If you haven’t heard, everybody (like here, here and here in addition to a ton of other places) is talking how a Hotmail phishing attack happened and somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000+ account passwords were leaked.

Use Hotmail and think your account is compromised? Well, if you happen to be in European user and your account name started with an A or B, probably. You’ll know if you attempt to login and can’t. It should be noted Microsoft responded to this immediately and is in the process of restoring accounts.

What caused this fracas to occur in the first place? As the title of this article indicates, phishing. This means a ton of people were fooled into simply giving over their account information. Where did the phishing occur? Social media. It was not an internal Microsoft system fault.

You could simply blame the account leaks on dumb internet users, but the difference today compared to yesteryear is that we now have web sites that routinely require our permission to interconnect.

For example, if you have a Flickr account and use another web service that accesses it, what happens on first use is that you must grant permission for the other site to use it. After you authorize it, the secondary web site can access the original Flickr account.

This is not a bad thing, but what is bad is that we see these authorization notices often, and many just consider it normal and that you should do it. Add to this that in social media these authorization requests all roughly look the same, and you can see where this can pose a problem.

With that said:

• If there is any email that asks you for your email account information, don’t do it.
• If when using social media (such as Facebook, MySpace or otherwise) it asks you for your email account information, don’t do it.
• Only check your mail within the mail system itself and not via any third-party source.

For many, there will come a time when you’re "connected" to too much stuff on the internet. You know you’re too connected when you simply can’t keep up with everything you’re signed up for. Whether it’s email subscriptions, RSS feeds, YouTube channels, MySpace/Facebook friends, AIM buddies and so on, all this information being blasted at you can be too much to handle.

If this sounds like you, maybe it’s time you do what I call The Purge.

There’s the basic purge and the extreme version. We’ll start with the extreme version.

Extreme Purge

1. Make a list of all the stuff you’re currently subscribed to. And I mean all of it. For some it make take time to get this list completed. To make it easier to get your list together, use a password manager like KeePass.

2. Go on an account canceling rampage and do it in such a way where you absolutely cannot get the accounts back. At the end of it all you should only have your primary email and a few instant messenger accounts left – but no more.

3. Commence freaking out for at least 1 to 2 days because you canceled so much stuff.

4. Accept what you did and know your life is better off for it.

Basic Purge

Similar to the Extreme Purge except you don’t actually delete accounts. Instead you remove any public presence the account has and discontinue all notifications, be they in-system or email.

Example using Facebook:

First, login to your Facebook account, go to Settings then Notifications, then tick every single option to Off. For some this will take a lot of clicking but it’s worth it.

Second, adjust your profile and privacy settings so you are not indexed whatsoever.

And that’s it.

Most of you out there will opt for the Basic Purge because it’s not so nerve-wracking.

Indicators that you need to purge

Information overload

This is mentioned above. You have so much info coming at you that you cannot make heads or tails of it anymore. Moreover you’re getting interrupted from receiving the information that’s truly important in your life.

More than 50% of the info blasted your way is worthless or doesn’t entertain anymore

The email notices from your bank are important. The services you pay for that send you notifications are important.

The "joke of the day" daily email isn’t. The incessant blabbering from friends in the form of bulletins isn’t. The YouTube comment notifications aren’t.

You get the idea. Stick to stuff that’s important to you and cut the fluff out.

You receive system notices from web sites you don’t even use anymore

You signed up for a bunch over the past few years and you’re still receiving updates from them – even though you haven’t so much as logged in to those sites in the last six months. Time to cut ‘em out.

What you’re signed up for is literally wasting time and money

Got a "pro" Flickr account but don’t upload photos anymore? Cancel it.

Do you pay for web hosting but do nothing with your web site, nor do you receive any significant traffic? Cancel it and use a freebie WordPress blog instead (or a freebie Blogger or Spaces or LiveJournal or whatever else you want to use).

Efforts to be more internet social only turned out to fill your email inbox full of crap

Social networking is one of those things that takes a fair amount of effort just to make it work for you. But if from your social networking stuff you’re just sitting on the sidelines watching other people use the system while you say, "Why do I even have this?", it’s time to get rid of it. That or at least turn off the notifications because it’s not doing you any good.

Consider doing The Purge as defragging your internet life, so to speak. Sometimes it just needs to be done.

Have you ever purged?

Did you ever reach a point where you said, F&@K IT, I’M DELETING EVERYTHING, and actually did it?

Or are you close to that point?

Let us know in the comments.

Hate Facebook? MySpace seems old hat now? Want something that’s easy to use and gives you instant message capability too?

Here are three you can try out. You’ve most likely never heard of these, but hey, that’s half the fun because being early in sites like these means you’ll probably get more e-popular.

All three of these sites have the ability to connect IM in Meebo, so you can centralize them all in one spot.

You will notice all these sites operate similar to each other, but each have a distinct "personality" of sorts.

Zorpia – www.zorpia.com

A social network that concentrates on more of an international presence compared to just USA-only.

dotblu – www.dotblu.com

The shtick with this site is "social gaming". Games, games and more games. No, not the hardcore MMORPG and FPS style, more like Yahoo! Games used to be back in the day, except this has a social twist to it. You might like this one a lot; it has a very addicting quality to it.

Flixster – www.flixster.com

This is exactly what you think it is, a social network for movie buffs of all types. Rate and share movie reviews, get social with it, etc. You get the picture (bad pun intended).

Why bother with any of these?

A problem that presents itself with social networking as a whole is that it’s too generalized. Yes, there is the ability to create groups in these networks, but most of them have hidden agendas (i.e. spammy).

Social networks with a specific purpose do hold value. If you’re overwhelmed by the "too much stuff" factor of the bigger sites, these smaller sites might be what you were looking for.

What do you think?

Are any of these networks good or are they total crap?

Let us know in the comments.

Somewhere right now on the internet, at least 25,000 people are blogging, video’ing, Twittering, Facebook’ing, MySpace’ing or whatever other-ing something they really shouldn’t about someone in their social circle. Shortly after what they post these people will encounter the wrath of those they posted about (and probably in less than 24 hours). Nasty emails will be shot back and forth and friendships will be ended.

If you want to avoid internet social mistakes that "deal the drama" as they say, below are my tips for keeping drama at bay.

1. If someone you know does not have a public internet presence, ASK before posting anything about them on the internet.

You attend a party and have a digital camera in tow, so you snap a few pictures. All the pictures are innocent. There’s nothing embarrassing about them whatsoever. You decide to post them to your Flickr account, then email your friends and say, "Hey! Look at all these cool photos I took at the party!"

Chances are you’re going to get some really nasty emails fired back at you in short order demanding that you remove them immediately. Why? Because you didn’t ask to put them on the internet first.

As far as you’re concerned, it’s no big deal. But to others it may be a very, very big deal.

And if you reply to complaints by firing back with, "What’s your problem?", you can count on friendships being broken quickly because of it.

Always ask and save yourself the hassle.

2. Before you post a "rant", understand you may incur the wrath of the internet.

Let’s say for the moment I decided to write a baseless stupid statement such as, "Ford sucks!"

Am I going to get a reaction from this? Yes. I will incur the wrath of the Ford automobile community, called every possible name in 40 different languages and be instantly pegged as a fool for stating such a thing – which I would deserve if I actually meant it.

The internet is full of rants. People sometimes feel the need to just blast away something, be it in written, audio or video form. However what these people don’t understand is that the internet is a social medium and you may get a reaction smacked back at you so hard it’ll make your head spin.

There is this ridiculous belief that you can post anything you want on the internet and that nothing could ever possibly come of it. It’s just the internet, right?

Wait until you stir the hornet’s nest and get back to me on that one. It won’t be pretty.

3. If it’s public, chances are it will be saved before you can hit the delete key and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

Using a reference to tip 1 above, let’s say you complied and decided to remove the photos you took of of the party you went to. Are they gone from the internet at that point? Probably not. You did email all your friends about it, and chances are a few of them saved local copies of those photos. And those friends re-uploaded them elsewhere on the internet. Uh-oh. The damage is done at this point and now it’s out of your control.

Another example: You write a blog ranting about how much you think your job sucks. Like a fool, you mention who you work for, other employees who tick you off and so on. You learn that your boss finds out about this so you immediately delete the post.

Trust me, it’s not gone. He or she saved it. If not the boss, then a co-worker. Possibly several of them. You just gave them all ammunition they can use against you later if you tick them off for whatever reason.

Was that rant worth it? Obviously not.

Always assume anything you post on the internet that can be viewed by others will be saved.

4. Think before you type

You’ve heard this a million times by a million different people. They were all right.

You have the luxury of being able to actually think about what you’re going to post to the internet before it actually happens. It isn’t like when you’re speaking and you blurt something out accidentally.

Here’s my suggestion to those of the "ranty" persuasion: The next time you want to rant about something, be it as a comment, a blog post or your own or otherwise, read it back to yourself out loud before posting it.

When you physically speak what you write before you post, you’ll probably think, "Whoa.. this is really angry. I should probably structure this better." Watch how your commentary drastically improves when you do this. It really does work.

You have the luxury of being able to edit before posting. Use that opportunity.

5. Any attempt by you to be funny will crash and burn if you don’t understand the lack of inflection with written word.

This sounds really technical but it isn’t.

One of the biggest differences between spoken word and written is the lack of inflection.

There is no such thing as inflection with the written word when compared to spoken. This is because spoken uses sound (where the inflection happens) and written uses visual.

The workaround, so to speak, of the lack of inflection in written word is to use punctuation marks, adjusting the style of text and the emoticon.

Examples:

• This is a plain sentence.
• This is emphasized.
• This is directing you to the word boat because it’s bold.
• THIS IS SHOUTING.
• The end of this sentence indicates I am joking! : – )

You get the idea.

And now here’s an example of how you crash and burn unintentionally.

"You’re a dork."

On read, this is insulting and not funny whatsoever. You may have meant it to be funny, but without inflection it come across as a serious statement.

Workaround: "You’re a dork! : – )"

The emoticon, a.k.a. the sideways happy face, in combination with the exclamation point should put the point across that yes, you are joking. I say should because believe it or not, even though the emoticon has been around since September 19, 1982, some people still don’t know it.

In that case, you write:

"You’re a dork! (joking!)"

Yes, very obvious, but sometimes you have to be. Or alternatively, try not to joke to avoid crashing and burning in the first place.

Care to comment?

Experiment with your newfound lack-o’-inflection knowledge by commenting with, "Rich is a dork" the insulting way, or shout it out, "RICH IS A DORK". Or maybe try emphasizing with "RICH IS A DORK"?

Minutes of fun! : – )

At right is a screen shot of the Wikipedia page List of social networking websites.

Said honestly I had absolutely no idea there were this many. Yeah, I knew there were quite a few but not so much that you had to press "Page Down" five times to read thru it…

…when reading the web page on a 1680×1050 monitor…

…with the browser maximized.

Sure, you’ve heard of MySpace and Facebook – who hasn’t?

But how about lifeknot?

Or Ryze?

Or wis.dm?

Never heard of any of these? Neither did I until I looked at the list.

And yes, it’s sad the only way I was made aware of these other sites is by examining a generic list of social networking sites.

What’s even crazier is that the list isn’t even complete and never will be as their are other "networks" starting up all the time.

Social networking has reached the point where I call it a "wash". The sites who were first in the game will always be the most popular and most used and anyone else who joins in will never achieve that level of success – and that’s just the way it is.

~ ~ ~

Some related reading: Although this article is a bit old now, I suggest reading The world map of social networks.

It is very interesting how some of these networks turned out to be very country-specific and more or less stayed that way.

More than a few PCMech readers truly don’t care about MySpace mainly due the reason they don’t see a purpose in using it.

I shall give you a 3 things you can do on MySpace that are easier compared to using other services.

Before I do, the thing to remember about that site is that it is a social tool. If you approach it as such it can work out quite well for you.

1. Easy scheduling with calendar app

MySpace does in fact have a calendaring app and it’s directly located off your profile’s home page. It’s easy to use and share event information with. It can also do reminders.

Reason why this is useful: If you have a group of people that need periodic notifications, this is one of the easiest ways to do it. Being that it’s in-system, the notifications are guaranteed to get to the people in your group (with e-mail, mail-outs can be flagged as spam by mistake).

2. Easy blogging

The blog application within MySpace is stupidly easy to use. This is one of the very few blog applications I’ve seen that anyone can use with absolutely zero experience. If you compare this to Microsoft Live Spaces, Yahoo 360 or even WordPress, MySpace’s way of doing it trumps them all in ease of use.

Reason why this is useful: Blogging should be easy and it doesn’t get any easier than MySpace. Furthermore the people in your friend list and groups can subscribe to you easily (there’s even RSS available).

3. Your bulletins will actually get read

When most people post bulletins on other social networks they rarely get read if at all. On MySpace for some magical reason the bulletins you post do get read by those in your friend/group list. Why do people read the bulletins of friends on MySpace but not other places? I have no idea – but it does work.

Reason why this is useful: Posting bulletins is not a waste of time because people will actually read them (for a change).

Still think it’s a big waste of time?

As said above, if you approach MySpace as a social tool you will find use out of it. The reason that site maintains its popularity is largely due to its easy-as-pie social connectivity. Use it to your advantage and you’ll be pleased with the results.

And if you still don’t like it, well.. it’s free so you can’t complain.