Tech Brief
• The response to Symantec's competition to find the best rap about cyber crime via the website has been swift, especially from pranksters. they have been exploiting vulnerabilities on the site to rickroll visitors.
"The security problems with the site prompted one wag to ask: 'Did they hire Snoop Dog as just a spokesman or did he also write the code?' on Twitter, a negative remark embarrassingly replayed on the site because it used the dedicated #hackiswack tag."
• Hot or Not. Remember that? Anyone? Anyone? It dates from the dark ages of the web and let users rate pics of people on a scale of 1-10. 1 being not very hot and, you can guess the rest. the site has launched a free iPhone app that takes the whole comparison shtick into the real world.
"it uses the iPhone's built-in GPS technology to map out the hottest guys or girls registered on HotOrNot.com that are close to your location. Currently the site draws from a database of 4.8 million members."
• A project in California to make it easier to track children on school grounds by making them wear jerseys sporting RFID chips may do the opposite, . She argues that it is largely because the information broadcast by RFID chips is not very secure.
"Someone who wants to do children harm could potentially sit in a car across the street and scan the children's jerseys without teachers, school officials, parents, or children ever knowing that any information has been read. And if this information can be read, it can be copied easily to a duplicate chip. A child could be taken off campus while the duplicate chip continues to tell RFID readers that the child is safely at school."
• Continuing the security theme, Facebook has unveiled a tool that will let its members kick unwanted users out of their account.
"The move addresses a growing problem on Facebook. Spammers use fake phishing sites to trick Facebook users into entering their usernames and passwords, and then they use those credentials to send spam messages to as many Facebook friends as possible."
• Londoners are obsessed with travelling round the capital so many will undoubtedly welcome the release of files about timetables, routes, operators and many other useful data points. .
"This is another significant tranche of data to come out of TfL - an organisation that for years has been seen by developers and some within the Greater London Assembly as something of a black box; as one person put it to me, 'you pour money in at one end and you get transport out at the other, but you're not allowed to see inside it.'"
If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.
