German Klimenko laughed at the ridiculous spam attack on users of the popular Russian social network
March 6, 2017 could have been a day of mourning for users of the popular Russian social network VKontakte (since the end of February, a message has been circulating on the resource about its imminent blocking), but the next closure of the site was not destined to happen. Realnoe Vremya decided to look into the situation and collected five facts about the problems of the popular social network.
Why won't March 6 become a "day of mourning"?
Since the end of February, a message about the imminent closure of the resource has been “walking” on the VKontakte social network, and on the eve of publications with the same content, spammers were fasting at a rate of once a minute. In the post test, a specific closing date is indicated - March 6, 2017 - and the person in charge who made the official statement is German Klimenko, who, according to the authors of the message, is the press secretary of VK (in fact, Klimenko holds the position of adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on the Internet).
Herman Klymenko has already commented on the situation to the press, saying that everyone openly laughs at this message, and he is not the press secretary of the social network, which, by the way, will not be closed.
Note that even such a clumsy presentation of the message could cause a small surge of panic and increased attention to the news about the closure of the resource. At the same time, users of the social network were frightened by the fact that after blocking VK, their personal information would be in public access, and in order to avoid this, they need to copy this message to their wall.
Herman Klimenko has already commented on the situation to the press, saying that everyone openly laughs at this message, and he is not the press secretary of the social network, which, by the way, will not be closed. Photo rosbalt.ru
Accidents in VK data centers and regular failures
Rumors about the upcoming closure of VK were notably fueled by a large-scale failure in the social network that occurred at the beginning of this week and dragged on for several hours. But it is worth noting that VKontakte, like any other resource, is at risk of being unavailable for a number of technical reasons.
In general, in the history of "VK" there are several major failures in the work. One of the most notable occurred on July 25, 2010, when the site remained unavailable for more than four hours due to a power outage in the data center. Another failure took place on July 27, 2014: then, as a result of an accident in one of the data centers, the site was also unavailable to users.
On August 4, 2015, the VKontakte website remained unavailable for more than two hours. According to the press service of the company, the cause of the problem was a physical break in the cable connecting the data centers. It was later reported that the cause of the failure was "a fatal confluence of a number of circumstances." Increasing cases of inaccessibility of VKontakte led to the popularization of the hashtag #vkzhivi on Twitter.
Is Pavel Durov to blame for everything?
In addition to the hashtag, the opinion spread among users that regular failures in work began exactly after Pavel Durov left the company. On April 1, 2014, on his VKontakte page, Durov announced that he was leaving the post of CEO of the company.
In his appeal, the creator of the social network claimed that in 2013 his freedom of action as the CEO of VKontakte was greatly reduced. He complained that the principles underlying the social network had become increasingly difficult to uphold and formal positions in the current conditions were not interesting to him. Experts are sure that in this way Durov hinted at serious pressure from the security forces, demanding the closure of the VK opposition groups, censorship and access to users' personal data.
Durov sold his shares to the well-known media manager and former CEO of MegaFon Ivan Tavrin, and the entire social network was taken over by the Mail.Ru Group.
Among users, the opinion spread that regular failures in work began exactly after Pavel Durov left the company. Photo aif.by
Not the first “closure” in the 10 years of the existence of the social network
The upcoming “closure” of VKontakte will not be the first and certainly not the last in the history of the social network. In 2009, the resource was to be closed by a court decision; in March 2012, Pavel Durov himself allegedly stated that "his offspring will stop working because it has become too difficult to manage the site."
In the open spaces of VK there is even a thematic group called “Maybe it’s true, maybe not ... VKontakte will be closed”, in which panic messages appear every year or six months that the social network will be closed.
Hotbed of fakes
VKontakte is a fairly large hotbed of fake news not only about its closure. As well as through any social network, fictional stories of varying degrees are distributed through VK, which, sometimes without prior verification, end up in the media and are perceived by the population as verified facts.
Similar cases are periodically encountered in the Tatarstan press: just last year, a local publication spread the news that during a fire at one of the industrial facilities of the Republic of Tatarstan, a huge piece of concrete ceiling flew away from the explosion towards the penal colony and, when it fell, demolished the watchtower with a machine gunner, broke through the fence and the restricted area, and the prisoners allegedly fled wherever their eyes looked.
Lina Sarimova
And use this social network. Believe it or not, but over the past week, two people have asked me the same strange, in my opinion, question.
It was about an entry that had been circulating on VKontakte for a long time, beginning with the words: “The VK program has been deleted since Monday, I will leave this entry so that my photos, correspondence, etc. do not scatter over the Internet ...”, etc.
The question was: does it work? Should such public statements be made?
To make it clear to everyone what it is about, I am posting the text of this entry in its entirety, and below I will tell you what it is all the same.
« Since the old VK program is being deleted from Monday, I will leave this entry so that my photos, correspondence, etc. do not scatter over the Internet.
In response to the new VKontakte policy, I hereby declare that all of my personal data, photographs, drawings, correspondence, and so on are subject to my copyright (under the Berne Convention). For commercial use of all the above copyrighted items, my written permission is required in each case.
VKontakte is now a public company. That is why all users of this social network are recommended to place such a “privacy notice” on their pages, otherwise (if the notice is not published on the page at least once), you automatically allow any use of data from your page, your photos and information published in messages on the wall of your page.
Anyone who reads this text can copy it to their wall on VKontakte. After that, you will be protected by copyright laws. This communique informs VKontakte that the disclosure, copying, distribution of my personal information or any other illegal actions in relation to my profile on the social network is strictly prohibited.»
Such a record has been circulating on the social network VKontakte for more than a year. Let me tell you right now, this is all nonsense.
Such publications have no legal force (as well as common sense). By the way, the origin of this "duck" has already been investigated and on some forum it is indicated that this was done at one time to promote the profile of one of the unscrupulous users.
As for the legal part, it is immediately clear that the information is compiled with the expectation of the illiteracy of the population in matters of copyright. I'll explain why:
The Berne Convention (the full name of the document is the “Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works”) is still valid and is the fundamental international legal act in the field of copyright protection, but it was signed in 1886 (XIX century). The truth was later revised in 1979. As you already understood, it does not regulate any relationship related to personal data, and even more so with VKontakte electronic correspondence. This is the first blunder of the compilers of our strange record.
The second blunder is the statement that " if the notice is not published on the page at least once, you automatically allow any use of data from your page».
Any objects of copyright (photos, author's recordings, music, poetry, literary works) receive legal protection by virtue of their conscientious creation by the author. According to paragraph 4. st.1259 The Civil Code of the Russian Federation, for the emergence, exercise and protection of copyright (including for literary works), registration of the work or compliance with any other formalities is not required.
The absence of a copyright holder's prohibition on the use of objects is not considered consent (permission) - this is regulated by Article 1229 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
What you post on your page, such as photos of which you are the author, or your stories, is nothing more than bringing to the public knowledge - one of the ways you use a work to which you, as the copyright holder, have full rights in accordance with st.1270 Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
And finally, let me remind you that, just like objects of copyright, your personal data is also already protected without your participation. The procedure for using personal data is regulated federal law dated July 27, 2006 No. 152-FZ "On Personal Data".
The same applies to correspondence, which is guaranteed secrecy by Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, without any additional statements on your part.
So, friends, do not fall for stupid tricks and do not fill the tape and head with yourself and your friends with all sorts of nonsense. Better subscribe to useful news. I hope that each of you who have read this material, in order not to get into such stupid situations, will go
Last weekend, VKontakte users heatedly discussed the closure of the social network.
The reason for the panic was a letter posted on his wall by one of the users of the social network. He wrote that on Monday VKontakte would be completely deleted, and all user data would become public. “Therefore, all users of this social network are advised to post such a “privacy notice” on their pages ... This communique notifies VKontakte that the disclosure, copying, distribution of my personal information or any other illegal actions in relation to my profile on the social network is strictly prohibited” , one user wrote.
End of VKontakte
After that, the mass distribution of the message on the social network began with the hashtags #ReturnDurov #vk_live #VkNeBenet.
Many argue that all this is a lie and someone's stupid joke. Moreover, such messages about the closure of the network have been circulating for more than a year. In addition, according to users, VKontakte is a profitable project, so it will not be closed.
Popularity VKontakte
VKontakte is the most popular social network in Russia. Its monthly audience in March 2015 amounted to 53 million 600 thousand people. In second place are Odnoklassniki (38 million 700 thousand users), in third place is Facebook with 23 million 700 thousand users, and in fourth place is My World (23 million 700 thousand people).
