IT Technology News

Facebook is no stranger to privacy-related controversies, and in the wake of last week's effort to expand the company's "open graph" concept, there are renewed concerns that the social-networking site is tracking your Web activity even after you log out of Facebook.

In a Sunday blog post, blogger and hacker Nik Cubrilovic tackled the concept of "frictionless sharing," or being able to share your non-Facebook activity with Facebook friends. He argued that Facebook can track your Web activity outside the confines of Facebook.com even if you have logged out of the service, something a Facebook engineer denied in the comments.

A group calling itself “The Script Kiddies” hacked USA Today’s Twitter account this weekend and used it to solicit requests for future targets and even to promote its own Facebook page. Although this recent hack seems like more of a childish prank, this group is being taken seriously by the FBI due to its earlier hacks involving false terrorism claims posted to NBC’s Twitter account.

Just days before this year’s anniversary of 9/11, The Script Kiddies posted news that Ground Zero was attacked to @nbcnews, demonstrating a callousness for human tragedy that was seriously disturbing.

Samsung and Apple went before judges in Australia and the Netherlands today in their ongoing patent battles.

These two companies have so many patent lawsuits going on around the world that frankly, we've lost count.

According to the BBC, Apple's lawyers in Sydney claimed that Samsung's Galaxy Tab infringed patents relating to its touchscreen interface.

In the hearing in Australia today, Apple attorney Steven Burley told the court that the rival tablet resembled the iPad 2 in "form, factor and shape", adding, "It must have been as plain as the [Sydney] Opera House to Samsung that the Apple patents were right in front of its eyes, and they were wide open."

Hacker headaches are no longer a PlayStation 3-excluisve. Nintendo today confirmed to the Associated Press that a Nintendo of America server was unlawfully accessed recently, but no user information was exposed during the attack.

"There were no third-party victims," Nintendo spokesman Ken Toyoda told the news service. "But it is a fact there was some kind of possible hacking attack."