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Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked critical details about NSA surveillance, has been granted asylum by the Russian government. He's also been offered a job. Snowden leaked ... information about NSA surveillance earlier this year. That prompted a media firestorm focusing on the ultra-secretive NSA and resulted in U.S. federal prosecutors charging Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. Snowden then fled the United States and until recently he was living in a Moscow airport. However, the U.S. ... (view more)

A recent Facebook outage not only prevented logged-in users from accessing the social networking site, but other sites as well, including Gawker, CNN, Mashable, and The Washington Post. The glitch occurred Thursday, February 7, 2013. It lasted just ... a few minutes and only affected those people who were logged into Facebook at the time. However, the issue didn't just affect access to Facebook -- instead, users reported being unable to view many other sites. Facebook Users Unable to Access External Sites According to reports, when users tried to visit sites like ESPN, Gawker, and CNN, they were ... (view more)

"Hi Infopackets, I recently bought Windows 8 and naturally want to learn more about the new applications that come with it. In particular, I'm a huge fan of social media and would love to find out more about the new People app. Who better to explain ... it all than you, who have been helping me understand the computer world for half a dozen years. Thanks! Mary B." My response: Great question, because Windows 8's new People app is one of the more exciting features included in Microsoft's newest operating system. People App: A Central Hub for Social Media Basically, the new People app is a social ... (view more)

A recent report suggests that most users that use social networking sites have reported being spammed, with more than a third of those messages containing malicious links, or malware attached to the bogus messages. The security firm which ran the ... survey says the issue could be a serious threat to corporate networks. According to security experts Sophos, 57% of those questioned say they received unsolicited messages on their social networks last year, compared with 33% in 2008. The proportion who received either infected files or links to harmful material rose from 21% to 36%. Businesses Aware ... (view more)

A range of security experts say the crusade by search engines to include "real-time" results from social networking sites will undoubtedly make life easier for hackers. Such word comes hot on the heels of a report suggesting sites like Facebook and ... Twitter now pose a risk to businesses. As we reported last week, Google is trying out a new feature which lists results for a search term in real time . That means that for popular topics there's no longer a lengthy waiting period while web pages are scanned and indexed: instead they are constantly monitored and appear in a special results section ... (view more)

Hundreds of thousands of users on Google's social networking site have had their computers infected by a 'worm' virus. One source reports 400,000 computers fell victim, while another puts the figure at over 700,000. The attack took place in the ... Portuguese language, likely because the Orkut site is particularly popular in Brazil. The virus took advantage of a loophole in the site's scrapbook feature to post a JavaScript code on users' personal pages. JavaScript is a type of computer code commonly used to make websites interactive. The code then sent copies of itself to a user and his or her ... (view more)