Hacking Government Systems goes Undetected for Over One year

According to a recent ABC News report, the hacking of the U.S Office of Personnel Management, which was discovered in April went undetected for over 12 months and the hackers could have accessed more information than previously thought.

The hack, which may have originated from China, is believed to have accessed more data, including forms used for background investigations, known as SF-86's. These forms may contain names of college roommates, so it's not just the personnel data that was accessed.

Lycos was a search engine in 90s that is now a news and entertainment site with a brand new wearable technology side. Ybrant purchased Lycos in 2010 and is using the name now to brand its new digital products, the Lycos Ring and Band. The fitness band will run $125 retail with the smart ring costing users $60. They both utilize near-field communication to provide data to your smart phone or allowing the transfer the transfer of data to other devices.

The fitness band tracks your steps, watches your heart rate and monitors your sleep. A couple features that make it different include a 14 day battery and security features to store passwords and unlock your phone. The Ring has the tap-to-transfer features and the security options.

A federal court complaint says that Paypal has misled consumers with a credit product on its popular online payment service. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking for $15 million for consumers and a $10 million fine against Paypal. You may have seen the Buy It Later option when you went to pay for an item online with Paypal. I guess some consumers didn’t view this option as credit. Richard Cordray of the CFPB thinks that is the case.

In December, Facebook started testing classified ads and now you can search across groups (public and subscribed to) and within categories. This feature should be released in the next few weeks with an a sales group link in the left pane. Users can post items by going into groups and selecting on 'Sale and Item' next to 'Write a Post'. Users will need to enter some information similar to an eBay auction to list their item for sale to the group.

If you have tried to send a message using your Facebook app recently, you noticed that the company wants you to download Facebook Messenger first. This new Facebook app has become popular with both Apple iPhone users and Google Android users. Using the app you can chat with your Facebook friends using your phones instead of their built in messaging apps.

Twitter has been active trying to get rid of trolls or limiting their reach so when they attack, their tweets are not read. The company just updated its abuse policy to target those that attack others through the platform. The company also has a new tool to find abuse automatically by comparing patterns to previous patterns that were found to be abusive. The company also plans to be more responsive to reports of abuse.

This is a change from prior activity by the company which favored growth over limiting the actions of certain members. Investors are looking for growth in subscribers and the company has seen a decline in engagement recently. They now feel that by limiting the abusive accounts, they can increase engagement and hopefully membership.

Over 190 Chrome extensions were killed by Google as the company ruled them to be nothing more than malware. The ad injecting extensions did not provide enough value over the issues they presented to users by showing ads or installing additional software. The University of California Berkley was involved in the study that led to the malware designation for the add-on products. 194 different extensions were removed from the popular browser and measures were put into place to prevent new ones from performing similar activities against users.

The federal government has launched a public analytics dashboard called "Where's My Refund?" The most looked at website powered by the U.S. government, "Where's My Refund?" had 4,561 viewers last Thursday. All federal websites combined had almost 147,000 viewers.

People can now look at what is going on with 300 executive branch domains. A recent White House blog says that anyone can now know how many people are on a particular federal website and also what operating systems, browsers and devices are being used.

A lawsuit filed in Maryland wants the NSA to end a program that it uses to tap into Internet streams and grab sensitive data on those connections. The suit, led by Wikimedia Foundation, filed on Tuesday is the latest against the agency and their unconstitutional spying programs involving US citizens discovered in the leaked documents stolen by government contractor Edward Snowden.

Lenovo laptops may have malware installed on them making secure transactions something that should be avoided until the issue is resolved. If you purchased a Lenovo between September 2014 and January 2015, the past Christmas season, there is a good chance that Superfish adware is installed on the computer and is capable to capturing secure internet traffic. Users should immediately make sure that their systems are not compromised according to security experts at Defcon security.