Siliguri Police busted a sex racket operated through a website

10:08 AM

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technology news

 The Siliguri Metropolitan Police (SMP) has busted a sex racket, which was being operated through a website in Siliguri and in an apartment in a township here.

Siliguri Police busted a sex racket operated through a website

After receiving information that the racket was being operated, officials from the detective department conducted raids at some places in Siliguri last night and arrested 10 persons, including five women, who were allegedly involved in the trade. "We had been receiving reports from different sources that a website- www.siliguricallgirls.com had been luring women to jobs. Accordingly, we conducted raids and arrested 10 persons, including five women. Among the males, one student used to supply the girls, and two of them are clients. Two women hail from Dum Dum in North 24 Pargana district, another hail from Habra in the same district and two from Cooch Behar district," said SMP commissioner Jag Mohan here today. 

According to him, police first arrested the student from Tin Batti area and they nabbed the others after his interrogation. 

"The trade was going on in a flat at Uttarayan Township for the past two years.  Action will also be taken against the website," he said.

Source: thestatesman

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Mobile banking hacking cases on the rise in Kalimpong

11:49 PM

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technology news

KALIMPONG, 6 May 2014: The number of cases on hacking of mobile banking data is on the rise in Kalimpong and is posing difficulties to the users as well as the banks which provide the service. The hackers can transfer money out of people’s account through a simple call or an SMS within minutes. In the last two months, as many as 6 cases of mobile banking fraud have been registered at the local police station.

As per the hackers’ modus operandi, they disguise themselves as bank officials and call the customers in the context of solving a certain hypothetical issue. They would then meticulously lure the customers and create a one-time pin code for an online mobile banking transaction and would use the pin-code to withdraw money from the customer's bank account. The hackers have managed to siphon cash worth Rs.7-40 from each individual in the six cases registered in Kalimpong.

State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Union Bank and Bank of India are among the banks where customer’s account has been hacked in the last two months. These banks through letters and SMSs have also started notifying their customers to avoid providing vital banking information to any unknown callers and also to inform the banks if they receive such call.

Moreover, Kalimpong is not the only place which has been plagued by the problem with Siliguri also registering as many as 5 different cases of mobile banking fraud. In a bid to curb the issue, the Siliguri police have started informing the people about such practices through pamphlets and announcements. Meanwhile, Kalimpong police station in-charge Achinta Gupta today informed about the problem through media and urged to people to be aware and vigilant.

Gupta also urged the people to avoid providing any banking information of their account to unknown callers and to inform the police immediately if they receive such calls. He however did not provide any information about the progress in the investigations related to the six registered cases.

Notably, a few days ago hackers managed to withdraw Rs 36,000 from a local doctor’s bank account. The doctor had filed a complaint at the Kalimpong PS. Similarly a local businessman, Binod Agarwal, lost Rs 7,800 on April 26 in a similar way. People say there have been many such cases recently, but not all have taken the initiative to lodge a complaint.

PRADIP LOHAGUN

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Sikkim girl fallen prey to an online scam, lost Rs1.95 lakh

1:45 PM

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technology news

Gyalshing West Sikkim - A girl has fallen prey to an online scam and lost as much as Rs1.95 lakh as she was tricked by her facebook friend named William Jackson from UK, which was later found to be fake. They were active online friends and had been chatting with each other on the social website since April 2, 2014.

Online Scam

The friendship eventually grew and they started talking on phone. During one of the conversation her friend expressed his intensions to send some gifts and money. However, the shipment required some amount to be paid as courier charges, anti-terrorism charges and money registration charges as per government rules. This is when a lady agent and apparently a friend of William Jackson, contacted the girl and provided her with a few bank account details to deposit the money. The innocent girl deposited a total of Rs.1.95 lakh.

However, suspicion arose when the agent asked the girl to fill a form and demanded extra money. When she inquired with the bank, the money she had deposited were already withdrawn. The lady agent too stopped taking her calls, while her online friend has also since been offline.

It was learned nine bank accounts where the girl deposited the amount into were from different states and under different names. The girl has written to the SBI to freeze the fake accounts and have also filed a police complaint. A case under section 420/468/34 and R/S 66 D IT Act 2000 has been registered.

Source:EOI

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Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion

11:24 PM

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technology news

In a play to dominate messaging on phones and the Web, Facebook has acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion.

That's a stunning sum for the five-year old company. But WhatsApp has been able to hold its weight against messaging heavyweights like Twitter (TWTR), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Skype. WhatsApp has upwards of 450 million users, and it is adding an additional million users every day.

Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion

Referring to WhatsApp's soaring growth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call, "No one in the history of the world has done anything like that."
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app for smartphones, according to OnDevice Research.

Buying WhatsApp will only bolster Facebook's already strong position in the crowded messaging world. Messenger, Facebook's a standalone messaging app for mobile devices, is second only to WhatsApp in its share of the smartphone market.
Related: 5 key moments that changed Facebook

Similar to traditional text messaging, WhatsApp allows people to connect via their cellphone numbers. But instead of racking up texting fees, WhatsApp sends the actual messages over mobile broadband. That makes WhatsApp particularly cost effective for communicating with people overseas.

That kind of mobile messaging services have become wildly popular, with twice as many messages sent over the mobile Internet than via traditional texts, according to Deloitte. But most of the messaging industry's revenue is still driven by text messaging.

On the conference call, Facebook said it is not looking to drive revenue from WhatsApp in the near term, instead focusing on growth. Zuckerberg said he doesn't anticipate trying to aggressively grow WhatsApp's revenue until the service reaches "billions" of users.
WhatsApp currently charges a dollar a year after giving customers their first year of use for free. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said on the conference call that WhatsApp's business model is already successful.

That indicates Facebook bought WhatsApp to add value to its existing messaging services, as well as for the long-term potential of the company.
Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 for similar reasons: As young social network users gravitated towards photo-sharing, Facebook wanted to scoop up what could have eventually become a big rival.

Like Instagram, WhatsApp will function as an autonomous unit within Facebook, with all the existing employees coming in as part of the deal.

Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) said it will pay WhatsApp $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in stock. WhatsApp's founders and staff will be eligible for for another $3 billion in stock grants to be paid out if they remain employed by Facebook for four years. Koum will also join Facebook's board of directors.

Source:money.cnn.com

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Darjeeling Chowrasta a Wi-Fi zone

8:51 PM

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Tourism

What is Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity. It is a facility that allows digital devices within a particular area to connect to the Internet and one another. The technology is basic. A Wi-Fi network can be set up in a home within a few minutes

Darjeeling Chowrasta 

When will Chowrasta become a Wi-Fi zone?

Sonam Bhutia, the executive director in charge of the tourism department of the GTA, said on Wednesday that Wi-Fi zone could become a Wi-Fi zone in “two to three weeks”

How will it be useful?

A Wi-Fi connection will provide access to the Internet and all the benefits that it entails. For example, a tourist from Calcutta without a return ticket might be able to buy a Bagdogra-Calcutta ticket online sitting at the Mall without needing to find a cyber café

How will people access it?

Users have to enable Wi-Fi on their phone or laptop or tablet and click connect when their device finds the network

Will those with Internet on their phones benefit?

Yes, but the phone must have Wi-Fi facility. The facility is available in most smartphones. If Wi-Fi is available, tourists will not have to use the data connection on their phones. This should help tourists because data on roaming can be quite costly. The GTA has not specified the speed for the service yet

How does my device get the Wi-Fi signal?

A basic Wi-Fi network is set up using routers — a device that converts a wired Internet connection into a wireless one. At Chowrasta, three routers would be placed to cover the 300m radius

Will it be free for an unlimited duration?

Yes, GTA executive Bhutia has said. There is a downside, though. If no time or data limit is set for Wi-Fi Internet access, then people might start downloading films and songs, thus slowing down the speed at which Internet is available to others

What area will the Wi-Fi cover?

A radius of 300m will be Wi-Fi enabled at Chowrasta

Do Wi-Fi users at Chowrasta need to know a password?

No. One can log in without a password. A password is required in places where the network is secured. In public spaces, such as some airports, Wi-Fi may be accessed without any password

Are hotels in Darjeeling Wi-Fi-enabled?

Some hotels and restaurants in Darjeeling are Wi-Fi enabled. Many residences, too, are Wi-Fi enabled. However, no public space in Darjeeling, the whole of north Bengal and Sikkim is Wi-Fi enabled

Source:Telegraph

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Facebook wants to read your private SMS - Kaspersky

12:01 AM

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technology news

NEW DELHI: Leading social media company Facebook wants to read SMSes and other confidential information of people on the Android mobile phone platform, cyber security firm Kaspersky said today.

"Over the last few days there has been a constant scrutiny over Facebook having access to your SMS. Buried within the latest update for Facebook's Android app is a feature that is causing growing concern among some users," Kaspersky said in a statement today.

No immediate comments were received from Facebook. Facebook is one of the companies that has been accused by US Whistleblower Edward Snowden of sneaking in to private information to help National Security Agency of US in spying at global level. The social media firm has denied that allegation.

The Facebook application at the time of installation on Android mobile phones seeks certain permissions and the updated version now asks users to allow it "Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)".

The social media's logic behind seeking access to SMS is that "if you add a phone number to your account, this allows us to confirm your phone number automatically by finding the confirmation code that we send via text message".

The updated Facebook application now wants to "Read calendar events plus confidential information" which it justifies as it is required to allow "the app to show your calendar availability (based on your phone's calendar) when you're viewing an event on Facebook".

Facebook sends code via SMS that has to be entered when a user registers with the social media website which in a way helps the company verify the authenticity of users twice.

"Two-factor authentication provides an extra level of security, so it's good to see Facebook providing this option ... As a final note, we'd urge people to carefully check the permissions requested by any app when you first install it," Kaspersky Lab's Principal Security Researcher David Emm said.

Kaspersky added the permissions also grants access to multimedia messages, for which reason is not explicitly given.

It expressed apprehension on the word 'automatic' used in the permission sought by Facebook.

"...the key, it seems to lie in the word 'automatically'. Surely the app doesn't need to do this automatically. Facebook could simply prompt me to type in the code manually. Or, at the very least, provide this option," Kaspersky said.

It added that this may be an innocent feature "but in the light of growing concerns about online privacy, such an option would help to allay people's fears".

Facebook is reported to have 93 million users in India out of which 75 million access it from their mobile phone as of December 2013.

The permissions sought by Facebook are apart from similar permissions sought by Google's Android platform in the name of Facebook.

The social media company on its website said: "Keep in mind that Android controls the way the permissions are named, and the way they're named doesn't necessarily reflect the way the Facebook app uses them. We realise that some of these permissions sound scary, so we'd like to provide more info about how we use them."

On the issue of permission sought by Android to access information and edit feature in user's phone, Google has earlier said, "Its an app which you (user) have choice of installing."

Facebook - with more than 1.2 billion users worldwide - is celebrating its 10th birthday amidst challenges of keeping its original base of young users with new innovative social networks coming to the fore.

The company was launched by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004, from Harvard University.

Source:economictimes

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Google outage on Friday took down Gmail

4:01 PM

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technology news

Google Inc suffered a service outage on Friday night that briefly took down Gmail, the email service used by hundreds of millions of people and many businesses across the globe.

Google outage on Friday  took down Gmai

Google, which first acknowledged the outage at 11:12am Pacific Time (1912 GMT), said a little over an hour later that the problem with Gmail had been resolved.

As of late Friday, the company did not offer an explanation for the outage, which affected users in at least India, Britain and the United States and prompted a stream of complaints on Twitter from users in many more countries.

"We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly," the company said on its "App Status" dashboard online, which tracks the state of various Google services.

Google Docs, the cloud-based productivity application that competes against Microsoft Corp's Office suite, also suffered a service disruption, according to the Google dashboard. Other Google properties, the social network Google Plus, and YouTube, appeared to load slowly as well.

Gmail, which includes calendar and chat features, has soared in popularity over the past decade to become one of Google's most successful product offerings. With more than 420 million users, it has begun to make small inroads against Microsoft Exchange in the battle to provide email services for corporate customers as well as individual consumers.

Yahoo Inc, which also runs a rival internet mail service, seized the moment to post a screenshot of the Gmail error page to Twitter. Yahoo later apologized for the barb and deleted the tweet.

Google users attempting to sign on saw a "temporary error" message and a brief note: "We're sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes." 

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