Here’s how Facebook is supposed to work: When you don’t want to be someone’s friend anymore, you unfriend them. Or, if you just want to keep certain things private, you can adjust their access settings. The ability to back out of a friendship is as vital online as it is off, which is why this is worrying: British security researchers Shah Mahmood and Yvo Desmedt have found a simple way to create un-unfriendable zombie accounts (via the Arxiv blog). Here’s how it works: 1. Make a new account Using an existing account works too, but the trick requires near-constant deactivation. 2. [...]

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During a presentation to Microsoft’s consumer focused efforts to analysts, with many key points related to Microsoft products, Steve Ballmer also mentioned Apple’s iPad tablet. Ballmer words on iPad: “Today, one of the top issues on my mind, hey there’s a category — tablets. Apple has done an interesting job. They’ve sold more than I’d like them to sell. We think about that. So it’s our job to say, we have got to make things happen. Just like we made things happen with netbooks, we have to do that with Slates.”

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