noel alanguilan

i’ve been receiving a lot of these emails of late. they’re scams in my view. the first one came from the “facebook team” saying that i have to “submit a new, updated account agreement” and that i should “unzip the attached file and run the agreement.exe by double-clicking it.” the other is supposedly from the “microsoft team” providing a system scanner to check and get rid of the conficker.b virus in your computer. these are email scams to get a user to run the attachment which is actually a virus. so when you receive them just delete them.

below are samples of the scams i received. i’ll likely post an excerpt any new emails that i think are scams.

from the “facebook team”:

Dear Facebook user,

Due to Facebook policy changes, all Facebook users must submit a new, updated account agreement,
regardless of their original account start date.
Accounts that do not submit the updated account agreement by the deadline will have restricted.

Please unzip the attached file and run “agreement.exe” by double-clicking it.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

from the “microsoft team”:

Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 12/11/2009 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly.
Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected.

To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program.
We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any
files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent
your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards,
Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis)
Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division

watch out. these are scams. do not fall for them.

rockyou, a service that offers up applications to social networking sites, has been hacked. 30 million user passwords along with the associated e-mail address has been compromised and some has been reportedly been leaked on the net. rockyou has apps in facebook and myspace. if you run applications made by rockyou they highly recommend that you change your password in rockyou and other online accounts that use that e-mail/password combination (presumably associated with rockyou). now.

so, a few hours after posting that i will leave facebook for at least three weeks, and i’m already wondering what pictures this friend posted or what that friend wrote as his/her status. terrible really.

i do get e-mail updates from facebook whenever someone sent me facebook mail directly; if someone made a comment about my status or any of my pictures or if someone added or confirmed me as a friend. but that’s about it.

i got to see one of my facebook friends the day after i started this experiment and she made the one-eyebrow-is-higher-than-the-other look asking, “why?!?” and i said, “nothing. trip lang (a whim). its an experiment of mine.” insert devilish grin here.

its been ten days and so far i found out that i use facebook to keep track of my friends and what they are up to–at least what they want to share to their friends–in one place. facebook makes it easy to keep in touch with friends. this is especially true for the ones that live beyond the bounds of metro manila. i don’t have to go to several other sites just to see how donnie or cherry are.

i don’t even play the games anymore. maybe i just don’t find them interesting enough or if they’re my cup of java or not; or maybe i’m just getting old. one in every while i just want to go out into the real world and take photos.

i also recognize fact that maybe more than half of the people i know are not even in facebook but for those that are it is a good venue for global friends to get together and tell everyone else who’d care to read that we’re fine. or not. never mind what the critics say about privacy. we always have the choice of what to put in there or leave out so if you want to keep it private then leave it out and don’t digitize it. we also have a choice on who can see what we put in.

i also learned, strange as it seems, that i find it more satisfying to give friends a call and hear their voices on the other end of the line or send a quick e-mail directly to the person. personal preferred. one can say that you can always use skype but not all of anyone’s friends is skype savvy as lola techie. it is always, always a happy occasion to get snail mail from this friend of mine. not everything digital is fun. its just more convenient. yeah, old school.

and i did find more time to spend on this blog which is a good thing. i have this tendency to neglect it.

ultimately, facebook is just another way of getting in touch with friends. its just done differently.

so now i’m calling the experiment and i’m happy with the results that i got.

call it my personal social (or anti-social) experiment. i will try not to access my facebook for at least 21 days. three weeks.

albert kept asking “why?“. and my answers were, “taking a short break.” and “i want to see if i can walk away from facebook for a bit. call it my social experiment.“

in the end, i just wanted to know why i use facebook and what i really use it for and if the time spent on it is worth it. it may be enlightening for me.

some people completely walk away from it.

i’ll tell you the story of my fb experiment after three weeks.

i’ve notice this has been happening quite often in facebook. i get notifications that a friend of mine would like to put my birthday on his calendar. fine. i would like to keep track of my friends’ birthdays as well so i click on “accept”. the problem is facebook redirects me to another app other than an application that looks like a birthday calendar. its rather sneaky of facebook to have a different app or two to get permission to access a user’s profile information. if i didn’t read the app name i would have clicked on “allow”. be careful out there. everyone wants to take advantage of you.

firefox 3.0.10 did not solve facebook-eating-memory issue for me

i woke up with an update waiting for me. it was apparently firefox 3.0.10. the first thing that came to mind was install the update and visit facebook to see if there were any improvements from the last version. ufortunately, as sh0wn by the screenshots, there were none or very little improvements. it still doesn’t release memory properly unless you close firefox altogether.

i used the same test as the last time.

and this is the usresponsive script which has been giving me problems

it was just a hunch that i’ve been meaning to dive into for a couple of days now. when i’m on facebook, the memory footprint of firefox gets larger and larger until i reach that point where i am forced to close firefox (or kill the process). i do have several tabs open at the same time–besides facebook i am also accessing my mail, this blog, slashdot, a news site, a bike forum, flickr and ubuntu forums, just to name a handful. so it was hard to pin down the culprit to just one site.

this morning i decided to experiment. from a fresh boot:

• start firefox
• log on to facebook only (defaults to my profile)
• click on home
• click on a friend’s profile
• click on home
• click on another friend’s profile
• click on home
• click on a third friend’s profile
• click on home

in the memory and swap history section, each step corresponds to each visit to my 'home' page in facebook

i waited for the browser to finish loading each page before moving on and clicking on the next. by the fourth visit to my home page the browser started to get sluggish and it popped a warning (second image) saying that there is an unresponsive script on the page and it is offering either to let the script continue or to stop it. i opted to stop the script and close the browser. the first image shows an increase in memory usage each time the home page in facebook is revisited. by the fourth visit the swap memory has started to increase as well.

i also found out that closing the browser tab where facebook is assigned does not free the memory it used. that can only be accomlished by closing the browser itself.

this may be the script that's allocating all that memory.

i’m not sure which is really the culprit but i’m leaning more on firefox’s memory handling. i do not remember the previous versions being this  bad at handling memory. but then again facebook may be using a new script for the user’s home page.

i’m just hoping it gets fixed. soon.

my brother tagged me in facebook. 25 random things about me. i’m not sure that if i ignore it the sky would fall on me so rather than risk bike, life and limb i’m listing 25 things down. now if i tag you, you’re not required to make your list but there is that possibility that the sky might fall. on me. would you want that on your conscience? besides its fun. (later on i found out that it was also difficult)

despite the seeming mayhem there are rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. sometimes my dreams come with subtitles.
2. i’m a hopeless romantic.
3. they wanted to name me after the holy family but someone realized it was too long and dropped a name hence–emmanuel jose.
4. they nicknamed me “cute” in college. the name is still used–on occasion–to this day.
5. my roots are in san pablo city. i was born and bred there.
6. i want to ride my bicycle in tuscany.
7. someone said i am an old spirit. i guess i’ve been around for a while now.
8. i am reasonably obsessive compulsive.
9. i’m a beach person. i like the mountains but i’m a beach person first.
10. i’m trying to see if sketching is for me. pencils. two of them. i have yet to use the eraser.
11. i prefer wine over beer.
12. i’m getting back into film photography. i found out how to get everything a lot cheaper. thanks kat.
13. i really want to speak and write in japanese.
14. i like romantic comedies and sad/depressing movies.
15. i like to keep my kitchen knives sharp i have one those sharpening rods.
16. yes, i can cook. but not as well as my girlfriend, brother or mother. well, at the least, i am comfortable in the kitchen.
17. according to my girlfriend, i make great omelettes.
18. i like my hotdogs toasted and my coffee black.
19. i name inanimate objects that i regularly use — chong for the car, kikay for my bike and oscar for my workstation.
20. i was able to bike from my house near ust to tagaytay and back. 130 kilometers total.
21. 59 kilometers per hour is the fastest i’ve gone on a bike. it was made on my way home coming from tagaytay.
22. i wear an earring. left ear.
23. i actually saw the bone inside my left pointy finger. gross. i was trying to create a wooden gun with a bolo and at one point i missed. it was a mess. five stitches.
24. all of my jeans have a hole over the left knee. and none of them was intentionally made.
25. i shook hands and had small talk with former presidents cory aquino and fidel ramos (he was then secretary of defense), and john taylor (of duran duran and power station fame).