Sex between minors appears on Twitter

(Illustration only)

CADIZ A recent Trending Topic on Twitter was a video of a sexual encounter among minors, shot in the Cortadura beach area of the provincial capital, and eliminated when the girl involved in the film complained to police that she had not consented to it being uploaded to the social medium. The matter was investigated by the National Police and the person who uploaded it, also a minor, is now facing a Youth Court sentence, as are the three involved in the act that became public but has now been removed. The video first appeared on the night of April 2, and quickly became a Trending Topic, spreading throughout the Internet. The girl involved made her complaint the following morning, alleging that >>>

Twittering about eating disorders

Leire Pajín

SPAIN Ministers are at present absent from their offices, busy campaigning. In any case, they are only temporary until the next government is sworn in (after the General Elections on November 20). But some of them left behind at least a few things to think about. One of these was Health Minister Leire Pajín, who, having taken the social network Twitter to task over profiles encouraging eating disorders, later  announced that she would be raising the matter at a meeting of European Union health representatives in October. There is no news that she did, but she did say at the time, "this is a problem that is not just ours but is much broader and it's something that is spread across social networks. We have to stand together and ask Twitter and other social networks to help us to block or stop the proliferation of such profiles."Indeed, Spain last week petitioned Twitter to remove controversial profiles from its pages, but the US-based company refused.>>>

Facebook, Twitter et al, access restricted in Town Hall

San Roque Town Hall

SAN ROQUE (Agencies) Uploading a photo onto Facebook, chatting via Tuenti, watching something YouTube, or tweeting in Twitter, will no longer be possible at San Roque Town Hall. Access to social media has been stopped since Monday in all municipal departments. The Mayor's office says the measure has to do with data protection as well as encouraging staff to concentrate on their jobs during working hours. Internet acces is not restricted, however, because it is necessary for several departments, but "connection to social media will have to be done at home." The matter has caused ill feeling among a large part of the staff, particularly from departments such as Multimedia, Festivities & Youth and Culture. Some exceptions have been made, though, and there are 19 people who can continue connecting to the networks, usually heads of departments, but they will have to request it and explain the need for it to get authorization.

Getting to grips with Twitter

GIBRALTAR (Received by e-mail) Get to Grips with Twitter. Find out why Twitter represents a huge potential audience for any brand, product or service, and why it offers a unique communications channel and functionality for both internal and external use in your business. Twitter could be the hub of your Social Media communication efforts and can be used as an effective marketing tool for businesses. Don’t miss out on this 21^st Century Revolution. This workshop will be held on Tuesday, May 17, at The Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce in Casemates Square at 9.30am. (£50 for Chamber Members for the 90 minute session including coffee and information pack.Non Chamber members £80. For more detailed information on the workshops go to www.workITgibraltar.com. To reserve your place please contact: Sue McGowan on sm@gibraltarchamberofcommerce.com  or call 200 78376.

Spammers take advantage of Facebook narcissism

Regular readers will know that we are none too keen on the social networks here. Yet another interesting article on ZDNet by Jennifer Leggio starts off by saying, "Narcissism fuels 'friend collecting,' which is the practice of either aggressively pursuing connections with friends of friends one barely knows, or indiscriminately accepting friend requests from unknown people" and goes on to warn of the dangers of doing so, and offers a few simple ways of avoiding the problem. Please read the whole article here and help make the Internet safer.

Australian 17-year-old takes blame for Twitter chaos

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald) A 17-year-old Australian schoolboy said on Wednesday he unwittingly caused a massive hacker attack on Twitter which sent users to Japanese porn sites and took out the White House press secretary's feed. Pearce Delphin, whose Twitter name is @zzap, admitted exposing a security flaw which was then pounced upon by hackers, affecting thousands of users and causing havoc on the microblogging site for about five hours. Delphin, who lives with his parents in Melbourne, said he tweeted a piece of "mouseover" JavaScript code which brings up a pop-up window when the user hovers their cursor over the message.>

Google tops comparative review of malicious search results

(Source: ZDNet/Ryan Naraine and Dancho Danchev) According to a newly released report by Barracuda Labs, based on a two-month study reviewing more than 25,000 trending topics and 5.5 million search results, Google remains the most popular search engine used by malicious attackers, relying on poisoned keywords. The company, which also sampled Yahoo Search, Bing, and Twitter, contributes Google’s leading position to the fact that Google remains the market share leader in online search, and consequently the most targeted search engine. Key highlights of the study:>