When you’re bored to death, do you end up watching some nasty videos on YouTube or search for Poonam Pandey’s pictures on Google Image search while you’re logged in to Gmail or Google Plus? If yes, then it’s time you start using Incognito mode in Google Chrome (or private mode in other browsers), because according to Google’s new privacy policy update, the search engine giant is going to store all of this information and may put to some use in the future.

In a recent blog post, Google announced that it is planning to replace 60 policies of its Web services to a unified privacy policy. This would allow the company to share data between any of the services the user is using. In other words, it will begin tracking users universally to gather information from its services, including Gmail, calendar appointments, location data, search preferences, YouTube, contacts, device information and search queries. All of this will all be used to integrate into its services to serve you better. This change will go into effect starting March 1, 2012.

However, service like Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome will be excluded from this policy due to different regulatory and technical issues.

Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

With the new updates, Google is planning to get rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google services and plans to replace them with one that’s shorter, easier to read and something that will enable it to “create an intuitive experience across Google”.

This move from Google is perhaps more or like a competition to the social networking giant, Facebook, over personal data. Facebook has an unmatched amount of information, which includes every little data that a user shares on the network. Not to forget, Facebook boasts to have over 800 million users on its network. That’s certainly is a huge amount of user information.

Google has never before collected much of personal information from its users, but as Facebook continues to grow ahead leaving behind its competitors, Google has stoked up the competition with this privacy change.

On the other hand, Google plans to unify its privacy policies in order to target appropriate advertisements to you. Google personalizes advertisements by filtering out unwanted ads and displays only those ads that are specific to your search queries. Now, with the new changes, it will enable Google to gather more information and display more relevant ads that match your queries. However, one can easily opt out and turn off personalized ads.

Simply go to your Ads Preferences Manager, click “Opt Out” under “Ads in Search and Gmail”, and then again under “Ads on the Web”. This will disable personalized ads being displayed on your search results as well as in Gmail.

As promised, Google has not changed its policies on sharing user information with third parties -

We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order.

To understand better, here’s a video that Google posted on YouTube -

Google India is celebrating India’s 63rd Republic Day by featuring a Google Doodle on its homepage highlighting the theme of Indian Tricolor – Saffron, White and Green.  The logo depicts the National Bravery Award winning children riding on the backs of decorated elephants holding (tricolor) umbrellas, much like the actual parade on Rajpath, New Delhi. The Google logo, however, appears in the background with the ‘O’ of Google appearing like the Ashoka Chakra.

India’s Republic Day commemorates the date when the Constitution Of India came into force replacing the Government of India Act 1935 and thus became the governing document of the country.

The 308 members of the Indian Assembly signed two hand-written copies of the new Constitution (one each in Hindi and English) on 24 January 1950. Two days later the Constitution became the law. Drafted by a committee headed by B. R. Ambedkar, the Constitution replaced the Government Of India Act Of 1935, and declared the country a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.

This short film depicts the journey of an Indian flag from sunrise to sunset, where it confronts the social evils plaguing our country. From poverty to corruption to discourteous youth, the flag is in desperate search of a sailor to take the nation towards the wisdom of light.

On behalf of the Techie Buzz team, I wish each and every Indian a very Happy Republic Day!

Accessing Facebook without Internet or GPRS on mobile is nothing new. Back in May 2011, we reported that a Singapore-based software applications development company, U2opia Mobile, had developed an application for mobile phones that will allow users to access Facebook without paying for a data connection and works well on all handsets.

Now, the application is fully functional, and the company is marketing the product with the name Fonetwish. Facebook India has teamed up with U2opia to allow its Indian user base to access the network for free without requiring any Internet connection. Yes, you can now use Facebook with your old Nokia phone (Including Nokia 1100).

The application has been developed using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) technology. Technically, USSD is a protocol used by GSM telephones to communicate with the service providers. The best example for this would the balance inquiry system.

Fonetwish works in a similar fashion. There is no graphical user interface as such, and you cannot view any graphical content. The service can only be used to read/send text based updates.

How to Enable Facebook Fonetwish

Please Note:  Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India. Unfortunately, other subscribers will have to wait a little longer.

Dial *325# (*fbk# for non-qwerty phones) and you will see a welcome message and after a few seconds you will be prompted with another message asking you to enter your username and password.

Once you have entered the username and password correctly, you will the following screen -

• News Feed
• Update Status
• Post On Wall
• Friend Request
• Messages
• Notification
• Account Settings

You can select any of the above options by replying with the appropriate option number.

Here’s how you to update your status -

Reply with option 2 and wait for a few seconds. You will see the message “Whats on your mind?” Reply the message with your status message. You should immediately see the message updated on your Facebook profile.

Likewise, you can also read your News Feed, manage friend request, read Facebook Messages, change account settings, and so on.

How to Deactivate or Disable Fonetwish

If in case, you did not find the application user-friendly or if the service is being charged, then you can always disable or deactivate it. Simply dial *325*22# from your mobile and the service should be deactivated immediately. If not, call up your service provider’s customer care and they will take care of it.

Also Read: Get Free Access to Twitter on Airtel

The CES 2012 exhibition held in Las Vegas from Tuesday, January 10 to Friday, January 13 saw some new and interesting announcements and releases. One such announcement made by Sigma, one of the major manufacturers of cameras, lenses, flashes and other photographic accessories, unveiled the world’s first 180mm f/2.8 macro lens that features a 1:1 magnification ratio. Apparently, out of the only two pre-production models, one of them has gone missing.

The Sigma APO Macro 180mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM is the world’s first 180mm macro lens that offers a magnification ratio of 1:1 and a large maximum aperture of F2.8. The lens is a successor to the older 180mm F3.5 EX DG macro. The new lens features Sigma’s proprietary Optical Stabilizer (OS) technology and the wide aperture features faster shutter speeds in low light and a narrow depth of field.

The lens also has three “F” Low Dispersion (FLD) glass elements, which have an equivalent performance to a fluorite glass. These FLDs are included to provide correction for color aberrations and an inner focusing system minimizes aberrations that occur as shooting distances change.

At 1:1 magnification, this lens has a focusing distance of 18.5 inches, which is a greater working distance than shorter focal length macro lenses, making it advantageous when taking pictures of highly sensitive subjects like butterflies.

The lens is compatible to Sigma’s tele-converters, and the focal length can be extended to 252mm f/4.5 using the AF 1.4x EX converter (404mm equiv.). It can also be extended to 360mm f/7 via the AF 2x EX converter (576mm equiv.), however, in this case you’ll lose the AF though.

According to the president of Sigma Corporation of America, Mark Amir-Hamzeh -

“Our first 180mm macro was very popular with macro photographers and we’re certain that discerning photographers will be very impressed with its new technical and performance upgrades. The Optical Stabilizer technology and faster maximum aperture will make it even easier for users to capture the close-up, intricate details in the tiny world around them. We’ve released some really incredible products in the past year – there’s truly something in our lineup for every type and level of photographer.”

There are no further details available about the lost lens; however, it’s definitely worth hundreds of dollars. Sigma, however, has not revealed the pricing and availability of the lens yet.

Complete Specifications of Sigma APO Macro 180mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM

Principal specifications

• Lens Type: Prime lens
• Max Format Size: 35mm FF
• Focal length: 180 mm
• Image stabilisation: Yes
• Lens mount: Sigma SA

Aperture

• Maximum aperture: F2.8
• Minimum aperture: F22.0
• Aperture ring: No
• Number of diaphragm blades: 9

Optics

• Elements: 19
• Groups:                14
• Special elements / coatings: 3 FLD glass elements

Focus

• Minimum focus: 0.47 m (18.50″)
• Maximum magnification: 1x
• Autofocus: Yes
• Motor type: Ring-type ultrasonic
• Full time manual: Yes
• Focus method: Internal
• Focus notes: Floating focus system
• Distance scale: Yes
• DoF scale: No

Physical

• Diameter: 95 mm (3.74″)
• Length: 204 mm (8.03″)
• Sealing: No
• Filter thread: 86 mm
• Tripod collar: Yes

According to a report from the Kaspersky Lab, a new phishing attack on Facebook has been discovered that primarily attempts to steal account information of Facebook users and compromise the account. The attackers then attempt to gather the financial information including credit card data and other sensitive information from the victim.

According to Kaspersky Lab’s David Jacoby, the attackers are not just tricking users to visit a phishing site, but are trying to scare them by sending them warning messages by using a fake “Facebook Security” account. The compromised accounts will be used to steal available personal information and then change both the profile picture and name to try the trick on other Facebook users.

The profile picture will be changed to the Facebook logo and the name will be changed to “Facebook Security” with special ASCII characters replacing the letters such as “a” “k” “S” and “t”. Here is a screen shot of the message sent from a fake account -

The message – “Last Warning: Your Facebook account will be turned off Because someone has reported you. Please do re-confirm your account security by: [LINK] Thank you. The Facebook Team,” is used as a warning message sent to users via Facebook Messages and Facebook Chat.

The link used in the message leads users to a phishing site. When we tried opening the page using Google Chrome, the following warning message was displayed – “Phishing sites trick users into disclosing personal or financial information, often by pretending to represent trusted institutions, such as banks.”

The site, however, is designed to look like a Facebook page and prompts the victim to enter the name, email address, password, security question, email account password, country, and date of birth. After having provided with all the information, the victim will be redirected to another page with the heading “Payment Verification” that asks for the first six digits of the victim’s credit card. Accordingly, in the following pages, the user is asked to enter the full credit card number along with the expiry date, CVV code (Security code), and the billing address.

If you’re an active Facebook user, then the most important thing that you must know is that Facebook never asks its users to enter their password(s), or credit card details. Check the URL of the site that you’re visiting and make sure it is genuine. Most of the sites that require users to enter any financial information, have a secured HTTPS connection, which are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems, which was not true in this case.

Also Read: Google Chrome Now Blocks Insecure Scripts on HTTPS

If you’ve been warned with such a message on Facebook, then ignore it. Alternatively, you can contact the Facebook Security team here and check if they sent the message or not. We have reported a similar Facebook Security Network Phishing Attack back in August 2011.

“These scams are just getting more popular and we really recommend not giving out personal information, especially not email, password and credit card information over social medias,” Jacoby wrote. “It is also recommend[ed] that you contact your security vendor and the social media vendor if you encounter these sites.”

Facebook announced that they have now extended its comments plugin (the Comment Box) to work on mobile supported websites. Websites with the Comment Box plugin embedded in them will enable its mobile visitors to use the plugin to add their comments and views.

“Today we’re launching the Comments Box plugin for mobile to make it easier for media sites to engage people across the web and mobile devices, and for people to comment on news regardless of where they’re reading it,” Facebook announced.

Installing the plugin for mobile devices requires no additional tasks. When a user visits a website supporting the feature, the Comment Box will be automatically displayed on the mobile version of the site. The plugin is designed to automatically recognize when a user is on a mobile device and unlike its previous versions, the plugin ensures to ignore the width parameter so that the comments are displayed at 100 percent.

However, Developers or Webmasters can disable the automatic width feature by setting the mobile parameters to false and can manually control the width settings. A complete documentation of this can be viewed from here.

Facebook unveiled the completely revamped Comment Box for websites earlier in March 2011. This intended to reduce spam comments on websites, since commenting using the box would require the user to login to his Facebook account first. Comments posted by a user will also appear on the commenter’s profile, unless the user manually chooses not to “post” comments by changing the user Privacy Settings.

Back in November 2011, we found out that comments added using the Facebook’s commenting systems were indexed by the search engine giant, Google. Queries like “commenter name and commenter title” will display all the comments the commenter may have written on different websites using Facebook or equivalent services.

Having the Facebook Comment Box plugin work on mobile devices might improve interactions and reduce spam, and of course, it does make life easier for website owners and its regular readers that use the plugin.

Facebook introduced its new profile layout “Timeline” in September, 2011, and after a long waiting period, the company finally rolled out the new style to all its users in December, 2011. Users were forced to change the look of their profile with the new layout and were left with no option to revert. Many users who found the Timeline too cluttered and confusing, are finding out ways to disable it, or revert and go back to the previous layout.

After releasing the Timeline to all its users, a spokesperson for Facebook had to say this -

Once you click “Get Timeline,” you will have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it.

If you choose, you can publish your timeline right away. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your timeline will replace your profile.

Eventually everyone on Facebook will be rolled over to timeline.

Being aware of this despair, scammers are taking advantage of it by posting scam messages on Facebook indicating how one can disable or remove the Facebook Timeline completely. Facebook has taken every measure to educate its users about the new layout. Despite that, some people are still falling for the trap set by scammers and hackers. A search on Facebook for the phrase remove “Facebook Timeline” filtered more than 10 Facebook Pages that have gained thousands of “likes.”

“We work hard to educate users on how to be safe through our blog and the Facebook and Facebook Security pages,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We regularly update the Facebook Security page and its over 5 million fans with tips and information about new threats. We also work with outside experts on education initiatives.”

There are a number of scam messages and rouge application/browser extensions claiming to show you the steps on how you can disable the Facebook Timeline. Installing these browser extensions, or linking your account to applications will give access to all information, and this is definitely a serious threat to your account. Here are the results obtained via the Facebook Search bar -

There is no way you can disable or remove the Facebook Timeline. It is a permanent change, until Facebook decides to implement a new layout. Therefore, the best option you have is to get used to it, or you can go with the second best option – Deactivate your Facebook Account.

However, if you’re finding the new layout too cluttered, then you can try disabling the ticker and chat. We had posted an article earlier on how you can disable the news ticker on the right. We have posted an in-depth guide about Timeline. I recommend you to go through it and know all of its features. Who knows, you may start loving it.

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If you are a Facebook user in the United Kingdom or in France, then it’s time to change your account password. The infamous Ramnit worm, which earlier was used to gain access to financial credentials, is now targeting users on Facebook. Reports indicate that the worm was first detected 18 months ago, and is now continuing to evolve on the social networking giant.

According to researchers at the Israeli firm Seculert, a variant of Ramnit was found and has managed to steal over 45,000 Facebook users’ credentials, mostly in the United Kingdom and France, and infected over 800,000 systems from September to December 2011.

Ramnit a is malware program that is designed to attack Windows executable files (.exe files), MS Office, and HTML documents. The malware is used to steal sensitive information such as user names, passwords, FTP credentials, and browser cookies. The malware program can “bypass two-factor authentication and transaction signing systems, gain remote access to financial institutions, compromise online banking sessions and penetrate several corporate networks,” Seculert wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Hackers are posting scam messages with links to bogus sites to spread the malware program. When users visit an infected web page, malware programs are automatically downloaded on the user’s computer, which gathers all the required information, like login credentials and saved passwords. The credentials are then accessed by the hackers to compromise users’ accounts. Once the victim’s account is compromised, it is suspected that the Ramnit download link is posted on the Facebook Timeline.

Learn: How to Prevent Your Facebook Account from Getting Hacked

We at Techie Buzz have warned our readers several times on scams spreading on Facebook, and have also provided tips on how to identify and avoid clicking scam links on Facebook. Facebook has recently added two new security features – Trusted Friends and Application Passwords – which are intended to keep your account secured and keep hackers at bay.

As a precautionary measure, always check which applications you use and remove unwanted or suspicious ones. If you are not sure how to do it, you can always check our guide on - removing apps from Facebook. In addition to that, don’t forget to check out our article about - Avoiding Facebook Lifejacking and Clickjacking scams.

Also Read: Facebook Introduces Sweeping Sharing and Privacy Changes

Bookmark - Techie Buzz – Facebook Scams. We always keep you updated with the latest scams spreading on Facebook.

According to a public post by Paul Allen, who claims himself as the unofficial Google+ statistician”, the newly launched social networking site, Google+, in competition with Facebook, will have nearly 400 million users by the end of 2012.

Well, that means that Google Plus will have a user base half the size of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook (taking the current 800 million users in consideration). This prediction is done with the help of the current rate of new signups on Google+. Currently, Google Plus is having over 62 million users, adding over 625,000 new users every day.

Here are the statistics provided by Allen -

• July 13 – 10 million
• August 1 – 20.5 million
• September 1 – 24.7 million
• October 1 – 38 million (Larry Page announced “more than 40m users” on Oct 13th)
• November 1 – 43 million
• December 1 – 50 million
• December 27 – 62 million
• January 1 – 65.8 million (forecast)
• February 1 – 85.2 million (forecast)

Paul Allen states that -

Google+ is adding new users at a very rapid pace. It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors, but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks.

In comparison, Facebook reported that it has over 800 million users as of September, while Twitter  reported  460,000 signups per day, which has obviously shot up after its integration with iOS 5. Now, looking at the (predicted) growth of Google Plus, the numbers are surely insane.

However, the question that strikes is whether users on Google Plus are only creating accounts, or do they even use it? Well, only Google has the answer to that question.

Allen’s stats have only predicted the current users registered on the site. However, his numbers do not indicate how many are actively using the social network. Last month, some stats suggested that over half the network’s first 15 million members hadn’t been back a week after joining,  the  Telegraph  reports.

Recently, Google+ announce new features on the site, including simple slider to control the stream, multiple admins for Google+ Pages, new photo Lightbox, and “Find My Facefacial recognition tool.

So, this question is out to our readers. When was the last time you opened your Google Plus page/account? Which among the three Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus have been the most dominant? Let us know by adding your comments below, or over on our  Facebook page.

It’s celebration time everywhere around the world. The whole world is busy preparing themselves for the week-long holidays till the first of New Year, and so is  Google and the team behind the Android OS.

Marking the festivity and joy around, Google has replaced its default logo with a “Happy Holidays” doodle. Google does this every year during the time of Christmas and New Year, wishing all its users a Happy Christmas and Holidays by updating their homepage with a Google Doodle.

This year the “holiday doodle” has a pitch black background depicting a dark night and showcases all the elements that are associated with Christmas, like snowflakes, Santa Claus, bell, snowman, candle and a gift box which are seen decorating the word ‘google’ in the latest doodle.

The Google logo is visible (faded) as an outline behind the icons. Unlike its other interactive doodles, the holiday doodle is static and clicking it will take you to the “happy holidays” Google search results page. Google has been celebrating Christmas and holidays from the past ten years, with a new doodle each year.

You might be wondering why it is “Happy Holidays” and not “Happy Christmas” or “Happy New Year”? Well, in the United States, the collective phrase Happy Holidaysis often used as a generic to cover all greetings for all of the winter holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

Google also released a new advertisement for the holiday called, “Happy Holidays- from Android.Here’s the video released by Google -

Not just that – Google also celebrated the holidays this year by giving away a free Galaxy Nexus smartphone to its employees. The company is allowing Gmail users in the U.S. to call Santa, and is bringing down a little bit of snowfall and frost to its search results when searching for the phrase ‘let it snow‘.