Public Wi-Fi Data Security Issues

Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC technology correspondent, investigates security issues with public Wi-Fi networks. If you use internet cafe's with your laptop or smartphone this video is of interest to you!

Here is the link: bbc.in/mfMDkH

The main issue highlighted by this video is cookie theft when logging on to popular sites like Facebook and Hotmail. This can be done by anyone using Firefox and a free add-on: Firesheep.

Facebook Places

Facebook have launched a new version of their iPhone app, version 3.2. This add's Place's to their service in the US. The service is similar to Foursquare but (and Facebook stresses) the Facebook service is limited to your Facebook friends. In fact you have strict control over which friends or lists can see your location. Despite Facebook's tight privacy controls privacy groups are concerned that geotagging your location onto the internet is a step too far.

Version 3.2 also brings Twitter for iPhone (formerly Tweetie 2) style "Pull Down to Update", which is a neat improvement.

For more information about Places check out this article from Mashable.

EDIT: Facebook for iPhone is now version 3.2.1 following bug fixes.

Unshrink URL's

It is very popular to shorten links for twitter/facebook/email so that people so don't have to copy and paste long web addresses. But this leads to a problem, where to these shortened links go?! Typically you have no way of knowing that http://bit.ly/dBMqnl in fact takes you to Web Warp Blog. You do have to be careful online not to follow unknown links that could lead to spyware/adware/viruses. But there is another way. If you use either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome as your web browser and by utilising add-ons & extensions. Then when you are browsing these links are automatically detected and converted to show where they really go.

For Firefox try 'Long URL Please' as advertised on BBC Click's Webscape. It supports lengthening the hyperlink of 80 shortening services including the most popular bit.ly, tinyurl.com & goo.gl.

For Google Chrome try ChromeMUSE. It also allows you to create your own short URL's as well as expanding them when they appear online.

In my opinion the better of the two services by far is Long URL Please which works really fast and is reliable and dependable. It does exactly what it says on the tin! A great Firefox Add-on.