Strategies of a Facebook Hackers and How You Can Outsmart Them

With one billion users at same place and hacking techniques at disposal, Facebook has become a huge playground for Hackers. They are coming up with different techniques to exploit Facebook and take advantage of user data. Here’s how you can outsmart them and protect your FB account.

Your personal details are sitting inside a vault called Facebook with a crackable password. I have compiled a list of some most used strategies by Hackers to break this vault.

Stealing Photos

All those Photo collections of beautiful women and attractive girls on Porn sites and forums; Where do they come from? They are stolen from personal albums of people’s profile on Facebook and other Social networks. And without user’s consent, they are circulated on web.

Benefit: Hackers sell these photos to such websites which in again earns revenue out of it.

Solution: Photos published are usually the ones which are publicly visible on Facebook. You should take care of visibility of a content you upload on Facebook. Restrict it to “Friends Only” and choose friends wisely, learn to detect fake Facebook profiles.

Duplicate Profile

Hackers create a new profile on Facebook using the same information of an existing user. And then starts sending Friend requests to people who are friends with original profile. If you were the one to receive such request, most probably you will accept it without a second thought. Even I will, because I know that person.

Benefit: After being friends, hacker has elevated access to your personal information to steal. Also, chances are higher that you will click the links sent by your friend which may open website embedded with malware.

Solution: With such a huge friends list, we often forget if we are already friends with some person. But, if there is even 1% of doubt, double check the profile and friend list for same name. Possibly, also notify the real person about this and report the profile to Facebook.

To avoid falling prey to malicious URLs, I personally use Bitdefender to scan links on webpage for me and notify about any danger.

Track using Geo-location

With smartphones, photos captured also contain GPS log which gives out information about your location. If you happen to click a photo nearby your home and upload it on Facebook, your residence location is revealed. It becomes easy for a hacker to reach where you live.

Solution: Keep a check on visibility of Photos.

Cracking Your Account Password

Hacker may use a phishing page to steal your password or use some hacking tool to crack it. If you search on web, there are number of tools available to hack Facebook account. Most of them are fake and may be used against you. But, with a right tool, it’s all possible.

Solution: Have a strong password for Facebook account. You may use one of the password generators to create an unbreakable one.

Still, if hacker manages to hack your account, learn to get back hacked Facebook account.

Using Facebook Apps

Little knowledge is what all you need to create a Facebook application. Hacker creates application with tempting name and content. Maybe revealing some secret about you or offering an iPhone for 50 bucks. On allowing apps, they could fetch all personal information about you. Some apps pretend to be a Free Game but ask for Credit Card information to start playing. Avoid them!

Solution: Don’t allow access to any random app and check permissions before approving. Be wise. Think logically. “Why a gaming app needs access to my phone number?”. Read my article on Stop Facebook Spammingwhere you can learn how to choose FB apps.

Whatever happens, you are responsible for your account and its protection. I have listed the most used ways to manipulate users but they may come up with some more innovative technique to exploit Facebook. So, you always have to take necessary security precautions while using Facebook.

Customize Facebook Login Page Style and Background Image

Inside Facebook, there may be a scope of customization using apps or beautiful timeline covers or Facebook Themes but what if you want to customize login page. Yes, the experience of awesomeness should start right from logging in to Facebook. Here is a solution which will help you to change Facebook Background image and style of Login page.

Not just background image but also it changes the style of login page. Text boxes to enter username and password are now shown in more elegant way.

It is made possible using the chrome extension called “FB Refresh” which can be downloaded for free from Chrome web store.

After installing, try opening facebook.com in new tab. You’ll notice change in the background image and position of login boxes. This is a default image which can be changed as per choice.

Click gear icon on top right of login box to access extension settings.

From FB Refresh Settings, you can specify image to be used in background. Browse the computer for image by clocking on Choose file button and wait for image upload to complete. Imgur link will appear in the box which signifies upload is complete and now you can save the changes.

You can also paste the Image URL already hosted on web.

Apart from image, there are various customization options offered by the extension. Like, you can change Facebook logo, font sizes and appearance.

Please note that these changes appear only on your computer. To be more specific- Only on the Chrome browser when extension is installed.

There is no risk in typing your username and password in this new boxes. Extension doesn’t collect user data and only responsible for visual appearance.

Which Folders are Taking Up Space on My Hard Disk

Suddenly, the Drive shows red color and you wonder which folder on your hard disk is taking up space. Searching for this manually would be a laborious job. I have already covered Disk Space Analyzers which can do it. And here are some dedicated free tools to know folders taking up space.

Finding those Folders can help you know the reason behind Low disk space. Following are some software tools which can scan Drives and represent Folders according to sizes.

1. FilePro

It is a simple software which represents the folders according to their size in different graphical forms. On opening the program, you have to run a scan of a drive and charts will be created accordingly.

In the Tree Map view, you can zoom in and zoom out with mouse scroll to get the clea idea which folder is taking space on your hard drive.

Right click on the area and you get more options about it like accessing its shell properties or viewing it in Windows explorer.

Programs has other views of presentation namely Tree size, Folder Statistics for easy reading.

Download File Pro (Available as Installer as well as Portable version)

2. Folder Size

Portable Freeware  to find which folder is taking space on windows computer. Presentation and Interface of Folder size is really attractive and easy to read.

Folder sizes can be represented in form of sizes and percentages in pie chart, bar graph and more.

Software is fully functional except Report exporting feature which requires PRO version.

Download Folder Size

3. GetFolderSize

Get Folder Size is completely free application compatible from Windows 2000 to Windows 8. Somewhat slow in scanning and even the reporting isn’t attractive but spotting the folder taking up space is easily spotted. It allows exporting of reports for free.

Download GetFolderSize

4. JDisk Report

JDiskReport is cross-platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux must be installed and requires the presence of Java, at least version 5, preferably the latest available.

Scanning is slower than others, at least on my computer , but it does provide many types of data, all in pie chart format.

While browsing, I could easily find the largest file or folder.

Download JDiskReport

5. RidNacs

Software requires installation and you can optionally add an option in right click context menu to analyze folder.

Folder to be scanned has to be specified and they are represented according to size instantly. But  the results are just like sorting by size without any graphical presentation.

The result of the scan can be exported in different formats (XML, HTML, CSV, TXT), so it could be printed or compared with future scans.

Download RidNacs

Hope these are enough alternatives to find out the folders taking up space. After finding out the obsolete, unused thing, delete it. If not easily found, here are 5 ways to free up Disk Space on Windows.

Make internet browsing faster on 3G USB Dongle/SIM

Not everyone has the luxury of a broadband connection for faster internet browsing. There may be times, may be in college or in some congested areas when you have to use slower USB Dongle or SIM to connect with internet.

We can easily boost internet speed on slower interfaces using some tweaky practices. Below are some tips to achieve faster internet browsing,

1. A text browser loads only the text data of a webpage and eliminates heavier images and animations. One such browser is Lynx which is tremendously fast.
2. If you’re browser is having toolbar(s) – for you news, search option and additional features then its better to uninstall them. Everytime you start browsing, such toolbars automatically load information from their servers.
3. 
   
   
   
   
   

                        Click to Expand on picture

   One great way of getting fast internet speed is by changing your schedule. 
   During daytime, due to network congestion USB Dongle/SIM doesn’t provide 
   good speed. So try and do most work during night-time where you can achieve 
   faster downloading as well as browsing speed. If you’re connected to internet 
   using SIM(in mobile) then cable connectivity is faster option than Bluetooth. 
   Wired interface has less data loss as compared to other mediums.
4. And now the key for boosting internet speed – Just like your mobile calls, signal strength should be strong for internet. Keep your USB Donlge at place where is catches better signal. Along the corners of a room is a good place.
5. Whenever there is internet  connectivity, all softwares start to download updates automatically. You should turn them off to get faster browsing speed.
   
6. Websites take long time to load mainly because of the ads they show. You can use programs likeAdBlocker as addon in your browser to prevent any ad from loading.
7. Mostly, JavaScript, Java Applets, Adobe Flash plug-in are bulkiest elements, so make sure they are turned off from the browser settings. This is one great tip to get faster internet speed.
8. Never turn off your browser’s cache. By default, its ‘On’ which allows your web browser to store some data of every website when visited for the first time. This makes your later visits faster.
9. Enhancing browser cache size is a good way to load websites faster. Previously visited sites may sometimes create problems and your browser can simple switch from downloading these files and retrieve it locally from cache.
10. Apart from this, you can use Internet Download Manager for speeding up your downloads. Also you can avoid working on multiple tabs, keep computer clean and fast for better internet speed.

Basically there is no magic wand, no software for increasing internet speed. We can only boost it and get faster downloading speed by employing the minor tweaks and practices.

Hope the above mentioned points would be of your help.

Find out who is using a fake profile photo on facebook

Have you ever been in a situation where you have received a friend request from a very attractive girl and find yourself asking whether it is her or not in her profile pictures? Trust me, you are not alone! I’m sure many of us have been in a similar situation.

It is very common nowadays  to see people use celebrity pictures or  some cute girl pictures from the internet and upload it as their profile pictures on social networking-sites.

There are many reasons why they do that. Sometimes it is because they don’t like to put their own photos online, or they just upload a fake Facebook photo to get more friend requests from opposite sex.

Identify fake profile photos on Facebook

Last month I wrote an article about how you can identify a fake Facebook profile based on the content or nature of the profile itself. In this post, I will show you how you can take advantage of reverse image search technology to find for images by uploading an image.
This method is pretty handy if you are wondering if your new acquaintance is using a fake picture or not.
1. Go to Google Image and click on the camera icon in the right corner of the search bar. A new window will pop up where you will be prompted to upload an image from your computer or from a URL.

Using Google Image to find for fake Facebook photo

You can either download and save your acquaintance’s Facebook photo and upload it, or you can directly paste his or her photo link in Google Image. If your friend’s photo is private, you can also use the small picture that appears on his or her profile. To get the image link, right-click on the photo and select Copy Image Location if you are under Firefox. You should find similar option for Chrome.

2. After uploading your image, click on search. If the photo has been taken from the web, Google Image will return all web pages where this photo is present.

 
With this powerful method, you can now easily find out who is using a fake profile picture on Facebook or any social-networking  websites.