[Breaking News] Communities under threat - Orkut Admin misuses powers! Possibility of a hacker gaining admin privileges

Fiasco had started on 12th Feb when the first complaint was spotted in the Orkut Help Forum that a medaled admin profile named Orkut Guy had taken over a few communities. Orkut Guy has only one friend, that is Vandini Ravindran who is a Google employee.

Allegedly there are many eye witnesses who have seen Orkut Guy taking over the control of the communities and transfering them to a random person. Yesterday when I saw the Orkut Guy profile there were about 25 Communities and now they have increased to 44, many of them were taken over.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Names of big ones are:

• Shahrukh Khan Fan Club (376000+ Members)
• Diamond- Girl's Best Friend (80,000+ Members)
• My Name starts with "A" (156000+ Members)
• WWE John Cena (153000+ Members)

OUG is one of the hacked communities which was taken over by Orkut Guy yesterday. There was a complaint about OUG along with other hacking related communities in the Orkut Help Forum by a anonymous profile named Better.0rkut. The complaint is that Orkut is not taking any action against communities which violate the Orkut and Google's TOS. OUG might also have come into attention because of this. The community members raised their guards with their backup community, infact some members were certain that OUG was going to be deleted. After a while, Orkut Guy transfered OUG to another profile.

As the real story has not come up yet. But from the events we can understand that Orkut Guy acts like a hacker's profile who has gained access to the admin powers. His list of communities display his juvenile tendencies or rather confusing, who would possibly want to have WWE and Diamonds-Girl's best friend. There have been no violation of TOS in many communities and this person has been keeping a low profile. The above screenshot is of one of the communities taken over by Orkut Guy which caught my attention. As India Community is in his list of communities and it is under a threat because of the recent cyber war. Where IRP was taken over by Hindu Cyber Warriors. It is possible that this profile performs an act of revenge. It is also possible that he is the person who had hacked IRP. Whatever might be the case, irrespective of the matter that Orkut Guy is a hacker or not, he/she has misused admin powers. As of now people are outraged by this and OUG has started complaining about this which is getting a huge response. People are requesting Google to investigate in this matter in the Orkut Help Forum. Many of them are talking about leaving Orkut and switching over to Facebook henceforth.

---------------------------------------------------------- UPDATE: 27th Feb 09, 2:21PM Orkut Guy has hacked over 4000 Communities. This is the biggest hacking spree ever.

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UPDATE: 27th Feb 09, 2:42 PM Orkut Guy has hacked over 5000 Communities. Orkut is totally Owned!

---------------------------------------------------- FINAL UPDATE: REPLY FROM VANDINI (Google Employee) 27th Feb 09, 5:04 PM Vandini has replied that Orkut Guy is nobody else but their system automated bot who has taken over all the communities which undertake activities which violate the Orkut TOS. All the communities that have been taken over in a fraudulent manner have been given to system selected eligible owners. Orkut guy has sent ownership requests to such system-detected eligible owners and a few of them have already been transferred to such trustworthy members. Many kids who had been naughty are crying now. Sorry but a community is such a small thing, I'm sure you would find something of your interest and work towards your goals with integrity. Use your smarts for the good.

CLICK ON THE ABOVE IMAGE TO ENLARGE MORAL OF THE STORY : HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

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[Update] Orkut Help Forum has started

As we had mentioned before, Orkut Help Google Group has moved to Orkut Help Forum from 10th of Feb 2009

The new forum has started and the Google Group has shut down. All the future help would be provided in Orkut Help Forum . 

Although I'm not very sure how would it stop the problem of people from repeating similar requests and cluttering the forum. 

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[Tip] Most Underused but Useful HTML tag working on Orkut

The Abbreviation or Acronym Tag is the least used HTML Tag which works on Orkut

Just copy paste the code below and preview it: <abbr title="This is the hidden text message ">Roll your mouse over to see hidden message</abbr>

It would look like this. Alternatively you can use <acronym> tag

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[Tip] Be an Invisible Man on Orkut - How to make an Invisible Profile with Invisible Community containing Invisible Topics

Have you ever came across any Invisible Profile and/or an invisible Community Topics ? This trick is not hard at all , even you can do it . You need Firefox for this to work. Just follow the instructions below:

Invisible Profile Name Trick:

There are a number of ways to do this. I'll tell you two easiest ones:

1. Copy the code inside the brackets and paste it in your profile name. [ㅤ] or [ㅤ] (Exclude the brackets)
2. Go to this Profile, You will find two dots. Copy the dots to your profile first and last name. Now from each field delete one dot. Now your profile will become invisible in community posts.

Invisible Community Name trick:

• Same as the step 1 of above. Just copy the invisible code to the community name

Invisible Profile Display Picture:

• Use this Display Picture (Right Click>Save Target as to download)

Note that the DP will show up in community posts. Everywhere else it will look invisible.

Invisible Community Display Picture:

• Use this Display Picture as your Community DP. (Right Click>Save Target as to download)

This will make your community invisible as well as non-clickable.

Invisible Topic name Trick:

You can make a post with non-clickable link where others would not be able to see or click on the topics (except if someone is using scripts to view the last post).

Follow these steps:

1. First Create a new Topic
2. Then on the Subject field and message field do this: click on the field and press and hold down alt key and then type 0173 from the Numpad of the keyboard! Then release the alt key. Repeat the procedure for both the fields.
3. Then click on Submit and you will see a topic without link and only with your profile name [If you still have not made that invisible yet]

Invisible Events and Polls:

The tricks are same as above.

• On Question, Description and Option put alt+0173 (as mentioned earlier) and the Poll will be invisible
• For events do the same for Title, Location, Event and City

Invisible Scrap Trick:

If you want to scrap a blank message to your friend then you can easily do this by scrapping him/her HTML codes without bodytext! For example send him/her these codes

1. <h3></h3>
2. <font></font>
3. <a href=/></a>

etc...

Hidden message in Scrap and HTML enabled Community Post:

The main idea behind this trick is to use 0 sized font! Note that the message will only be hidden under Firefox web browser! Under Google Chrome it will be shown.Write your message under this code:

<font style="font-size:0pt">Your Hidden Message</font>

~~~~*FIXES*~~~~

Now we shall discuss on how to edit see and modify even these invisible Topics and profiles

To fix the invisible Profile name:

This is quite easy and can be done by simply using this Greasemonkey script. Prefer to our previous posts for getting help on installing Greasemonkey. Once done >>install this script<<

To see the Hidden messages on Scraps and Community Posts:

This is a little bit tricky. Follow these instruction and refer to the screenshots for more help.

1. First select the blank scrap or Community post along with the profile name and then Right Click and select "View selection Source".

2. Now a new window will open. You can find the hidden message after the line div class="para" as shown in the image below.

To get the Link to the invisible Community Topic:

This is the most trickiest part. But not something which you cant do! So have patience and follow these instructions very carefully.

1. Select the profile along with the invisible topic as shown in this picture.

2. Right click and chose View Selection Source as mentioned previously. A new window will pop-up.

3. Now note the number after this line a href="/Main#CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=***&tid= as shown in the image below.

4. Now you need to note down the community number. You can do this easily by hovering your mouse over the community name and noting down the community id from the link shown in the status bar. See this screenshot for reference.

5. In the link below replace "xxxxxx" with the community number you have noted in step 4 and "yyyyyy" by the topic number you have noted in step 3.

http://www.orkut.com/Main#CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=xxxxxx&tid=yyyyyy

Now just copy paste the modified code in the address bar of your Browser and you will be on the hidden thread. Now you have enough knowledge for being invisible in orkut while making others visible! Enjoy and as usual.

Special Thanks to: Ashwin S. [Member of Team Blakut] -for doing extensive researches on the invisible community post, DP's and Polls & Events Sunny [Member of Team Blakut] - for finding the codes for invisible profile name

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[Update] Gmail adds import emails from other email clinets. Get your mail from Yahoo and Hotmail Now!

Gmail has added a new feature by which you can get email from your other email accounts in your gmail account.

This feature is currently being tested and is available to only a small subset of users, I was lucky to be one.

Here is the list of email clients you can import your email from.

If you are one of the people being offered this feature you can import your email from

SETTINGS> ACCOUNTS and IMPORT> IMPORT MAIL AND CONTACTS

If you don't have this feature then you might have to wait till Google rolls it out to more people. I have imported my email from Yahoo and Hotmail already....what are you waiting for? It takes some time to import all the email and contacts, it depends on how much data you are importing. But it does it automatically , just leave it alone for a couple of hours and you would get a message after the import is complete.

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[Update] Gmail Labs adds your location in Signature

Gmail Labs has yet again added a cool feature in the signature, so when you are travelling your location of the sent email would appear in your signature.

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[Update] Reply by chat in Orkut Scrapbooks

Orkut has added a minor update today. Now if your friend is online, you can reply to his scraps on chat rather than time consuming scrapbook conversation.

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[Update] Orkut Help Group being moved to Google Help Forum, Create your Google Profile Now!!

Vandini Ravindran(The Orkut Guide) has already given the following notice in the OHG about moving the Orkut Help Group to a new forum.

Hi everyone,

We're in the process of moving the orkut Help Group from Google Groups to a new platform that offers a number of features our users have requested. The Forum in Google Groups will be closed to posting once we've made the switch, but will still be available as an archive of all the great information you've shared.

Some of the features the new forum will provide:

- Question & answer format to help you find answers quickly - Better spam detection and prevention - Public recognition of Top Contributors and frequent posters

I'll make sure to post another announcement as soon as the new forum launches, but wanted to give you all a heads up so that the change doesn't take you completely by surprise :)

Thanks in advance for your patience as we work to build a community in the new orkut Help Forum. We hope you'll come check it out!

Cheers, Vandini

Upon a little digging we figured out that future Orkut Help would found in Google Help Forum. You may make your Google Help Forum Profile now and start helping. As you can see in the screenshots that your contribution would be evaluated by the number of answers and the quality of answers which is determined by "thumbs up" from other members. The best answer is chosen and given a green tick. The more good quality answers you provide, the more your level and reputation would increase. It works like somewhat like Yahoo! Answers.

This is particularly useful to people who were or want to be active in the Orkut Help Group before to get a headstart.

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