Twitter quietly launches tags to location feeds with Foursquare

Finally Twitter will let you see when tweets are from a specific place, like a business, sports stadium, or music festival. After a reader tipped us off, Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch it’s now rolling out this new location feature to all iOS users, with other platforms coming later.

Location feeds linked to from these tags could inspire people to tweet more while out and about, fuel Moments about particular places, and improve Twitter’s ad targeting data. Better location functionality could be an important building block for Twitter’s future products and revenue potential.

What’s new is that specific location tags now appear in the main Timeline and on profiles, clueing people in to the fact there are location feeds to browse. The Foursquare branding and design of the location feeds is new too. Despite confirming the news to us previously, Twitter says a basic version of location feeds was available before, but there was no way to tell a tweet was tagged with a location unless you opened its detail view.

Foursquare is powering precise place identification for the Twitter feature. In exchange it gets prominent branding, links back, and the ability to improve its own database.

Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck tells us “We’re excited about this integration, which has been getting deeper over time. Location can provide important context for any moment, and our location intelligence is best-in-class. We’re proud to support Twitter in the US, Canada, Brazil and many other geographies. Stay tuned for more to come.”

Twitter has always been obsessed with hosting the what and the when. Here it’s finally getting a grip on where.

Read Josh Constine's article at https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/24/what-when-where/.

Here's how your Facebook Messenger inbox is getting smarter

The Facebook Messenger app is about to be updated with a new design that also makes its inbox smarter.

The new look, which rolls out later this week, will change how the app's home tab is organized. Right now, it acts as a pretty standard inbox, showing all of your message threads with the most recent on top.

In the redesign, Messenger's home screen will still display some of your most recent conversations at the top — but it will also add more personalized information farther down.

At a Wired conference in New York, Facebook's Vice President of Messaging Products David Marcus described the update as a "first stab at reinventing the inbox."

Read Karissa Bell’s article at http://mashable.com/2016/06/16/facebook-messenger-home-redesign/.

How data thieves hook victims — and how to beat them

Say what you will about the thieves who ply their trade in the digital realm, you can’t deny they put in a hard day’s work. After all, according to Verizon’s just-released 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report, which analyzed an astounding 100,000 digital security incidents last year, these crooks continue to succeed at stealing corporate and personal data and records by the millions.

And while high-tech trickery and sophisticated technical exploits are certainly employed by some, Verizon’s report suggests that most thieves rely on basic human frailties to do their dirty work. In particular, 63 percent of the successful data breaches studied involved weak, default or stolen passwords, and nearly one-third of the so-called phishing emails (see below) were actually opened by unwitting recipients. The message is clear: Your digital world is more vulnerable than you ever thought. Encouragingly, however, protecting yourself is way easier than you might imagine.

Gary Davis' article discusses:

• Phishing: a foolproof plan for crooks
• How to tell is you've been phished
• Hook removal: how to fix the damage

Read the complete article at https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/16/how-data-thieves-hook-victims-and-how-to-beat-them/.

'Spam King' Sanford Wallace Sentenced to 2½ Years for Facebook Scheme

Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed "spam king" who has bedeviled Web users since the dawn of the public Internet two decades ago, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for bombarding Facebook users, according to court records.

Wallace, 47 — also known as "Spamford" and the handle he preferred himself, "the Spam King" — pleaded guilty in August to electronic mail fraud and to criminal contempt of court, according to sentencing documents filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The contempt charge was leveled against Wallace for disobeying previous orders from one of his many court cases never to access Facebook in the first place.

Judge Edward J. Davila also sentenced King to mental health treatment and five years of probation once he's released. And he barred King from possessing or using any computer without the permission of his probation order.

According to the 2011 indictment, Wallace — using the aliases "David Frederix" and "Laura Frederix," along with at least 1,500 fake Internet domain names (including "GayestProfile.com") — illegally obtained Facebook users' account information to lure them into clicking on a link that would download their friend lists and redirect them to other websites.

In just four days over three user sessions from November 2008 to February 2009, he flooded more than 550,000 Facebook users with more than 27 million spam messages, prosecutors said.

Total damages assessed against King approach $1 billion, according to court records. It's not known how much, if any, of that money Wallace has turned over.

Read Alex Johnson's article at http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/spam-king-sanford-wallace-sentenced-2-years-facebook-scheme-n592651.

Never forget where your car is parked

Forgetting where you parked could soon be an issue of the past, thanks to a new feature in Apple's upcoming iOS 10 that automatically remembers where your car is located.


Via AppleInsider reader Ophir.

Using Apple Maps for directions in the upcoming iOS 10, a user's iPhone will remember a vehicle's location at the end of of a trip. This is done automatically for a trip that does not end at the user's home address.

The new feature, first discovered by reader Ophir, notifies a user that their vehicle is parked and drops a pin on a map in its location. Users can get directions to their parked car, or edit the location to pinpoint it more accurately.

A parked car also shows up automatically as a recommended destination in Apple Maps. That means a "Parked car" option will show up on the Apple Maps lock screen widget for easy access, if a user has it enabled in iOS 10.

Read Neil Hughes' article at appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/14/inside-ios-10-apple-maps-will-remember-where-you-parked-your-car.

With iOS10, Apple may have solved a huge privacy riddle

With iOS 10, your phone will suggest which phrase or address you might want to use next in a message. Your Maps app will show you restaurants nearby you'd probably want to visit, and the Photos app will recognizes faces and scenes.

Sounds nice — until you stop to think about how your phone (or, soon, your Mac) knows all this, and how it's compatible with your privacy.

To be able to make these sorts of predictions, Apple must have a lot of information about you and your habits, and it must store that data somewhere. Logic implies that, if you want your data to be absolutely safe from prying eyes, you can forget about your phone finishing your sentence. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

But maybe you can.

Read Stan Schroeder's article at mashable.com/2016/06/14/apple-differential-privacy/?utm_cid=hp-hh-pri#xBN4IFvbkZqW.

Unique Habits of Ridiculously Likeable People

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likeable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception.

Being likeable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ). Unlike innate, fixed characteristics, such as your intelligence (IQ), EQ is a flexible skill that you can improve with effort.

To help you improve your EQ, Dr Trvis Bradberry uncovered the key behaviors that emotionally intelligent people engage in that make them so likable. Read his article at >https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unique-habits-ridiculously-likeable-people-dr-travis-bradberry?trk=eml-b2_content_ecosystem_digest-recommended_articles-91-null&midToken=AQGFtmzNFEWB5g.