There has been a rash of fake notices this week, supposedly from Apple, warning that “Your Apple ID was used to sign in to FaceTime, iCloud, and iMessage on an iPhone 5”. Hopefully, if you received one of these, you were quickly able to realize that these fake Apple alerts were spam, but just in case you weren’t sure, we are confirming that for you.

If you, like many, have been using Amazon.com for some of your Christmas shopping, then your account may be vulnerable to a scam using your order number that is genius in its execution, and uncovers some of Amazon’s failings in inventory control. It all comes down to the individual order numbers assigned to your orders. Those order numbers are for sale, along with the corresponding email address (as in your email address), and scam artists are using that information to get duplicates of your orders sent to them.

The Wickr self-destructing message app (pronounced “Wicker”) gives you complete messaging security. This is because you can set your messages to self-destruct after a certain time, assuring that your privacy is protected. Wickr works with both email and text messages, and the intention is that the self-destructing Wickr message app will also be able to be used with services like Twitter and Facebook, one day.

It’s happened to most of us at one time or another. You leave your laptop open and a family member accidentally sees an email that you’d rather they didn’t (perhaps you are planning a surprise party for them), or a friend sees an embarrassing chat in your instant messenger program, or a colleague finds that website you were looking at during your lunch hour. If only there were a way to password protect individual software programs and applications (increasingly known as simply ‘apps’ ) on your Mac or Windows PC. Well, there is!

The new Facebook “Profiles for Couples” movement is quietly growing on Facebook. If you feel that your shared Snuggie or email address does not make you and your significant other enough of an amorphous couple blob, never fear, there is a group of co-dependant couples aiming to create shared Facebook pages. Because nothing says “healthy relationship” quite as much as a lack of personal identity.

If you received an email from Twitter prompting you to change your password due to a possible hack, you’re not alone. It was a mistake from Twitter, who has issued a statement explaining what happened.

We can all probably agree that one of the most frustrating things about belonging to so many social networks is managing all of them. Different passwords, profile pictures, and account and privacy settings can be a lot to keep up with in your regular day. Enter BlissControl.com, the website that now allows you to manage the settings on all of your social media accounts with the click of a button.

While Dropbox file-sharing service is intended to be a mostly consumer-based product, many companies use it as a means to share files between employees. The problem with using cloud-based services, such as Dropbox, for business purposes is that businesses don’t have proper controls over the data stored in the cloud. This was driven home this week when Dropbox announced that an employee’s password was stolen and the hackers made off with some sensitive information, including user email addresses which led to the spamming of Dropbox’s European user-base.

Google has found themselves in hot water over privacy issues yet again. As we previously reported, it was discovered that the Google Street View vehicles were collecting data illegally, while taking street pictures in the US, Australia and Europe. In fact, they were doing it for three years, between 2007 and 2010, by harvesting personal data through open wifi routers as the Street View car drove by. This data included entire emails, site visit history, passwords, and other private information that the average citizen probably does not want floating around.

It seems like every week brings news of a new hacking, which in turn means that usernames, email addresses, and passwords are constantly being posted online by hackers, and this inevitably leads to a simple question: when should you change your password? Or, to frame the question in a slightly different way, how often should you change your password? In general, you should change your password about as frequently as you can tolerate changing your password. As long as you can keep track of your various passwords, there isn’t any disadvantage associated with changing it (besides the fact that changing your password can be a bit of a pain). Now, however, there is at least one definite answer to the question posed above: you should change your password when ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com tells you to.

Here’s the skinny: LinkedIn experienced a password breach today – 6.5 million passwords were leaked. Now, according to reports, LinkedIn has 160 million users, so that’s not even 5% of the total number of LinkedIn passwords that could have been compromised, but its certainly enough that you should go to LinkedIn right now and change your password. Here’s how.

A Federal court ruling this week by Judge Robert Blackburn, of Peyton, Colorado, says that you can be ordered by the court to provide the password to decrypt encrypted data, or face contempt of court, and that being forced to reveal your passphrase does not violate the Fifth Amendment (the 5th Amendent includes, among other things, the right against self-incrimination). In the ruling, Judge Blackburn ordered Ramona Fricosu, whose laptop hard drive is encrypted with PGP, and who is charged with taking part in a mortgage scam, including charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, to decrypt her hard drive or face, among other sanctions, contempt of court.

If you find that you have to change your Gmail password, you would think that it would be really easy to update your Gmail password on your Android phone. And you would be right. The problem is, it is not at all obvious how to update your Gmail password in Android, and there is no way to reset your Gmail password in, say, the Gmail account settings on Android. So how do you change your Gmail password on your Android phone? Here’s how.

Fox Network has announced that next month it will start requiring people to prove that they have a cable or satellite subscription in order to have timely access to online Fox Network content on the Fox website and on Hulu. Those who can authenticate that they have a paid subscription will be able to get past the so-called ‘paywall’ and will be able to access contemporary content the day after it is aired on Fox, just as they can now. However those without a cable or dish account will be stopped at the pay wall, and will have to wait a week and a day (8 days) before they can see the latest episode of their favorite shows.

We have often taken flack for saying that children have no business being on Facebook (or the Internet in general), and that parents really don’t understand the dangers of letting your child on the Internet without adequate supervision and precautions. Now a group of police officers is saying the same thing, going so far as to say that you need to have your child’s Facebook password, and monitor their activity on Facebook – even if it means stealing their Facebook password to do it.