Popular texting, messaging and microblog apps developed for the Android smartphone have security flaws that could expose private information or allow forged fraudulent messages to be posted, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Zhendong Su, professor of computer science, said that his team has notified the app developers of the problems, although it has not yet had a response.

The security flaws were identified by graduate student Dennis (Liang) Xu, who collected about 120,000 free apps from the Android marketplace. The researchers focused initially on the Android platform, which has about a half-billion users worldwide. Android is quite different from Apple's iOS platform, but there may well be similar problems with iPhone apps, Xu said... Read More

Have you done your Federal and State taxes? If you aren't using a tax preparer for your 2013 taxes, there are a few ways to save some money on online services such as TurboTax.


Your bank, brokerage, credit card company, or mutual fund company may offer a discount so check their sites to see if they have a partnership discount with a site like H&R Block or TurboTax.

 ... Read More