Hacker Ron Bowes from Skull Security has created the torrent file (2.8GB), which contains the Facebook account details of roughly 100 million users. That’s about 1 in 5 of the half billion accounts the social networking site has! The 2.8GB torrent was compiled via a web crawler program that harvested data on users contained in Facebook’s open access directory, which lists all users who haven’t bothered to change their privacy settings to make their pages unavailable to search engines.

Bowes’ directory contains 171 million entries, relating to more than 100 million individual users – more than one in five of Facebook’s recently trumpeted half billion user base.The file contains user account names and a URL for each user’s profile page, from which details such as addresses, dates of birth or phone numbers can be accessed.

Accessing a user’s page from the list will also enable you to click through to friends’ profiles – even if those friends have made themselves non-searchable. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about what Bowes has done – the information is, after all, publicly available – but perhaps the existence of a stalker’s online black book might finally persuade less security-minded Facebook users to get their act together.

Feel free to go download the torrent, but if you’re looking for juice on a particular person, you could just as easily get it by searching Facebook for them. You’ll get the same info.

1. Watch what you say: The public nature of the social networking sites is also the most dangerous thing about them. You say (tweet, set a status message, leave a scrap, comment) something and it STAYS there till eternity, for the rest of the world to watch and judge. Being funny might be a good thing to be considered “sociable”, but what if your potential boss fails to see the humor? Extreme case in point: There were at least couple of occasions where guys had to land in jail, because the police didn’t find their tweets funny!

2. Don’t be the Sales Guy: Okay, we know. That most of us join social networking to gain something in return. So, it makes perfect sense to spam others with your affiliate links, right? WRONG! No other feeling is more irritating than the feeling of being at the cross-hair of a spam-attack. Avoid forcing your business to other people. It is considered as spamming if you try to overly promote your business. It’s just like going to a conference and handing out your business card to EVEYONE even before you are introduced. When you don’t do this in real life, then why in the social networking sites?

3. Politics and Religion: Okay, we know – it’s a free Nation (world) and everyone has right to freedom of speech blah blah blah… But the fact remains that people join social networking sites to connect with others and while doing so they prefer to leave their political view and religious beliefs behind. Obviously, they expect the same from you, as well. So stay away from strong political or religious views. Since people can have different views in these areas, it is in your best interest if you remain neutral and professional all the time.

4. Consistency is the Key: Irrespective of whether you are an average Joe, a social networking guru or a huge multi-national trying to leverage social networking to connect with its consumers, being consistent is the key to your social networking success. Social networking can take up a lot of time – agreed! But, if you get bored with it and stop updating your profile (status updates, community updates, pics, tweets, videos etc), it is just a matter of time that your friends/followers/consumers will also get bored of you and will stop following you. Make sure you make a schedule and more importantly — stick to it. Although you don’t want to spend all of your time on social networking sites, you DO want to consistently update every day and there are automated tools to help you do so.

5. Incomplete Profile: Even if you don’t feel like completing your profile page and even if you don’t think that it is important, on the contrary, it is the most important thing for your success in social networking sites. Just because of the fact that I have included this point as the last mistake, don’t assume that it is the least important of all. Your profile is where people will go to find more information about you and your business. This is the place where you should be genuinely talking about your business, and maybe even provide a link to it. If you go around adding value to forums, it is most likely that people will be interested to visit your profile, so make sure it looks impressive. Compare your social networking profile page to the home page of your blog or company website and suddenly you will start seeing more value in it.

Which of these mistakes have you committed in your social networking life? Feel free to add your own mistakes to the list via commenting.

But irrespective of your feelings, here are 12 least known Facebook facts that are interesting to some, unknown by most, and will enhance your knowledge of the largest social network in the world.

- Facebook was originally funded by a co-founder of Paypal for $500,000.
- There is evidence that founder Mark Zuckerberg stole many of the ideas and much of the code from ConnectU. They sued Facebook and settled for an undisclosed amount.
- 400,000,000 people log into their Facebook profile at least once a month.
- Half of those people log in every day.
- 70% of Facebook users live outside of the US.
- The Facebook users make it the — Third Most Populated Country in The World – The United States of FaceBook!
- 44.1% of Denmark has an active Facebook profile.
- Only Google gets more traffic. Check their respective Alexa traffic ranking and you would know.
- Yahoo! tried to buy Facebook in 2006 for a whooping $1,000,000,000. Obviously, they didn’t succeed.
- 8,300,000,000 hours are spent on Facebook monthly. And we talk about being productive at work!
- The fastest growing demographic in America on Facebook: Women 55+. So don’t fall from your seat if I tell you that my mom-in-law and granny are on Facebook too.
- FAD is a mental disorder – Facebook Addiction Disorder — FAD. Ironic, isn’t it?
- Court notices and summons sent through Facebook are legal and binding in Australia.

Source: Online PhD Programs

The text of the email is as follows:

“Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in the attached document.

Thanks,
Your Facebook.”

The message is spoofed and shows up as coming from “Facebook Support” at help@facebook.com, although that’s really not the source.

If you use a web based email client, you shouldn’t be too concerned with the viral part of this but if you download your email, it’s worth virus checking your computer to be safe. The attachment contains a password stealer that can potentially access any username and password combination used on the computer, not just the login credentials for Facebook. If you have downloaded the application you should install a virus scanner and also change your Facebook password immediately.

I have a facebook account but received this same email on my work email, which is essentially a totally different one and not even close to my facebook account. So that would lead me to think that they are just mass-emailing to see who will bite. It is always a best practice to always be wary of any email attachments, irrespective of the domain from which it appears to have been sent! I don’t care who it is from. If you are not expecting one. then alway scan it.

At any rate, isn’t that uber-annoying? I would hope that these wannabe hackers go find something better and more productive to do with their time. At the same time, I find it absolutely hilarious that people actually fall for these phishing attacks (LOL)!

I have been a full time cook in Café World since couple of months and thanks to the Café World cheats, now I own the biggest Café available in my friend’s circle. Café world has helped me a great deal to get rid of stress and as I looked for more such embedded Facebook games, I came across Mafia Wars; another addictive social media game from the same production house Zynga. If you are a fan of action-packed adrenaline pumping games then Mafia Wars is a perfect match for you.

Mafia Wars game falls in the crime/thriller genre as compared to Café world which is of arcade genre. I am playing this game since a couple of weeks and I must admit that it is quite entertaining. I did a bunch of mistakes initially after joining the game. But I have learnt from my mistakes and now, my family (Mafia Family) is growing fast with all the weapons and stuff. I have compiled a checklist of Mafia Wars Tricks, Cheat Codes, Hacks And Tips for the new players which would help them to dominate the game and reach the top of the tree pretty soon.

How to Dominate Zynga Mafia Wars in Facebook with Secret Tricks and Cheat Codes

Grow Your Wealth in Mafia Wars! First and foremost, you will obviously want to do some jobs to get some money. But pretty soon you won’t need to do any jobs to make money, only to level up. This is because your investments will make money without having you to do anything. At the very start, when you are doing jobs, choose the ones that offer you the highest payoff with the least amount of energy used – good pay/energy ratio. Alternatively, you can choose jobs that have a high experience gained/energy used ratio. With the least energy lost the more benefit to you. These strategy tips will help increase the family wealth regardless of the ultimate goal:

- In the early levels of game play, purchase properties with a low investment cost and decent return rate. Mafia Mike’s Delis are an excellent choice; however, the number available for purchase is dependent on the number of family members.
- As the money increases purchase high end properties – the key is to purchase as many as possible at one time. Once a purchase is made, the price increases for the next purchase.
- Beware of the upkeep cost of some high end weapons and vehicles. Make sure money flow is sufficient to cover the costs.

Using Points Strategically! With each level up, players are given reward points by the Godfather. These can be used to increase a variety of attributes, such as attack, defense, energy and more. Where to apply these points depends on the Mafia Boss’ strategy.

- Knocking off rivals and going for kills: this strategy requires using reward points to increase attack, defense, and stamina attributes. This allows the player to knock off other mobs and engage in more fights while staying strong themselves.
- Money Accumulation: this strategy requires putting most reward points into the energy level. Energy enables the family to do more jobs, thus acquiring more money.

Bank Your Money! This game is all about mobs and you could very easily end up losing money during fights. Your money is very much safer in a bank. As soon as you are paid, it is a wise decision to bank your money. Yes there is a 10% money-laundering fee that the bank will charge you, but this is much better than losing everything in a fight.

Strengthen Your Family! Recruit people who play this game almost every day. This will ensure that you are building a strong family. Help other members of your family and by doing this, you are also keeping your family strong. The first and ultimately most important key to advancing is to keep the mob family growing. This can be done in a few ways:

- Players invite all of their friends to join
- Link to other players on one of the many ‘add me’ pages in FB, thousand of players network on these pages
- Reciprocate when players join their mob family – Mafia War players can be members of more than one mob.

Family Defense! Family members need to be able to defend themselves. It is up to the Boss to make sure each team member has defensive tools. As the family accumulates wealth, the boss should make sure each member has weapons, vehicles, etc.

- Initially, funds will be low, the Boss should focus on growing wealth in order to take care of family
- As wealth is accumulated, Boss should purchase each member of family more weapons

Get the Best Weapons! This will help you in defense and gain more attack points too

Saving Energy Packs! They will come handy during times of emergencies.

Select the Manic Class! In the Mafia Wars, energy is much valuable than money. Energy allows you to do missions, whereas money will not. This is a common mistake many players make when starting out. With the “Maniac” class, you won’t have to worry about any energy issues anymore.

Use your Experience Points on Energy! Do not waste your points around on Godfather points or any other useless items. That can be done in the later part of the game, however for present situation, it will only slow you down. Therefore, i would advise you to focus on “Energy” as it is the most important thing for you to level up quickly in the game.

FAQ:
Q1. What are the skills to Dominate Mafia Wars?

- Attack increases your damage on enemies during fights.
- Defense reduces the damage you receive from enemies in fights.
- Health determines how well you survive fights.
- Energy is your ability to do jobs.
- Stamina allows you to fight more often.

Q2. How to make money in Mafia Wars?
Do jobs and help your family with their jobs. Invest in property for a steady stream of income. Get into fights and target players on the hit list. There’s nothing better than making dough while icing someone.

Q3: What are the characteristics of the Mafia Wars characters?
Moguls level up the slowest, but they make money quickly. Maniacs recover energy quickly and are better equipped for doing jobs. The fearless recover health quickly, which gives them an advantage in fighting. At this point you cannot change your character type in the game.

Q4: How do I get more Godfather points?
Play every day and you will get a bonus of 3 Godfather points every day that you sign in. When you level up, you will get 1 godfather point.

Use these tricks and Dominate Mafia Wars like never before! Also make sure you check our greatest collection of  Café World Cheats.Happy Playing

There can be no doubt that irrespective of the launch and all the buzz around Google Buzz and the latest advancements of Twitter, Facebook is pretty much unstoppable at the moment and a real massive juggernaut. For some perspective on Facebook’s amazing growth, here is this infographic. We hope you’ll enjoy it!

via pingdom.com

Take another look at that last number. That’s more than half a billion Facebook users, an incredibly large user base for a social network site, and it may not be too long before Facebook reaches it. Didn’t I warn you all that Google Buzz lacks the steam to knock out Facebook just yet?

It’s natural that when you hear about a brand new Google app — especially one that’s obviously designed to confront Twitter and/or Facebook — the first thing you want to do is try it out. So when I heard about Google Buzz, I immediately ran to my Gmail account. And it turns out that Google Buzz is indeed a Facebook/Twitter look-alike. Your friends are defined by your existing Google contacts. You can send a buzz (i.e. a status message) privately to a list of friends (if you use Google Contacts, you’ll already have various categories in place), to all your contacts, or as a public message.

Users of the service can post a public or private buzz, which is a status update, as well as share the content of and connect with other social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Users get a profile page and Buzz lets you ‘follow’ people in order to share in their updates and photos, and there’s also the option to ‘like’ content. You’ll also be recommended content that Buzz thinks will interest you.

The biggest site that it will compete with is obviously Facebook, but also Twitter, and on mobile phones, apps like Facebook and Foursquare. But 400 million people are already happily using Facebook, and tens of millions (or hundreds of thousands) are using the other services. Why would they switch to this Google service when there are no compelling reasons to do so? And if Google isn’t going to actually kill Facebook with this thing, what’s the point?

On the other hand, Google killed incumbent search engines that had a multi-year head start because they figured out how to make search results relevant. All of a sudden, you could find what you were looking for in the first page of links… fast. Twitter feeds are full of irrelevant noise, and nobody really cares about most of what their Facebook friends are doing most of the time. If Google can come up with some kind of TweetRank that works as well as PageRank did, to filter and present only the good stuff, then they might be onto something. Time will tell.

It remains to be seen whether Google has managed to select the best from the rest and created the network that everyone will want to use once Buzz is rolled out to all accounts within the next week, or whether this will be another of its network ideas which will fall by the wayside.

For many users ‘Google Buzz’ can be confusing and it has another place “to go”. I have used Gmail since it first came out in Beta form. For me it has almost totally replaced outlook. I jumped at using Buzz today, but, again, it’s confusing. Not sure what to do with it even though I have it sitting in my Gmail interface. Personally I would love not to leave my GMail page. Finally, I’m already distracted enough when I work with google’s gmail interface. And do I really need to have my private life (email) so closely linked to my public life (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)? It’s new, so we’ll see. But it is not a slam dunk – at least not for me.

I just don’t want the majority of my Gmail contacts have anything social to do with me. Also people on the facebook and people I follow on Twitter are very different groups, Neither will integrate well with my Gmail contacts. We are already in an information overload state and now Google Buzz brings us true privacy broadcast? Seriously who’s gonna remember to set each and every buzz “private” or “public”? Would you? Maybe google is betting you won’t.

The researchers, led by led by Robin Dunbar, have developed a theory known as “Dunbar’s number“, which claimed that the size of our neocortex – the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language — is too small to handle more than 150 active relationships.

He told the Sunday Times that “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world“. “People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they’re unlikely to be bigger than anyone else’s.”

Anyhow, those looking to catch a glimpse of the work of Professor Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar, can consult one of his numerous publications, “The evolution of culture: An interdisciplinary view” on Google Books.

Professor Dunbar’s findings will be published towards the end of the year and might finally debunk the myth of Facebookers who claim to have 5000 friends or so and Twitter users with over 34,000 followers. How many friends do you have on Facebook/Twitter?

Before starting this post let me introduce you to Café World. This is a browser based embedded game in Facebook where the player need not have to be online while playing with his/her buddies. This new genre of this kind of gaming is called “asynchronous” or “appointment” gaming. I have been playing this game since a while and I am very much addicted to this right now. There is not a single day when I don’t visit my Café (Virtual).

The game is really a gem for part-time gamers. The user need not have to be hooked up to the game to finish the levels. Once there is food on the counter you are almost done. But, the game doesn’t deliver satisfaction to hard-core gamers like me because of its slow pace. Thankfully I came across some cheat codes, hacks, tips and tricks which can change the way Café World operates and I wanted to share them with you.

Cafe World cheat codes can easily make you earn cash and coins quickly. You don’t have to use any cheat engine for increasing your level now. There are various cheats available online that promises to increase your levels but it is always advisable to employ hack free techniques. Cheat codes mainly teaches you to play the game more strategically and helps you become a good entrepreneur. So are you ready to Dominate Café World On Facebook?

‘Earn More Coins’ Tricks!
- Always plan the food that you want to cook and serve to your customers and do not run out of food in your counter.
- Keep your buzz rating high. Buzz rating brings more customers, thus more coins!
- Don’t forget to Visits your friends’ café regularly to get more coins. That is the easiest method to earn coins.
- Regularly click on the “Daily Bonus” button (on the left) whenever you see it. It is a great way to earn some FREE coins and cash.

Reduce waiting time by ‘Trapping your Waiter’!
- Trapping your waiter is one of the best ways to reduce waiting time. You don’t have to worry about foods, as they will be automatically served to your customers. This process not only saves your time but also increases your buzz rating ( and thus the number of visitors). What you want to do is place your stoves against the back wall; then set up your serving tables, leaving one space behind them and the back wall. This will trap the waiters and they will be able to deliver and clean up dishes in an instant without moving.

Avoid ‘Spoiled Food’ in Café World!
- This is not exactly a cheat code but using this strategy you can avoid some spoiled food (and hence some coins) in Café World. The key to avoid the waste of throwing away spoiled food is pretty simple. If you want to use food that takes a long time to spoil, create meals that take a long time to cook. The longer the cooking time, the longer the food will stay edible. Spoiled food can be a big waste in Café World, so it is important to take this cheat into consideration when planning which meal you will be cooking.

Gather a Stockpile of ‘Café Points’ Quickly And Easily!
- Bacon Cheeseburgers and Chips & Guacamole are two foods in Café World that can help you gain café points very quickly and easily. A bacon cheeseburger takes 5 minutes to cook and chips & guacamole takes 7 minutes to cook giving you +7 and +4 café points respectively. If you repeatedly cook these two items, you will gain a lot of café points quickly and easily.

‘Save money’ in Café World!
- There is a cheat for saving your money too. You can easily save up to 15 coins by placing your stoves in the inventory instead of cleaning it. This process can make you save cafe coins and cash quickly.
- You can increase visitors to your restaurant by opening the floodgates and adding doors. This will eventually make you richer. But do this ONLY when you have enough food on the counter.

Save your Buzz rating when ‘Running Out of Food’ in Café World!
- Running out of food can sometimes be a problem in Café World, forcing you to find a solution to the problem. Close your Café by simply removing the door. This will close the Café and prevent new customers from entering the establishment.

‘Gain Experience Points’ in Cafe World!
- To earn experience points in Cafe World, cook meals that take a long time to prepare. Yes, this takes more work and can sometimes be a pain, but the experience points will be worth it in the end.

Do you like Café World in Facebook? If yes, feel free to try these cheats and tell us if it helped you to Dominate Café World!

Not everyone has the ability at the moment, it has yet to appear in my account. You can check to see if you have it by going to your Facebook newsfeed and see if you have a button on links called “share.”

Guess what that button does? This is a small feature change by Facebook that will make promotion and data sharing on Facebook quite a bit more viral. It looks like this:

This marks one more movement by Facebook to integrate popular Twitter features into their ecosystem. Twitter touched a nerve with consumers, and Facebook is dedicated to staying on top of the latest trends. Given that Twitter turned down a Facebook offer, Facebook is just going to replicate what it could not buy.

This little feature can be huge, especially for Facebook fanpage as it adds a huge element to viral growth. Before this whenever someone shared something from a fanpage or profile, they would have to manually give credit, which many didn’t even know how. Now it will give credit by default and funny thing is although there is an option to remove the credit, many won’t know how to do that. So it’s a good thing because just like in the world of blogs an article should link where it’s due, in the world of social networks and information exchange, credit should be give in any form and this new feature certainly make it easier.

This feature should be rolling out to more users in the coming weeks. Of course, we can as always expect Facebook users to have a cow and a half about the changes. Past that, Facebook is dedicated to keeping ahead of the curve, lest a smaller company hurt their edge. Right now it appears as though all users have this feature although it was only recently turned on (at some point this evening). We’ll be sure to continue our ongoing coverage of Facebook’s Twitterfication.

However I doubt if simple “Twitterization” will cut it… Facebook perhaps has nothing to fear because the social system on Twitter is different. Connections (or follows) don’t have to be mutual, 140 characters will be odd to a core facebooker and most importantly Twitter isn’t for everyone! What do you think about Facebook’s Twitterfication?