What happened to the freedom of speech and expression, I wonder? Imagine running a community on Orkut, and being held accountable for every message posted. This is exactly what happened to Ajith D, a 19 year old computer student and an Orkut account holder, who apparently created a “Shiv Sena hate community” on Orkut. Mumbai cyber crime tracked him down and initiated criminal proceedings against him. Not just that, the site is being constantly supervised by the police after the Sena violently protested against Orkut for carrying anti-party remarks.

Ajith has denied posting any death threats against Sena’s Chief Bal Thackeray, however, has admitted on creating the anti-Shiv Sena online group.

Try running a simple search on Orkut, and you’d find hundreds of such “hate communities” online – “I hate Ekta Kapoor”, I hate George W. Bush” and so on, where people post all kinds of comments, share all kinds of personal views. I’m sure many Orkut users (and others) have already deleted their online communities after this incident blew up.

Share your thoughts on what you think about this case? Also, do you think that your online freedom of expression is being threatened?

After this incident, I personally feel very uncomfortable creating a community online. Being held accountable in the court of law, for statements made or opinions shared within the community, in my books, is a little too excessive!

Most of you must have noticed that Google Talk was not available for chatting on Orkut for people who did not have a Gmail account. Thankfully, this will not be a hindrance for Orkut users any more.

Now, Google’s chat feature is being enabled for all Orkut users, irrespective of whether they have a Gmail ID or not. You will be able to use your existing email address as your user name and chat on the Google Talk network without any hassles.

This is still work in progress, so if you do not see this feature enabled for you yet, give it a few more days, it must be on its way into your account, for sure. 

As a security measure, you will be required to do a simple email verification in order to use this feature.

Click here to read more: Verifying Your Google Account: How it works

(Source: google.talkabout)

(Image Credits: google.talkabout)

About a year ago, Google’s social networking site – Orkut started displaying Google adsense ads on Orkut users’ homepage below the ‘Community’ section. its really amazing to see Orkut is getting desperate about generating more revenue from Google Through Orkut users.

Guess what? This evening when I logged into Orkut, I was surprised to see the placement of Google ads between ‘Friends’ and ‘Community’ section.
Placement of Google ads changed on Orkut homepage

For your ready reference, I have uploaded a screenshot herewith wherein you can clearly notice how Google ads are interfering between ‘Friends’ and ‘Community’ section.

This time atleast, with change of placements of Google ads, its really very annoying as it interrupts while navigating between friends and community section.

Initiative to keep Orkut going?

Though I was disappointed by these changes, immediately after seeing it, I started thinking whether this is an initiative by Google to keep Orkut alive? Actually few days ago, when Google shut down some of its services, their were rumors floating around the internet that Orkut too may get closed.

May be this move by Google is to keep Orkut survive in these tough time, but I personally feel this change very annoying. What do you think?

With the growth of Orkut users, there are equal amount of rise in creation of fake profiles and malicious & other hatred activities being carried out inside this ‘so called’ Social networking sites.

Recently Arpit sent me a profile link that automatically gets diverted to a page that is cloned exactly with that of Orkut’s login page and when you enter your Orkut login information into the cloned page, they seem to store your data and automatically divert you to the homepage of Orkut.

So, this post is to aware you on how your password too, can be hacked within seconds. To prevent from such kind of hacking, you are requested, not to provide your Orkut login information in any other sites except in Orkut. As a precautionary measure, you should always punch in your password only in the login form that you get after typing www.orkut.com on the address bar.

Those who want to have a look on the fake login page, its here. But make sure that you do not enter your correct password on the page if you don’t want to loose your Orkut account. Open the page on your own risk, OrkutDiary will not be responsible if anything wrong goes with your account.

After attacks in Mumbai there were hot discussions going on between India and Pakistan, and from sources it was revealed that Pakistani hackers defaced a lot of Indian websites, blogs and even Orkut communities.

Also there were a lot of complains in Orkut Help Group regarding, hacking of a famous Orkut Community “Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s Fan Club” having approximately 200 Thousand members.

As per an article on Thaindian:

The community group holds significance for the orkut members, as it is probably the biggest platform for the young fans of former President A.P.J Abdul Kalam. And, the most of the members of this community write in it with deep affection and respect for their ideal in life. There are 207,249 members in this group.

The hackers have renamed the community originally named Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam as Indian and now using it as a platform for malicious and objectionable content.

Though, the name of the community has been restored to what it was, and the homepage of the community reads “We have got control back from Pakistani hands” still many Orkut experts suspect that the Community is still with Pakistanis disguised as Indians..

So the question is, why those unethical Pakistani hackers are targeting more and more Indian websites, blogs, Orkut communities and at the top of it eminent Indian personalities?

Has war being initiated between India and Pakistan in the cyber space?

Do let us know what do you think!!