Tag Archives: Social Media

Debunking the ‘Well played China’ conspiracy theory

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Along with the SARS-CoV-2 or coronavirus that has spread throughout the world causing a pandemic, conspiracy theories abound. One of the most recent ones being spread through social media can be summarized as follows:

China created the coronavirus to cause global economic collapse – people are told to stay at home to prevent the virus from spreading, businesses temporarily closed & work stoppage has been implemented.
This has sent stock prices dropping then China comes in to buy those low-priced stocks until we end up with a ‘world owned by China’.

Mind-blowing isn’t it? However this conspiracy theory is wrong on several points.

First, SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19 is not a man-made or engineered virus. This has already been proven by scientific studies in the journal Nature Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Second, while it’s true that the US stock market has seen some decline as COVID-19 has spread in the US, the market has made a rebound after the federal government announced an economic stimulus package.

Third, Chinese investors did buy shares but the shares they bought are those of Chinese companies.

In addition, the Chinese government rolled out an economic stimulus package and spent more than 1.2 trillion yuan ($170 billion) buying shares to shore up prices.

Lastly, Peter Nolan, a professor of Chinese Development at Cambridge University, debunks the notion that China is ‘buying the world’ in his latest book entitled “Is China Buying the World?“

‘China has not bought the world and shows little sign of doing so in the near future,’ Nolan writes. ‘Their presence in high-income countries is negligible. This is a remarkable situation for a country that is the world’s largest exporter and its second largest economy and manufacturer. In other words, ‘we’ are inside ‘them’ but ‘they’ are not inside ‘us’.

Peter Nolan, “Is China Buying the World?”

Final words

Stop spreading conspiracy theories. Verify, look for sources or references that are credible. Since most of us are staying at home these days, use the time to search on Google and do some basic research.

If a message is forwarded to you and it has no references or citations, think twice before forwarding it to others or sharing it on social media. Verify. Google. Research. Or ask first from persons you trust to be experts or have knowledge about these things. Don’t be a sheep. Think! If there’s something more dangerous than the coronavirus is it ignorance and being too gullible.

And remember, stay at home. Stay healthy and be safe.

How to contact GCash Customer Service

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Updated November 21, 2021 – read on for details

For most of last week, there has been an issue with GCredit. It wasn’t showing up as an option when I tried to use it in a few purchases. Turns out that GCash has been doing some system maintenance to fix this. Last Wednesday, I decided to report it to GCash customer service, but knowing that their hotline 2882 is often useless, I tried one of their social media accounts. Globe has one @talk2Globe and they’ve answered customer service reports so I figured GCash would have one as well as they have @gcashofficial.

However it turns out that it was only for PR and marketing via social media, so I assumed they had a separate Twitter account for customer support. Searched for “gcash customer support” on Twitter and it led me to an account that posed as one. Turns out it was a fake account meant to steal GCash users’ credentials: mobile number, full name, date of birth and most importantly the MPIN. Cutting to the chase, I was alarmed when that fake account asked for my MPIN:

Fake Gcash customer support account
Fake Gcash customer support account almost got away with my MPIN

I stopped the conversation there even after they messaged back insisting that I reply with my MPIN. This is something that real customer service would never, ever do. Ever. So never give it to them and if they ever do, 99% chance that you are being scammed.

So I did what I should have done in the first place, use the Help Center right inside the GCash app. Tap on the Profile icon on the lower-right corner of the app to open the side menu, then Help > Help Center. At the top of the page, tap on Submit a Ticket. You can then reply from inside the GCash app or via your registered email address since you’ll also receive a copy via email.

So to recap, GCash customer service can only be contacted in the following ways: email (support@gcash.com), self-help options at help.gcash.com, 2882 hotline, and from right inside the GCash app > Submit a ticket. All the other Twitter accounts out there are fake and would just scam you.

Snapchat Cameo: Star in your own video clips

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Taking Bitmoji to the next level, Snapchat is working on an upcoming feature that lets users put their selfies into short clips that convey quick emotion, reaction, or silly situation in Snapchat messages.

It uses Deepfake tech to add your face into short video clips. It’s under limited testing in France as seen in a few tweets by French Snapchat users who have stumbled into it:

https://twitter.com/toddflanderrs/status/1203305620188913665

Snapchat has not yet confirmed when the feature will be available globally and you can be sure this will start a new trend among social messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber etc.

The concept has so many potentials, the applications actually scare me a bit. What do you think of Snapchat Cameo?

By the way, here’s a good explanation of what Deepfake is. You’d understand why the technology is quite scary.

Sacha Baron Cohen: Rise of Social media, Democracy declines

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At a recent ADL conference, actor/comedian/director Sacha Baron Cohen links the rise of the social media to the decline of democracy:

“Today … demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It’s as if the Age of Reason—the era of evidential argument—is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.”

Sacha Baron Cohen, Keynote Address at ADL’s 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate

Though he cites many reasons, emphasis was made on one:

But one thing is pretty clear to me. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

The greatest propaganda machine in history.

Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others—they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history—the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.”

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

Sacha Baron Cohen, Keynote Address at ADL’s 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate

The Age of Reason has come to an end. Social media has helped speed it along.

Facebook passwords stored in plaintext – change it now

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Have you changed your Facebook & Instagram password lately? If not it’s time to do so now. News has gone viral that Facebook has stored millions of passwords in plain text format making it readily accessible to its thousands of employees for a long time now.

Krebs on Security got hold of a Facebook employee and here are the basics:

  • Facebook employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it in plain text on internal company servers.
  • So far, it’s estimated that 200 and 600 million Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plaint text and searchable by Facebook employees.

It’s very basic that for services like Facebook, user account passwords are stored in a secure way – passwords are scrambled using cryptography aka hashing then stored in its servers. Once hashed, the passwords are virtually impossible to crack even with a powerful computer.

What Facebook discovered is that passwords were stored without being scrambled or hashed. This is like typing your Facebook account password in a text file using Notepad. Naming the file ‘FACEBOOK PASSWORD’ then saving it on a share folder. If you want to go offline, it’s like writing down your Facebook password on a sticky note then putting it on the fridge door.

Fortunately, for now, Facebook has found no indication that the passwords were abused by its employees nor has it been accessed outside its network. Either way, the best thing to do now is change your Facebook and Instagram passwords. And for goodness’ sake don’t save it on your computer or device. Use a password manager app if you’re having trouble remembering your password for each social media account.

Remember, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Featured image by Mark Burnett