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Author: Qazi Tariq

Delete Facebook Account

06
Apr
2018

Recently we heard about the Facebook data leak, what sort of data was it and how that data was leaked? How does it effect to us. Why someone will steal our data and do we really need to bother about it? Is that so serious? Will someone steal our bank account after this data leak, or will someone hack our phone and computer? Can a plumber please fix this? What is this leak?

Situation is so confusing for most of us who addicted to Facebook and using it just for the sack of connecting with their near and dear ones. They do share their happy moments, trip information, success stories, their kids examination results, family get to gather information, vacations photos, that’s pretty much it. What else?

For the sack of argument if some is poking in our Facebook data, why do we bother about? I meant is it that serous that we should delete our Facebook account? Then how will we spend our time, then how will we actually poke in others life?

So the biggest problem for many us directly or indirectly, how will be able to see what others are doing and how will we be able to share our stories to everyone, if they will remove their Facebook account and their be nothing for us to Like, Share, make fun off and nothing will left for comment. Situation is back to square one, what do we do now?

The co-founder of Whatsapp Brian Acton is so troubled with this that he had twitted “It is time. #deletefacebook. Now while using his twitter account, he forgot that on Nov 3rd, 2017 – US President, Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was deactivated for almost 11 minutes. On Mar 21st, 2016, the Indian Prime Minister’s official Twitter handle was owned by a teenager for almost 15 minutes. Just imaging it can happen to the world’s most power man’s account, then how can we expect ourselves to be spared from it?

 

On the different tangent, Tim Cook, the Apple CEO said that such sort of possession of data with companies like Facebook shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Unfortunately he forgot the news about the IOS code leak on Feb 8th, 2018 and when Hackers had embarrassed Apple with data leak back in 2012. Similarly in 2014 Apple admits celebrity accounts were hacked. The list in long. I’ll not go in detail. Here you can check on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches

 

So let’s get back to our basic question what should we do now, delete the Facebook account of keep it? If you ask to me, I would suggest post this and move on;

I, Qazi Tariq, do hereby give my PERMISSION to the Police, the CBI, the NSA, the ISI, FIA. FBI, CIA, MI6, RajniKant, James Bond, Miss Moneypenny, M, Q, the Swiss Guard, the Priory of Scion, the inhabitants of Middle Earth, The White walkers, First Men, Nobel houses of Seven Kingdom , Mereen, Dothrakis, SEAL TEAM 6, Agents Mulder and Scully, the Goonies, ALL the Storm Troopers and Darth Vader, the Mad Hatter, Chuck Norris, S.H.I.E.L.D, The Avengers, The Illuminati, The Men in Black, X-Men, Ghost Busters, The Justice League, Gandalf and Dumbledore, Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Great Pumpkin, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, School House Rock, Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, The Tooth Fairy, The Krampus, and all the members of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Black Sabbath, Voltron, The Groovy Ghoulies, the Thunder Cats, Dr. Who, Hart to Hart, Mystery inc. (Scooby Doo), James Garner, Angela Landsbury, the WWF, the EPA, and even Magnum P.I., He-Man, Jay and Silent Bob, Cheech & Chong, Neo, Blade, the NHL, MLB, the Boondock Saints, Shaktiman and to all my beloved FRIENDS to view all the amazing and interesting things I publish on Facebook.

I’m aware that my privacy ended the very day that I created an account on Facebook, I know that whatever I post can (and usually does) get shared, tagged, copied, and posted elsewhere because I’m THAT awesome. If I don’t want anyone else to have it, then I don’t post it!

 

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Better Opportunity

05
Apr
2018

Better Opportunity

What does better opportunity means? When someone asked during his / her interview about the reason for the change, they simply says “better opportunity” but what if, he was asked to elaborate the better opportunity then it will be a bit difficult for many of us to explain.

 

Usually most of us are really getting much better opportunity then we had dreamt about, however many of us are switching, just for the sack of change or better compensation or run towards the brand name. The recent example is “John Giannandrea”. After spending 8 years with Google, now moving to Apple. John is not a simple engineer or developer but the AI chief of Google. What made him to take this decision of movement?

 

The “better opportunity” is not one way, instead it is a two way agreement as the employer is also seeing better future with this change along with the aspirant applicant. Before switching the applicant might have inquired about the company, but does he / she actually what will happen once he’ll join the company. I think most of the time no. During the selection process he / she might be told about the responsibilities, still he / she will not be aware of actual condition and future. This makes him / her to think about the change.

 

It is not compulsory that this happens in all the change cases, we may find in many of the companies which are having staff more than a decade. For me this is the real best opportunity where both see themselves each other as the best opportunity. This makes healthy relation, better understanding and develop trust towards each other.

 

Working in a long relationship may make us think about the comfort zone, which is up to some extent true, however on the other hand this long relationship helps a lot. So think few time before looking for better opportunity, if that opportunity will actually pay you as a better option.

 

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Our Information – personal / professional

03
Apr
2018

We used to enter all the required information asked by any of the website, without understanding the consequences of it. Since these are marked with RED asterisk “*”, we have no choice but to provide it. Have we ever thought, why does these information asked?

 

We are habitual of receiving lots of mails on daily basis. Our mail provider, Outlook, Gmail, Ymail etc has given us the Spam / Junk mail facility, where we can move such unwanted mails. Our mailing system is already very intelligent, which moves many of such mails in the spam / junk folder by its own. It does have the feature, which permanently delete such mails over a period of time.

 

Since we are so used to about these mails, notification, alerts, calls, sms, whatsapp message that we sometimes decide to live with it. Some of us gives up and let it be like that. Some of us decide to fight back against these unwanted messages. As a result we have DND “Do Not Disturb” facility, still some of these unwanted messages are reaching to us.

What these messages are? Well these can be advertisement, promotions, news, information; the matter of fact, these could be anything. But if we haven’t subscribed for these, why these are coming to us? Unfortunately knowingly or unknowingly we used to subscribe for these messages, while accepting the terms and condition during the registration of some of the sites / portals etc. Now if we have done so, then there should not be so much of hue and cry.

 

The problem starts, when so many of such messages starts appearing from many providers.

 

How does others getting our data? Is the site / portal whom we have provided our information responsible for it? Is the owner of the company responsible of it? Is the government responsible of it? If the owner of company resigns, will that resolve the problem? If the CEO gets terminated will that solves the problem? The answer is NO. The process has to be matured to secure these information.

 

There are possibly two very simple and common method of such data leak, one – code’s security testing wasn’t done properly and two – someone internal or external has the database access. I am not blaming here the developers or hackers, instead I believe someone’s responsibilities are compromised.

 

Remember the future’s oil is data and that is the reason you will notice everyone is asking for data. The more data the company have, the better prediction will be done by them. To understand it more, we take the simplest example which we see during our Search. As we start typing to the search box, it starts giving us suggestions. Similarly our personal and professional information provide lots of information to others. Lets take another example; we used to receive lots of calls for loan, how? They know out credit score and they have the defaulter’s data with them. Lets take another example; we used to receive lots of mail and calls about many job portals including those whom we haven’t even registered, how? They are pulling the information from our professional database.

 

So far there is not any solid idea, which I am aware of to stop data leak and misuse of our data but one, which may reduce these, is to make ourselves responsible of our data because whatever is once out over internet, assume it is public. Hence we should deactivate our account from all those places, which are not needed anymore. Stop registering ourselves here and there. Think twice before installing any free software. Think again for registering ourselves for receiving any free alerts or promotions.

 

Again the Data is today’s Gold, the more it is with the companies the better they will be. So the companies will keep on asking for it. It is for us, how we deal with it.

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Digitization

02
Apr
2018

Digitization

In a survey, on an average everyone in India is spending almost 2 hours a day on internet. Many of them are involved in the IT business, many are spending time over social networking apps / sites, some are on shopping and few are listening or watching songs / events / movies. Digitization is become so common and a daily need that we are even not realizing, when all of us became so digital.

 

When a person joins any social media, he actually want to tell to his world, what he is up to. It is up to some extent similar to a kid, who needs everyone’s attention. If we notice this digital world is doing exactly the same thing for us. It is giving a shape to our imagination to gain others attention. This help us to gain business and success in marking. It also helps to show how exactly a company is doing and what other people think about it’s product or service. It is kind of transparent and available round the clock, while working tirelessly for you.

 

There are many companies which are helping others to get digital as per their requirement and imaginations. Google is one of them, which is putting all effort to help new comers to take benefits of it’s services to get their business quickly digitize. Google even providing free online training session to make things simpler for them. It is providing site templates, SEO and SEM facility, how to search domain along with managing the data.

 

As a human, everyone wants to be a better future and this virtual digital world is proving all these to today’s and next generation. Hence everyone should embrace this digitization and open our mind, let the transformation of imagination happen. Because at the end, this is the imagination only, which is the mother of all the innovation and today’s digitization.

Tech Update

The most difficult question ever asked – Tell us about yourself

02
Apr
2018

Tell us about yourself

“Tell us about yourself” is the most difficult question asked during an interview. We have so much to tell yet it feels confusing and difficult, what to tell.

Many experienced trainers suggesting to explain about your strengths, describe your achievements, whereas few of them suggests to talk about related achievements for the advertised vacancy. Sometimes if required you can exaggerate it as well.

Everyone talks from their own or from others experience, hence all the about are correct. However for me, it is kind of more dependent over the state of mind of the interviewer. What he wants to know about you and if you’ll give him the precise information in this first introduction itself, 50% of your interview will be cleared, rest 50% will be specific to the profile only, which should not be a big deal for you.

In my opinion, the interviewer are there only to select you and not to reject you. If we see on the other way, by letting us selected, we are actually helping them and making their job easier and this is the key, which we should understand. Once we’ll understand it, all we need to do is to help the interviewer. This will give us more confidence and help us to overcome of shaking hand, stammering or losing confidence kind of common interview-mania situations.

To sum-up, the simplest way to answer this question during the interview can be, telling yourselves in points or topics. As the conversation starts, you can also ask the interviewer, what specific area he wants you to elaborate. This will make the interview easier and quicker. It will also help both parties to be comfortable and will allow a two way interactive communication, which may change your future carrier!

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Message Transfer Agent – Miscommunication

02
Apr
2018

Mail server sends your mail to someone else

Most of us may know about the MTA “message transfer agent” or “mail transfer agent” or in a simple word mail relay, which basically circulate our messages to the recipients. Its job is sending the message to the right addressee.

There is a defined way to complete this task, MUA – SMTP – MTA – MDA – POP / IMAP – MUA. I’ll not go in further technical details here, still I want to understand, what are the chances of failure in this process, where the mail doesn’t reach to the actual recipient, instead landing to other’s mail box. At which step, we add another level of check to fix this issue?

Interesting? Believe me it is happening. I am not talking about the mails are not delivering to other mail recipient, I am talking about mails delivering to wrong recipient. Imagine your salary slip, your bank accounts details, travel details, password reset requests are received by other person who is having similar mail id as you do, with an extra dot “.”.

While searching over internet, I have received few mailing issues, however don’t know how will this issue be fixed?

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/Gdb4Ga6hwyY

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=137222

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/some-of-my-e-mails-are-not-reaching-the-intended/c9bc0937-79c9-4504-b899-f040962cf479

I think the simplest way to fix it, will be to inform the person about this issue and keep on forwarding these messages to that person who belongs to these messages, but the question is why? Am I responsible to receive others message? Is he responsible for Google mail server, which is delivering his message to me? Or is it Google mail server, which forwards his messages to me?

Someone has to test it, collect the failure rate and fix it and I don’t think I have Google’s mail server’s access yet 🙂

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Resume Writing

02
Apr
2018

Resume writing is always a challenge especially for those who are either changing their profession or changing job after a long gap. There are two main challenges, what to show and how to show? In my case, I have to write a resume after 10 years, things and trends all are changed. So how to proceed then?

I had consulted many of my well-wishers and few of them were really great and took a step ahead for me, they have not only guided me about writing the resume but also shared few valuable trainings about how to write a better resume.

Two points, which I learnt from all these are, write your resume according to the opportunity and write precise instead of a biography. However that is not so easy. I still needed guidance and expert to understand these two types of resume.

As an exercise, I have opened the LinkedIn and closely read many of my mentor’s and colleague’s profiles. Few of the profiles were ideal for me and helped me learning, how to craft a meaningful resume, still all these work was very manual and took lots of effort and time. Luckily my friends and mentors are with me and they helped me to get it finalized.

Many job seekers might not get such kind of guidance, but now they should not be worried as LinkedIn has recently introduced the Resume Assistance with Microsoft Office 365. This is amazing and will be a boon for all job seekers. It is simple and quicker. It allows us to explore the LinkedIn profile in a proper way and get the resume crafted. It kind of giving power to everyone and boosting their confidence.

More details

InfoSAAT Guru

Automation

29
Mar
2018

Service Automation

There was a news recently, “Automation will reduce 70% of IT jobs”. Being an IT guy, this sounds terrible and raising lots of questions. If I am jobless now, obviously it wouldn’t matter to me much and may be those who are not in IT field will even bother about it, however for all those who are either in IT field or planning to join it, will certainly be tensed.

If we look back in early 90s, when the banks had decided to migrate all their manual systems to on-line automated systems. There was huge crowd agitating against banks for their decision and making hue and cry. Many of them even said that all the information will leak or the companies which will involve in this transition may take all your money. The story doesn’t end here, there were more rumors and concerns.

Now we all know what happened at the end. Think for a moment of not migrating the banking system online today, we might still be wasting hours and hours in the queue for depositing and withdrawing the money, money transfer to other banks will be difficult and business would not be even possible today.

Similarly if we see around us, we’ll see almost everything is on-line and computerized, even in the hospital the computerized machines are performing critical operations, keeping person alive on ventilator. On the other side, we are now having a driverless bus running in New York’s busiest street.

If we had not migrated, then we might be living in the Stone Age today. Hence we should take this news in positive way and should not be panicked. This will make our life easier down the line. Keep in mind, in case if it reduce the IT jobs, then again it will open the opportunities for those, who can get things automated and the best part of human is that it is keep on learning and upgrading itself, which computer may not be able to do it by its own!!

 

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/automation-to-kill-70-of-it-jobs/article9960555.ece

 

Tech Update

Facebook Startup Training Hub

29
Mar
2018

Training by Facebook

Recently the Facebook has started the “Startup Training Hub”. It is available at https://startups.fb.com

The Facebook id can be used to login and choose the lessons from the provided itemized list, which you want to learn. Since it is just started so not much data available there, however as a startup it is sufficient. They are promising to share more data shortly.

Unlike the other training portals, which are providing training sessions in the animation of video format, the Facebook is giving these trainings in readable format as of now. It is good for those who wants to read and learn. The catch here is, that if you don’t even read the full lesson and simply scroll down till end, you’ll get the training completion note with “start next training” option.

The Facebook is also giving an opportunity to those who want to create their own training plan, so by clicking the “create lesson plan” one can select the kind of training he/she want to go for. It will ask few basic questions before we can continue and based on the answers, it will provide a list of training lessons for you.

Again since it is Facebook and I think that is the reason why it’s idea is different than other training portals. It is quick, easy to load and as you read the complete lesson, the training will be marked completed.

I strongly recommend it to be explored by you at least once.

Happy learning Guys!!

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Add over LinkedIn

29
Mar
2018

LinkedIn Marketing

Almost everyone now a days is trying to earn by advertisement so do the LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn is providing an option to bid for the ads. The one who wins the bid, gets an opportunity to show their ads. The good part here that LinkedIn is giving us an option to start whatever the budget we want to go for. It is not mandatory that we have to go for a higher amount only. This flexibility encourages the bidder to start as and when he/she want to. Also at any point of time, one can stop the services.

Here is the marketing URL https://business.linkedin.com/ where one can start as per requirement.

In terms of the investment, we can control it by setting a daily budget, a total budget, and maximum bids along with, whenever we want to start it and stop it.

There are 3 ways, which LinkedIn is offering us to control our expenditure over ads.

1- Total budget

If we want our ads to visible ASAP for a specific budget, then we can go for this option

2- Daily budget

If we want to set up a campaign that is always on, then this option is for us.

3- Setting bids

Set the maximum amount we are willing to pay for clicks, impressions, or delivered InMails. By this option we’ll never pay more than the price we bid for.

 

Once we’ll decide what option we should go for, we need to decide the pricing options. Again LinkedIn is proving 3 options there;

  • CPC – Cost per click – when people clicks our ads
  • CPM – Cost per 1000 impressions – when people sees our ads
  • CPS – Cost per send – when they receive the ads in mail

I believe at this point only two action left for us;

  • Decide about the ads
  • Give our credit cards details to LinkedIn
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