MySpace is an example of what happens when you release a half-assed, hacked together demo to the world instead of a fully-designed and tested product (i.e. something you actually thought through beforehand). You have to keep fixing it, and yet it never works quite right all the time.

http://www.myspace.com/bobby133

I’ve never met this person. Who is that?

In April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th 2007, all myspace members are to not go to a gas station in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the myspace network, and the average car takes about 20 to 30 dollars to fill up.

If all myspace members did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,200,000,000.00 (that’s BILLION) out of the oil companys pockets for just one day.

If you agree (which I cant see why you wouldnt) repost this bulletin repost it with Don’t Pump Gas on May 15th

Of course, all the “facts” and “figures” above are easily debunked fictions.

More importantly, it’s not a true boycott. You’re not giving anything up — you’re simply going to buy your gas a couple of days before or a couple of days after. The total amount of gas sold for the month does not change one bit. A real boycott requires real sacrifice. If you really want to make a statement about gas prices, then don’t drive! That’s a real sacrifice. (Let me know what day you won’t be driving, so I can enjoy a nice motorcycle ride free of cagers.)

MySpace is truly the worst website on the Internet. I noticed spam bulletins coming from one of my friend’s accounts today. I went to her page to send her a message to let her know, and lo and behold, I got redirected to this page:

http://login.myspace.cfm.fuseaction.splash.mytoken.76701a26.da3e.44a3a17b.794380e6.com/da3e/index.php

See the screenshot. It’s designed to look like a MySpace login page, and it almost fooled me. The giveaway is the url: it’s not http://www.myspace.com/; it’s http://www.myspace.<blah blah blah>.com/. It’s what’s between the http:// and the next / that’s important — that isn’t a MySpace site!

Obviously, my friend’s account has been seriously compromised. Several buttons (send message, view pics, etc) have been changed, and now redirect to the website http://www.6064b195.com/, which then redirects to the fake login page.

This is the fundamental problem with MySpace: it’s so easy to abuse because it allows users — or hijackers — to insert pretty much any code (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc) they wish.

Update 4-19-2007: My friend was able to correct the problem by:

1. Changing her password;
2. Deleting all customizations from her page, since this is where the hijacker/phisher inserted his malicious code.

I received three friend requests on MySpace this morning. The models in the profile pics are a dead giveaway that the profiles belong to spammers. Most of the time I simply ignore these friend requests, but this morning I decided to see what the assholes were up to this time. The profiles themselves are covered with a large image that says “This profile is securely protected. Click here to download FREE myspace viewer”. Clicking the image links to a malicious executable.

This kind of thing doesn’t fool me, but it likely fools a lot of people. This is what we in the computer industry call “social engineering”: fooling people (in this case, horny boys) into installing malicious software.

(Click the thumbnail to see a full-size screenshot.)