America's beloved shoe buying website Zappos.com was the unfortunate victim of a hacker on Sunday, who gained access to the company's internal network through the company's servers in Kentucky. The specifics of the attack were not revealed, but Zappos said that credit card and payment data were not accessed or affected by the crime.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent out an email to employees, which read:

"The most important focus for us right now is the safety and security of our customers’ information. Within the next hour, we will begin the process of notifying the 24+ million customer accounts in our database about the incident and help step them through the process of choosing a new password for their accounts. (We’ve already reset and expired their existing passwords.)

Zappos users simply need to reset their passwords and create a new one. The company is cooperating with law enforcement on an ongoing investigation into the incident.

The infamous hacker activist collective known as "Anonymous" vowed to support the on-going Occupy Wall Street protests by erasing the New York Stock Exchange "from the Internet" on October 10. On Wednesday, the group posted a video message on YouTube declaring war on the world's largest stock exchange in retaliation for the mass arrests of Wall Street protesters.

A link to the video was also posted on one of several Anonymous Twitter feeds.

The message, which was about two minutes long, did not give any further details on threat or if it was referring to only an attack on the NYSE public website, which would have no effect on trading whatsoever.

In the past year, Anonymous has launched directed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites, including DDoS attacks on MasterCard and Visa's websites in December. The group uses special software to launch the attacks, which can then slow down or crash the site.

A spokesman for NYSE Euronext (NYX), which operates the exchange, said that the company does not comment on rumors or security matters.

Another day, another Facebook scam. This time the scam promises a leaked video of Casey Anthony confessing to her lawyer.

Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee last week. The verdict has shocked the country and remains at the forefront of current news discussions. With such a large media interest in the case and its outcome, scammers have taken advantage of the opportunity for their own financial gain.

This is what the Facebook link scam looks like:

If you make the mistake of clicking on it, you'll be taken to a site that asks you to verify that you are at least 13-years-old, and to confirm you must click on the "jaa" button. "Jaa" is Finnish for "Share", which means you'd be clicking a button to share the Facebook scam on your wall to share with all of your friends, hopefully netting a few more dimwitted clickers.

You'll never get to see the video you've been promised because it doesn't exist. You'll ultimately be taken to a page that looks like YouTube, but that is really designed to trick you into taking a survey that will earn commission for the con artists.

Lesson: Don't click on sensationalist links. Most of the time they're scams designed to get you to take surveys or infect your computer with viruses and/or malware.

According to a terrorism expert, computer hackers have successfully shut down al Qaeda's ability to communicate using the internet.

Evan Kohlman of Flashpoint Global Partners, which monitors the terrorist group's communications, told NBC on Wednesday:

"Al Qaeda's online communications have been temporarily crippled, and it does not have a single trusted distribution channel available on the internet."

Kohlmann says that the attack was carried out within the past few days, and was "well coordinated and involved the use of an unusual cocktail of relatively sophisticated techniques." He added:

"My guess is that it will take them at least several days more to repair the damage and get their network up and functioning again,."

This is not the first time that hackers have targeted al Qaeda's means of communicating online. Last year, British spies reportedly hacked into their website and replaced instructions on how to build bombs with cupcake recipes.

Two programmers have uncovered a hidden file on the Apple iPhone and iPad (NASDAQ:APPL) that keeps track of where the phone has been and when it was there. Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan revealed their discovery at the Where 2.0 tech conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

The file, "consolidated.db", stores data on the devices. When synced to a computer, the location information is also then copied on to the computer's hard drive.

Privacy concerns were immediately raised, but the duo advises consumers not to panic, at least not yet. Allan wrote in a post on O'Reilly Radar:

“There’s no immediate harm that would seem to come from the availability of this data. Nor is there evidence to suggest this data is leaving your custody."

Nevertheless, Allan is pushing for transparency from Apple, stating:

“Why this data is stored and how Apple intends to use it — or not — are important questions that need to be explored."

Warden, who is a former employee of Apple, has built a free online application, iPhone Tracker, which grabs the data and maps out where the device checked in. He created this app to show just how easy it is to access the data by anyone that uses your computer, and how it could easily fall into the wrong hands.

Undoubtedly adding to the privacy concerns surrounding Facebook and its handling of personal information, the social networking site suffered from a glitch late Wednesday when a small number of users were bombarded with e-mail messages that were not meant for them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the slip-up, Facebook has blamed the glitch on a bug in computer code used to handle messages on the site. That bug somehow allowed some messages to be rerouted to people that were not the intended recipients.

In one particular case, a user received more than 100 messages meant for someone else.

Just a few months ago, Facebook sparked some major privacy concerns when it made changes to the popular social networking site.

You've locked down your Facebook profile so that only your closest friends and family can view its contents, so you're safe from prying eyes, right? Wrong! An interview on TheRumpus.net with an anonymous Facebook employee shows just how unsafe your information is, even your private messages to other members.

Amongst the items the employee revealed are:

• Facebook has 200 to 220 million active users, and more than 300 million total acounts, which includes disabled accounts and potential fakes.
• As of a few months ago, Facebook records and archives info on whose profile you view.
• The employee is aware of at least two co-workers that were fired for abusing their access to profiles. The employee admits that she also inappropriately accesses profiles.

A search for Jessica Biel's topless screenshots from the film "Powder Blue" will likely leave you with more than you were looking for, namely in the form of computer viruses. Biel topped this year's list of the most "dangerous" online celebrities as compiled by McAfee.

According to McAfree, searches for the 27-year-old actress are more likely to spread viruses than any other star. There is a one in five chance that looking for information, wallpapers, images, and videos of Jessica would lead users to a website designed to cause damage.

So who else is dangerous? Here is the full list:

Here is the full list:

1. Jessica Biel
2. Beyonce Knowles
3. Jennifer Aniston
4. Tom Brady
5. Jessica Simpson
6. Gisele Bundchen
7. Miley Cyrus
8. Megan Fox
8. Angelina Jolie
9. Ashley Tisdale
10. Brad Pitt
11. Reese Witherspoon
12. Britney Spears
13. Rihanna
14. Lindsay Lohan
15. Kim Kardashian

Three of the web's most popular social networking websites - Facebook , Twitter and LiveJournal - were both targeted in malicious Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks Thursday morning. Twitter first acknowledged that their downtime was a result of a DDoS attack, followed sometime later by Facebook, and then LiveJournal.

During the attacks, Twitter was completely inaccessible to users. Facebook fared a bit better and worked, although not completely. Facebook users encountered quite a few errors rather than an inability to access the site altogether. LiveJournal users also encountered a number of problems.

What does this mean? This was a deliberate attempt by some nefarious group to take down three of the most popular social media sites. Given the strength and size of the infrastructure of these sites, the attacks had to have been coordinated and planned for months.

It's likely that the FBI will jump in to investigate the origin of these attacks today. Just when we the public might find out who was behind it, however, remains to be seen.

There could be other sites out there as well that were or are still affected. Have any of your favorite social media sites been acting funny today? Let us know in the comments.

In a statement issued late Thursday evening, Verizon Wireless acknowledged that some of its employees accessed president-elect Barack Obama's cell phone records without authorization.

The statement read:

"This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed president-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone account. All employees who have accessed the account -- whether authorized or not -- have been put on immediate leave, with pay."

Verizon also apologized for the security breach:

"We apologize to president-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day."

Verizon said that Obama's account had been inactive for months, and that no emails or other data was accessed as the phone was a simple flip-phone, not a smartphone.

With reports such as this emerging, it makes sense that Obama won't be permitted to use his BlackBerry in the White House - it's simply not secure enough.