Relationship Status

By Jessica Walker

As I was researching for this post, I was surprised at how important the “Relationship Status” has become on Facebook.  I honestly had no idea how critical this click was for a lot of people.  I guess I am confused because I primarily use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family only.  It does not seem like a dating destination.  Besides, your close friends and family members should know your relationship status already and if they don’t then I would question why they are even on your connections or contacts list in the first place.

Now from a safety standpoint, I would avoid posting the following status options:

•    Single
•    Widowed
•    It’s Complicated
•    Swinger (MySpace option only)

Choosing any one of these status options is like throwing chum into the cyberland sea.  You may attract friendly fish but you’re also inviting predators as well.  Criminals swimming around lurking to feed on emotional carnage will be drawn to the Single status, It’s Complicated status and especially the Widowed status.  As for the Swinger status, that sounds to me like an invitation for a sketchy couple looking to rob you blind while the other keeps you occupied if you know what I mean.  If that’s your thing, please “tread” lightly.

My advice is focus your online dating interaction towards the sites that specialize in just dating and turn off your relationship status on sites like Facebook and MySpace.  If you’re worried about a missed opportunity, don’t sweat it!  If someone wants to know your status they can always send you a message through your profile page.  Which in turn gives you the opportunity to check them out before replying.

For those already in a relationship, I would also avoid the Relationship Status.  In my research, I read far too many stories of public humiliation due to someone changing their status before they had “the talk” with their partner or the bombardment of questions from concerned contacts once they noticed your status changed back to Single.  Check out this article where an ex-partner was harassed through Facebook to the point that a defamation suit was filed.

If your partner gets concerned because you’re not posting your status just simply tell them you are concerned with promoting too much of your personal life online.  I’m sure in this day and age they will understand.

Relationships are complicated enough.  So why layer in another element that could potentially cause you grief.  Let’s throw out the chum bucket and grab a good old fishing pole or two and cast our lines out into the online dating cyberland sea and score our next catch the safer way.

Until next time, here’s to keeping you Safer in the City!

- Jessica

Sexually Attracted or Just Friends?

By Jessica Walker

One of our readers asked how he could avoid being “The Friend” and start being “The Boyfriend.”  Well, I have to confess that I’ve used the “friend” line a time or two or three.  I’ve even had that line used on me at the end of a relationship. So, I took a couple days to think back on my past relationships, trying to come up with ways that I could have avoided that situation.  I researched advice articles posted by men on how to avoid The Friend Zone or The Friend Trap.  These articles advise men to play hard to get instead of being so forth coming.  I kind of agree with that because I personally like a challenge.  But if that approach does not come natural to you already then you may come off looking like a jerk and end up ruining everything by trying to be someone you’re not.  In the end your so called “friend” qualities will surface.

So after days of racking my brain, and for a blonde that seems like a lifetime, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s flat out unavoidable.  Here’s why.  Every time I used that line it was because I was not sexually attracted to the person.  But, I did enjoy their company otherwise I would have told them it was over and that was it.  Which I recall saying that as well on a couple occasions. It is near impossible to be sexually attractive to everyone you date.  That’s what dating is all about; you win some you lose some.  Sometimes people get it right on the first try but for the rest of us it takes time to find the right person. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Let’s look at it from another angle.  If that person wants to truly be your friend than you both may be better off that way.  One of my best friends in the whole world is a guy who I told that I just wanted to be friends.  And you know what his reply was to that… I’ll never forget it, “I’d rather be your friend then not have you in my life.”  It actually worked out to our advantage because all through high school and college we called each other when we had questions about our partners.  Now does that guy sound like he was trapped?  I’ll let you decide.

As for the others I supposedly trapped in The Friend Zone, I’ve bumped into them on Facebook and they are all happily married with kids.  I’d say they escaped the trap as well.

My advice to the reader that posted the question and to everyone else is stop trying to avoid it and just keep dating; have fun and most of all be yourself at all times.  You will eventually find that special someone and in the meantime you may also be so lucky as to find your very own phone a friend.  My wish for you all is that you find a friend like I have, because we have happily spent 15 years trapped in The Friend Zone.

- Jessica

By: GateHouse News Service

Tip of the Week

Valentine’s Day is coming, and that means there might be romance in the air at your workplace. Here are five tips from business etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, author of the book “NewRules@Work: 79 Etiquette Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Get Ahead and Stay Ahead,” to help you and your significant other share a copier by day and a bedroom by night without hurting your professional image:

1. Do not broadcast your relationship on any social media sites. Keep the relationship private. Your co-workers do not need to know the intimate details of your romance. No posting information or photos about your latest love interest on Facebook or sending tweets about it. You never know who will see them.

2. No giant billboards in Times Square! If the relationship fails, be professional and adult about it. A recent billboard in New York publicly announced the affair between Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle Corporation, and his mistress. Even if you have been jilted and the relationship ends badly, you cannot vent your negative feelings in public. This is the risk of office relationships. They sometimes don’t work out and then you have to continue to see or work with the person.

3. No physical contact in the office. No romantic displays. No secret kissing, caressing, hand holding or sex in the office. This also includes your behavior at office parties.

4. Don’t e-mail X-rated Valentine’s Day cards. E-mail is not private. Do not mail an unsigned Valentine’s Day card to a co-worker. Being a secret admirer is not a corporate concept.

5. Your boss shouldn’t be your valentine. Relationships are tricky enough without your boss or subordinate being your valentine. If you are dating your boss, have your reporting relationship changed.

Source: McPhersonSentinel.com

By Harriet Ryan

The police sought a person who claimed to be Bree Condon and who had bilked thousands out of men in an online scam. They were surprised to meet Justin Brown.

Postings over the last two years on the website Who’s Dated Who hint at the number of men who may have been scammed. After the site authors listed both actor Colin Farrell and professional basketball player Marko Jaric as dating Condon, a visitor calling himself Michael Curry wrote, “love the gossip but bree and i have been dating for months.” Others replied with warnings.

“She is bad news,” read one typical posting.

Interestingly, another user disparaging Condon identified himself as Justin Brown.

“I dated her too. Really sweet at first then it’s $5,000 a month just to be one of her boyfriends,” the posting read.

Brown remains in jail, and his court-appointed lawyer did not return calls seeking comment. Satterlee, the detective investigating the Austin case, described him as “cooperative” in an interview with police.

“He made statements that substantiated the information,” Satterlee said.

Jason Boone, a researcher at the National White Collar Crime Center who has studied Internet scams, said Condon’s case stood out as an unusual “true case of identity theft” among the more common schemes targeting bank accounts or credit card information.

“Here you are actually stealing someone’s name and likeness,” he said. As a criminal operation, it is rarer than viruses or e-mail con letters that aim to steal financial information, likely because those require less work, he said.

Impersonating someone else “takes a little more attention and a lot more motivation on the part of an individual to create this type of attractive profile to lure people in,” Boone said.

Austin police are investigating whether Brown created a fake “official” website for Condon as well as Facebook and MySpace profiles in her name. According to the arrest warrant, his days impersonating the model came to an end after he sent a message to Carbona, the Fort Myers investor.

“It opens to this picture of a beautiful woman. A damsel in distress,” Carbona said of the message he received this fall through a networking application on his iPhone. The sender claimed to be Condon and to know Carbona through a friend. She said she was in dire financial straits after an airline had lost her luggage, he recalled.

After several phone conversations, however, Carbona concluded, “I think I have someone who is full of baloney.” He tracked down the real Condon on a film shoot in Wales and said she told him it was a long-standing problem and referred him to her private investigator. Carbona, whose father and grandfather were police officers, said he cooked up a sting operation to pinpoint the fake Condon’s location by offering to pay her motel bill.

He passed the address to the private investigator who notified authorities. He was stunned when the person arrested was male.

“I’d been talking to this person for three months,” Carbona said. “I’m telling you this guy has either had his gonads removed or he is talking through a voice synthesizer.”

“He has a very feminine voice,” Satterlee, the case detective, confirmed.

Brown’s arrest went unnoticed online, where questions about Condon’s real identity and love life linger.

Source: The Los Angeles Times

A new report from McAfee has predicted that social networking sites will be increasingly targeted by cyber criminals this year.

By Jennifer Scott

Tech security specialist McAfee has predicted that popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter will be major platforms for cyber crime throughout 2010.

In its 2010 Threat Predictions report, the company said that the bad guys will specifically target users of social networking sites and third-party applications who will be more trusting of clicking onto links through these sites than in other online situations.

With Twitter specifically, McAfee believes the abbreviated URLs will help to hide any sinister sites that may be otherwise detectable.

“Over the past decade, we’ve seen a tremendous improvement in the ability to successfully monitor, uncover, and stop cyber crime,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, in a statement.

“We’re now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications and more advanced techniques used by cyber criminals.”

However, Green still concluded that the company was “confident” that 2010 will be successful for those involved with cyber security.

Other potential problems that the whitepaper warned of included the increasing use of HTML 5, offering new avenues for malware writers, a continued targeting of Adobe Reader and a rise in the volume of banking Trojans.

Source: IT Pro

Here at Cosmo, we feel the same way about New Year’s resolutions as we do about rules — some are just meant to be broken. Here, 10 things that shouldn’t show up on any Cosmo girl’s list of do’s and don’ts for 2010.

By Zoe Ruderman

1. Quit your job and wait for a dream career opportunity to present itself. Recession shmecession.
Reality check: Suck it up and hang on to your gig for now. Appease yourself by taking a class or picking up a hobby that will make your résumé stand out, like learning a foreign language or starting a blog.

2. Lose five pounds.
Reality check: Hot chicks like Jessica Biel, Beyoncé, and ScarJo are proof that toned and curvy is the new skinny.

3. Finally win back your ex-boyfriend.
Reality check: Move on. We give you permission to engage in some rebound relationship therapy.

4. Buy into all the latest trends.
Reality check: It’s okay to be a slave to fashion…just be a slave to cheap fashion, rather than dropping serious bank on each and every look. Kick yourself later for wearing it, but don’t kick yourself for blowing your paycheck on it.

5. Change your man.
Reality check: While some relationship tweaking is to be expected (hey, few guys are natural-born good kissers), if the words “fixer-upper” and “project” could describe your boyfriend, it’s time to get real.

6. Triple the number of friends you have on Facebook.
Reality check: Less time stalking your friends’ friends’ friends. More time catching up with buddies you actually care about.

7. Don’t eat any junk food.
Reality check: Cutting out all unhealthy food from your diet will most likely lead to binge eating, followed by intense guilt, by mid-January.

8. Watch less trashy TV.
Reality check: Zoning out and de-stressing for a bit every night with the help of good bad television is harmless.

9. Save more money.
Reality check: Let’s be honest. In this economy, we’re just happy to be able to pay our rent, gas, and credit card bill.

10. Keep your number down.
Reality check: Nothin’ wrong with notches on your bedpost, as long as you’re being safe.

Source: lifesytle.msn.com

By Joe Campana

Beware of identity thieves that are students of social engineering. They can exploit your holiday cheer or drear by duping you into becoming another victim of identity theft. The term, social engineering, may sound innocuous, but it actually refers to trickery and deception. Social engineers manipulate people into giving up valuable information, and even money by playing to human emotions.

Most often social engineering refers to turning over sensitive information such as a Social Security number, credit card number, credit card id number (CCID, CSC, CVC, etc.), account or building access code or other confidential information that can be used by the thief for identity theft, fraud, espionage, and other crimes. Victims can even be duped into handing over money directly to sinister social engineers.

Holidays are advantageous to identity thieves that practice social engineering and pickpocketing. Consumers in the holiday mood are likely to have their guard down. Consumers in a heightened emotional state can be taken advantage of more easily. Social engineering identity theft grinches can nab your identity in person, over the telephone, by mail, email and through websites including social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Pickpockets may even use social engineering to engage and distract you emotionally, while another thief snatches your wallet or purse.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. So be cautious of offers to earn additional income over the holidays or to obtain huge discounts on gift items. With the dreary economy and many people out of work, offers for making a quick buck or saving money are attractive. Some schemes scam consumers into giving out their Social Security number in the hope of getting work. Others may steal financial account information when consumers provide payment information thinking they are covering fees associated with bogus “make money now” schemes.

Look out for too good to be true prices on products advertised over the Internet. If the sale is on a popular retailer website that you got to by clicking on a link, how can you be sure they are at the authentic website of a retailer? The website may be a spoof (a clone or lookalike site). The sole purpose of a spoof website is to snatch your financial account information when you think you placed an order with the retailer. To be sure you are at the retailer’s authentic website, search for the retailer website with your search engine, don’t trust a link in an unsolicited email or one posted on social networking website.

Do your homework before doing business or making purchases online. Search the name of the company and look for complaints, alerts and warnings. Internet advertisements that appear on legitimate websites can be dubious if not completely fraudulent. It’s always worth an extra five minutes of online research instead of making an impulse purchase that you may later regret.  Research may not only save you from becoming a victim of identity theft, but you may find a better deal with a reputable retailer by doing your homework.

A recent e-Week Security Watch article lists many common e-scams such as phony charity scams, bogus social networking friend requests, holiday e-cards, super sale pitches, malware ridden Christmas carol websites, job and work from home scams, password stealing scams, e-banking attacks and others. These scams may involve phishing, pharming or malware downloads that infect your computer with not only viruses but also keylogging software that allows fraudsters to capture your keystrokes particularly when you are logging into an online financial account.

Social engineering schemes don’t just involve the Internet. They can occur by phone or by mail. Beware of telephone calls from financial institutions, credit card companies, law enforcement, government agencies and charitable organizations that ask you to provide sensitive information such as your Social Security number or financial account information over the phone. Don’t trust what you see on your caller id, because caller id’s can be faked through a practice called vishing.

Received a notice in the mail that you won the lottery? To collect the $100,000 prize, just wire $1,500 to an offshore agent to cover the taxes before cashing the $2,000 bogus advance check you received with the notice. It was a coincidence that just before a financially needy consumer and very happy prizewinner was going to wire money to the lottery agent, I asked, “Did you enter the lottery?”  That was an “Ah-ha” moment, when they realized they were about to be scammed. You can’t win, if you didn’t enter!

Recently a Madison, Wisconsin woman was taken for nearly $20,000, a laptop computer and a cell phone.  She met a man, an identity thief, through an online dating service. Crafty social engineers play on our strongest emotions, even love.

Whether it is a holiday, a commemorative day, a tragedy, or any day or situation when you may be vulnerable beware of social engineering.

Source: examiner.com

By Seth Liss

People seem to be doing everything online these days: shopping, banking, reading books, staying in touch with friends. But there are still some things that should not be done online. Ending a romantic relationship is one of them, especially when it is done on a public social network.

Yes, apparently this is something that happens enough to have earned its own term, “facebook breakup.” According to urbandictionary.com, it is the act of breaking up with someone by changing your relationship status on Facebook. A broken heart icon is then sent out to your network and a message stating you’re now single. That’s generally followed up by questions like “What happened?” and sympathetic comments like “Stay positive”.

It’s probably not the best way to end a relationship, but it’s fairly common for people in their 20s who don’t want to deal with the drama of breaking up in person.

Here’s how Facebook’s relationship status works: When you fill out your profile you can choose one of six statuses: single, in a relationship, engaged, married, it’s complicated, and in an open relationship. You are not required to choose any but most people choose single or married.

There are gray areas. People who are on and off may choose “it’s complicated.” And if you’re single and you start dating someone, at what point do you change your profile to “in a relationship”? It’s a waiting game and you probably don’t want to be the first to do this. But if you are, you’ll obviously want your partner to change their status.

A colleague here at the Sun Sentinel told me the relationship status issue caused enough drama in his life to make him delete his Facebook account for good.

Here are my recommendations on the best way to use the relationship status:

Don’t change your status unilaterally if you’re dating someone. Don’t even bring up the idea until you are in a serious relationship. That means about six months of dating. Then you can ask if your partner is ready to upgrade your status. It’s the new way of asking if you’re going steady.

Do the break up face-to-face — or at least over the phone — if it was serious enough for a status change. No one should be a victim of a Facebook breakup.

Hit the “Cancel Relationship,” button that allows you to change your status without alerting your friends. That way, you don’t have to deal with all of the questions. (If it is not a friendly breakup, my cousin Ben suggests running home to be the first to change your status.)

Unfriend the person once you’re broken up and remove photos of the two of you together. Even if you decide to be friends, you don’t need to see each other’s status updates or have your ex looking through your photos and wall posts. You can always re-friend after you have both moved on.

Being sensitive on Facebook pays off in the long-term. It may help you find a better match. It’s safer, too. It’s hard to forget the story of the widely reported Facebook break up that led to murder: Sarah Richardson, of Great Britain, was killed by husband Edward Richardson after she had changed her Facebook status to “single.” It’s an extreme example, but it shows the how painful a breakup can be for people on the other side of a Facebook breakup.

Source: sun-sentinel.com

Technological gains may render one person extinct in adultery: The blindsided dupe

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cheating scenario, 1989:

There were errant signs. Like the times you phoned the office and it rang and rang (”I was in the conference room,” he said), like the matchbooks from places with names like the Candlelight Inn, where you’d never been. There were always plausible explanations. Work lunches! Work trips! Work lipstick! You wondered if you were crazy. There was so much wondering. Months, maybe years of uncertainty.

Cheating scenario, 2009:

I found your text messages, Jerk boy. Pack your bags.

* * *

There are so many questions about Tiger Woods’s reported affairs. (A cocktail waitress? Really? Have you seen his wife? And who knew Swedes could get so angry?!) But perhaps what’s most vexing is related to the saucy missives waitress Jaimee Grubbs claims were sent to her by the professional golfer.

Specifically: What kind of nitwit celebrity would still leave an e-trail?

Did he not learn from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), whose affair was apparently discovered because of a text message? Was he not convinced by the career annihilation of Kwame Kilpatrick after the revelation of naughty notes between the former Detroit mayor and his chief of staff? If only Woods had watched a recent episode of “Glee” — Quinn catches Puck sexting — he would have realized the technology that enables you can also destroy you.

This raises a question: In an age of iPhones, TMZ and standard-issue personal GPS devices, is technology killing the affair?

Here’s a potentially apocryphal anecdote, submitted via e-mail to game forum GoNintendo.com: The e-mailer, a soldier, came back from Iraq and settled down to play some Nintendo Wii. He found an unfamiliar avatar lurking in his console. It was the Mii created by his wife’s lover.

Schadenfreude-by-Google, as related in a column written by a London attorney: His client was apparently tooling around on the Google Maps Street View option and looked up a friend’s house. Parked outside was her husband’s Range Rover, identifiable by its custom rims. He was supposed to be on a business trip.

We’re not talking the end of cheating altogether. There will forever be opportunities for hook-ups in bars or incidents of ex-sex. The social scientists who research infidelity say that the Internet is good for adultery. Sites such as cheating portal AshleyMadison.com have made it easier than ever to find some sleazy person whose interests include long walks on the beach and home-wrecking.

And yet maybe technology is doing in the long-term dupe, the dangerous liaison where no one gets caught and no one pays.

Everyone pays these days, Tiger. Everyone pays.

“The first thing my partner and I said,” Mike Russell says. “We said, ‘Wait, he’s got all that money and he doesn’t have a bat phone?’ ” — the secret cell kept just for booty calls.

Russell is a private investigator in Alexandria. He uncovers cheating, or verifies what the wronged parties usually already know. “I just finished talking to a lady a few hours ago,” Russell says. “She sees 300 texts going to the same number on her husband’s phone, she knows what’s happening.”

Because the cheaters never have a bat phone. They never seem to realize how nakedly traceable their actions are. (It’s like sex tapes. Post-Paris Hilton, post-Eric Dane, post-Carrie Prejean, why do people still make sex tapes? Have they never heard of YouTube? Do they think they still have zones of privacy? Ha ha ha, that’s cute.)

But those who try to go bat phone, who try to be smart about their duplicity, still get tripped up in the end. Tasha Cunningham is the founder of DontDateHimGirl.com, a site on which women share their bad-relationship stories and talk about how they totally caught the cheating snakes disguised as boyfriends.

In one of Cunningham’s favorite stories from the site, a guy thought he was being crafty by creating a secret Facebook profile in addition to the one his significant other knew about. He used it to amass dozens of friends, most of them pretty women. Unfortunately, one of those friends turned out to also be a friend of his lady’s. “Or maybe it was a friend of a friend,” Cunningham says. “Often, it’s a friend of a friend,” but what’s the distinction, really? Do degrees of separation even exist anymore, when everyone is connected with everyone else?

“It’s amazing, the people we find are cheating because of their Facebook photos,” says Ed Hruneni, president of the Private Investigators Association of Virginia. “Or . . . we’ll go with Twitter stuff. The wife might be wondering, was he at work on Friday night?” and meanwhile there’s the phone number she’s noticed her husband calling all the time.

Hruneni can find a name to go with that phone number, and within minutes he has subscribed to a Twitter feed. It’ll say something like ” ‘I was with Bulldog on Friday night, and boy did we stay out late.’ There are no photos.” There’s no full name, but then we go back to the wife, and what was her husband’s nickname? Oh, it’s Bulldog? Hunh.

And what about “GPS trackers. We can stick them on cars, real time, and know where you are. . . . we can find passwords you deleted seven years ago,” and do everything legally, Hruneni says.

Let’s ring up Sandy Ain, one of the District’s most prominent divorce attorneys, and ask him how many of his adultery cases involve technology.

“It’s the majority,” Ain says.

And how many involve cheaters being caught by their own technology?

“It’s very often.”

Isn’t it so typical of the way we engage with technology? Always thinking of the benefits, of the way we could tappa-tappa notes to mistresses while sitting innocently next to the girlfriend — never thinking of the times when we’re in the shower and the girlfriend might glance at the BlackBerry.

UR busted.

Source: washingtonpost.com

by Stan Schroeder

The latest research conducted by IT security firm Sophos shows that it’s very easy to convince Facebook users to reveal their personal info to complete strangers.

This is nothing new, mind you – after all, many users see Facebook (Facebook) as a possibility to make new friends – but it is worth noting that simply friending someone you don’t know nothing about can result in identity theft.

Here’s how Sophos conducted their research:

“Sophos created two fictitious users with names based on anagrams of the words “false identity” and “stolen identity”. 21-year-old “Daisy Felettin” was represented by a picture of a toy rubber duck bought at a $2 shop; 56-year-old “Dinette Stonily” posted a profile picture of two cats lying on a rug. Each sent out 100 friend requests to randomly-chosen Facebook users in their age-group.

Within two weeks, a total of 95 strangers chose to become friends with Daisy or Dinette – an even higher response rate then when Sophos first performed the experiment two years ago with a plastic frog. Worse still, in the latest study, eight Facebookers befriended Dinette without even being asked.”

At Sophos, they call it the “rubber duck attack”. The moniker is silly on purpose, as it shows how you can gather someone’s personal info without any technical expertise, simply by working within the social network’s rules.

It’s important to point out that Facebook gives very extensive privacy options for every profile; you can read the details on how to protect your data in our Facebook privacy primer. While there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, even with strangers, Facebook users need to understand that this friendliness can cost them, and the price of identity theft can be very high.

Check out a video showing how the “rubber duck” tactic can be used for identity theft below.

Source and Video: mashable.com