Protect your Myspace from spam

Now MySpace.com has sued self-proclaimed spam king Scott Richter for allegedly using compromised user accounts to send millions unsolicited ads touting ringtones, polo shirts among other things. So how to protect your Myspace?

Here you can protect :-

1. Do you get complaints from your friends about spam bulletins that were sent in your name? Bad sign!


2. Check your “Sent” mail. Are there messages there that you did not send? Bad sign!


3. Do you see friends on your list that you did not add yourself? Bad sign!


4. Change your password: go to your “Account settings” and click “Change Password” (this reverses the effect of #2)


5. Clean out your profile: go to your “Edit Profile” page and clean out the “About Me”, “I’d like to meet”, “Interests”, … text boxes. (this reverses the effect of #3)


6. Don’t click on links in bulletins. Better still, don’t read your bulletins at all.


7. If you unexpectedly get a MySpace login screen, make sure the URL starts with http://login.myspace.com.


8. So if you use Myspace, use your head. Don’t download or install software from untrusted sources, even those apparently recommended by your friends (Washington Post)


9. Only become ‘friends’ with people you know or artists you know. This blonde chick from Houston with 5000 friends is dying to become your buddy? Chances are, “she” might actually look more like Onslow. If that is actually your type, forget I said that.


10. Go easy on the profile pimping. If you just take whatever HTML you get from some site and paste it in your profile, that’s like taking a drink from a stranger. Next thing you know you’re screwed.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk | http://blog.forret.com/
technorati tags: Myspace Safety Social Networking Spam Spyware

HTML/CSS Hack to Hide Your Friends Section

If you are not a friend-sponge, remove your friend section. Here's all the html code you need to kill that section.

1. Log into MySpace
2. Click the Home link
3. Click the Edit Profile Link
4. Paste this code into the About Me Section:

<style type="text/css">
td.text td.text table table table, td.text td.text table .orangetext15, td.text td.text .redlink, td.text td.text span.btext {display:none;}
td.text td.text table td, td.text td.text table {height:0;padding:0;border:0;}
td.text td.text table {background-color:transparent}
</style>

5. Click the Save All Changes button at the bottom

To view, click Home link and then click View My Profile.

Source: http://www.tech-recipes.com

Principal sues ex-students over MySpace profiles

A Pennsylvania school principal has filed a lawsuit against four former students, claiming they falsely portrayed him as a pot smoker, beer guzzler and pornography lover and sullied his reputation through mock MySpace profiles.

Eric Trosch was principal of Hickory High School in Hermitage, Penn., at the time the short-lived profiles went up on the popular social-networking site. He claims that the students committed defamation by posting three separate profiles bearing his name, official school portrait and a host of "unsubstantiated allegations, derogatory comments and false statements" about him, according to a complaint filed last month in Mercer County, Penn., civil court.

Each of the disputed sites, which went online during the course of one week in December 2005, was removed within days of its appearance after school officials contacted MySpace.com. Trosch has since become principal of Hermitage Middle School.

One profile, which the complaint claims was created by a student named Thomas Cooper, listed an unnamed pornographic flick as Trosch's favorite movie, according to the complaint. Another profile, allegedly posted by students Christopher and Brendan Gebhart, claimed he "liked to have sex with students and brutalize women." A third profile said he "kept a keg of beer behind his desk at school, was on steroids, and smoked marijuana," the court filing said.

The latter posting, which the complaint attributes to Justin Layshock, is already the subject of a federal lawsuit that has been wending its way through court since early last year.

Layshock--then a 17-year-old Hickory High School senior with a 3.3 GPA--and his parents sued Trosch and the Hermitage school district over the school's response to the incident. Its response included suspending him from school and placing him in an alternative education program that allegedly prevented him from progressing with his normal coursework. That complaint argues the school's actions were excessive, violated Layshock's First Amendment free-speech rights, and interfered with his parents' freedom to judge how best to raise and educate their son.