Delhi court asks Home ministry to serve summons to Google, Facebook

The Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) was asked by a Delhi court to get its summonses served to various foreign-based social networking websites, including Facebook and Google, accused of promoting class enmity and undermining the national integrity. 

The court asked MHA that the summonses issued against the websites should be returnable by September 22. 

"Let the accused (social networking websites) be summoned through the assistance of the MHA, Government of India. The summonses shall be returnable on September 22," Metropolitan Magistrate Jay Thareja said. 

These websites named in the complaint filed by Vinay Rai includes -- Facebook, Orkut,YouTube, Yahoo, Blogspot, Google and Microsoft. 

Besides this, the court discharged two accused websites, Shyni Blog and Exbii after the complainant's counsel S P M Tripathi told the court that they do not want to proceed with the complaint against the two websites as their addresses have not been found despite all efforts. 

"In view of the statement made by the advocate for the complainant, the complaint is dismissed against accused Exbii and Shyni Blog," the magistrate said. 

The court, on the last date of hearing, had told Rai to come out with the modalities of serving the summonses to the foreign-based websites. 

As the day's proceedings began, advocate Tripathi said they could send the summonses served to the websites through courier service.
Source:TOI

Why avoid having multiple identities

Recently I got a Facebook request from Roby S, my schoolmate. I was surprised, because he is already my friend. Why was he adding me again? The profile photo was similar. The 'About' column too matched. Was it someone else who had stolen Roby's identity and playing mischief? 

So I sent Roby a message seeking a clarification. He replied saying he had an FB account opened with his official ID. Later he discontinued it, and opened one with his personal ID. Now, he decided to revive his FB account opened with his official ID after he came to know that some friends whom he had added there, had sent him messages to which he hadn't replied. 

There was another case of Vini. Her earlier email ID was on Hotmail, and she had opened an FB account with it. Later, she dumped her Hotmail ID and moved to Gmail, and she opened another FB account with the Gmail ID. Now there are two FB accounts of hers, confusing her friends no end. 

Should Roby and Vini have opened another FB account? No. Even if your email ID has been hacked, you needn't dump the FB account opened with it. Just add another valid email ID to your existing FB account and delink the hacked email ID from it. 

You can link multiple email IDs to one Facebook account and use any of them to log in. You can even use your phone number as login ID if you have added it. To add another email ID to your FB, click on the downward arrow beside 'Home' on the top right corner, click on 'account settings' , click on 'Edit' against Email, and click on 'add another email address' . It will get activated after you click on the verification link sent to the email ID you added. Just as you add, you can remove email IDs as well. LinkedIn works the same way. There's no need to have another account just because you have changed your default email ID. 

Of course, there are cases where people do have two FB accounts. But that's when they want to have two sets of identities -- like one account that can be accessed by acquaintances, colleagues etc; and another more personal one that can be accessed only by family members and very close friends.

Similar is the case with email accounts. Suppose you have three email IDs, used for different purposes, they can be accessed at one place. All major email clients like Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail allow forwarding emails to another ID. They also allow you to open different email IDs that are linked to the original one, and you can toggle between them.

Gmail also lets you reply from a non-Gmail ID from within Gmail. Meaning, you can send a mail from your Yahoo ID, say abc@yahoo.com, via Gmail. The recipient of your email will see it as sent from your Yahoo ID, but via Gmail. This can be done by using 'Mail Settings'.

Cyberspace lets your different identities easily co-exist .

Source:TOI.IT

Twitter adds Do-Not-Track feature

Twitter will honor requests from users who do not want their online behavior tracked, the company said, in contrast with Web companies such Google Inc and Facebook Inc whose business models rely heavily on collecting user data.

Twitter said it will officially support "Do Not Track," a standardized privacy initiative that has been heavily promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browser.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Apple Inc's Safari, include a "Do Not Track" option that sends a line of code to websites indicating the user does not want to be tracked. But under current regulations, it is up to the website to honor the requests.

Google has said it will implement a "Do Not Track" feature in its Chrome browser later this year.

The "Do Not Track" announcement also coincides with Twitter's recent push to provide a more personalized service. Twitter recommends "tailored suggestions" based on a user's Web surfing history, but does not use the data for any other purpose, the company said. "As always, we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience," Twitter's Director, Growth and International, Othman Laraki, said in a blog post. 

"For those who don't want to tailor Twitter, we offer ways to turn off this collection."Twitter's support for the initiative was first announced on Thursday by Ed Felten, the FTC's Chief Technology Officer, during a panel in New York. The microblogging site later confirmed Felten's statement, adding in a Tweet: "We applaud the FTC's leadership on DNT."

Mozilla praised Twitter's move in a blog post and noted that adoption rates for "Do Not Track" have risen steadily, to 8.6 percent of desktop users and 19 percent of mobile users. "We're excited that Twitter now supports Do Not Track and global user adoption rates continue to increase, which signifies a big step forward for Do Not Track and the Web," Mozilla said.

Twitter's decision to get onboard with "Do Not Track" represents something of a balancing act for the six-year-old company, which has been closely scrutinized on how it can generate enough revenue to justify its multibillion-dollar valuation. Online tracking through bits of code embedded in websites known as "cookies" underpins the business models for many Internet companies.

Facebook, due to go public on Friday in the largest-ever U.S. IPO, has been valued at $104 billion, partially by investors who believe it can offer advertisers a platform for highly targeted ads based on perceived user interests. Google similarly generates billions annually by targeting ads based on what a user is searching for.

Major online destinations that have endorsed "Do Not Track" include Yahoo, which said in March it would allow consumers "to express their ad targeting preferences to Yahoo" beginning this summer.

Source:TOI.IT