Beware!! Facebook Is Spying You

Yes it is true; facebook is tracking your browsing. According to a report published by USA TODAY, facebook is keeping track of all the websites you visit. Every single site you visit will be tracked and even logging out won’t fix the issue. It is a clear violation of privacy policy and facebook is using your private information for their business needs. And even more frustrating thing is that, 800 million facebook users are not just being spied upon. Even if you are not a member of facebook and you visit facebook for some reason, tracking begins from there on. Facebook officials are able to create a log list of previous 90 days of any person. Each and every site you visit that has a facebook plugin will be tracked. The information is from top facebook officials including facebook’s engineering director, Arthur Bejar and Gregg Statancile and two other executives.

How Facebook Tracks You?

·  Facebook doesn’t track everybody the same way. It uses different methods for members who have signed in and are using their accounts, members who are logged-off and non-members.

·  The first time you arrive at any Facebook.com page, the company inserts cookies in your browser. If you sign up for an account, it inserts two types of cookies. If you don’t set up an account, it only inserts one of the two types.

·  These cookies record every time you visit another website that uses a Facebook Like button or other Facebook plugin — which work together with the cookies to note the time, date and website being visited. Unique characteristics that identify your computer including IP address, operating system and other basic system information are stored.

·  Facebook keeps logs that record your past 90 days of activity. It deletes entries older than 90 days.

·  If you are logged into a Facebook account, your name, email address, friends and all of the other data in your Facebook profile is also recorded. 

Data about web searches and browsing habits could be used to figure out political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexual orientations or health issues about consumers.

Why Facebook Does this?

Facebook makes most of its money through ads. Getting a thorough information about the sites you visit allows them to generate ads that corresponds to you. In a way, they are using your private data or interests to make money. This is so unfair and really disturbing. They are literally selling us for money and it should stop. I don’t know what the authorities are going to do about this. To add to the point Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have been using similar tracking methods for years now.

Now it’s all down to two questions:

How much privacy do we really have? And how much protection do we need?

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Sony, Samsung And Panasonic Join Hands To Fight LG

After hearing this, the first thing that came to my mind was “enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Yes it has been that sort of an alliance. So what’s the deal? Deal is to fight their common enemy LG in producing better 3D glasses. There is no doubt that all other 3D TV manufacturers have been caught off guard by LG’s Passive 3D glasses. Till now, other main stream TV manufacturers are using active-shutter glasses.

Active shutter glasses definitely have the upper hand when it comes to image quality but to be honest, active shutter glasses are very irritating. Active shutter glasses are basically small LCD screens that alternatively dim the left and right "lenses" in succession. They rely on an infrared signal emitter in the TV that tells each pair of glasses when they should dim each lens, so each eye can see the image intended for it. Since active-shutter glasses are fairly complicated electronics, they're costly: A typical pair usually costs around $150, and works only on 3D TVs made by the same manufacturer. They depend on batteries to keep running, too. What's more, they're kind of heavy--especially if you're already wearing prescription eyeglasses--which can make watching a whole movie somewhat uncomfortable.

Passive 3D glasses, on the other hand, are sort of like a pair of specially designed polarized sunglasses. Unlike sunglasses, which are designed to block light equally from both eyes, polarized 3D glasses block different kinds of light from each eye, creating the illusion of depth. That means you don't need any kind of expensive, delicate electronics in the glasses themselves, nor do you need a proprietary infrared emitter to sync with the glasses--but since each lens is blocking out light, you're technically not getting a full 1080p image for each eye, though your brain should be perceiving a 1080p image when it puts the two together.

Ever since the introduction of Passive 3D glasses, the sales of LG 3D TVs have rocketed and are still going very strong. That obviously have worried other TV manufacturers and they decided to team up. Sony, Panasonic and Samsung will now join hands for a project named “Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative”, a project to standardize 3D glasses. The incompatible active-shutter glasses will now be replaced by a unified standard glass that will let you use the same pair of spectacles on any display or at any theater that uses the Xpand 3D standard.

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iPhone 4S Battery Drain Issue

Hardly one month after its release, the iPhone 4S users have come up with a battery drain problem. Some of the iPhone 4S users have posted complaints about battery draining too fast. The problem is described as follows, “ iPhone 4S users have seen a 10 percent drop in battery life each hour, even if it is in the standby mode”. Whereas Apple says that the battery will last for 200 hours in standby mode.

When contacted, the Apple’s customer services told that they are still trying to find a solution to fix the problem. Some suspect siri as the main culprit. But there is no real improvement after switching off features including siri and location services. If you contact Apple about this issue, an engineer will call you back and will ask a series of questions. After that he will ask you to install an activity monitoring file, that’s all, nothing more. The problem still persists and is very frustrating.

Latest news is that, a bug in location services is suspected to be the real culprit. A fault in Apple’s location services in iOS 5 software can be the reason. The "Setting Time Zone" element of the Systems Services within the broader Location Services product seems to be operating even when there is no chance that the user would have moved to a different location or time zone. An icon beside the setting, which indicates whether it has been used in the past 24 hours, suggests that it is running repeatedly to access the phone's location even when there is no apparent reason to do so.

As of now, Apple hasn’t opened its mouth on this issue and the problem still persists. It is very disappointing that Apple engineers are not able to find a solution and this will definitely affect their reputation. I think we won’t see an answer from them soon,  even though I would have loved to.

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