Chennai executive held for obscene orkut profile

BANGALORE: An executive of a Chennai-based firm has been arrested for creating a fake e-mail through which an "obscene profile" in the name of a housewife here was posted on a popular social networking site, police said today.

A resident here had lodged a complaint with the cyber crime police station in October about the fake profile in Orkut where her phone number was given inviting for sexual favours, following which the woman started receiving calls regularly from strangers, police said.

India survey says Facebook affects productivity

Indian firms are losing productivity because office staff spend too long on social networking sites, a survey says.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) says workers use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin for "romancing" and other purposes.

Office employees questioned in the survey spent on average an hour a day on sites like Facebook, leading to a loss in productivity of nearly 12.5%.

The findings were based on responses from nearly 4,000 corporate employees.

'Dangerous'

"Close to 12.5% of productivity of human re

source in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours," according to the findings of Assocham's Social Development Foundation survey.

"As a matter of fact, [the] growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity and IT companies have already installed software to restrict its use," Assocham secretary general DS Rawat said.

The survey questioned 4,000 employees between the ages of 21 and 60 in Delhi, Bangalore, Madras (Chennai), Cochin, Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow and Kanpur.

The survey found that 77% of workers who had Orkut accounts used them during work hours.

Nearly half of office employees accessed Facebook during work time.

Moreover, four in every 10 workers built their entire Orkut or Facebook profile at work, the survey found.

Some 83% saw nothing wrong in surfing at work during office hours.

According to the survey, 19% of companies allow use of social networking sites only for business purposes, while 16% allow limited personal use.

Only 40% of the employees interviewed said that their companies allowed staff full access to social networking sites.

The survey also says that 84% of respondents in India's major cities show signs of internet addiction - they do not take breaks at appropriate times, they spend more than a "normal" amount of time online, and can get irritable if they are interrupted while surfing.

In September, Portsmouth City Council in southern England banned staff from accessing Facebook on its computers after it was revealed they spent on average 400 hours on the site every month.

The move was expected to stop the "waste of public cash". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8423888.stm

Computer hacker accesses 30 million Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut usernames and passwords

Redwood City, CA - Hackers broke into an online database hosted at RockYou.com and illegally accessed the usernames and passwords for more than 30 million users of Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and Orkut. The hacker may also have accessed usernames and passwords for Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts as well.

RockYou produces widget applications that are widely distributed on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. In order to work properly, these widgets require the user’s username and password. Most social networks have data security requirements for its widget developers, and it may be possible that RockYou was in violation of these requirements.

Orkut Introduces Inline Photo Browsing, Slideshows and Face Detection

Orkut the social networking site popular in Brazil and India has rolled out a new set of features for photo sharing on the site. The new features include Inline photo browsing, photo slideshows and Face detection for tagging friends.

Photo tagging has been pretty popular on Facebook, however, Facebook still does not have options for inline photo browsing and photo slideshows.

Orkut has been spicing up the site by introducing a new design and several more features which have brought it on par with other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, Orkut still lacks the popularity of Facebook and more and more users are now migrating to the other available options.

Do you use Orkut? Have you left it recently for Facebook or Twitter? Let us know through your comments.

More NY sex offenders to be removed from social networking sites

ALBANY - Thirteen additional social-networking Web sites will remove accounts belonging to registered New York sex offenders, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday.

Qasab attracts fans on Orkut, Facebook

26/11 terrorist Ajmal Amir Qasab's supporters in Pakistan use networking sites to whip up support for him

Terrorist Amir Ajmal Qasab, one of the 10 terrorists in the November 26 terror attacks on Mumbai, has attracted a huge fan following among Pakistanis on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut.

One fan of the terrorist, who created an Ajmal Qasab fan club on Orkut, claims Qasab's arrest is part a conspiracy by Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis wing (RAW). "Well, this is my fan club.

I need no introduction. Nowadays, I am busy with officials, trying to prove myself Pakistani," he writes, posing as Qasab.

Man held for posting obscene pics of airhostesses on Facebook, Orkut

New Delhi: An unemployed 30-year-old hotel management graduate has been arrested by the police for posting morphed and obscene photographs of two Jet Airways airhostesses on social networking sites.

The accused, Jitender Singh, who is married and lives at Rohini in northwest Delhi, was arrested by the special cell on Thursday.

"Singh and the victims have a common friend. The victims recently had a dispute with that friend. So, Singh downloaded the victims' photographs from their Facebook accounts and sent morphed, obscene versions to their friends and colleagues," a senior police official said. The photos were also posted on Orkut.

The women, residents of Delhi, in their early 20s, have been with Jet since 2005.

Harassed candidates vent anger on Facebook, Orkut

New Delhi: Those unhappy with the marred Common Admission Test (CAT) are venting their ire on social networking sites Facebook and Orkut. The IIMs and the American firm Prometric, which is conducting the online test, have come in for intense criticism. "Legal cases can be filed against IIM for harassing students in such a way. Many students came to give exams from remote areas. The institute had enough time to prepare itself for such an emergency. This is playing with the life of several students," said one student on Facebook.