Round-up of the security news updates

Website collects addresses of users who tweet the word ‘home’
This interesting website scans user tweets for the word ‘home’. If the person who tweeted the word has location tracking switched on, the website uses the location data and saves it as the address of that user. This information is then published on the website in a blatant violation of user privacy.

Reuters blogging platform hacked again
The Reuters blog was hacked into for the second time in two weeks. This time, a fake article about the death of a Saudi foreign minister was uploaded and this led to the platform being shut down for an entire day. The news story was subsequently removed and it is believed that the hack was possible due to Reuters using an outdated WordPress version. Version 3.1.1 was being used instead of the latest 3.4.1 and this is rather alarming for a service as widespread as Reuters.

Hotmail moderators clueless about two-factor authentication
Hotmail may be getting revamped as the stylish ‘Outlook’ but old habits die hard. The service has been loaded with spam for years and has also faced many security breaches in the past. A Hotmail forum recently had to deal with questions regarding two-factor authentication. This is a security procedure for usernames and passwords that has only been implemented by Gmail so far. It is concerning that Hotmail does not provide this feature and even more alarming that most of the moderators of the forum did not even know what this term means.

Deleted Facebook images do not linger on online servers
Last week we stated how deleted Facebook images remain over online servers for months. Facebook has now changed this algorithm and ensured that deleted images do not linger around on such servers. These images will now be removed from servers within 30 days and in special cases, in just 2 days.

Rahul Thadani