The volume of spam has dropped steadily since August, but the Christmas period saw a precipitous decline. One security firm detected around 200 billion spam messages being sent each day in August, but just 50 billion in December.

Facebook appears to have U-turned on plans to allow external websites to see users’ addresses and mobile phone numbers.

The White House is telling US agencies to create “insider threat” programmes to ferret out disgruntled workers who may leak state secrets, reports say. The move follows the leaking of thousands of secret US cables to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. An 11-page memo by US intelligence officials detailing the advice has been published by US broadcaster NBC.

Microsoft has issued a warning about a serious vulnerability in all versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser. If exploited by a booby-trapped webpage the bug would allow attackers to take control of an unprotected computer.

Facebook has launched what it calls the “Modern Messaging System,” a product that integrates e-mail, IM and texting in a unified inbox.

How often should you change your password? I get asked that question a lot, usually by people annoyed at their employer’s or bank’s password expiration policy: people who finally memorized their current password and are realizing they’ll have to write down their new password.

The U.S. still faces a significant gap in residential broadband use that breaks down along incomes, education levels and other socio-economic factors, even as subscriptions among American households overall grew sevenfold from 2001 to 2009.

The website of Britain’s Royal Navy was shut down Monday after it was compromised by hackers.

Attackers turned the tables on both their competitors and researchers investigating a recent Zeus attack, which targeted quarterly federal tax payers who file electronically, by feeding them a phony administrative panel with fake statistics.

Germany has introduced electronic identity cards that store personal data on microchips, raising fears over data protection in a country especially wary of surveillance due to its Nazi and Stasi past.