Want Personal Data? Go Phish!

At least 2 million people received the email May 16 2013 notifying them that an order they had just made on "Wallmart's" website was being processed, though none of them had done any such thing.

Still, thousands of people clicked on the link in the email, taking many of them to a harmless Google search results page for "Walmart." Others weren't so fortunate.

The link led to the invisible download of malware that covertly infected their personal computers, turning them into remotely controlled robots for hackers.

Phishing, also known as “brand spoofing” or “carding”, is a term used to describe various scams that use (primarily) fraudulent e-mail messages, sent by criminals, to trick you into divulging personal information. The criminals use this information to steal your identity, rob your bank account, or take over your computer.

With spear-phishing they use social engineering – researching social media and other publicly available online sources – to profile high value targets and personalize bogus emails. Broader phishing campaigns may engage partners in crime to conduct high volume mailings, but very realistic looking emails will invariably hook a significant number of users who will download a malformed spreadsheet or click on a link to a fraudulent website.

Make no mistake, phishing and spear-phishing works. RSA recently reported that in 2013 there were nearly 450,000 phishing attacks and estimated losses of over $5.9 billion.

Even before phishing became so prevalent, legitimate businesses and financial institutions would hardly ever ask for personal information via e-mail. If you receive such a request, call the organization and ask if it's legitimate or check its legitimate Web site. Look for misspellings and bad grammar. While an occasional typo can slip by any organization, more than one is a tip-off to beware.

In the fake-Wal-Mart attack, people missed clear warning signs — such as the company name being misspelled and the sender's address being very long and strange.

The success of phishing is largely determined by the low levels of user-awareness regarding how the companies which fraudsters try to imitate, operate. Many legitimate sites contain special warnings saying that they never ask users to send confidential data in messages. However, users continue to send their passwords to phishers.

Phishing is a modern hydra, cut of one head and two more grows out. The only way to actually combat phishing is with awareness and to starve it out. I personally think this is a result of the young age of the Internet; people are simply not accustomed to online scammers the same way we are local market hustlers. In a few years phishing and scamming will probably have malnourished itself out of existence, but until then we all need to be aware. 

Please don't feed the phish. 

Facebook buys WhatsApp

Social network giant Facebook grows by acquiring Whats App, a messaging service for smartphones with 450 million users. The purchase price is set to $19 billion. Approximately $4 billion paid in cash, the rest is to be paid in Facebook shares.

WhatsApps founder Jan Koum will thus become a major shareholder in Facebook. He will also take place in the social network's board of directors.

Facebook have likely made the acquisition because they lack an operating system of its own, such as Google's Android or Apple's iOS. With its own operating system, Facebook can now pre-install apps, and programs and by doing so bring up the use of its own products.

Facebooks previous attempts to market it 's own user OS Home, which could be installed to Android, fell flat and become a flop. Facebook is now seemingly trying to redeem this venture.

After the announcement Facebook 's stock fell 4.4 percent, signaling that the market apparently doesn't share Zuckerberg's interest in WhatsApp. 

Snapchat Playing it Cool

I recently wrote about how SnapChat may spell the fall ofFacebook. Now I don’t want to pat my own back here, but it seems as though Mark Zuckerberg is reading my blog and taking notes (probably not, but fun still) since Facebook recently announced plans for acquiring SnapChat.

However, since founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy also seem to be avid subscribers to the Social Gnome, they coldly, shrewdly, and wisely turned down that offer. What happened next? Zuckerberg upped the ante. But Spiegel and Murphy would not have any of it, turning down the 3 billion dollar offer.

23-year-old Spiegel, has yet to comment on the information, but according to the Wall Street his plan is to start bringing in bids from potential buyers first next year. It is hoped that Snapchat will have grown even larger at that time, and thus have become worth more money. Snapchat has today only been around for about two years, and if the net-worth increases along the same tangent it has so far, it would be worth (crude calculations) an estimated 3,75 billion in May and 4,5 in November of 2014.

This however is all conditioned on several things but the two most important factors would be;

1.  Facebook themselves just copying the app and incorporating their “FaceSnap App” into their existing library. We all know they do have the resources, and building such an app is NOT a 3 billion dollar investment. What Snapchap is offering Facebook here is a kick start, where Facebook would not have to invest in building a community nor brand awareness.
2. Fad dying off and users leaving SnapChat. And if this happens SnapChap will not even be worth the time of day. It has happened before with immensely popular sites and applications. The social Internet is moving fast, and so is its users.

However, Facebook are not alone in trying to acquiring Snapchat; several different companies have shown interest. As of right now Snapchat has no sales what so ever, simply relying on its users. No ads, nothing; just investors and evaluations. With such a volatile income base, it shows Iceman guts to pass by an offer that would make the founders economically independent. 

And as of right now, Speigel and Murphy are playing it cool.

WeChat overtaking Facebook?

What is WeChat?

Reading the first news of this social challenger giving Facebook a run for its users, your first question will probably be; What is WeChat? And why haven't I heard of it before?

We know it's not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. In fact, it’s a company that most people in the west never heard of. WeChat is a smartphone app, developed by Tencent in China, to send voice messages, snapshots and emoticons to friends.

Something that is already done by most smart phone, you might say, but that has not stopped the app from gaining massive ground.

WeChat's popularity has grown dramatically since its launch in 2011. Tencent announced in September 2012 that its users had increased about to 200 million. The vast majority are in China, though WeChat has since been launched across Asia, and have already established subscribers in both the US and the UK.

So what are is Tencent doing to sail past Facebook? First, it has managed to differentiate its product with some killer features that keep users coming back for more. On the messaging side, users can “hold-to-talk” and send free walkie-talkie style messages that bypass the need for voicemail. Yet what keeps its network growing are fun discovery features that can connect users locally and across continents.

WeChat has neatly fused together the open approach of social networks such as Twitter, where anyone can follow anybody, and more closed networks such as Facebook, which rely on mutual friend connections. Another neat option with WeChat is the ability to talk to any WeChatter around the world by simply shaking the phone. The app will then connect to another user also shaking their phone at the exact moment. That feature alone is enough for me to want to try it.

So will this knock of Facebook as the prime social network of choice? Mobile use is up, and by 2014 more people will connect to the Internet from their phones, than from desktops. Also, China is on a broad technological advancement, which surly affects the development of social technology. 

However WeChat will overtake Facebook is to early to tell, but it is clear to me that Facebook needs to react. Othewise the king just might fall.

Rise of SnapChat - Fall of Facebook?

After a slow start, including a failed phone-app, Facebook's mobile revenue finally got wind in their sails during the early summer months. In the first quarter of this year, mobile revenues rose up to 30 percent of the company’s total revenue, from having been almost non-existent a year earlier. But now the future may still not be really is so bright. The reason for this being a new generation of mobile applications, which are currently overwhelming users.

It started with the simple message apps, where Whatsapp excels with 250 million users, and competition is increasing. From Asia Wechat, Line and KakaoTalk are growing stronger, making names for themselves also in the west.

But the rocket in this context are the image and messaging app Snapchat, which has taken the younger generation by storm. Snapchat has the odd property that the images that are sent, are automatically deleted after 10 seconds. This, on one hand made it extremely popular in a privacy perspective, but on the other got Snapchat singled out as a stronghold for sending sex chats and images.

Snapchats popularity is enormous. According to Mary Meeker, renowned analyst, venture capitalist and net guru, one third of all photos shared online this year passes through Snapchats network. 200 million photos are now shared with Snapchat every day, according to the company. In February, the figure was a mere 60 million.

Meanwhile Snapchat just brought in new capital, valuing ​​the company which started as late as 2011, to 800 million USD. It's more than what Facebook finally paid for Instagram almost a year ago; that affair ended with a price tag of 715 million USD. Mark Zuckerberg's company made an attempt to copy the self-destruct Snapchats pictures with the Poke app, but to no success. Instagram recently also added a function to capture short video clips, this to meet the threat of another newcomer, Twitter-owned Vine.

The fight will (as usual) be decided by who pulls in the biggest bucks. Facebook still have some substantial mobile revenues, while neither Snapchat nor Vine, so far, have any income to speak of.