.
"The internet and mobile phones are now part and parcel of young people's everyday lives," said Claire Lilley, safer technology lead at the NSPCC.
"The benefits are huge, both socially and educationally, but so too are the dangers.
"We cannot put the genie back in the bottle, but we can talk to our children about this issue. Parents, schools, technology companies, and young people themselves can all play their part."

Kaspersky anti-virus cuts web access of thousands of PCs

Thousands of computers running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system were unable to connect to the internet after installing an anti-virus update.

Users said they were also unable to access their internal company networks.
Russian IT security company Kaspersky Labs told users to disable its anti-virus software or roll back the update.
Two hours later it issued a fix - but since their PCs were unable to auto-install new code from the net, users had to perform several tasks first.
Kaspersky told its customers: "Please disable the web AV component of your protection policy for your managed computers."
It then told them to go the repositories section, download an update and re-enable the protection.
Repair jobs The company issued a statement, apologising "for any inconvenience caused by this database update error".
"Actions have been taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future," it said.
Dorset-based IT consultant Graham Lord wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter: "Bravo on breaking the internet on all your XP clients.
"Your update just set back one of my repair jobs by a day's work."
But Spain-based security blogger David Barroso tweeted: "So Kaspersky QA [quality assurance] team failed with this update but they quickly released a fix, which it is something good."

Zynga at a Crossroads in Mobile Quest

SAN FRANCISCO — Zynga has been on a monumental losing streak. Hits have been rare, profits nonexistent and crucial employees are fleeing.

The story of the company, which developed the notion of social gaming and persuaded tens of millions of people to try it out on Facebook, illustrates how suddenly the fortunes of hot Internet companies can shift. Two years ago, as Zynga was first being talked about for a public offering, it was said to be worth $20 billion.

By the time the offering took place, a little over a year ago, it was for about $7 billion. And Zynga has spent most of the time since then sliding downhill. The value of the company Tuesday, as it released mediocre but nevertheless better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, was about $2 billion.

In the next few months, Zynga faces a critical test that will determine if even that sum is excessive: can it successfully put its most popular Web games, starting with Farmville, on mobile devices?

“Do I wish that we would have gone all-in on mobile and made a bigger commitment to it earlier?” Mark Pincus, Zynga’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview after the earnings release. “Yes.”

Mr. Pincus called 2013 “a year of investment and transition.”

“While we are excited about the long-term growth opportunity on mobile, and the opportunity to make games even more accessible to people in more parts of their day, we need to build a compelling network around it,” he said.

That is because social gaming on mobile is not necessarily social.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Mr. Pincus said. “You’re holding a phone, an inherently social device. Yet the experience we have is a more fragmented one.”

The pain accompanying Zynga’s transition to mobile was evident in the earnings report. Revenue was $311 million, flat with the year before. Daily users of the games were down 6 percent from the third quarter, a clear measure of flagging interest. More casual users dropped as well.

Earnings per share were a penny, better than the 3-cent loss that analysts had been expecting on an adjusted basis. And Zynga’s cash hoard of $1.65 billion was untouched from the third quarter.

For the full year, revenue was $1.28 billion, up 12 percent from 2011. Not exactly what you would expect from a growth company.

Nor were its immediate prospects cheerful. Zynga warned that it would release few new games in the first quarter and that its revenue would drop from 2012.

Weak as the results were, however, they were not as bad as some feared. Zynga shares immediately rose in after-hours trading by 7 percent. In regular trading they were also up 7 percent to $2.74. That jump was fueled by an analyst upgrade from Merrill Lynch, which said the stock was so beaten down that it now accurately reflected the company’s prospects.

Many online stock sites, by contrast, have been portraying the company as going the way of Pets.com or Myspace. “Zynga’s Earnings May Reveal Its Impending Demise” read the headline at one.

Michael Pachter, a managing director of Wedbush Securities, wrote in an e-mail that Zynga management was “definitely saying the right things, now all they have to do is execute.”

Aside from Mr. Pincus, it has been a team in flux. Just last week, Zynga suffered another defection when its chief game designer, Brian Reynolds, quit, saying he wanted to experiment “more than might be appropriate for a publicly traded company.”

As recently as two years ago, Zynga had only 20 people working on mobile issues. Then the team ballooned into the hundreds. In the last few months, the team members have integrated into each game. Zynga has 298 million monthly active users, 72 million of them using mobile devices to play games like Words With Friends and Zynga Poker.

The central issue overshadowing even the mobile transition is whether Zynga became successful only because it was in the right place at the right time, a condition also known as dumb luck. Zynga’s rise was inseparable from Facebook’s, which gave it preferential treatment. That era is over. In March, Facebook will be free to develop its own games.

There are other perils for Zynga, plenty of them. Analysts have been pointing to the rise of King.com’s games, including Candy Crush, which makes the latest version of FarmVille look as complicated as advanced physics.

“Who thought crushing candy would have been popular?” said Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst.

King.com is promoting itself as a new, improved Zynga, which underscores the volatile nature of the business. “This is a hits-driven industry, and Zynga could not sustain their hits,” Mr. Blau said. “Game players are fickle.”

Zynga learned that lesson with Draw Something, which it acquired last March for $180 million at the height of its popularity.

Draw Something had about 15 million daily users. Before the ink on the purchase was dry, nearly a third of them had departed for a newer craze.

Zynga wrote down over half the purchase price even as Draw Something’s audience continued to dwindle. A Zynga spokeswoman declined to say Tuesday how many players it now had.

“The one thing that hasn’t changed is our focus on social,” Mr. Pincus said. “With every platform change over the years, we’ve bet the company on social and accessible.”