Facebook

Facebook has been hit with a surge of violent and pornographic images spreading across the network in the last 24 hours.

The photoshopped images show celebrities like Justin Beiber appearing to a perform hardcore sex act, while there's unsavoury pictures pics of dogs being abused. The photos have apparently spread through a click-jacking virus, which encourages users to click on seemingly innocuous links and then goes on a widespread re-posting spree throughout their friend list.

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard University as a dropout with a novel idea. He returned Monday with a triumphant message: He's hiring.

The 27-year-old CEO received a rock-star welcome during his first official visit since he left for California's Silicon Valley in 2004. He made his recruitment pitch to 250 students at Harvard after a similar meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As millions of kids and their parents satisfy a post-Halloween sweet tooth, Facebook scammers are spreading an especially nasty campaign to revive last night's fright and lure people into compromising their computer security.

The Facebook message, which began spreading Tuesday, shows a picture of a bloodied woman and reads, "Girl Killed Herself on Halloween After Dad Posted This on Her Wall."

A small array of scripts programmed to pass themselves off as real people stole 250 gigabytes worth of personal information from Facebook users in just eight weeks, researchers said in an academic report to be presented next month.

Every 24 hours 600,000 Facebook accounts are subject to attempted hacking or violation, Facebook has revealed.

The Social Network™ disclosed details of hacking activity as it unveiled new measures to protect user’s privacy. “We are adapting and responding to new threats everyday and will continue to roll out new ways to protect your account,” Facebook said.

Facebook is testing security features that boost password protection for third-party applications and make it easier to reactivate accounts hijacked by hackers.

Brooke Rutledge of Lafayette County, Mississippi has sued Facebook for allegedly violating federal wiretap laws by illegally tracking her Internet activity while logged out of the social networking site. The 17-page filing seems to have been prompted by a recent discovery by Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic. In late September, Cubrilovic released an article explaining how Facebook could track users across the Web on any page running a Facebook widget, such as the "Like" button seen at the bottom of TechSpot's articles.

Despite the fact that Facebook has apparently reworked its security and privacy controls several times, 51% of users are reportedly unhappy with the current privacy controls on the social networking site.

That's just one of the messages from Barracuda Networks' 2011 Social Networking Security & Privacy Study, which also reveals that 20% of respondents have been negatively affected by information that was exposed on a social network, and 95% think that social networking sites need to do a better job protecting against account hacking.

A Facebook user has filed a federal lawsuit against the social networking giant, claiming it violated wiretap laws with a tracking cookie that records web browsing history after logging off of Facebook.

John Graham, a 42-year-old lawyer, is the named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Kansas. His suit seeks class action status for the 150 million users of Facebook in the United States. Graham referred all comment to his attorneys, who declined to comment on the filing.

It's impossible to express how sad many people in the technology world feel at the news of the death of Steve Jobs.

Sickeningly, as with the deaths of other figures in the public eye, there are scammers waiting to take advantage of bad news.

Here's a scam we have seen on Facebook, claiming that free iPads are being given away "in memory of Steve Jobs".  The cool-sounding link sucks you in, tricking you into believing that you may get a free iPad but then goes on to get you to complete online surveys to "qualify".