Facebook launched its Messenger app for Android and iOS in 2011 with a default setting that shared its users’ geolocation data. Some news outlets picked up this potential security flaw but it wasn’t until this past May, when computer student Aran Khanna exposed the flaw and the story went viral, that Facebook updated the app not to share geolocations by default. Khanna was set to start an internship with the company this summer but after the story went viral, Facebook cancelled the internship. 

During the first six months of this year, Adobe’s Flash platform has experienced eight serious exploits. The trend continued this week, as Yahoo confirmed hackers had used an existing Flash vulnerability to infect its users through advertising on its sites. The attack re-directed some users to malicious websites and infected others with ransomware, a kind of computer virus that takes control of the user’s machine and demands that money is paid to hackers to make it accessible again. 

Search Module by Goobzo is a potentially unwanted web browser extension that is ad-supported.  Similarly to other hijackers, Search Module has ability to change homepage, default search engine and new tab page. Once Search Module is successfully installed, it changes Windows host file, DNS settings as well as registry entries. You will notice that your PC performance becomes much slower than it was before. To protect your homepage and default search engine in the future, download Web Companion.