January's Hacker News

Hey readers! I've thinking about starting a new monthly series called 'Hacker News', this is the pilot post, so let me know what you think in the comments! We've all heard of the Gawker hack, a few months ago, which supposedly revealed "millions" of authentication credentials. But another lesser known credential hack recently happened with the 'Trapster' app as well exposing "millions" of e-mail addresses and passwords. This hack was so major, that Twitter sent out a warning e-mail, suggesting users change their passwords often. This is very good advice! CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS OFTEN! because shortly after several viruses leaked across Twitter, and Facebook now too. These viruses are rouge applications bragging to show the number of page hits, but in reality show random numbers and fake information. I don't know much about these fake applications, but I do know they are mal-ware of some type. Their data is not congruent, and if aggregated twice, will show random results. Be careful of the applications you allow access to your data, some of these may end up compromised like Trapster, and some may not protect users from internal malicious applications, the kind of protections Facebook lacks. Protect your information and CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS OFTEN!!