The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) also warned that the end of support for Office 2003, which also falls today, also creates the same ramping up of risk.

“Anyone using either of these two products must consider their options and ensure that personal data is not unduly placed at risk. Failure to do so will leave your organisation’s network increasingly vulnerable over time and increases the risk of a serious data breach that your actions could have prevented," he concluded.

The announcement of a copyright lawsuit in Virginia federal court isn't quite as surprising as the January 2012 raid that shut down Megaupload, but due to the statute of limitations, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. needed to act.

His adversaries in Hollywood are now suing Megaupload, which at its height claimed more than 180 million registered users and an average of 50 million visitors and 4 percent of total Internet traffic on a given day.

As chief executive, Obama has the power to reform the NSA on his own with the stroke of a pen. By not putting this initiative into an executive order, he punted to Congress on an issue that affects the civil liberties of most anybody who picks up a phone. Every day Congress waits on the issue is another day Americans' calling records are being collected by the government without suspicion that any crime was committed.

The president won't scrap the phone metadata surveillance altogether; it's unrealistic in today’s climate of paranoia. But Obama could turn his words into immediate reality with a stroke of his pen.

Facebook has a perception problem, which is largely driven by the fact it controls huge amounts of data and uses people as fodder for advertising. Facebook has been embroiled in numerous privacy controversies over the years, and was built from the ground up by a kid who basically double-crossed his Harvard colleagues to pull it off in the first place.

Perhaps the largest driver of skepticism towards Facebook is the level of control it gives users—which is arguably limited. Sure, you can edit your profile so other people can’t see your personal information, but Facebook can, and it uses your data to serve advertisers.

The record companies, which focus on a sampling of artists’ work in their suits, seek court orders to remove the infringing material and to require VK to implement content identification and removal measures like audio fingerprinting to prevent unauthorized uploading of infringing materials.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large scale,” said International Federation of the Phonographic Industry chief executive Frances Moore.

Researchers have released technical details and attack code for 30 security issues affecting Oracle's Java Cloud Service. Some of the issues make it possible for attackers to read or modify users' sensitive data or to execute malicious code, the researchers warned.

Oracle says it has doubled the performance of its open source MySQL database when running over large datasets across more than 40 cores, as it strives to preserve its lead in a market thronging with credible contenders.

"These performance enhancements are reached at scale when looking at 40 or 50 or 60 cores being used," Ulin explained. "On the low core counts you don't see it."

The email addresses of LinkedIn users can easily be exposed via a web browser add-on tool, it has been revealed.

LinkedIn said it was taking legal action over the plug-in and advised users to uninstall it.

"We are doing everything we can to shut Sell Hack down. On 31 March LinkedIn's legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter as a result of several violations," a spokesman told the BBC.

Google confirmed over the weekend that its Domain Name System (DNS) service has been “intercepted” by Turkish ISPs after government orders to block Twitter.

Twitter fans in the republic soon took to VPNs, TOR and other workarounds to get onto their favourite site, while the firm itself posted up advice on how to tweet via SMS.

Negotiators worked through the night here in Yokohama in an effort to complete their review of a key report on the impacts of climate change.

The report is the second of three analyses developed by international teams of researchers. The first, published last September detailed the mechanics of climate change, explaining that warming was "unequivocal" and humans were behind it.