Social networking sites have been all the talk in the news this week. If you are among the millions who message on MySpace, or any of the thousands of sites similar to it, here's the latest security news you won't want to miss:

- Crafty cyber-thieves are skimming personal details from social networking sites to use in targeted attacks.

The adware distributor DirectRevenue LLC, which you may remember from a New York, U.S. adware case, has settled U.S. Federal Trade Commission charges that it used unfair and deceptive means to download adware onto consumers' PCs and obstructed them from removing it, the FTC says.

Along with giving up $1.5 million in ill-gotten gains, the settlement:

- Bars future downloads of DirectRevenues adware without consumers' consent.

If you are following the case about the substitute teacher that faces 40 years in prison, you won't want to miss this recent article on Julie Amero.

Stay tuned for the March edition of Lavasoft News (where we'll be publishing letters from some of you who wrote in to us about the so-called "spyware" teacher) and for an update from us on Friday (when Amero's sentencing is expected).

Even before it hit the market, Vista, pegged by Windows as their most secure operating system yet, has been under the scrutiny of many in the security industry. And the security spotlight continues...

Only weeks after its commercial release, researchers are raising specific concerns about the new operating systems security.

This is directed at all of our North American users - did you know that you'll be turning the clocks ahead three weeks earlier this year? And that your PC could be affected?

In a bid to conserve electricity, an American energy policy was signed into law in 2005 calling for the extension of DST by four weeks. This year it will be moved from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, and will end one week later, the first Sunday in November.