Automatic Screen Refresh

When you make changes to your file system and use Explorer, the changes are not usually displayed until you press the F5 key
To refresh automatically:
1. Open RegEdit
2. Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update
3. Set the value name "UpdateMode" to 1

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Changing Windows ICONS

You can change the Icons Windows uses for folders, the Start Menu, opened and closed folder in the Explorer, and many more.
1. Open RegEdit
2. Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Shell Icons
3. Add a string value for each Icon you wish to change.
Example: "3" ="C:\Windows\Icons\MyIcon.ico,0" This will change the closed folders in the Explorer to "MyIcon.ico". Here is a complete list for each value.
0= Unknown file type
1= MSN file types
2= Applications Generic
3= Closed Folder
4= Open Folder
5= 5.25" Drive
6= 3.25" Drive
7= Removable Drive
8= Hard Drive
9= NetWork Drive
10= Network Drive Offline
11= CD-ROM Drive
12= RAM Drive
13= Entire Network 14= Network Hub
15= My Computer
16= Printer
17= Network Neighborhood
18= Network Workgroup
19= Start Menu's Program Folders
20= Start Menu's Documents
21= Start Menu's Setting
22= Start Menu's Find
23= Start Menu's Help
24= Start Menu's Run
25= Start Menu's Suspend
26= Start Menu's PC Undock
27= Start Menu's Shutdown 28= Shared
29= Shortcut Arrow
30= (Unknown Overlay)
31= Recycle Bin Empty
32= Recycle Bin Full
33= Dial-up Network
34= DeskTop
35= Control Panel
36= Start Menu's Programs
37= Printer Folder
38= Fonts Folder
39= Taskbar Icon
40= Audio CD
You need to reboot after making changes. You may need to delete the hidden file ShellIconCache if after rebooting the desired Icons are not displayed

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News: Anger at ministers' e-crime reply

The government disagrees with the peers' suggestions.

An influential group of peers has accused the government of putting its "head in the sand" after it rejected their ideas for dealing with e-crime.

The Lords Science and Technology Committee report found the internet was "the playground of criminals".

But the government did not agree with its suggestion that lawlessness "was rife" on the internet.

Committee member the Earl of Erroll said the government's response was "a huge disappointment".

In its report, the Lords committee criticised the government's "Wild West" approach of leaving internet security to individuals as "inefficient and unrealistic".

Disagreement

It called for the police and criminal justice system to have more resources to catch and prosecute internet criminals.

The peers recommended a central law enforcement agency for reporting e-crime, incentives for banks and other companies trading online to improve data security and the setting up of a "kite-mark" to identify internet service providers that guaranteed a secure service.

The government does not agree with the implication that the public has lost confidence in using the internet Government response

And they also argued that steps should be taken to establish legal liability for damage resulting from security flaws found in hardware or software.

But the government made no commitment to accept any of the recommendations.

In a statement, it said: "The government does not agree with the implication that the public has lost confidence in using the internet.

"The continuing increase of trading on the internet, with year-on-year growth of 80% in some areas, does not support such a view ...

"As such, we would refute the suggestion that ... lawlessness is rife."

Business burdens?

The response went on: "The government does take seriously all crime committed by use of the internet and agrees with the committee that confidence in the internet is vital.

"However, we also feel there is an unwarranted suggestion that [the government's] only response to the problem is to regard it as a personal responsibility of the user to take necessary precautions...

Unfortunately, the government dismissed every recommendation out of hand Earl of Erroll

"Legislation will be kept under review, but the government does not consider imposing additional burdens on business is the best way forward."

The Earl of Erroll said: "Unfortunately, the government dismissed every recommendation out of hand and their approach seems to solely consist of putting their head in the sand."

During its inquiry, the committee heard "compelling evidence of substantial amounts of e-crime".

"We recommended that the government set up a group to develop a scheme for recording all forms of e-crime," the earl said.

"The reply just says that the government 'do not see that there is a need for this'. If you have no idea of the scale of the problem, how can you design solutions?"

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News: Support for ad-tracking opt out

Google targets adverts based on searches US privacy advocates and consumer bodies are seeking the creation of an opt-out list for internet users who do not want to be tracked by advertisers. The "do not track" list would prevent companies from tailoring adverts based on a user's web habits. The groups behind the idea include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Consumer Federation of America. They have approached the Federal Trade Commission to create the list. The "do not track" list would be similar to the "do not call list" in the US which stops phone advertisers calling households. Personalised, or social, advertising is expected to be big business in the coming years with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all purchasing online ad firms in recent months. The "do not track" list would require advertisers that place electronic cookies or tags on consumers' computers to register with the FTC all domain names of the servers involved in such activities, according to the groups. "All of this is going to make consumers even more aware of just how much is being tracked Micro Persuasion "Online opt-outs should be as well-known and as easy as the Do Not Call list," Mark Cooper, research director of Consumer Federation of America, told Reuters news agency. The list would prohibit advertisers from collecting and using personally identifiable information about health and financial activities. It would also require independent auditing of companies using behavioural tracking to ensure they upheld privacy standards. While many search engines allow users to opt out of personalised services, it often comes at the expense of being able to use mail accounts and other tools. Steve Rubel, a senior marketing strategist, at Edelman, wrote on his blog Micro Persuasion: "Regardless of where the Feds decide to weigh in, the noise around mining behavioural data and patterns and the potential privacy implications is only going to get louder in the coming months. "All of this is going to make consumers even more aware of just how much is being tracked."

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New Update

Now you not able to send a Message to all your friends. There is Only 2 Options now

One Friend
Group Friend

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Shutdown Your Enemy's PC

with this trick u can make ur OPPONENT'S PC SHUTDOWN.
read CAREFULLLY its very easy and excellent.


SHUTDOWN OPPONENT'S PC FORCEFULLY.

how it runs- you make a shutdown exe and make ur enemy run.

and it happen in 4 EASY STEPS---->>

*************** START ****************


1)OPEN NOTEPAD

2)WRITE SHUTDOWN -S (SHUTDOWN(SPACEBAR)-S)

3)SAVE IT WITH NAME SHUTDOWN.BAT (BAT STANDS FOR BATCH FILE--NEED NOT TO GET INTO THIS CRAP JUST DO AS I ASK)

4)SEND THE SAVED FILE TO UR FRIEND AND ASK HIM TO RUN IT.(VIA ANY MASSENGER(YAHOO,MSN,IRC,EYEBALL,ETC ETC ETC ANYYYYY)OR EMAIL HIM THIS SAVED .BAT FILE.

***************THATS IT FINISHED***************


OK NOW AS SOON AS UR FRIEND OR ENEMY WILL RUN IT HIS PC WILL SHUTDOWN,WITH THE COUNTDOWN STARTING FROM 30 SEC

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Javascript: Watch Dance Of Scrapbook

javascript:b=[]; a=document.images; for(wt=0; wt<a.length; wt++){a[wt].style.position='relative'; b[b.length]=a[wt]}; j=0; setInterval('j++; for(wt=0; wt<b.length; wt++){b[wt].style.left=Math.sin((6.28/a.length)*wt+j/10)*10}; void(0)',1); void(0)

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Javascript: Scrapbook Flooder

Just copy it & Paste in Address bar.

javascript: i=0;nb=document.body.innerHTML.match(/\w+\/\d+\/(\d+).jpg/i)[1];nb1=document.getElementsByTagName('TEXTAREA').item(0).value; document.body.innerHTML+='<iframe name="SbFlood" width="800" height="600"/>'; function a(){vi=replyForm;vi.toUserId.value=nb;vi.target="SbFlood";vi.scrapText.value=nb1 + "[silver]" + i ;vi.action='Scrapbook.aspx?Action.submit';vi.submit();i++};void(setInterval(a,1050))

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Restoring Desktop Icon to the Quicklaunch Bar

Restoring Desktop Icon to the Quicklaunch Bar

If you mistakenly deleted the icon for the Desktop on the Quicklaunch toolbar
Go to C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
(where user_name is replaced by your login name)
Create a Text file called ShowDesktop.SCF with the following contents:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop


Network Access After Norton Anti-Virus Install

Sometimes you can't access a WinXP computer after installing Norton Anti-Virus.
There might be a variety of errors at the other computer depending on the operating system.
On the XP computer, in the Event Viewer / System log, there will be the following error:
The servers configuration parameter "irpstacksize" is too small for the server to use a local device.
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\lanmanserver\parameters
Edit the IRPStackSize
Give it a value of 15
Reboot the computer

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Configure for Auto-Logon

Configure for Auto-Logon

If you are the only person using the computer and what to have it automatically log you on,
Start / Run / "control userpasswords2" - no quotes
Uncheck User must enter a user name and password to use this computer
Services You Can Disable
There are quite a few services you can disable from starting automatically.
This would be to speed up your boot time and free resources.
They are only suggestions so I suggestion you read the description of each one when you run Services
and that you turn them off one at a time.
Some possibilities are:
Alerter - Sends alert messages to specified users that are connected to the server computer.
Application Management - Allows software to tap directly into the Add/Remove Programs feature via the Windows Installer technology.
Background Intelligent Transfer Service - The Background Intelligent Transfer service is used by programs (such as Windows AutoUpdate) to download files by using spare bandwidth.
Clipbook - ClipBook permits you to cut and paste text and graphics over the network.
Error Reporting Service - Allows applications to send error reports to Microsoft in the event of an application fault.
Fast User Switching - Windows XP allows users to switch quickly between accounts, without requiring them to log off.
Help and Support - Allows the XP Built-in Help and Support Center to run.
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service - You don't need this if you have other software to create CDs.
Indexing Service - Indexes contents and properties of files on local and remote computers; provides rapid access to files through flexible querying language.
IP SEC - Manages IP security policy and starts the ISAKMP/Oakley (IKE) and the IP security driver. If you are not on a domain, you likely don't need this running.
Messenger - Transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers. This is how a lot of pop-up windows start appearing on your desktop

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Guest Only Network Access

Guest Only Network Access

If you try and connect to an XP computer and are shown a logins screen with only the computername/Guest,
You may need to change one of the Local Security Policies:
Got to Control Panel - Administrative Tools
Go to Local Policies - Security Options
Check teh Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts
Set it to Classic - local users authenticate as themselves


Hiding a XP Computer from Network Neighborhood

If you want to share files from a XP computer,
yet want to remove it from showing up in the Network Neighborhood,
Run net config server /hidden:yes


Easy Way to Share Multiple Folders

If you need to share multiple folders, running the program SHRPUBW.EXE will bring up a simple dialog box to let you:
Browse to the folder you want to share
Enter in a Share name
Ender in a Share description
Set permissions. Several choices are available
Restart the process from within the same program


Not Viewing Zip Files as Folders

If you want to turn of WindowsXP showing Zip files as folders,
just run:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll


Setting Capslock, Numlock, Scroll Lock

If you want to set the startup state for any or all of these keys,
you just need to edit the registry.
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
Open InitialKeyboardIndicators
Change the value to one of the following numbers
0 - All Keys off
1 - Caps Lock on
2 - Num Lock on
4 - Scroll Lock on
For multiple keys, add their values:
3 - Caps Lock and Num Lock on
5 - Caps Lock and Scroll Lock on
6 - Num Lock and Scroll Lock on
7 - Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock on
Log off and back on again

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Opening Ports or Adding Allowed Programs with SP2's Firewall

Opening Ports or Adding Allowed Programs with SP2's Firewall

1.Click on Start / Run
2.Enter in firewall.cpl
3.Click on the Exceptions tab

Adding a Port for Internet Access:
1.Click on the Add Port button
2.Name it whatever you want
3.Enter in the ports you want to open

Adding a Program for Internet Access
1.Click on Add Program... button
2.A list of all installed programs will be displayed
3.Highlight the one you want to include for Internet access
4.Click on the OK button

Autoexec.nt or Config.nt Errors

If you are getting errors similar to:
The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.
Try copying the file from \windows\repair directory to the one that is in the \windows\system32 directory.


Common Control Panel Applets

The follow are some common Control Panel Applets that are located in the \windows\system32 directory.
If you find yourself using any of these frequently, then you can simply make shortcuts to them on your desktop.

appwiz.cpl >>Add/Remove Programs
desk.cpl >> Display Properties
firewall.cpl >> Firewall Settings
inetcpl.cpl >> Internet Options
mmsys.cpl >> Sound and Audio
ncpa.cpl >> Network Connections
nusrmgr.cpl >> User Accounts
powercfg.cpl >> Power Options
sysdm.cpl >>System Properties
wscui.cpl >> Security Center
wuaucpl.cpl >> Automatic Updates Configuration


Windows Explorer Opens Search Companion Rather than the Folder
If the Windows Explorer opens up the Search Companion rather than opening up the actual folder, the default setting for opening a folder is changed.

To correct this:
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Directory \ shell
Edit the default value to be explorer or none

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Changing title of windows media player

Changing title of windows media player

You can change the title bar for the Windows Media Player

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_USERS \ .DEFAULT \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ WindowsMediaPlayer
3. Create a string value of TitleBar
4. Give it a value of whatever you want to appear in the title bar

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Few Tricks For XP Users

This method may be known to guys who have studied mcsc but also this trick can be used for some most notorious purpose............................

Trick no 1-how to restrict shutdown the second way............
Firstly go to run command and type secpol.msc then go to local policy settings and user rights assingnments.there you will see a option shutdown the system go to that option and remove every account from the list..........the shutdown button of the comp will be missing .......................

Trick no 2-go to the same place above mentioned and goto deny logon and remove the accounts other than administrator nobody can logon but if you remove administrator you may be also prevented from logging on.........
Anyways you can see many option there you can do the same adjustments..............

Warning any trick done should be reversed back if you corrupt these files you have to reload the windows..................

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10 Steps To Be Safe n Sound

1. Update / patch ALL your software every now and then!

2. Check / adjust ALL your settings so they are safe, since they ARENT by default!

3. Use firewall, like ZoneAlarm!

4. Use good passwords: at least 13marks long, containing both letters and numbers. Remember to chance your password every few months atleast!

5. Get a good antivirus program: F-Secure or Norton Antivirus and keep it updated!

6. Don’t open or execute files that you are not 100% sure are absolutely safe nomatter where or how you get them.

7. Wipe your historyfiles (like cookies, internet history and temporary files, etc.), logs and personal files, with specific wiping program (like Eraser) instead of just deleting them.

8. Use encryption to enhance your privacy! Use encrypted email (like Hushmail or Ziplip) and encrypt sensitive files on your computer (PGP).

9. Don’t use public computers for anything you need to type in your logins, they usually have Trojan horses that capture your passwords.

10. Don’t assume anything. If you don’t know, find out! If you cant or don’t understand, ask someone who knows! There’s nothing more dangerous than doing something you don’t really know anything about. That’s the best way to cripple your system or get a Trojan horse on your computer!

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Restart Your Friends' Mobile

here is a new trick to restart ur friends mobile via text msg

with dis trick only 1110,1110i,1112,1100,2100 can be restar.

Just Type 79 inverted commas

just type
CODE
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

in text msg and send it to ur friend having cells mention above and see wast happen


this is tested by me practically and also proved

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Copy Display Picture

Hey people ...


To Copy Others Display Pic


Simple Steps:

1] Add the person of whom you want to get the DP

2] Go to friends list.

3] Find the person...He/she will be there in PENDING REQUESTS

4] Save the image...

DONT ASK ME HOW TO SAVE!!

DONE!!


P.S IF U R ALREADY HIS/HER FRIEND....DELETE HIM/HER AND ADD AGAIN

P.S - I MADE THIS TRICK!! .....could b old for some

Another Way

go to his / her profile

press prt scr

on keyboard

go to paint

press ctrl+v

crop d part u wnt

otherwise, i can save.

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Submarine Fibre Optic one-week repairs shutdown

KARACHI: The system interconnecting Pakistan with the whole world Submarine Fibre Optic Cable seame.we3 will be shutdown for repairs from October 31, 2007 to November 7, 2007.

Senior journalist Zubair Kasuri said that the PTCL has already notified to all the companies providing Internet service across the country in this regard.

PTCL sources told that the Fibre Optic Cable was being closed for repairs near Indonesia, however, the Internet traffic coming to Pakistan from abroad would be transferred on sea-me.we3.

Sources said that the Internet, mobile phone and foreign call services in Pakistan could face difficulties and may cause interruptions in Internet due to the closure of Submarine 3. Nearly 4000 total bandwidth of Pakistan Submarine 4 would be available countrywide, which was highly inadequate and may irk the customers.

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Joke Of The Day

Top Reasons Eminem's Wife Filed for Divorce
--That comment about Elton being "twice the woman" she ever was.
--Caught Eminem fantasizing about killing other women.

--Sick of hiding her love for the Insane Clown Posse.

--Sure, he talks and raps like a black man, but when he takes down his pants...

--Would rather end up like Nicole Kidman than Nicole SIMPSON.

--Overheard 5-year-old daughter shouting, "Faggot!" while watching "Mr. Rogers".

--Recently overtaken by a strange and unfamiliar compulsion to live past the age of 35.

--I mean come on, people. . . the dude LOST TO STEELY DAN!!!

--Thanks to a recent surgery, her head's no longer implanted deep within her own rectum.

...And The Top Reason Eminem's Wife Filed For Divorce. . .

--Sick of dating a rich, famous, abusive bastard. Would like to try a poor, unknown abusive bastard for a change.

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Write In Style

CLICK HERE
http://meuorkut.com.br/editor_smile.htm

1.Select the Smile Faces, first for your text and second for Background.

2. In the smal text box Named "Texto:" Type your Maximum 8 caracter Word which you want to make smiley.

3. Click on the Button "Criar.

4. Copy your code from the below large text box. Copy only from 3rd line to 2nd Last line.

5. Now Paste this code in your Friend's scrap book and click SUBMIT to make your friend Surprise.

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Article On Orkut

Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called "communities") of users. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation. In April 2007, Orkut introduced polls in communities. The initial target market for Orkut was US but it found its audience in Brazil & Asia, Orkut is catching up in US too.

1 History 2 Features 2.1 Orkut Redesign 3 Criticism 3.1 Flooders and fake profiles 3.2 Hate groups 3.3 Copyright disclaimer 3.4 State Censorship 4 Security and safety 4.1 Hacking accounts and communities with XSS 4.2 MW.Orc worm 4.3 HTTPS Not Obvious 4.4 Session Management and Authentication Issues 5 Orkut Help 5.1 Help Center 5.2 Help Group 6 Legal Issues 6.1 Brazil 6.2 India 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

History

Orkut was launched on January, 2004 by the search company Google, the brainchild of Orkut Büykökten, a Turkish software engineer, who developed it as an independent project while working at Google.

In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Orkut Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code.^[ambiguous] Originally the Orkut community was felt to be elitist, because its membership was by invitation only. At the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark and by the following September it had surpassed 2,000,000. As of August 2007, the number of members equated to over 67,000,000 users.

Features

Orkut has a list of features unique to itself like "Scrapbook","Communities" etc., apart from normal features such as messaging and photo albums.

A user first creates his or her "Profile", in which he/she mentions his/her "Social", "Professional" and "Personal" details, with the option of choosing which group ("Friends", "Friend's friends","everyone") of people would be allowed to view the particulars. A user can also upload his/her photo as the photo of his profile. If necessary, a user can completely remove his profile photo if they wish.

Scrapping, though the word is not accepted officially in English, is popular among the Orkut community as a kind of offline chatting. Users can scrap on another member's scrap book, even if that member is offline. The scrap recipient will be able to see it when he or she visits their scrapbook. Contrary to personal messaging or email, scrap book entries are public, meaning that any one with an orkut account can read others' scraps. Users can reply to a scrap from their scrapbook itself by replying to a scrap. Scraps can also be in HTML, enabling users to post photos, videos, audio files and other embedded objects directly into others' scrapbook.

Another unique feature of orkut is "Communities". Anyone with an orkut account can create a community on anything. One can post topics, inform users about an event, ask them questions or just play games. There are more than a million communities on Orkut with topics ranging from pizza to pasta or from film star to superstar. The first five communities on Orkut were started with in 24 hrs of launch of orkut. Users can upload photos into their Orkut profile with a caption. Users can also add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Videos with the additional option of creating either restricted or un-restricted polls for polling a community of users.

In addition to this, there is a personal messaging feature which is rarely used by members.^{[citation needed]} It is mainly used by community owners to ask others to join their community. One issue of this feature is that it lacks confidentiality, ^{[citation needed]} owing to the reason that if you know the exact link of the message then you can read such messages.

Users have options to rate their friends in the order of "Best Friends", "Good Friends", "Friends", "Acquaintances" and "Haven't met". Further, each member can become fans of any of the friends in their list and can also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons) and is aggregated in terms of a percentage. Unlike Facebook where a member can view profile details of people only on their network, Orkut allows anyone to visit anyone's profile, unless a potential visitor is on your "Ignore List". Importantly, each member can also customize their profile preferences and can restrict information that appear on their profile from their friends and/or others (not on the friends list). The highlight feature is where any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List" and both of them will be informed only when both parties have added each other to their "Crush List".

When a user logs in, they see the people in their friends list in the order of their logging in to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so. Orkut's competitors are other social networking sites including MySpace and Facebook.

Orkut Redesign

The new orkut interface announced on 24th august..

On Friday, August 24, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign. The new UI contains round corners and soft colors including small logotype at upper left corner. The redesign has been announced on the official Orkut Blog. Orkut will be spreading out this UI by the next week to some of the user groups, says Eduardo Cordeiro.

By Thursday, August 30, 2007, most users on Orkut could see changes on their profile pages as per the new redesign. On the 31st, Orkut announced its new features including improvements to the way you view your friends, 9 rather than 8 of your friends displayed on your homepage and profile page and basic links to your friends' content right under their profile picture as you browse through their different pages. It also announced the initial release of Orkut in 5 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Profile editing can take place by clicking the settings button under your profile photo (or alternatively, click the blue settings link at the top of any page).

On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced another new feature. You can now see a "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage where you'll get real-time updates when your friends update or make changes to their profiles, photos and videos. Moreover in case of some things on your profile you want to keep private, Orkut has added an easy opt-out button on the settings page.

Criticism

Flooders and fake profiles

As the number of Orkut users increased, there was a rise in the number of fake and clone profiles, something that can be achieved just in a matter of a few minutes.^[1] Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system, the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. These profiles are normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. It isn't hard to find users owning more than one profile, with some stating they own hundreds. Also, many of the users use these profiles to steal art that has previously posted online and deem it their own.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005 invisible profiles, communities and topics started to appear in Orkut. This could be achieved by using HTML escaping codes and 1x1 pixel photos to fool the engine behind the site.^[2]

In the August 2005 a freeware program made in Delphi called Floodtudo ("tudo" in Portuguese means "everything" - this was developed by a Brazilian) specifically for flooding Orkut. It quickly spread through the users and was easily downloadable (the most common Floodtudo versions were 1.2, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.2). As this program was massively used by thousands of spammers, a big spam wave struck Orkut in September and October 2005. However, changes implemented by the developers in November made this program non-functional.^{[citation needed]}

As the flooding of Orkut was getting out of control, the developers implemented some features in order to stop this, such as not allowing two or more verbatim topics or scrapbook entries to be submitted, forcing the user to wait before posting another topic or scrapbook entry, and the usage of captchas, whenever a scrap entry has a hyperlink. They gave more rights to community moderators as well, so that they can just ban users instead of relying on the developers to remove them, and now community moderators are able to mass-delete posts too.^{[citation needed]}

Hate groups

There has recently been controversy revolving around the use of Orkut by various hate groups. Virulent racists allegedly have a solid following there. Several hate communities focused on racism, Nazism and white supremacy have been deleted due to guideline violation. However, the number of these communities and profiles has not stopped growing because they can be very easily created and it is hard for Orkut to check them ^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, various cases of racism were denounced to police and reported in the Brazilian media.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut.^[3]. Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google on March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.^[4]

Anti-religion, anti-national, and anti-ethnic hate groups have also been spotted. Recently an Indian court has issued notices to Google on some of the groups. The Mumbai Police too is seeking a ban on Orkut post objections raised by political groups. Groups denigrating various political leaders and celebrities have also emerged.

Copyright disclaimer

Orkut's terms of service state:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

and:

This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Orkut users retain copyright to all original work posted on the Orkut service [2].

State Censorship

Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is now blocked by the government. As they say, this is due to national security issues, and ethical Islamic issues about dating and match making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups have communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. Though it was once possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, the site has closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Now it is almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.^{[neutrality disputed]} Also many sites have been published since Orkut's blockade in Iran following the same path such as MyPardis, Cloob or Banhaneh. Of course these websites deal with a high degree of risk to get filtered too, so they have their own censorship policies to meet Iran's un-written regulations and rules of filtering.

In August 2006, United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat [3]. The ensuing moral panic resulted in a renewed ban of the site by Etisalat by July 4, 2007 [4], still in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE [5]. Saudi Arabia is another country that has blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's information ministry is also under pressure to follow suit [6].

Security and safety

Hacking accounts and communities with XSS

In 2005 dozens of communities' ownership was hacked by a Computer Security expert known as Shamsher Terror to demonstrate the undiscovered security vulnerabilities. A similar feat was performed by a Brazilian hacker called Vinícius K-Max , using a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Eventually, various phishing sites were developed with the intent of stealing other people's accounts and communities.

MW.Orc worm

On June 19, 2006 FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc.^[5]

The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that causes the infection installs two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mail banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users click on the "My Computer" icon.

The infection spreads automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors can leave comments visible on the user's page. This link lures visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carries an infection link can vary from case to case.

In addition to stealing personal information, the malware can also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs. The botnet in this case uses an infected PC's bandwidth to distribute large, pirated movie files, potentially slowing down an end-user's connection speed.

The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) creates two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicks the "My Computer" icon, a mail is sent containing their personal data. In addition, they may be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link may be sent to other users that they know in the Orkut network. The infection can be spread manually, but also has the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user.

According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.^[5]

HTTPS Not Obvious

On and around April 17, 2007 users began reporting that secure (https) access to the orkut login server was no longer available. This led to some users cancelling accounts, because of fears that insecure access could lead to compromise of Orkut accounts and by extension Google accounts as well as Gmail accounts since the password for login is transmitted as clear text.

In fact, Google had changed the main login page to http delivery to improve efficiency, but the actual login is still secure using https in an iframe [7]. This information has not been well published by Google, and does not give the users the reassurance of seeing the "secure connection" padlock in the browser. On Friday 17 July 2007 a revised logon page, which is delivered via https , addressing these issues

Session Management and Authentication Issues

On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues. ^[6] The vulnerablities are considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they can lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts. ^[7] The vulnerabilities are not known to be fixed yet and therefore pose threat to the Orkut users.

A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue can be exploited to hijack Google and GMail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions.

Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out. ^[8] His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session can be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out does not kill the session. ^[9]

Orkut Help

Help Center

To resolve users queries and help them on a one click.The orkut have well setup and uptodate help topics in orkut help center Where users can find answers for their questions in addition to this help center

Help Group

There is another official Help group.User can ask,report their problem and get update from help group, also they can suggest new features. This group is running by orkut users. i.e help to each other. With help from orkut officials.

Legal Issues

Brazil

On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release Orkut user’s information of a list of about two dozen Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and involved in child pornography by September 28. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. The information the government is requesting would also be used to identify individuals that are spreading child pornography and hate speech, according to the Brazilian government. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that they will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.

India

Of late, the number of Indians on Orkut has been increasing rapidly.^[10] On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India.^[11] This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content.^[12]

The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut^{[citation needed]} to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community continues to exist and had spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities.

Prior to the 60th Independance Day of India, orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized orkut logo. The word orkut was written in the Devanagiri script and was colored in the Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the orkut India Product Manager, Manu Rekhi,^[13] on the orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.^[14]

On November 23, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.^[15]

Recently, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party which is illegal in India.^[16] The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be one of the mode of communication for these kind of drug abuses.^[17]

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History of Orkut

Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called "communities") of users. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation. In April 2007, Orkut introduced polls in communities. The initial target market for Orkut was US but it found its audience in Brazil & Asia, Orkut is catching up in US too.

Contents [show] 1 History 2 Features 2.1 Orkut Redesign 3 Criticism 3.1 Flooders and fake profiles 3.2 Hate groups 3.3 Copyright disclaimer 3.4 State Censorship 4 Security and safety 4.1 Hacking accounts and communities with XSS 4.2 MW.Orc worm 4.3 HTTPS Not Obvious 4.4 Session Management and Authentication Issues 5 Orkut Help 5.1 Help Center 5.2 Help Group 6 Legal Issues 6.1 Brazil 6.2 India 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] History

Orkut was launched on January, 2004 by the search company Google, the brainchild of Orkut Büykökten, a Turkish software engineer, who developed it as an independent project while working at Google.

In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Orkut Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code.^[ambiguous] Originally the Orkut community was felt to be elitist, because its membership was by invitation only. At the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark and by the following September it had surpassed 2,000,000. As of August 2007, the number of members equated to over 67,000,000 users.

[edit] Features

Orkut has a list of features unique to itself like "Scrapbook","Communities" etc., apart from normal features such as messaging and photo albums.

A user first creates his or her "Profile", in which he/she mentions his/her "Social", "Professional" and "Personal" details, with the option of choosing which group ("Friends", "Friend's friends","everyone") of people would be allowed to view the particulars. A user can also upload his/her photo as the photo of his profile. If necessary, a user can completely remove his profile photo if they wish.

Scrapping, though the word is not accepted officially in English, is popular among the Orkut community as a kind of offline chatting. Users can scrap on another member's scrap book, even if that member is offline. The scrap recipient will be able to see it when he or she visits their scrapbook. Contrary to personal messaging or email, scrap book entries are public, meaning that any one with an orkut account can read others' scraps. Users can reply to a scrap from their scrapbook itself by replying to a scrap. Scraps can also be in HTML, enabling users to post photos, videos, audio files and other embedded objects directly into others' scrapbook.

Another unique feature of orkut is "Communities". Anyone with an orkut account can create a community on anything. One can post topics, inform users about an event, ask them questions or just play games. There are more than a million communities on Orkut with topics ranging from pizza to pasta or from film star to superstar. The first five communities on Orkut were started with in 24 hrs of launch of orkut. Users can upload photos into their Orkut profile with a caption. Users can also add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Videos with the additional option of creating either restricted or un-restricted polls for polling a community of users.

In addition to this, there is a personal messaging feature which is rarely used by members.^{[citation needed]} It is mainly used by community owners to ask others to join their community. One issue of this feature is that it lacks confidentiality, ^{[citation needed]} owing to the reason that if you know the exact link of the message then you can read such messages.

Users have options to rate their friends in the order of "Best Friends", "Good Friends", "Friends", "Acquaintances" and "Haven't met". Further, each member can become fans of any of the friends in their list and can also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons) and is aggregated in terms of a percentage. Unlike Facebook where a member can view profile details of people only on their network, Orkut allows anyone to visit anyone's profile, unless a potential visitor is on your "Ignore List". Importantly, each member can also customize their profile preferences and can restrict information that appear on their profile from their friends and/or others (not on the friends list). The highlight feature is where any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List" and both of them will be informed only when both parties have added each other to their "Crush List".

When a user logs in, they see the people in their friends list in the order of their logging in to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so. Orkut's competitors are other social networking sites including MySpace and Facebook.

Orkut Redesign

The new orkut interface announced on 24th august..

On Friday, August 24, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign. The new UI contains round corners and soft colors including small logotype at upper left corner. The redesign has been announced on the official Orkut Blog. Orkut will be spreading out this UI by the next week to some of the user groups, says Eduardo Cordeiro.

By Thursday, August 30, 2007, most users on Orkut could see changes on their profile pages as per the new redesign. On the 31st, Orkut announced its new features including improvements to the way you view your friends, 9 rather than 8 of your friends displayed on your homepage and profile page and basic links to your friends' content right under their profile picture as you browse through their different pages. It also announced the initial release of Orkut in 5 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Profile editing can take place by clicking the settings button under your profile photo (or alternatively, click the blue settings link at the top of any page).

On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced another new feature. You can now see a "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage where you'll get real-time updates when your friends update or make changes to their profiles, photos and videos. Moreover in case of some things on your profile you want to keep private, Orkut has added an easy opt-out button on the settings page.

Criticism

Flooders and fake profiles

As the number of Orkut users increased, there was a rise in the number of fake and clone profiles, something that can be achieved just in a matter of a few minutes.^[1] Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system, the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. These profiles are normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. It isn't hard to find users owning more than one profile, with some stating they own hundreds. Also, many of the users use these profiles to steal art that has previously posted online and deem it their own.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005 invisible profiles, communities and topics started to appear in Orkut. This could be achieved by using HTML escaping codes and 1x1 pixel photos to fool the engine behind the site.^[2]

In the August 2005 a freeware program made in Delphi called Floodtudo ("tudo" in Portuguese means "everything" - this was developed by a Brazilian) specifically for flooding Orkut. It quickly spread through the users and was easily downloadable (the most common Floodtudo versions were 1.2, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.2). As this program was massively used by thousands of spammers, a big spam wave struck Orkut in September and October 2005. However, changes implemented by the developers in November made this program non-functional.^{[citation needed]}

As the flooding of Orkut was getting out of control, the developers implemented some features in order to stop this, such as not allowing two or more verbatim topics or scrapbook entries to be submitted, forcing the user to wait before posting another topic or scrapbook entry, and the usage of captchas, whenever a scrap entry has a hyperlink. They gave more rights to community moderators as well, so that they can just ban users instead of relying on the developers to remove them, and now community moderators are able to mass-delete posts too.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Hate groups

There has recently been controversy revolving around the use of Orkut by various hate groups. Virulent racists allegedly have a solid following there. Several hate communities focused on racism, Nazism and white supremacy have been deleted due to guideline violation. However, the number of these communities and profiles has not stopped growing because they can be very easily created and it is hard for Orkut to check them ^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, various cases of racism were denounced to police and reported in the Brazilian media.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut.^[3]. Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google on March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.^[4]

Anti-religion, anti-national, and anti-ethnic hate groups have also been spotted. Recently an Indian court has issued notices to Google on some of the groups. The Mumbai Police too is seeking a ban on Orkut post objections raised by political groups. Groups denigrating various political leaders and celebrities have also emerged.

[edit] Copyright disclaimer

Orkut's terms of service state:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

and:

This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Orkut users retain copyright to all original work posted on the Orkut service [2].

[edit] State Censorship

Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website is now blocked by the government. As they say, this is due to national security issues, and ethical Islamic issues about dating and match making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups have communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. Though it was once possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, the site has closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Now it is almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.^{[neutrality disputed]} Also many sites have been published since Orkut's blockade in Iran following the same path such as MyPardis, Cloob or Banhaneh. Of course these websites deal with a high degree of risk to get filtered too, so they have their own censorship policies to meet Iran's un-written regulations and rules of filtering.

In August 2006, United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat [3]. The ensuing moral panic resulted in a renewed ban of the site by Etisalat by July 4, 2007 [4], still in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE [5]. Saudi Arabia is another country that has blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's information ministry is also under pressure to follow suit [6].

[edit] Security and safety

[edit] Hacking accounts and communities with XSS

In 2005 dozens of communities' ownership was hacked by a Computer Security expert known as Shamsher Terror to demonstrate the undiscovered security vulnerabilities. A similar feat was performed by a Brazilian hacker called Vinícius K-Max , using a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Eventually, various phishing sites were developed with the intent of stealing other people's accounts and communities.

[edit] MW.Orc worm

On June 19, 2006 FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc.^[5]

The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that causes the infection installs two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mail banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users click on the "My Computer" icon.

The infection spreads automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors can leave comments visible on the user's page. This link lures visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carries an infection link can vary from case to case.

In addition to stealing personal information, the malware can also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs. The botnet in this case uses an infected PC's bandwidth to distribute large, pirated movie files, potentially slowing down an end-user's connection speed.

The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) creates two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicks the "My Computer" icon, a mail is sent containing their personal data. In addition, they may be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link may be sent to other users that they know in the Orkut network. The infection can be spread manually, but also has the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user.

According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.^[5]

[edit] HTTPS Not Obvious

On and around April 17, 2007 users began reporting that secure (https) access to the orkut login server was no longer available. This led to some users cancelling accounts, because of fears that insecure access could lead to compromise of Orkut accounts and by extension Google accounts as well as Gmail accounts since the password for login is transmitted as clear text.

In fact, Google had changed the main login page to http delivery to improve efficiency, but the actual login is still secure using https in an iframe [7]. This information has not been well published by Google, and does not give the users the reassurance of seeing the "secure connection" padlock in the browser. On Friday 17 July 2007 a revised logon page, which is delivered via https , addressing these issues

[edit] Session Management and Authentication Issues

On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues. ^[6] The vulnerablities are considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they can lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts. ^[7] The vulnerabilities are not known to be fixed yet and therefore pose threat to the Orkut users.

A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue can be exploited to hijack Google and GMail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions.

Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out. ^[8] His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session can be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out does not kill the session. ^[9]

[edit] Orkut Help

[edit] Help Center

To resolve users queries and help them on a one click.The orkut have well setup and uptodate help topics in orkut help center Where users can find answers for their questions in addition to this help center

[edit] Help Group

There is another official Help group.User can ask,report their problem and get update from help group, also they can suggest new features. This group is running by orkut users. i.e help to each other. With help from orkut officials.

[edit] Legal Issues

[edit] Brazil

On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release Orkut user’s information of a list of about two dozen Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and involved in child pornography by September 28. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. The information the government is requesting would also be used to identify individuals that are spreading child pornography and hate speech, according to the Brazilian government. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that they will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.

[edit] India

Of late, the number of Indians on Orkut has been increasing rapidly.^[10] On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India.^[11] This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content.^[12]

The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut^{[citation needed]} to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community continues to exist and had spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities.

Prior to the 60th Independance Day of India, orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized orkut logo. The word orkut was written in the Devanagiri script and was colored in the Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the orkut India Product Manager, Manu Rekhi,^[13] on the orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.^[14]

On November 23, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.^[15]

Recently, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party which is illegal in India.^[16] The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be one of the mode of communication for these kind of drug abuses.^[17]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my regular Email Updates!