Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Mila Kunis, the star of movies such as “Black Swan” and “Friends with benefits“, is the latest celebrity to be making the headlines over allegations that hackers broke into her mobile phone and stole nude photos.

In the wake of the story about nude photos of Scarlett Johansson, several gossip websites have reported that they were contacted by people offering to sell them pictures stolen from Mila Kunis.

In Kunis’s case, the images are said to have been taken from her mobile phone, and apparently show her “Friends with benefits” co-star Justin Timberlake lying on a bed topless, wearing some pink underwear on his head, and an image of Mila Kunis in the bath.

A fourth explicit image is said to feature an intimate part of a man who cannot be identified because his err.. head is out of the frame.

It’s also alleged that private SMS text messages between Kunis and Timberlake are available on the internet.

Clearly, there’s a continuing theme of celebrities having nude photographs of themselves leaked onto the internet – whether to publicise their careers or latest movies, or to make money for those who stole the images.

Past victims have included Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus andVanessa Hudgens.

So, here’s my simple advice which I recommend to every Hollywood actor/actress, rapper and TV reality star. Cut it out and keep it in your wallet:

In fact, this is good advice for anyone to remember who finds themselves naked with a camera pointed at them, or is considering taking a self portrait before remembering to put on their clothes.

By the way, it’s best to print out this page before you cut-out this advice. You don’t want to damage your monitor. And ask a grown-up for help with the scissors.

And that’s how you avoid having naked photos stolen by hackers.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The latest Google Doodle, which went live for some on September 4, pays tribute to Freddie Mercury, who would have celebrated his 65th birthday on September 5.

In June, Google wowed the web with their interactive tribute to master guitarist Les Paul and inspired countless Google guitar tutorials.

This time around, they’ve honored the rock band Queen’s lead vocalist, who battled HIV for years before dying on November 24th, 1991 at the age of 45.

A video, which appears over the Google logo, features an animated tribute to Mercury, highlighting Queen’s 1978 hit “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

Queen guitarist and songwriter Brian May wrote a post about Freddie Mercury for the Google Blog.

From May’s post:

“Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though physically he is not here, his presence seems more potent than ever. Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams—made them feel that through him they were overcoming their own shyness, and becoming the powerful figure of their ambitions. And he lived life to the full. He devoured life. He celebrated every minute. And, like a great comet, he left a luminous trail which will sparkle for many a generation to come.”

The song lyrics featured in the Google Doodle seem to echo May’s thoughts:

“I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky/Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity/I’m a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva/I’m gonna go go go there’s no stopping me”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Scammers on Facebook have once again proven themselves to be cold-hearted opportunists, unafraid to take advantage of personal tragedies for their own financial ends.

In the latest scam seen surfacing on the social network, innocent users are being tricked into believing that they will see a video of a crash at an air show which resulted in the death of a British pilot.

Flt Lt Jon Egging was killed during an RAF Red Arrows display at the Bournemouth Air Festival this weekend.

The news of the death touched many people who are fans of the world famous Red Arrows, and over 170,000 people have joined a Facebook group in Jon Egging’s memory.

Although the public’s generosity and compassion must be a comfort to Flight Lt Egging’s widow, it’s unlikely that she would find much solace in the scams which are taking advantage of her husband’s death.

For instance, this page on Facebook:

It looks like you’re going to see a YouTube video of the Red Arrow crash at the air show. But in fact what you’re looking at is a clickjacking scam. Clicking your mouse on the video thumbnail will initiate a process which will say that you like the page, and share it with your friends.

Those people who are running addons like NoScript (on Firefox) will see a page intercepting the clickjacking.

But the aim, of course, is to spread the link as far and as wide as possible. The scammers hope that your friends will see you linking to the page and follow your lead.

Ultimately, you will be directed to the all-too-familiar online survey, which earns commission for the scammers.

If you got hit by this scam, make sure you have removed the entries from your news feed (to stop them being shared amongst your friends), marking them as spam if you like, and check your profile does not have any unwanted “Likes” under your “Likes and interests”.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Following HP’s August 18 bombshell announcement that it would discontinue its poorly selling TouchPad tablet, the company decided to deeply discount the remaining devices. The company issued a note to retailers that said all units would receive a $300 price cut. After factoring in a price drop from earlier in August, the new price for 16GB units would be $99; the 32GB units would cost $149.

Ironically, the repriced tablets are now a hot commodity–if you can find one.

HP’s website currently sports a sale page for the discounted tablets. Though the tablets were out of stock (online and in stores) in the United States on Sunday, more are apparently on the way, according to a notice on the site, which advises customers to “check back soon.”

Users can sign up for an email alert to find out when more devices are available.

Retail giant Best Buy began selling the discounted tablets in the United States on Sunday. Though the site said that the TouchPads were “sold out online” on Sunday evening, a post on the site informed early adopters of a return/exchange policy update. “Customers who purchased the 16GB or 32GB TouchPad after June 19 may come into the store to get either a full refund or a refund of the difference between the price they paid and the clearance price,” the post read. “Best Buy will not accept customer returns or exchanges on clearance-priced TouchPads bought through any Best Buy channel.”

WebOSroundup explains that users who bought the tablet at full price can obtain their refunds:

Folks who bought HP TouchPads from HP’s website just need to call HP’s Home & Office phone service (be ready to be on hold for about a half hour) and tell them you want a full refund or to be credited the difference. HP will honor either request, and in the case of the fire-sale difference, they will give you an additional $10 credit off of your sales tax.

BetaNews tweeted a helpful link to deals aggregator SlickDeals.net, which has rounded up many of the websites selling the HP TouchPad at the discounted and off-discounted price.

Have you been able to snag your own super-cheap TouchPad since the clearance frenzy began? Where did you find one? Share advice for other deal-seekers in the comments.

Read on to see the other gadgets HP just killed off, as well as an explanation of why HP decided to end its line of mobile devices.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Armchair travelers rejoice! Google StreetView has set its sights on the Amazon.

A team of Googlers are currently traveling the Amazon by boat and by bike to collect panoramic images of the River and the surrounding communities, the Telegraph reports.

The team is filming a 30-mile section of the Rio Negro River tributary from Manaus to Terra Preta, the Daily Mail reports.

The tech giant has partnered with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS) to get footage of the rain forest and is even employing locals as tour guides–locals will pedal tricycles armed with cameras to show indigenous cultures.

“Once all the images are uploaded to the internet, we can share the local culture and beauty of the Amazon with anyone, anywhere in the world. Without the vision, creativity and dedication of our partners, this endeavor would not be possible,” Karin Tuxen-Bettman, the head of the Street View team in the Amazon, told the Telegraph.

Already, web surfers can explore Antartica, the Colosseum, Cape Town‘s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Whistler Blackcomb, and Stonehenge, among others, using StreetView.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Fashion designer Kenneth Cole’s latest project isn’t a line of shoes or a fall collection: it’s a new site, “Where Do You Stand,” that aims to spark debate on social issues, from gun control to same-sex marriage.

Where Do You Stand marks a continuation of Cole’s socially conscious—and sometimes controversial—ad campaigns that have promoted not only bags, shoes and apparel, but also political issues. For example, a past ad featured an illustration of a condom with the caption, “Our shoes aren’t the only thing we encourage you to wear.”

On the Where Do You Stand website, visitors are prompted to select one of two portals: “What You Stand For,” where people can participate in varying degrees of debate on several topics, and “What You Stand In,” which is the more fashion-oriented portion of the site consisting of video style guides hosted by editors from GQ and Vogue. A link to Kenneth Cole’s online store is featured throughout.

Cole, who regularly tweets from the official @KennethCole account, notes that social media has been a game changer when it comes to raising awareness for both brands and social issues. (He adds that his two favorite people to follow on Twitter are Barack Obama and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.)

“The world moves so quickly today, and social media is the best way to communicate the message,” Cole said. “I feel very in the moment [when using Twitter], which makes me feel very empowered.”

While Cole and his company have embraced tools like Twitter and Facebook, their foray into social media hasn’t always been problem free. The designer committed a highly-publicized Twitter gaffe earlier this past spring when, during the protests in Egypt, Cole tweeted, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.”

“I’ve struggled to find the right voice to reach people, and I paid for it when I tweeted about the Cairo uprising earlier this year,” Cole said of the incident. “It’s critical to our brand though…Nothing is black or white here. We are trying to figure it out, as is everyone else.”

Even as he praises the positive influence social media has had on social awareness initiatives, Cole reminisces about the days when “social” had a very different meaning.

“Is social media antisocial? Yes,” he said. “How are we defining social these days? We had a dinner for the blogging community a year ago, and everyone at the dinner table took out their cell phones. Not that long ago, that would have been considered rude.”

In spite of such nostalgia, Kenneth Cole is a gadget lover at heart. He owns an iPhone, a Blackberry, and an iPad, which have contributed to some information overload.

“I’m perpetually overwhelmed,” Cole said. “I used to try and consolidate, and now I just can’t do it anymore. I spend a lot of time with each of them.”

At its launch, the Where Do You Stand platform, which was developed by Kenneth Cole’s internal marketing team and Intersect, a web production agency, features four main discussion topics–marriage equality, gun control, abortion, and “war”–that the site’s creators say will evolve over time.

“Already, we’ve started looking at more provocative debates. As the national dialogue changes, so will we,” Cole said. “It’s sensitive to what people are talking about at the moment.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Charlie Kindel, one of the most public faces of Microsoft‘s Windows Phone group, has quit Microsoft after 21 years to start his own company.

Kindel was charged with getting developers on board for the new platform, and he and his team have done a pretty good job so far — Windows Phone has more than 25,000 apps after less than nine months on market. But it still trails behind the hundreds of thousands of apps available for the iPhone and Android. A lack of long-tail apps is really the only glaring gap in Microsoft’s mobile platform, which is otherwise a solid competitor.

Kindel reported the news on his personal blog this morning and posted his good-bye email. It’s mostly full of inside jokes, but one funny bit:

To my kids: No, just because I don’t work at Microsoft anymore you many not use Google. Remember, every time you use Google, a puppy dies.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is famously hardcore about using Microsoft products and reportedly bought his kids Zunes and wouldn’t let them use iPods.

Source :-http://www.businessinsider.com

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At the DefCon hacker conferencethis weekend in Las Vegas, a team from Facebook has been making the rounds and delivering an unusual message: Please hack us. We’ll pay you for it.

The team, led by Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan, is promoting the company’s new “bug bounty program,” which pays researchers to report security flaws in the social-networking site of more than 750 million active users.

Facebook will pay a minimum of $500 for valuable information so long as the hacker agrees to not disclose the flaw until the company has fixed it. Since the program was announced last week, Facebook has already paid out one bounty of more than $3,000, Sullivan said.

“It mobilizes a lot of great security experts all over the world who are passionate about security,” Sullivan told The Huffington Post. “Hackers like to hack. We’re basically saying, ‘We want you to hack our site and we want you find things and we’re happy to pay you.’”

To get paid, hackers must be the first to report the security flaw and must reside in a country not under U.S. sanctions. They must also adhere to the company’s disclosure policy, which says researchers must make “a good faith effort” to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data and interrupting the site’s service during research to avoid being sued or investigated by law enforcement.

Facebook is not the only company looking to pay hackers for security help. Earlier this week, Microsoft said it would offer up to $200,000 to researchers who design new security technologies. Google also offers from $500 to more than $3,000 to researchers who find security flaws.

Sullivan said Facebook has a dedicated engineering team that builds tools to catch spammers on the site.

“It’s a little bit of whack-a-mole, but they’re so effective at it and that’s why the vast majority of Facebook users have much less spam in their Facebook inbox than their email inbox,” Sullivan said.

Earlier this week, Facebook celebrated a legal victory when Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed “Spam King,” turned himself in to face charges he compromised about 500,000 Facebook accounts by sending large numbers of spam messages through the company’s servers.

Facebook’s bug bounty program is not the first time the company has asked for help from hackers. In June, the company hired George Hotz, the young hacker who gained notoriety in 2007 for “jailbreaking” Apple’s iPhone, or getting around the phone’s software controls.

Sullivan said DefCon is fertile recruiting ground for Facebook because the company is looking to hire people who live and breathe security.

“We try to only hire people who, when they’re hanging out on Saturday night, are thinking about security,” he said. “That’s the people who are here right now and that’s why we want to be there.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Might we finally be getting the long-sought-after “dislike” button on Facebook?

The social-networking giant is working on an overhaul of its News Feed product, where users post status updates, photos, videos, and other items of interest, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Facebook is considering an unfiltered News Feed, which would dramatically increase the amount of content users see on their homepage, people familiar with the situation told the newspaper.

The site is also working on expanding the functionality of its “Like” button to include other hand gestures created by third-party developers, allowing users to share information about products or services with their friends. The move is seen as key to attracting more marketers to the social network.

A Facebook representative told CNET that the company was testing News Feed changes but declined to address changes to the “Like” button.

“We are currently testing a feature within News Feed that gives people the ability to see what their friends are commenting on and ‘liking,’ as these actions are being taken on Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement. “This test includes a small percentage of Facebook users, just a fraction of a percent. In the coming weeks, as we learn more from this test, we’ll keep making improvements and may expand it to more people.”

Facebook is expected to detail the updates at its F8 conference for developers, although the company hasn’t yet announced when that will be, the Journal noted.

Borrowing a feature from social-networking rival FriendFeed, Facebook rolled out its “Like” button in February 2009, allowing users to express their approval for the messages, photos, and other content their friends posted. However, the feature doesn’t allow users to quickly voice negative opinions, inspiring at least one developer to create a Firefox extension that adds a dislike button to Facebook posts.

Source :- http://news.cnet.com

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Apple is slipping when it comes to providing customers with automated over-the-phone assistance, according to Vocal Laboratories, a company that helps measure the quality of businesses’ contact centers.

The findings are part of The National Customer Service Survey (NCSS), which “tracks customer service quality in several industries, using telephone interviews conducted with a customer immediately after a customer service experience,” states Vocal Laboratories.

Statistics in this particular Apple case study were based on 4,161 surveys conducted between May 2008 and June 2011. The study measured exclusively assistance provided to customers over the phone and found that though Apple scored top marks in many areas, a few facets of Apple’s once overwhelmingly positive technical support are beginning to fall behind in comparison to competitors Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

According to the report, during the first six months of 2011, 58% of customers surveyed were “Very Satisfied” with the phone-based technical support provided by Apple, a 15 point decrease from a year ago. Fifty three percent of HP customers rated their experience as “Very Satisfied”; a nine-point improvement over the past two years.

The study confirms that Apple’s strength remains in its live-person support on calls, with 77% of callers saying they were “Very Satisfied” with the technician.

The automated part of the call however, left customers wanting more. A mere 24% of Apple customers were “Very Satisfied” with the automated portion of the call, trailing Dell’s 36% and HP’s 40%. Furthermore, during the survey period, 40% of Apple customers reported a problem with the automation system; nearly double the percent complaints from the previous year.

“Apple used to be well ahead of the pack in tech support,” said Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocalabs, in a press release. “Now it would be fair to say that they are merely at the front of the pack. Apple used to lead on nearly every metric for support quality. Now there are several metrics where Apple is tied with its competition, or even trails.”

Contrary to these data reports, other sources indicate that Apple is still ahead of the pack however. Earlier this year, Laptop Mag staff rated Apple’s tech support 14 out of a possible 15 points, applauding the company for its “step-by-step solutions” and the Apple associate who “followed up with an e-mail that included additional advice”.

In fact, it was only one year ago that Consumer Reports readers ranked Apple number one in desktop tech support and laptop tech support.

Fortunately for Apple, even if the Vocal Laboratories report indicates that the computer maker is falling behind in tech support, its product reviews still pass with flying colors. Most recently, Lex Friedman of Macworld noted that “Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air were [rated] the best 17-inch, 15-inch, 13-inch and 11-inch laptops available,” according to Consumer Reports in 2011.

While phone-based automated support might not be Apple’s strong point, it’s fair to say that the company’s reputation is still in the clear thanks to the raging success of its retail stores and genius bar. Case in point, would Dell or HP let their customers bring pet goats and other oddities into its stores? Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong with knowing where a company can improve.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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