Today, Sony Corp. said that sensitive information belonging to its users may have been compromised during the attack. There are approximately 75 million users at risk. The hackers could have accessed users’ email addresses, log-in information, birth dates, purchase history and billing information.

According to a representative, there is no solid proof that any credit-card data was taken but it is possible.
I don’t play PlayStation so luckily, I am not at risk. There have been many such attacks recently. On March 30, customer data was stolen from Epsilon Data Management which sends out emails for big retailers and banks such as Best Buy, Walgreens, CitiBank and Chase.

As a precaution, I would recommend that you be careful about incoming emails. Big companies will never ask you to reveal your personal information in an email. Also, if you think your information has been hacked, change your log-in information as soon as possible.

Pakistan, a Muslim country, has blocked parts of Facebook which offend Islam. This entire issue started when a Facebook user created a page titled “Draw Mohammad Day” which invited users to send their drawing of Muslim prophet. This has created a rage amongst the muslims.

Ban on Facebook was imposed by the Lahore High Court and it will remain till May 31. If you may remember, five years ago (2005), a Danish newspaper published an offensive cartoon of Muhammad which started several protests in Muslim countires.

As soon as the ban was imposed by the court, the Pakistan Telecommunication Regulatory Authority banned the link.

Kurram Mehran, spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, said, “We were instructed by the Ministry of Information Technology to block a link.”

Pakistan is the country with the second most Musilm population after Indonesia.

As a facebook user, I fail to understand why some users do stuff like this. Needless to say, Facebook should ban such groups and a lot of people find them offensive.

This issue has led to formation of several other related groups on Facebook such as “Everybody Draw Muhammad.” Here is a quote from the group,

“We would like to encourage you all to add and share Muhammad’s photos, as this will only enrage some people.”

What do you think about this issue?  What actions should authorities take?

Now it’s Google’s turn. As you know, Google offers a service called Street View which provides street pictures around the world on Google Maps. Google’s cars come equipped with cameras and take these pictures. However, is that all the information that they take?

Google had admitted to collecting bits of information that are sent over unsecured networks. Google’s engineering chief admitted in a blog post that Google has been doing this for more than three years. This confession is a result of series of questions asked by European regulators about Street View. They were intersted in knowing What information was collected and how that information was analyzed.

According to Google, the information that was collected can be used to improved advertising services.

Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering & Research, said in his blog post that Google “never used that data in any Google products.”

Google said that it will stop collecting the data and delete any old data that they have.

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If you are an important person and need to be discrete about your life then sure, you should be upset. But if you are a common person like me who only uses Facebook to talk to your friends, stay in contact with old friends living in different time zones, share your pictures and join stupid Facebook groups then there is nothing to worry about as of now. I would understand people getting worried if they have shared their credit card numbers with Facebook, but if you haven’t done anything like that then you shouldn’t spend too much time looking into this matter.

Several of us, just use Facebook to stay in touch and nothing more. So what if one of your co-worker or boss saw what you did last Saturday? If it is something that can get you in trouble then you should not really talk about it online anyways.

Facebook has provided me with a way to communicate with my old friends that I had lost touch with for several years. I have some friends who barely use Facebook yet they are so hyped about the privacy issues. Yes, it is not fair for Facebook to share too much sensitive information with third parties but the situation is not that bad yet and especially not if it doesn’t apply to you.

If you do think that these privacy changes will affect you negatively then sure go ahead and protest. Otherwise, just lay back and enjoy the benefits of Facebook. (Just make sure you get some work done too!)

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Recently, it has been revealed that when Apple’s latest gadget will hit the stores on April 3, 2010, it will come with 30,000 free Ebooks for the users. Where did these E-books come from? These books are from Project Gutenberg’s library.

Apple’s iPad can be thought of as a fancier version of ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle. Recently, these ebook readers have been getting very popular and companies have noticed that they can be very profitable. Sony, Amazon and Barnes and Nobles all have their own ebook readers and now Apple will join the competition too.

Google is now thinking about ending its local search engine Google China due to recent cyber attacks from China. Google has not blamed the Chinese government of the attacks yet but said that it will not be censoring the search results anymore. If that happens, Google will be shutting down its offices in China.

Google revealed that the GMail accounts that were hacked into belonged to Chinese human rights activists. The attacks were only for gaining access to the subject line of the emails and the date the account was created. The body of the emails were not accessed.

Baido, the most popular search engine in China, claimed that Google is thinking of quitting because it has not been able to dominate the Chinese search market. Currently, Baidu owns more than 60% of the search market. The chief architect of Baidu said that he is sickened by Google’s move. According to him, they should not make excuses and just say that they are quitting because of financial reasons.

Read what Google has to say about the issue.

This is contrary to what a lot of economists believed. This is good news for Australia and its citizens. Most of these new occupied jobs were full-time. This also had a positive impact on the Australian dollar as its value rose to US$0.9 which is the highest since August 2008.

40,600 more people were employed In September. This is the highest monthly employment rate ever since November 2007. Due to this, Australia’s unemployment rate has slipped to 5.7%. The economists believed that the unemployment rate would be 5.9%.

This is really good news for Australians who had been unemployed for the last few months. Hopefully, America will get to see similar results.

Google has achieved a lot in the last 11 years. The site which was formerly known as BackRub is now the most famous site and search engine in the world. Also, it is not just a search engine anymore. It offers so many more services like Google Maps, Mail, Chrome, Earth etc.

The bank took a lot of chances under Mack by betting more money than they actually had. This helped them a lot previously and also saved them from collapsing in 2008. However, in the second quarter, the bank reported a loss of $1.26 billion while other banks reported better results.

Gorman, who is thirteen years younger than Mack, looks over Morgan Stanley’s retail brokerage business.

“All these large financial institutions are going to replace their head honchos with someone with a background in a business with a more consistent, predictable revenue stream — commercial banking, retail brokerage, or asset management,” said Bill Fitzpatrick.

Gorman will be taking his new position on January 1, 2010.

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Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) took control of the three banks: Affinity Bank of Ventura (California), Bradford Bank of Baltimore (Maryland) and Mainstreet Bank of Lake Forest (Minnesota).

It is evident that regulators seem to be closing bank at a very fast pace and we can expect some more closures as losses from real-estate debt pile up.

The deposits of the three banks that failed will be assumed by three different banks. Pacific Western Bank of San Diego will assume deposits of Affinity Bank, Central Bank of Stillwater will assume deposits of Mainstreet Bank and Manufacturers & Traders Trust Co. of Buffalo will assume Bradford Bank.