5 SMS Per Day Limit For The Next 15 Days By Indian Government

In a very insane move by the Indian Government, a limit of 5 sms per day has been imposed on GSM and CDMA mobile users of India. From August 18, 2012, mobile users can send only 5 sms per day to the maximum after which the messages don’t get delivered with a prompt indication from the mobile operator.

The move was made by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) to curb the spread of rumors which was meant to spread fear and to vacate North Eastern Indian’s from certain states. Home Ministry said that the rumors led to the flee of North East Indian’s from states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra and hence the move was necessary. The rumor SMSs contained misleading information related to Assam Violence.

The restriction does not apply on the transaction SMS related to Banking, Financial Institutions and Railway alerts.

Moreover, one cannot send more than 20 KB of data, not more than 5 MMS per day as well. According to some reports, the rule has not yet been implemented by Airtel, in some parts of the country.

When the 6th message was tried from Aircel, the following message was sent by the operator.

“Due to Govt. directives, More than 5 SMS per day are blocked. Please retry tomorrow. Anticipate your co-operation.”

Other operators will come up with a similar message ” Hi! You have sent 5 SMS today. As per Govt. guidelines, you can’t send more than 5 SMS today. Your SMS services will be resumed post Midnight.”

No inputs about what the existing users will do about their SMS Booster Packs which allows them to send 100 or 200 SMS per day depending on the pack. The money won’t be refunded and the validity of the pack can’t be extended either!

It’s a very disappointing news for Indian Youngsters! There seems to be no point in curbing the SMS limit to 5 per when already there has been a limit of 200 per day.

There are plenty of Alternatives available. If you are an Android or iPhone User, you can install WhatsApp, Viber Apps for free unlimited texting over the Internet, provided the receiving user also has that App installed on their mobile with proper access to the Internet.

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iGoogle Will Stop Working From November 2013 Onwards

Google-Perhaps the biggest name in the internet world that has always been a subject of controversy, has now again bombarded the iGoogle Followers with the news of its end. There are possibilities that most of you might not know or use iGoogle and therefore, its end will not going to affect you anyway; there are still its old followers who are finding this action unnecessary. According to the latest reveal on Google Blog, iGoogle will no longer be available from November, 2013onwards as Google is keen to analyze that it is no more a source to increase its productivity in any sense.

What is iGoogle?

iGoogle took over the market as Google’s custom homepage that it launched in 2005. Similar to My Yahoo, My Msn homepages, that you still see in while accessing your Yahoo or Hotmail inbox, iGoogle was an initiative taken by Google to provide the users a freedom of addinggadgets, news updates, weather forecasts , horoscopes and much more. Although the idea might not click you today, but if we go back to the era, 2005, it was really an eye-catching feature, overpowering all other Homepage functionalities.
It was a rich resource for bloggers especially to keep them selves updated with the RSS feeds of their favorite websites. RSS feeds would display on your iGoogle homepage and you could easily look at every latest hot story. 

Why iGoogle to come to an End?

We can owe an entire post on the reasons that actually contributed in bringing this superlative creation of Google, to an end. Following are some summarized causes:

1) iGoogle was never upgraded

At this time of stage when even the web pages are updated twice or thrice a week to ensure their sustainability in the market, iGoogle was completely deprived of any improvement, making it out-dated slowly and gradually.

2) New Technology over-lapped iGoogle

Since this page was never taken into account other than the features that the developers added seven years back (seven years is indeed, a long period), the new technology in terms of Social Media took away majority of its users. It was obvious that when users could get all iGoogle’s features, with a touch of social networking at the same time, iGoogle had to lose its place.

3) Mobile Applications give a blow too

People have had been looking for technology to get mobilize since a long time and with mobile development, it became all possible. Your smartphones have got everything to serve you what even iGoogle failed to provide. All you need to have is a right application now to make your phone do what you want. No one has got enough time to sit exclusively and use iGoogle when features much more than that are available of fingertip access.

4) Google itself gave it a final Hit

Google itself has produced the superset of the features that were once a part of iGoogle. With Google Chrome, you can browse everything you want. Google plus here can be considered as the biggest superset of iGoogle, providing all what users might miss about their old iGoogle. Google Calendar is one of the best schedulers available in market which has made the simple calendar of iGoogle obsolete. In short, it is Google itself that has some other plans and with newly launched features, Google has find iGoogle as outdated.

What Next Google?

It’s not iGoogle only that has been a victim of Google’s ‘clean it’ policy. In fact many Google products are coming to an end this year, including Symbian Google Search application, which has undoubtedly lost its scope with the advent of Android phones. Reports have shown that Google Mini and Google Talk are also in the Hit list.

Let’s see how Google reshape its services for the users, but there is one thing to mention that the Google Fans are going to miss their favorite products that are coming to an end.

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Internet shutdown July 9 2012 and DNSChanger malware attack: details

Internet shutdown July 9 2012 is making headlines across the world. DNSChanger malware attack is one of the most feared topic for millions of internet users. Here are some important details

Are you using a Windows PC? Check out and make sure your system is not affected by the DNSChanger malware. It is time for you to have a look at whether your PC is under the attack of the villainous malware. Four million Windows PCs including as many as 64,000 in the U.S. are to go dark on Monday, July 9, 2012 as part of defending the malicious virus. Well, there are multiple ways on the web to verify whether your system is affected by the malware, which has been there since 2007.

Confirm your PC is secure against DNSChanger
To check the status of your computer, please visit any of the following sites http://www.dns-ok.us, http://bit.ly/FBI-checker or http://bit.ly/Mcafee-checker. The first and last ones have more easier process since they can automatically track your IP address and tell you whether your computer is under attack or not. The FBI site, remember FBI is an agency that has been working for a long time to fight the virus, has a bit complicated process. You will have to type your IP address manually to find the result there. However, the result from FBI is more genuine than the ones from DNS-OK or MacAfee.

What is DNSChanger?
DNSChanger is a severe malware attack against Windows PCs from a set of hackers, who try to make money from online ads through it. Seven hackers – six Estonians and a Russian – are behind the malware attack, which was started back in 2007. Since then, they have been attempting to hack Windows PCs across the world to get clicks for their online ads. As per a last year indictment from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in New York, the hackers have the goal of generating money through automatic impressions and clicks for their online ads.

The name DNSChanger also stems from the job the hackers are doing with the malware. The virus will automatically change the DNSes of the websites you search on your PC to their sites. That is, as per ABC News (thanks to FBI), “if your computer was infected and you clicked a link to go to Netflix, you would wind up at BudgetMatch.” The practice is simply called ‘click hijacking.’ Well, put it simply, it is a habit of changing the domains of sites you search to the wish of the hackers, who can make some money out of it.

Internet shutdown on July 9
Blackout of internet on July 9 (for the affected PCs) is not anyway the direct result of the contagion as it has been hyped up by some sources for a while. It is actually a precautionary step on the part of FBI, which has been fighting virus for a long time. The U.S intelligence agency earlier created alternative servers for the affected PCs. Since those PCs will not have functioning DMNS on the coming Monday, the agency has decided to shut down the servers of those systems. The result will be that no DNSChanger-affected PC can access web on the day. It will secure the PCs from further complications of the malware attack, as a result.

“Once the FBI got around to fixing the problem in 2011, it realized it couldn’t simply shut down the rogue servers because infected computers would be left without a functioning DNS, leaving them virtually Internet-less. So it set up temporary servers to give malware-infected Internet users time to fix their computers,” says ABC News.

Conclusion
Indeed, it is a matter of concern for all Windows PC users in the world now. There have been discussion over the DNSChanger attack for a while. Some sources even reported that the World Wide Web is facing a crucial end by that day. That is not the case. The Monday internet blackout is just another step against the DNSChanger virus. By the way, you can just make sure whether your PC is not affected using the above noted sites.

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