App Scams!!!!

Yesterday, I got a whatsapp surprise message from a unknown number.  A link with my phone number was send to me. And it said I'll lose my chance after 30 minutes. I was excited for a second as the link looks very real. But before I click the link, I googled "Whatsapp surprise", and it turns out to be a scam.

There are more and more App scams recently. I saw a news on Weibo the other day. It was about a scam of WeChat. The bad guys hacking the WeChat accounts, especially from overseas students. And they pretend to be the students and try to get some money from the student's parents and. The case in the news was an Australia  overseas student named Benjamin. His WeChat account was stolen and used by the hacker. The hacker told Benjamin's mother that he needed 30,000 RMB (about 4600 AUD) for an extra language course. When his mother try to use voice message, he claimed that it was too noisy around him that he couldn't hear and talk. And ask the mother use text message. Luckily, Benjamin's mother didn't fell for that and get in touch with Benjamin at last. But there were several cases that some parents was worried and transfer the money to the hacker's bank account which they claimed as university's account.

Please be careful and tell your parents and friends that if you need money, you would call them instead of just send them text message and ask for money. Sometimes parents would be very worried when their children are overseas and in trouble. When they couldn't reach them, they might believe many things they wouldn't normally. So be aware and keep in touch with your parents!

What do you think about this kind of scams?

BE CAREFUL OF SOCIAL NETWORKING APPS

There are certain type of apps came out recently could be categorized as social apps, such as Momo, WeChat and so on. 

Take WeChat as an example. WeChat is a mobile phone text and voice messaging communication service developed by Tencent. It is available on Android, iPhone, Windows Phone and Symbian platform. It has normal functions as much as whatsapp, text messages, voice messages, group message. The special about apps like WeChat is they have a function that you would be able to see people around you who has WeChat and you can send message to them. Once you allow WeChat to use your current location, then other people can see you by "Look Around" function as well. When you go into "Look around", you can choose to view female or male only, or view them all. And you can see the distance between you and other users.

It is fine for people using these kinds of apps to contact their friends, or making new friends, but there always are bad guys out there. Bad guys know you are around, and they could pretend to be nice and chat with you, when you lower your guard, they may ask you out since you're just next to them.

I saw a news the other day. A girl was raped by someone she know from WeChat. They just chatting several times and decide to meet each other. She even doesn't know the guy's name. After they met, she saw a movie with him and had a couple of drinks, then she was raped on the way he drives her home. And she was not the only one.

So we really need to be careful and on the alert. Do not meet someone online so easily or when you don't know them very well. I'm not saying making friends online is bad, but we need to be careful. What do you think?

King of The Clone

Tencent Holdings Limited is a Chinese investment holding company whose subsidiaries provide Internet and mobile phone value-added services and operate online advertising services in China. It is famous for its main product, the instant massager - Tencent QQ. QQ is a copy of ICQ back in 1999and its original name is OICQ. QQ is the first and most famous clone of Tencent. After years of accumulation, Tencent has more than billions of users, more than 700 millions of them are actively. The large amount of users is the key to Tencent's success. for example, Tencent has many many many other softwares and applications. Such as micro blog, blog, email, input, browser, payment platform and online shopping website. Of course there are many other brands of these application or website out there. But, first of all, you will not need to register each time, secondly, all your friends and contacts are using the same, why wouldn't you? As long as it is not worse than others, and sometimes, it is even better.

Why is Tencent so success that it is now one of the largest web portals in China? Let's have a look at Tencent's clones. QQ is a clone of ICQ, but it is more humanization and has more functions. Paipai.com is a clone of Taobao, though it is not as good as Taobao, but the large amount of users still give it a really high hit. QQ show is a clone of Cyworld but it has much more nicer avatar and outfits, and it is linked to QQ. Tencent weibo is a clone of Sina weibo. Tencent was launched more than half year after than Sina, but again, the users of Tencent helped it to become one of the only two success micro blog service providers. TenPay is a clone of Alipay which is the payment platform of Taobao. So as we can see, Tencent is very busy copy things from others that has no time to developing their own products. But it got success by its users and fast learning.

However, personally I don't like Tencent very much. I use only QQ from Tencent but nothing else. Do you use anything from Tencent and if no, would you like a enterprise like Tencent?

Personal Info For Sell

Couple of months ago, I got a phone call from Redenergy. Of course they want me to quit my current energy company and join their company, and I'll get much lower rate and big discount from them, and blah blah..I came across this situation before with TRU and it didn't turn out well. But I was boring so I chat with that guy for a while. After a while, I realise that I didn't know this company till then, so how could he called me on my cell phone and know my name? Therefore, I asked him: How did you get my phone number and my name? I never visit your website and leave any information. And he told me they bought it from a company specialised in collecting and selling customers personal information. And they even have the data categorized, like gender, age, occupation, even living area and address. Which means, they may know me better than my classmate!!!

This is a dark side of online activity since your personal information even personal life gets public, there is less and less privacy left. I thought these information was collected from website like Facebook as there are many personal info on it and everyone can see. But I was wrong. They bought these information from all kind of other companies like online dating, online shopping, as you have to put your real information for these kind of website.

This is definitely unethical, and I think it is illegal as well. But how can we stop this? What do you think? 

Sick Viral Marketing

Marketing Viral is defined as marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks and other technologies to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives  through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses. But some people use it in a sick way to get famous.

There is a female called Luo Yufeng, aka "Sister Luo". She is a 27 years old, college graduated girl from a small town. Her appearance is not exactly people would say pretty, and she is only 1.46m tall. 

In late 2009, She started to pass out flyers in Shanghai, looking for a marriageable partner who has to meet inordinate requirements such as he must be elite with a master degree in economics or similar from Peking University or Tsinghua University" and "his height must be between 176cm and 183cm with very good looking." This action became a hot topic online and medias started to interview her.

She started to bring out many crazy comments on every possible social media like Weibo. For example, she claimed to be the smartest human being in the past 300 years and she will be the smartest one for the coming 300 years. After South Africa 2010 World Cup, she said, Messi (Lionel Andrés Messi) is not bad for me, he is young and has a great malleability, but he is too short, I think I'll pass.

People started to disgust her and publicly against her. Then, one day, all of a sudden, she went to USA after she earned enough money from being "famous".  And she started to pass out English version of her original dating flyers near Columbia University and Harvard University.

She got what she wanted, even by using social media in a very sick way. And now she is living in USA. She may not be rich but she sure makes better money before she gets "famous". What do you think? Is that all worth for being disgust by your own people?