Pakistan Ends May 2012 with 119.9 Million Cellular Subscribers: ProPakistani

Pakistan Ends May 2012 with 119.9 Million Cellular Subscribers
Yahoo Gets Hacked – 450,000 Passwords Leaked Out
Concerns Shown Over Use of Social Networking Websites by Military Men
Why You Should not Buy Chinese Tablets?
Samsung Opens Experience Zone in DHA, Lahore

Pakistan Ends May 2012 with 119.9 Million Cellular Subscribers

Posted: 13 Jul 2012 06:56 AM PDT

According to latest stats issued by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, cellular industry of Pakistan ended May 2012 with almost 120 million subscribers or 119,860,799 subscribers to be exact.

PTA said that teledensity of cellular mobile subscribers in Pakistan reached 68.8 percent, up from 68.2 percent in March 2012.

PTA today updated cellular subscribers' stats for April and May 2012, in which Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone and Zong showed positive growth while Warid lost quarter a million subscribers per month to continue its data cleanup process.

Mobilink stood at top position with 36,048,127 subscribers at the end of May 2012, followed by Telenor with 29,896,660 subscribers. Ufone contented at third slot with 23,550,270 subscribers and Warid had 13,798,974 subscribers on May 31st, 2012.

More details in statistical graphs below:

Yahoo Gets Hacked – 450,000 Passwords Leaked Out

Posted: 13 Jul 2012 06:33 AM PDT

News of 'hacking and leaking' of personal information on the net are getting more and more common these days. Only weeks ago we saw 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords getting leaked out over internet after an attack on the site.

This week, Yahoo has announced that its servers have been attacked and account information of 450,000 of its users, mostly from Yahoo Voice, has been leaked by a group of hackers called D33DS. Hacker group posted login information of some 450,000 accounts over internet. The accounts of yahoo on several other sites have been affected too.

Interestingly, it has turned out that the act was carried out not for any negative purpose but to 'warn' Yahoo of the faults on its Web servers and network.

TrustedSec says the hack was executed using SQL injection attacks that are commonly used to hack into databases, and security expert Anders Nilsson has an analysis of the data that is linked below.

Spokeswoman for Yahoo, Dana Lengkeek said that "We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo users and notifying companies whose user accounts may have been compromised".

Yahoo said that only 5% of its users had valid passwords and the users should change them on a regular basis. They said that they will work on the issue that caused this incident to happen so that it won't happen again in the future.

This incident proves that although organizations pay serious attention on these matters, still no one's information is completely protected on the Internet.

Concerns Shown Over Use of Social Networking Websites by Military Men

Posted: 12 Jul 2012 11:07 PM PDT

Use of Social Networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ has become a need of life for many, without doubt. But this habit or need becomes serious and crucial when services men use social networking websites.

Situation gets worsen when these military men and women surface on social networking websites with their real names, pictures, contact details and even with their military ranks.

PakSoldiers.Com, a website that covers defense related matters, claims that young services officers are more active on social networking websites than the senior officials.

A research conducted by PakSoldiers.Com revealed shocking stats, which are as following:

90% Young Officers (Below Major Rank) are on Social Networking Websites especially on Facebook.
80% Young Officers are there with their original details, Address, Profession and Phone Numbers.
55% have shown their Profile Picture in Uniform to show clearly that they belong to Services.
42% don't know about the 'Privacy Settings' on Facebook, hence their Photos in Uniform are easy to access.
09% have shown even their ranks with their names.

Here are some serious concerns,

Using Original Name and showing their profession in Profile, these young officers are easily available be contacted by anyone.
By sharing Photos in Uniform, their Photos can be misused and lead to serious problems for the military men.
Female Spy Agents from the enemies can easily contact them (though Officers are smart enough to deal with enemies)
Sharing latest Status Updates regarding current happening around them may lead towards the serious leakage of the info.

Research produced on PakSolders said that Spy agencies are smart enough but probably they can't put a check over the officers using the social networking websites.

Report said that Military Intelligence (MI) and the other sections of the intelligence keep a close eye over the officers moving out side the garrisons, but it feared that keeping a watch on social networking websites is still leaves a question mark for intelligence agencies.

Report expressed its concerns about possible data leakage due to status updates from army men and women. It said that officers are usually inclined towards uploading pictures of their activities, which could be monitored and misused by unsafe hands.

It maybe recalled that pictures and video footages of army men (while being at service) keeps on surfacing on Facebook and other social networking websites, which at times reveal serious inside information.

PakSolders said that whole scenario gets severe just because services men are not fully aware of the privacy issues and are usually unable to limit the audience of their updates to certain groups/friends.

According to Official Sources, services officers have been informed to not to upload their official data like their photos in uniform, regiments, units, and about their senior officials on social networking websites. Having said this, intelligence agencies and Pakistan Armed Forces will have to take a serious step towards regulating the use of social media for its officials and non-commissioned officers.

Why You Should not Buy Chinese Tablets?

Posted: 12 Jul 2012 10:11 PM PDT

We have seen a lot of people talking in favor of the Chinese tablets which come at a modest price and can be bought by anyone, even those with very limited budget.

However, it must be taken into consideration that these tablets are not reliable and should be bought only when you are on an extremely strict budget.

Below listed drawbacks are valid for not only the tablets but for cheaper Chinese smartphones too. Let's go straight away to the reasons, why these tablets are not worth buying:

Illegal unlicensed software

To start off, many of these tablets come without official, licensed software from Google which means they are made illegally. This means that their software is vulnerable to more viruses and of course, going to face performance issues and lagginess.

The software issues will definitely increase and the device gets even more laggy in the future, since software updates are usually hard to find,

Cheap build quality, unreliability & stolen design

Most of these tablets come with poor build quality so get ready to bid farewell to them incase you've dropped them. Their designs are similar and stolen especially from the iPad (I've already seen so many of them). They don't usually come with warranties and after sale support so chances are narrowed that you'll be able to repair or exchange them in case of any hardware issues.

No software updates or access to Play Store

Since the companies making these tablets do all this just for financial gain, they never 'waste' money on software updates to fix issues or updating the software. And because of the stolen & unlicensed software, they usually don't have access to the Play Store for downloading apps so downloading your favorite apps will definitely become a headache.

Though you can download APKs for various apps, but again, that's not legal.

Bad specifications

This was expected, wasn't it? Because of no access to application stores, poor cameras and only limited pre-installed apps, these tablets will bore you soon. Those ports you see on them might just be there just for the purpose of show-offing.

Performance issues, display & touch input

This is possibly the biggest drawback. To save manufacturing costs, these tablets have low RAMs and aged & underpowered processors. This will cause the tablet to have performance issues which will only worsen with time. Battery life isn't that great either. Their displays are usually washed out and touchscreens are usually resistive so they actually promise to make your user-experience 'memorable'.

Low resale value

After a year or two, these products will most probably be rendered unusable so on reselling them, you'll only get a fraction of your money back as no-one would like to spend their fortunes on a cheap, unreliable and used device.

Conclusion

And all these reasons apply not only to Chinese tablets, but also to all the other cheap Chinese devices too. This article is only scratching the surface and listing the most important points, but you'll learn about even more trade-offs as you'll progress in your journey with the tablet.

Its always recommended that you save some more money and buy a good, reliable and branded tablet from a well-known company (like Google Nexus 7). Although not all of the Chinese tablets are like this, but most of them are so why not save your money and make a sensible decision?

Samsung Opens Experience Zone in DHA, Lahore

Posted: 12 Jul 2012 09:22 PM PDT

Samsung Electronics Company Ltd. has been expanding its network in the country. An addition to its earlier projects, a new experience zone was recently inaugurated by Samsung in DHA Lahore.

Samsung Pakistan's Business Head of HHP Division – Mr. Farid Ullah Jan, inaugurated the experience zone.

Samsung experience zones are a new solution for consumers to explore experience and purchase Samsung products, where they are assisted by highly trained sales staff for their information needs.

The newly inaugurated experience zone opened at H Block, DHA Lahore would let customers experience the entire range of wonderful Samsung mobile phones, tablets along with laptops and cameras.