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Hackers who stole data from a website promoting extra-marital affairs say they did so to promote misleading claims. The Ashley Madison site has responded by dropping a controversial fee to delete user accounts. The site openly promotes itself as ... appealing to people who want to arrange dates online where at least one party is already in a relationship. Not surprisingly, that setup brings added interest in keeping client details confidential. Earlier this week attackers claimed to have breached security and got access to the records of a supposed 33 million members around the world. They've ... (view more)

Facebook has clarified its rules on what can and cannot be posted on the site. The changes are designed to bring more common sense, but critics say the rules still have inconsistencies. The decision to remove posts, photos or videos is based on a ... set of rules known as Facebook's community guidelines. In the past, the guidelines have come under heavy criticism for being either too vague and broad, often seeming to outlaw content many people would consider acceptable, or allow content widely considered unacceptable. Three years ago, leaked documents showed the instructions for previous ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Tom S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have been a subscriber for well over 4 years now, and lately something has been bugging me a lot ... The newsletter greeting for each newsletter states that you have two freeware programs in each ... newsletter, but there are almost no programs offered or mentioned anymore. What's going on? PS: Thank you for your time, and all your efforts! " My response: You're not the only one to ask this question. We don't have freeware picks any longer in the newsletter for two main reasons. The first is that since 2006, Brandon Dimmel ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paul H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded my Internet connection speed through my Internet Service Provider, and I now have 60MB broadband service. As I expected, I have really fast downloads and web pages load lightening ... fast. However, some websites are considerably slower than I would expect, even slower than before the upgrade. Any ideas why that might be? " My Response: There are many reasons why some pages don't load as fast as others, even if you upgraded your broadband. The most important point to understand is that even though you have a fast ... (view more)

Google has added a new measure to protect users from visiting risky websites. It's now going to warn users about bogus downloads, even before they go to the website concerned. The changes will affect Google Search, users of the Chrome browser, and ... advertisements provided by Google to third-party websites. Safe Browsing Warnings Extended to Chrome Google's Chrome browser will now contain special warning messages built into the web browser. The warnings are part of Google's Safe Browsing Service , which is also available as a third party API (application program interface). Parts of the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Dave' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a question which I can't seem to find a clear-cut answer to. Can you tell me: is it possible to view a web site / web page and determine when it was last updated? " My Response: The simple ... answer is that there is no easy way to know when a page was last updated - which is most likely why you're having trouble finding the answer. Information regarding the 'last modified date' of a page is usually reserved for web site owners (via direct access to the web site files / database with their associated time stamps). However, there are ways to ... (view more)

A new report from a government auditor suggests that the United States Healthcare.gov web site is missing basic security features. The most alarming findings include ineffective cyber security controls, such as resilient passwords and stable ... security patching. Healthcare.gov represents the central hub of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act, which is intended to offer U.S. citizens an easier method of finding and acquiring health insurance. However, since the site's launch in October 2013 it has suffered from stability problems, with issues lingering well into 2014. ... (view more)

A company that helps protect websites against a popular form of cyber attacks says it's solved a major security concern. The change could mean high-profile websites can be much more resilient and secure. The company in question is CloudFlare, which ... offers services to defend against denial of service attacks (DoS) , including distributed denial of services attacks (DDoS) . That's where cyber attackers flood a website with bogus data requests, until the site (or server) is no longer able to deal with legitimate requests. Oftentimes such an attack will bring a web server to a grinding ... (view more)

US Marshals are to auction off almost 30,000 Bitcoins, a controversial "virtual currency." The coins have a current market value of around $18 million dollars. The government confiscated the virtual currency when it raided an underground online ... trading site named Silk Road. Silk Road was not part of the ordinary World Wide Web, and could only be accessed using special web browser software. That made it extremely difficult to trace anyone using the site and their activity. The site was well known in the digital underground community for buying and selling services of both a legal and ... (view more)

A new study reviewed security among leading online companies following the Heartbleed bug scare, in which a commonly used encryption technique for secure websites had the capability to expose highly confidential data. The study comes from Dashlane, ... a password management firm. The study evaluated 80 web sites and examined 6 factors with regard to the way passwords and login processes are handled. Using these details, Dashlane ranked each site between +100 and minus -100. Based on a range of security issues, the study suggests Apple and Microsoft have the securest policies for passwords, while ... (view more)