Facebook has added an account delete option but it wasn't well publicized until around a day ago on Slashdot. Unlike the "de-activation" many users have been forced into when trying to close their account, the delete function actually deletes your account and all your personal information. If you're excited to hear the news, here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
Hate your online social networks? Sick of acquaintances who barely know you eating up hours of your time and rating how attractive you are compared to others? Want to get to know real people? Want to kick the habit? Kill yourself... online that is!
Since the launch of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, over 800 people have cathartically killed their online identities, de-friended over 50,000 friends, and removed over 200,000 tweets. Even Facebook got in on the action, sending a baseless legal threat to the group which was posted to the whistleblower site Cryptome.
The site will quickly delete all of the content on your accounts at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Better yet, you can watch it do this live and enjoy watching your online demise which is as close as you'll get to an out of body experience without risking your health by fasting or taking drugs.
Why stop there though? These sites make money using their user's information (which is never really deleted anyways) to sell advertising. Give them something they'll love: more information for their hungry databases. Fill it with junk, join random groups, send meaningless messages, and friend request people you'd never even be remotely interested in back when you had your online identity. Poison the machine!
UPDATE: There is now an anonymous forum for Iranians to discuss the situation over there and send anonymous reports and testimony. It's called anonymous Iran, and it's located at: http://iran.whyweprotest.net/
Iran is on fire! and it's being done with technology. I will be doing a more indepth write up for the next Hack This Zine but these are the main points so far.
- After a sham election, iranians used twitter and facebook to organize and to get the message out.
-Regular media is not in the country right now, it's all indymedia style and bloggers within the country. The government knows this and are targeting anyone with a camera or a cell phone
-Proxies are playing a huge role right now, allowing iranians to circumvent government censors.
-People are setting up ECD on a large scale to attack main websites with websites already going down.
-Videos and pictures of people getting shot in iran are getting out through twitter and youtube.
- Fake twitter accounts spreading disinfo are popping up: http://twitspam.org/?p=1403
Fucked up police state crap:
-People injured are being arrested at hospitals
-Starting last night, raids are happening on people involved with protests.
- From the washington post :
"Two European companies — a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker — last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents.
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.
A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for “lawful intercept functionality,” a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement’s ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.
In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression"
Really Inspring Stuff:
-Videos coming out show women in burkas gathering rocks and handing them to young men as they walk towards police.
-People seem to be very unafraid of paramilitary groups, even as people are getting shot.
-Most of the people that are protesting right now concerned not with the election but the shadow government that exists.
- From the huffington post, emailed to them from someone on the ground: Just got home...haven't read you're blog yet but if there's a lot of stories about violence I'm sure they're all true. I don't know where to start, I'd taken my camera but had the sence to take out the memory card this came in hany as I was serched twice (by Basij) before getting stuck in the middle of hell. If I'd been caught with pictures it would mean jail time and a possible a charge of spying (as I'm a Canadian citizen). Eventually I dropped of the camera at the house of a friend without being able to take any pictures as it would make me a definate target...The chants of death to Khamenei are true...I witnessed peoples fear of the Basij dissapear, an 80 year old chadori woman with rocks in her hands calling for the exacution of khamenei and all Basij...A group of Basij were surrounded and forced in to a building, the front was blocked with garbage and set on fire, They (basij) opened fire on the crowd with what I assume were blanks, the crowed disspersed for a moment the came back with a fury...thats when the molotov cocktails came out. When I moved on the building was on fire...an hour later when I passed by again there wasn't much of a building left. There was full blown war...there was a young man who had taken all of a basij's things including their teargas rifle. We were finnaly able to get out on the back of motorcycle...the ride home took 25 minutes,for 15 minutes of it we were passing intermitently though Basij and protesters fires placed to displace the teargas... might I add the 3 hours that we walked through fire we didn't see one shop or car that had been damaged by protesters...however I just recieved word for the one who was kind enough to keep my camera and other belongings that the Basij had gone into her street and destoryed cars...thats all I can get out for now hope some of it may be useful...I'm pissed I was unable to get pictures.
The best place for updates right now is huffington post, most of the major media is taking their info from huffington or from twitter accounts. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215...
Reposted from the binaryfreedom.info mailing list
If you are organizing with a group that believes a better world is possible and spend your energy trying to realize it, and if this world you envision is not beholden to corporate interests as our current one is, then there is something ironic and sad about using tools paid for by corporate advertising revenues to get the job done. /Hey, let’s organize a boycott, this message brought to you by Coca-Cola/.
And it’s not just a matter of words. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they pull the plug on your communication channel,then do you win?” If we are really planning to shake the boat, we need to realize that none of these (closed source, walled garden) networks are going to stand with us when we start to threaten shareholder value.
There are options out there that are built by activists like you with the right knowledge to create these tools for all of us, in a open environment.
An example of this software is crabgrass, by the riseup network, you can find it in beta at:
http://we.riseup.net
--Rek2
According to a report from Indybay, a woman was not allowed to portray her self breastfeeding her children on the popular social networking site.
According Patricia Madden one of the individuals who's photo was removed:
"It's amazing to me that we're living in a world where people are
upset by this,'' she said. "You can't see my nipples. It's completely legal to breast-feed in public. Breast-feeding is completely natural and healthy. They took off the photo, without my permission.''
There was a protest against Facebook at their headquarters regarding the removal of the pictures on December 27th in Palo Alto. Facebook as well as many social networking sites have made it clear that breastfeeding is a dirty act!
Read the Report here: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/12/27/18556590.php
anyone concerned with issues like these regarding social networking sites should consider joining we.riseup.net
Several news outlets are reporting that an Australian lawyer just served legal papers to a couple via Facebook, the social network, by citing it as their last known address. This was deemed legal by the courts and sets a scary precedent, many of us have multiple accounts on social networks, most of which we never bother to check. Now that this has happened in Austrailia it could quickly and easily spread to other countries.
If this couple had not checked their facebook status, they could have stood to be in contempt of court and loose their home!
From the article:
Courts usually leave legal documents at a defendant's last known address or somewhere they know family members are.
Mr Moore said the Facebook option was a novel way of serving documents and probably an effective option of bringing court action to someone's attention.
"I suspect it is a first and can't see why it can't be followed here," he said.
Past Issues
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Past Issues
A note from HB staff: This issue is coming out really late. It has been a busy year for all of us, and some of the articles, news, and technology in this issue are way out of date. We decided to go forward and release it anyway becasue it was a half finished issue and we wanted to get it out even if it is really old.
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