Sony said it believed the intruders collected the log-in credentials from another source, not from Sony’s networks, and were able to gain access to the Sony accounts because customers used the same credentials with their Sony accounts.

He noted that a “small fraction” of the accounts showed activity after they were breached, but that the intruders couldn’t access credit card account information. Sony had since locked all of the accounts accessed through the attack until customers can be notified to change their passwords.

10 public-interest groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Facebook’s various business practices. This demand comes right after two similar ones this week: two US congressmen asked the FTC to investigate how Facebook’s cookies behave, and Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner has agreed to conduct a privacy audit of Facebook.

They are also concerned about its “frictionless sharing” feature that is available on the newly launched Ticker and the upcoming Timeline and Open Graph rollout announced at f8 last week.

At the F8 conference yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off some of the most drastic changes ever made to the company's service. And though Zuckerberg is excited by those changes, many folks across the Web aren't so quick to celebrate.

The Facebook CEO said he believes the improvements will help create "a completely new class of social apps" that will let users share every single facet of their lives on the social network.

"All those activities people perform with these apps--listening to a Bjork tune, reading about same-sex marriage laws, cooking Arroz con Pollo, running four miles, donating to Amnesty International--will be stored permanently and made accessible (if the user allows it) on a greatly enhanced profile page that will essentially become a remote-control autobiography," Wired's Steven Levy wrote about the update.

"We're aware that some of you are having issues trying to log into PSN. We're working to resolve the issue, and we'll update you here," read a tweet on the PlayStation Twitter account several hours ago.

PSN downtime is a sensitive subject for many following a month of PSN outages earlier this year that were ultimately pegged to cyberbattacks.

The sheer scope of the recent hacking scandal--which compromised the personal information of millions of gamers--was a huge smudge on the public perception of the gaming network.

The intercepted correspondence included employee usernames and passwords, sensitive security information about the configuration of corporate network architecture that would be useful to hackers, affidavits and other documents related to litigation in which the companies were embroiled, and trade secrets, such as contracts for business transactions.

The researchers also discovered that a number of doppelganger domains had already been registered for some of the largest companies in the U.S. by entities that appeared to be based in China, suggesting that snoops may already be using such accounts to intercept valuable corporate communications.

Someone whose registration data suggests he’s in China registered kscisco.com, a doppelganger for ks.cisco.com. Another user who appeared to be in China registered nayahoo.com – a variant of the legitimate na.yahoo.com (a subdomain for Yahoo in Namibia).

Oddly for a site that is spectacularly easy to use, this redesign is intended to make it even easier. What could this mean? You could just whisper at the screen and your wishes are granted within 12 seconds?

But please remember, Amazon doesn't really want you to buy CDs and books. It wants you to buy all the more virtual, gadgety things. They're far less bother.

Not everyone is currently privileged to view the new design. An Amazon representative told the Journal: "We are continuing to roll out the new design to additional customers, but I can't speculate on when the new design will be live for everyone."

Let’s say your friend Bob tags you in a photo. Facebook will send you a message saying “Bob added a photo of you. To approve this for your profile, review your pending posts.” That’s the new bit.

Using Facebook’s new “improved” privacy controls, you can tag someone else in photo and then keep them from seeing it. It’s pretty simple; just change the sharing option so they don’t see what you posted. So if you want to tag a picture of a jackass with your friend’s name on it and make it Public, everyone on Facebook will be able to see it except one – the person whose name is on it.

In a move worthy of China's communist regime, UK PM David Cameron wants to shut down social networks whenever civil unrest rears its head in Britain's towns and cities.

"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

On August 6, 1991--20 years ago--Tim Berners-Lee posted a summary of a project for organizing information on a computer network using a "web" of hyperlinks: the "WorldWideWeb," or W3.

The Web has changed the way people think and revolutionized the world as we know it in a remarkably short period of time. From clunky modems to smartphones, Web-based technology has come a long way. The only question is how far will it continue to evolve in the next 20 years?

The latest development has to with Facebook's facial recognition feature that helps users tag photos. After joining in the chorus of European nations that objected to the feature launch in June, German authorities are now the first to declare the feature illegal.

Facebook collected data about non-Facebook users through the Friend Finder feature and then stored it without permission. German authorities threatened legal action then, but it took Facebook nearly six months before they finally disabled the feature.

Still, the company doesn't seem to be responding too quickly. "We have repeatedly asked Facebook to shut down the facial recognition function and to delete the previously stored data," said Caspar in a statement Tuesday.