Early this week, Trend Micro released their Online shopping safety tips infographic and this got me thinking of how applicable this was to the Philippines?



After some research, I found my answer – while the percentage of the population that has access to the internet has been increasing, it remains a lackluster 6.5% as of 2009. That means less than 6 million Filipinos have internet access. Various reports from Yahoo! also indicate that on average, less than 5% of Filipinos go online every month to shop and instead majority goes online to use Social Networks or to search. To add more insult to injury, less than 5% of the entire population have credit cards – the typical payment method that is utilized for online shopping.



Maybe this model has changed since 2009/2010 due to the numerous groupon/coupon sites that have been cropping up? But we’ll see by next year how this improves.



Note: Material used in the infographic from various sources.

Have you been receiving a lot of spam messages about a free iPad on Facebook? Read up on Trend Micro’s Blog about the full story behind it.



While this spam is virtually harmless in the sense that it does not install malicious software on your desktop, laptop or Facebook applications. Malicious persons behind it are earning money from ads clicked by unsuspecting users on the “In Memory of Steve Jobs, we’re giving away 1,000 free iPad 2′s” page.



PREVENTION

As much as possible, do not click on the “Free iPad” Facebook spam that you may have received via Facebook. This includes wall posts, chats, comments, emails or private messages.



CURE

If you have inadvertently clicked on the link, and followed the succeeding instructions on the Facebook page, simply close the tab or page that you were directed to.



DANGER RATING

The site is currently not rated by any of the following tools:

Trend Micro Site Safety: Unrated and Untested

McAfee Site Advisor: Queued for testing

WOT: No result found



Disclaimer: I am not a security expert and I offer these instructions with no guarantees. Remember to keep your security software up to date!

If you’re yet to have a crush on MMDA for bringing the latest traffic news on their Twitter and twitpic, prepare to be blown head-over-heels, truly, madly, deeply in love with MMDA for bringing the first ever, real time interactive traffic monitoring system in the country.



The website has three main views of the city with a “System view” showing how the 6 major routes of EDSA (Blue line), Quezon Ave. (Purple line), Espana (Green line), C5 (Brown line), Roxas Boulevard (Light Blue line) and SLEX (Yellow line) interact with each other. Users can click on major points along these lines to get the traffic information.



Users can also view the system on a per line basis and select whether they want only North bound or South bound traffic reports. Finally the system is tied up to Google maps and presented in a map view. There are also live Facebook and Twitter updates shown on the foot of the interface for easy reference.



The website is currently maintained by TV5′s Interaksyon news and MMDA and so far the system shows up-to-the-minute live traffic reports.



Image sources: Images are taken from screen shots of the MMDA Metro Manila Traffic Navigator site.

The Friend Matrix application has been going around Facebook for a couple of days now and many are wondering if the application is legitimate or not. Well here’s what we’ve found out so far and if you’re still worried about it read through our investigation below.



What is it?



As you might have seen, FriendMatrix is a Facebook application that creates “a unique collage of your friends and posts them on your wall” (see above image). Additionally the app tags photos of your friends on the collage which then posts it into the corresponding friends’ walls. Sounds a little bit spammy but nothing bad going on behind the application so far.



Is it bad?



The application asks for “permissions (that) must be accepted in order to use the application because they are required in the analysis process, which enables the application to automatically generate results.” Among these permissions are access to user photos, tags, likes and other activities. While this is harmless at the onset, one should be wary to keep an application with such a wide array of permissions in the long run.



In fact here’s what some popular website reputation analysis tools are saying:

Trend Micro Site Safety: Unrated (Categorized as Entertainment)

McAfee Site Advisor: Safe

WOT: Poor Reputation



Should I use it?



Our initial suggestion says yes, let the application take fun collages of your friends. However, once you are happy with the generated collage, we suggest you promptly remove the application.



To remove the application (after you’ve generated your collage)



1. Click on “Account” then “Privacy Settings” and under “Apps and Websites” click on “Edit Settings”

2. In the section “Apps you use” click on “Edit Settings”

3. You should now have navigated to this page

4. Click on “Edit Settings” and “Remove App” on the right of the applications and websites you no longer use or are unfamiliar with



Image sources: Images are taken from FriendMatrix.co site.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s site recently underwent a long overdue redesign and is now generally cleaner and easier to navigate.



Front Page



On the front page, the 8 main “channels” or sections of the site are clearly marked which makes it easier to browse the site. Ads are now also grouped together and not interspersed throughout content. Headlines are visibly promoted first before other news while the remaining sections (including breaking news) are given equal placement in a somewhat long series of boxes of content. Perhaps the problem with the new layout is that there are still too many boxes of content on the front page which may cause the front page to load slowly.



Down Below



After patiently wading through the rest of the mid-section contents, you get to much richer photo and video displayed in a long bar before you reach the footer. It was weird though that richer content are regulated near the bottom of the screen. Info boxes like weather is also strangely far from Lotto, Forex and Exam results and given far too much prominence than it seemingly should.



Further Reading



When you finally decide which article you want to read, you get into a nice layout of content with tools clearly marked for easy sharing on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Articles are now also given a wider column for easier reading (unlike before where ads took up most of the space on the right and navigation on the left). Those who like discussing Inquirer’s rich content of news and features will find a now more prominent comment section which seems to be far less moderated than before.



Image sources: Images are taken from screen shots of the Inquirer.net site.

To remove the application

1. Click on “Account” then “Privacy Settings” and under “Apps and Websites” click on “Edit Settings”

2. In the section “Apps you use” click on “Edit Settings”

3. You should now have navigated to this page

4. Click on “Edit Settings” and “Remove App” on the right of the applications and websites you no longer use or are unfamiliar with









To remove the page

1. On your Profile Page, click on “Edit Profile”

2. You should now have navigated to this page

3. Click on “Activities and Interests”

4. Click on “Show other pages”

5. Click on “Remove page” on the right of the pages you no longer visit or are unfamiliar with



To remove malicious files that may have been installed on your computer

1. Run your Antivirus or security application or visit TrendMicro’s Housecall for a free scan of your desktop

2. Check out the threat information pages for “JS_OBFUS.AB” and “JS_FBJACK.C” to find out more on how to remove these malicious files on your computer



Disclaimer: I am not a security expert and I offer these instructions with no guarantees. Remember to keep your security software up to date!

Are you affected?
If you have downloaded, opened or clicked on the attachments you need to run your Antivirus program. if you do not have an AV application on your computer, you may check out the Solution provided by Trend Micro below.

More Information:
BBC – Nude worm tempts World Cup fans
TrendMicro- WORM_STAC.A

Are you affected?
A fix has been provided by Norton here Cannot connect to AOL after running LiveUpdate on March 15, 2006.

More Information:
ZDNET UK – Norton update kills AOL connections
PC World Australia – Symantec boots users offline

News:
News.com – McAfee update exterminates Excel
Inq7.net – McAfee ‘bad pattern’ update causes file deletion problems