Kind Gesture Toward Girlfriend of Deployed Soldier Becomes Internet Sensation

Kind Gesture Toward Girlfriend of Deployed Soldier Becomes Internet Sensation - “I noticed the sticker on the back of your car,” the note read, referring to a “Half my Heart is in Afghanistan” bumper sticker. “Take your hero out to dinner when he comes home. Thank you both for serving. Him deployed and you for waiting.” It was signed “United States veteran” and “God Bless.”

The woman, Samantha Ford, a mother of two who lives outside of Boston, quickly snapped a photo of the note and the cash, and shared it on the Facebook page “Our Deployment: 101,” a sort of online support community for people affiliated with the military.

 

The letter everyone's loving (and Ford, inset). Photos: FacebookThe story of a good deed has spread like wildfire online since Sunday, when an anonymous do-gooder left a kind note and $40 on a woman’s windshield in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

“I just thought I would share with you all what happened to me today!” Ford wrote when she posted the photo. “Came out of Dunkin’ Donuts and found this under my windshield wiper. There are no words to describe how I'm feeling right now. Tears in my eyes. I just wish I could thank whoever did this! God bless our troops and all of those who stand behind them.”

By Tuesday morning, the post had a million and a half “likes,” had inspired more than 43,000 comments, and had been shared nearly 200,000 times.

“It was crazy!!” Ford said in an email to TODAY.com, adding that she’d spoken to her boyfriend Sunday night and told him about the gesture. “He was so touched, and he said it’s people like this that make him proud to be an American Soldier. We are forever grateful and we will DEFINITELY be paying it forward! God bless our troops!”

According to TODAY.com, her deployed boyfriend, Albert DeSimone, is assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division based in Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Ford also said she hopes the photo will inspire others to appreciate the country’s military.

“They are all heroes,” she said. “I just happen to be in love with one.” ( Healthy Living )

READ MORE - Kind Gesture Toward Girlfriend of Deployed Soldier Becomes Internet Sensation

Google privacy overhaul 'unlawful', say regulators

Google privacy overhaul 'unlawful', say regulators - Google new privacy policy, which comes into force tomorrow, may be illegal and should be suspended, European privacy regulators have said.

The European Commission's data protection advisors expressed "strong doubts" about the lawfulness of Google’s new privacy policy. Google said last month it will introduce a new, unified privacy policy to cover all its services, prompting an investigation by the Article 29 Working Party, a group made up of national privacy regulators.

Google's new privacy policy comes into force on Thursday

The new rules will allow Google to pool data from all its services - from Gmail, to YouTube, to search - to create a single profile for each of its hundreds of millions of users. The consolidated data will allow it to track interests and target advertising more accurately.

Reporting its preliminary findings, the Working Party has now told Google that "our preliminary analysis shows that Google's new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection, especially regarding the information provided to data subjects".

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin of the French Data Protection Authority, which is leading the investigation, said that she welcomed Google’s move in theory. However, “we regret that Google did not take a real opportunity to consult the authorities prior to the announcement of its new privacy policy on 24 January 2012", she added in a letter to Google CEO Larry page.

European data protection authorities "are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data cross services", she reported.

Contrary to public statements by Google representatives suggesting that data protection authorities across the EU had been "extensively pre-briefed", not all authorities were informed, and those that were informed only heard about the changes a few days before the announcement.

They saw the contents of the new privacy policy at best a few hours before its public release, without any opportunity to provide any constructive feedback.”

Ms Falque-PIerrotin said that the new privacy policy provides only generalised information, and that simply telling users what Google would not do with their information was insufficient.

“As a consequence, it is impossible for average users who read the new policy to distinguish which purposes, collected data, recipients or access rights are currently relevant to their use of a particular Google service," she said.

In response, Google said it had engaged with the investigation.

“Over the past month we have offered to meet with the [French data protection authority] on several occasions to answer any questions they might have, and that offer remains open. We believe we’ve found a reasonable balance between the Working Party’s recommendations: to ‘streamline and simplify’ our policies while providing ‘comprehensive information’ to users.

"We are committed to providing our users with a seamless experience across Google’s services, and to making our privacy commitments to them easy to understand.”

Ms Falque Pierrotin however concluded there were “strong doubts” about the "lawfulness” of the plan. She reiterated the Working Party’s call for a pause until its analysis was completed.

Despite previously requesting Google simplify its privacy policies, the Working Party proposed that the firm provide a short, medium and full-length version of them.

European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who had welcomed Google’s new policy said "companies must ensure that their privacy policies are written in clear, everyday language. Consumers must be able to make informed decisions about using Internet-based services.

"I therefore welcome the European data protection authorities’ statement today that Google should delay introducing its privacy policy until questions about its compliance with EU data protection rules have been resolved."

Google sources have previously observed that the Working Party does not have the power to enforce its recommendations. The Working Party said it will present further comments in mid-March. ( telegraph.co.uk )

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Google users ignore major privacy shakeup

Google users ignore major privacy shakeup - Only one in ten British Google users have read the firm’s radical new privacy policy despite heavy promotion and controversy over its "invasive" terms, a survey has found.

The new system comes into force on Thursday and will pool personal data from more than 60 Google services into a single file for each of its hundreds of millions of users.

Google announced its new privacy policy in January

The move has been criticised by privacy campaigners and was described as “troubling for a number of reasons” by a group of state Attorneys General last week, who accused Google of invading consumer privacy. The firm has meanwhile argued it is “making things simpler and we’re trying to be upfront about it".

For a dry legal document the publicity campaign has been unprecedented, signalling the importance Google places on its data-pooling project. It has emailed every account holder and prominently displayed a link to the new policy on its homepage for weeks. The approach has attracted praise from European officials who want privacy policies to be simpler and more accessible.

The repeated prompts and controversy have seemingly failed to generate much interest among British users, however. According to survey by YouGov for Big Brother Watch only 12 per cent have bothered to review the new document.

Some 47 per cent said they did not even know any changes were in the works.

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, should delay Google’s privacy overhaul and mount an investigation.

“The impact of Google’s new policy cannot be understated, but the public are in the dark about what the changes actually mean,” he said.

“If people don’t understand what is happening to their personal information, how can they make an informed choice about using a service?

“Google is putting advertiser’s interests before user privacy and should not be rushing ahead before the public understand what the changes will mean.”

Comparable data on the proportion of users who read Facebook’s frequently-rewritten privacy policy, for example, were not available.

Google said its new policy would help users with concerns find answere quickly.

"We’ve undertaken the most extensive notification effort in Google’s history, informing every Google account holder, flagging the new policy on every Google product site and publishing a link on our home page," it said.

"Big Brother Watch fails to recognize that whereas large companies update their privacy policies on a regular basis, they rarely take the time and effort Google has taken to communicate them to their users."

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner said officials were working with their European counterparts to "ensure that these changes, and the manner in which they have been communicated, comply with the requirements of European data protection law". French authorities were speaking to Google on behalf of all European data protection authorities, he said.

"It is nevertheless important that people read the information organisations provide them with before agreeing to any changes related to the processing of their personal information," the Information Commissioner's spokesman added.

The new privacy policy does not mean Google will collect more information about users, but information it gathers via its different web services will be combined for the first time, allowing it to build a more detailed profile of each user.

For instance, data on which YouTube videos a user has watched could be combined with their web search history and Google Maps searches to infer their interests and movements for targeted advertising. The new pools of data will be created for all users with a consumer Google account; companies that use Google Apps will retain control over employees' privacy settings.

Google has emphasised that users can increase their privacy settings before the new policy comes into force. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a US civil rights group, has published a guide. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Google users ignore major privacy shakeup

Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia.

Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia - This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce.

The Swedes could not say why. Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common. Perhaps long transit times exacerbate corrosive marital inequalities, with one partner overburdened by child care and the other overburdened by work. But perhaps the Swedes are just telling us something we all already know, which is that commuting is bad for you. Awful, in fact.

Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-suck—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic.

In the past decade or so, researchers have produced a significant body of research measuring the dreadfulness of a long commute. People with long transit times suffer from disproportionate pain, stress, obesity, and dissatisfaction. The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income leftover from your cheap rent? It is almost certainly not worth it.

First, the research proves the most obvious point: We dislike commuting itself, finding it unpleasant and stressful. In 2006, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Alan Krueger surveyed 900 Texan women, asking them how much they enjoyed a number of common activities. Having sex came in first. Socializing after work came second. Commuting came in dead last. "Commuting in the morning appears particularly unpleasant," the researchers noted.

That unpleasantness seems to have a spillover effect: making us less happy in general. A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance, found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work "experienced worry for much of the previous day." That number falls to 28 percent for those with "negligible" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less "enjoyment," as well.

Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled.

Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.

According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction." It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make "non-grocery food purchases"—buying things like fast food—and will shift into "lower-intensity" exercise.

It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal.

Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.

So, in summary: We hate commuting. It correlates with an increased risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and sleeplessness. It makes us eat worse and exercise less. Yet, we keep on doing it.

Indeed, average one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called "extreme commuters," whose number has doubled since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. They collectively spend 164 billion minutes per year shuttling to and from work.

Why do people suffer through it? The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: "Drive until you qualify." Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter.

For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is "crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting." But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question.

How much would we need to be compensated to make up for the hellish experience of a long commute? Two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, actually went about quantifying it, in a now famous 2004 paper entitled "Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox." They found that for an extra hour of commuting time, you would need to be compensated with a massive 40 percent increase in salary to make it worthwhile.

But wait: Isn't the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one.

Do not take it lightly. People who say, "My commute is killing me!" are not exaggerators. They are realists. ( salte.com )

READ MORE - Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia.

That's what Facebookers are for

Atma Jaya University student Fanny has 1,003 Facebook friends – and knows the figure off the top of her head. While she admits most of them are probably only acquaintances, she still likes to collect them, as accumulating friends on Facebook is like a competition among young people to see who is most popular.

The computer generation: Three students look at Facebook on a laptop at a Jakarta university campus. Facebook is now the most-used website in Indonesia with 13.9 million active users. JP/Alexandra Hansen

Her friend Melati knows how many friends she has, and how many her boyfriend has to the exact number, “I have to know,” she laughs, “I have to keep an eye on my boyfriend.”

The students say they use the social networking site to make purchases, find information, learn about groups and publish information. They say it is an important tool to keep in touch with their old friends and reconnect with people from their youth who they wouldn’t be able to locate otherwise.

Another important aspect of Facebook is the “Facebook status update”. This offers a unique opportunity to get a message across to hundreds of people at a time, and many young people use this very public forum to display their innermost feelings.

But Facebook has its limits too. While youngsters say they can reconnect with old friends through Facebook, they also run the risk of losing their current social networks.

“I know some people who just spend their whole day browsing on Facebook, adding photos, commenting on people, which ruins their current social life,” Fanny says.

The students add it also has the ability to distract them from their studies if they don’t have adequate time management skills, and raises privacy issues.

Both girls say they have had their private pages hacked and experienced problems when accepting requests from complete strangers. No surprise there.

“I add people if I can recognize their face, or if we have mutual friends, but I don’t always know them. I’ve had problems where people I don’t know keep sending me messages and comments until I have to delete them or tell them to stop [sending message].”

Facebook has eclipsed Friendster as Indonesia’s social networking site of choice.

Will a newer, funkier social networking site make Facebook redundant?

“No way,” Fanny says. “There are too many Facebook users out there, and everyone already knows how to use it. It is too hard to get off Facebook.”

Facebook is now the most used website in Indonesia, beating search engines Google and Yahoo! with 13.9 million active users.

With the third-biggest Facebook membership in the world, after the US and the UK, Indonesia is becoming a nation obsessed with social networking.

There are over 300 million active monthly Facebook users around the world, with the number growing every second — there was a greater than 630 percent member growth rate in 2008.

Illustration by JP/Irma

Facebook is the second most popular site in the world (after Google) and approximately 30 percent of Internet users worldwide are also Facebook members.

The social networking site is now a household name. Even if you don’t have an account, you will know about it. The term “facebook” is now a commonly used verb: “I’ll facebook you the details,”
“I’m just facebooking him,” et cetera.

The social site created some controversy on its inception in Indonesia, with 700 Muslim imams drafting guidelines on its proper use, which excluded “flirting and gossiping”.

But since it has been given the all clear, Facebook has rapidly become the most popular site in the country. In fact, there are more active Facebook users in Indonesia than there are people in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Four percent of Facebook members worldwide are from Indonesia, so one must ask: What’s with this country’s obsession with social networking?

The university’s communications lecturer, Natalia Widiasari, says for many of the young people on Facebook, this kind of display is like therapy, an emotional release.

“They say things online they would not have the courage to say otherwise, this can be positive or negative,” Natalia says.

Natalia admits she has followed her student’s example and created a Facebook page.

“I haven’t had much time recently as I just gave birth to my baby, but yes, I used to be a Facebook regular,” she laughs.

The social networking site is important to the students mostly because it is a bit of fun, she says.

“For the kids, it is cool to be popular, to have lots of friends, to be known.”

The obsession starts with it taking up excess time, she says, and while she thinks it can be good for social confidence and networking, it can also be a distraction from other important tasks.

Social networking: A female employee looks at her Facebook in a Jakarta office. JP/J. Adiguna

“Often when I am teaching, the students are facing me, their eyes are on me, but their thumbs are ticking away like mad on their Blackberrys, talking on Facebook.

“This means their attention is only minimally focused on what they should be doing.”

They like to have access to Facebook all the time, she adds. “When they’re eating, when they’re reading, all day if they can.”

Natalia says that while Facebook has its drawbacks, it can be an important business tool.

“For business and marketing, this is the future. Advertising and pushing products on social networking sites like Facebook is a new kind of media. It’s a good way to spread the ‘buzzword’,” she says.

When asked if the site could go against the religious beliefs of students and the guidelines initiated by the imams, she says in her experience, the students didn’t use the site for “gossiping and flirting” as was thought by some members of the Muslim community.

“It is just a bit of fun for them,” she says, “nothing untoward.”

While to some, the site is a friend-collecting popularity contest, Natalia says young people without a Facebook do not run the risk of being socially inept, or “out of the loop”.

“I think kids stick to their own groups most of the time anyway, so it is not to the detriment of those who don’t have Facebook.

“If there is something very important going on, they tend to text message anyway.”

“It can be a very positive thing in a young person’s life,” she says.

“If they are not spending too much time absorbed in it, if they are using it as a supplement to their everyday social life and not as a replacement, then it is a good thing.”

The students say Facebook is now an intrinsic part of their lives, and they check and update it a few times a day.

When asked if they would ever delete their Facebook pages they instantly reply “No, never!”

“It has taken a long time to collect so many friends, I would have to find them all again!” Fanny says. ( thejakartapost.com )

READ MORE - That's what Facebookers are for

Facebook and MySpace in content talks

Facebook and MySpace in content talks. The social network wars may be over as traditional rivals Facebook and MySpace reveal they're in talks about sharing content.

Facebook says it'd be happy to feature content from MySpace now that the two are moving in different directions, according to the UK's Telegraph.

Facebook and MySpace consider deal / AP

"Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy," Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told the newspaper.

"We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users."

MySpace boss Owen Van Natta – who left Facebook in April to lead News Corp's social network - confirmed the talks.

“Facebook is about core communications with your friendship network, whereas MySpace is about congregating around popular content with people who share your interests," he said, adding that partnerships would be a large part of MySpace's future.

Ms Sandberg said Facebook could use its Connect feature for users to share MySpace content, although "nothing has been formally arranged yet".

Connect allows Facebook users to discuss and share content as they are viewing it on a partner website.

MySpace recently launched a new music service in Australia – the second country to get it after the US – adding a raft of music tracks from major labels and independent aggregators.

The audio tracks – which stream in full and can be playlisted on profiles - are linked to Apple's iTunes for purchase.

A spokesperson for MySpace Australia said they couldn't comment on the Facebook talks "at this stage". / news.com.au

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What happens to your email when you die?

What happens to your email when you die?. IN a digital world your deepest secrets no longer die with you. Andrew Ramadge reports on what happens to your private emails when you pass away.

Remember that time you poured your heart out in an email to your best friend after one too many glasses of wine?

Or that sexy message from an old lover that made you blush at work?

Well, if you die, your family and others could end up reading them.

Web email services owned by internet giants Google and Microsoft have a policy of keeping your data after you die and letting your next of kin or the executor of your estate access it.

There is no way for users to flag that they don't want this to happen and no recourse under Australia's existing privacy laws.

Web email services like Hotmail and Gmail won't let users specify what should happen to their messages when they die.

More than one in four Australians uses webmail, with around six and a half million people logging on to one or more of the top three providers Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! in September, according to Nielsen Online NetView.

So, if Hotmail will keep your emails and allow access to others when you die, why can't they retrieve emails that have been lost while I am stillalive?????

Unlike a shoebox in the attic, these services can hold tens of thousands of messages. Accounts with Google's Gmail can hold up to 7GB – or roughly 70,000 emails with a small to medium picture attached to each.

And they archive the messages you've written as well as received.

When it comes to deleting the data, Microsoft's Hotmail will remove an account if it is inactive for 270 days, while Gmail leaves the responsibility to the next of kin.

Of the top three providers, only Yahoo! refuses to supply emails to anyone after a user has died. The user's next of kin can ask for the account to be closed, but cannot gain access to it.

A Yahoo! spokesperson said the only exception to this rule would be if the user specified otherwise in their will.

Australian privacy laws do not cover the emerging problem of what happens to your web-based data when you die. The Privacy Act only refers to people who are alive.

On top of that, many of the most popular web services are not covered by local privacy laws because they are based in the US.

The subject has also proved problematic for social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. More than eight million Australians visited one or both of those sites in September, according to Nielsen's figures.

Facebook has recently publicised a feature called memorialisation that lets the family of deceased users keep their profile page online as a virtual tribute.

Turning a profile into a memorial will remove sensitive information from the page and restrict access to the deceased's friends. The family will not be allowed to log in to the account or access private messages, but can request that it be taken down.

MySpace on the other hand says it addresses the issue of family access to sensitive data on a "case by case basis".

A spokesperson for MySpace could not rule out letting a user's next of kin log into their profile – potentially giving them access to private messages.

There is no way for users to tell MySpace that they don't want this to happen, however the site said it was "a good idea that we are exploring".

Read on for a summary of the policies of popular email and social networking sites:

Hotmail

Hotmail has a policy of deleting email accounts if they are not touched for 270 days. If you die, your next of kin would be able to access your account within that period by proving their identity and supplying a death certificate.

A spokesperson said: "Microsoft's policy allows next of kin to gain access to the content of the account of the deceased upon proving their own identity and relationship. Hotmail does not have an option to specify in advance that they do not want the contents of their email accessed by a next of kin."

Gmail

Gmail will also allow the next of kin or executor of estate to apply for access to a deceased user's email account. However, they need more identification than Hotmail. The person would have to prove their own identity and supply a death certificate as well as proof of an email conversation between them and the deceased.

If the deceased user was underage, the next of kin would also have to provide a copy of their birth certificate.

Gmail does not delete the deceased user's account, but says the next of kin could choose to do so after gaining access to it.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has the strictest policy when it comes to the data of deceased users. The company will let the user's next of kin ask for the account to be closed, but will not give them access to it. It says users who want their emails to be inherited should make arrangements in their will.

A spokesperson said: "The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for a Yahoo! Mail account is to treat their email as a private communication and to treat the content of their messages as confidential.

"Internet users who want to be sure their email and other online accounts are accessible to their legal heirs may want to work with their attorneys to plan an offline process for such access as part of their estate planning process."

Facebook

Facebook has a policy called memorialisation that applies to the profiles of deceased users. Once the user's death is confirmed, their profile can be turned into a sort of virtual shrine. When that happens, the profile is locked so no one can log into it and sensitive information (including status updates) is removed.

Family members can determine how the memorial looks and behaves – for example if other people can continue to write on the user's page – but can't log into the profile themselves.

From Facebook's Help page: "Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honour requests from close family members to close the account completely."

MySpace

MySpace has no set policy when it comes to the profiles of deceased users. A spokesperson said: "Given the sensitive nature of deceased member profiles, MySpace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified and will work with families to respect their wishes."

The site says it will not allow anyone to "assume control" of the user's profile, however it won't rule out giving families access to the user's private data. MySpace does not delete profiles after periods of inactivity, but will remove a deceased user's profile at the family's request. A spokesperson said giving users a choice about who can access their data "sounds like a good idea". / news.com.au

READ MORE - What happens to your email when you die?

Things to Know About Windows 7

Things to Know About Windows 7. The latest version of Microsoft Windows — Windows 7 — is now on the market. So if you're like the average PC user, it's fated to become a factor in your life. Here are seven things to keep in mind about it.

1. It's really a "maintenance release."

Basically, it's Microsoft Vista with accumulated fixes and performance enhancements. That's a good thing, since there's no dramatic break with the past to cause festering compatibility issues, and no steep learning curve for the users. Compared to Vista, Windows 7 does better running on low-performance machines like netbooks. It boots and shuts down faster — but that's less of an issue since its sleep mode is reliable, letting you shut down in two seconds and restart in two seconds. With Vista, desktops often refused to go into sleep mode, or would restart randomly from sleep mode, noted PC industry watcher Rob Enderle, principal analyst the Enderle Group in San Jose, CA.

2. It's more secure.

A new release always is, since the malware writers haven't had time to pick at it for weaknesses, and there are too few installations to amount to a worthwhile target. They'll get around to Windows 7, although its built-in antivirus facility has been well-reviewed. In the meantime, malware's favorite target is the older Windows XP. Anyway, the bad guys are turning more and more to phishing, where they dupe users into spilling their personal information on the pretext of "restoring" their "suspended" online bank accounts. Technology is not much help there.

3. There is new stuff.

While most of the news concerns performance, the desktop and taskbar have been given enhancements that should make it easer to invoke specific applications and documents. The reviled User Account Control, which warned Vista users any time any application did anything to the system, has been given settings to make it less annoying. And, yes, Internet Spades, Backgammon, and Checkers, which had been dropped in Vista, are back. The enhanced Search facility, meanwhile, is now actually useful. For future expansion, Windows 7 makes better use of multiple cores, and includes handwriting recognition.

4. Pick the right version.

There are two retail versions: Home and Professional. The Pro version has a feature called Active Directory, which lets it be assigned an address and privileges in a corporate network. It is of no interest to a home or small business user. The Home version can also be found in a family pack that can upgrade three PCs. (Strictly speaking, there is also a third version called Ultimate, of interest only to software developers.)

5. If it ain't broke, don’t fix it.

If you are happy with Vista, there is little reason to upgrade to Windows 7, cautioned Enderle. If you are annoyed with Vista, Windows 7 should help. If you are running Windows XP, upgrading may make sense if your hardware is less than two years old. Otherwise, you are better off getting a new machine, with Windows 7 pre-installed, he advised.

6. If it's broke, do fix it — correctly.

If you're upgrading with the retail package, you can use either the clean (also called custom) or the in-place installation method. The first will wipe the disk clean and you'll need to re-install your applications. (It keeps your data intact. You did back up, of course.) The second performs the installation with your applications in place. The second is easier, but the first will remove any malware, broken drivers, and other evidence of the hard life your computer's been living, Enderle said. It's also the only method available when upgrading from Windows XP. Even easier is to buy a new machine with Windows 7 pre-installed.

7. Resistance is irrelevant.

Among Internet users, 93 percent use some version of Microsoft Windows, and that is not going to change dramatically in the near future. You can assume that all future PC software worth mentioning will be written for Windows 7, and new PCs will be shipped with it. The alternative is to go with the Apple Mac, Linux, or something esoteric. / livescience.com

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