Google blocks data from Facebook as competition heats up

Google Inc. has decided to begin blocking Facebook and other Web services from accessing its user’s information, highlighting an ever growing rivalry between the two internet giants. Google made a subtle change to the guidelines that govern how external services can let their users import contacts from Google. Now those services will have to allow their users to export data in a manner similar to how Google handles data export, meaning Facebook will have to change its policy if it wants to allow more users to morph Gmail contacts with Facebook friends. However, as Mathew Ingram notes at GigaOm, now that Facebook has 500 million users the policy change is a bit late to really force Facebook into having to make any meaningful changes. All it means is that Facebook users won’t be able to automatically use their Gmail contacts to populate their Facebook friends list, but they’ll still be able to use contacts from Yahoo or Microsoft’s services, as well as just find contacts by searching on Facebook. Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20021949-265.html Share...

Tech Talk: Google Offers Money for Bugs

Are you a researcher who likes to find vulnerabilities on web applications? You have a chance to earn money if you can “discover legitimate, critical flaws in its Web applications — including Google.com, Blogger.com, Orkut.com, and YouTube.com”. In a bold move, Google is offering money for bugs that users can find on its various services. The rules are simple: “No automated testing tools are allowed, nor are attacks against Google’s corporate infrastructure, social engineering and physical attacks, denial-of-service bugs, non- Web application vulnerabilities, SEO blackhat techniques, vulnerabilities in Google-branded websites hosted by third parties, and flaws in any newly acquired technologies by Google”. And researches can only use their own accounts and must not acquire access to data from another account. Bug reports can earn the research $500 to $3,133.70, depending on the severity and cleverness of the bug reported. The researcher of the bug report that got accepted for the monetary award will also be recognized in Google’s security page. A similar program launched for the Chromium project last January yielded important bug reports and Google hopes to duplicate the success with its web applications. The Chromium project is an open source browser that “aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web.”, according the Chromium website. Sources: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/11/rewarding-web-application-security.html http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228200276 http://dev.chromium.org/Home Share...