Want to avoid getting mugged? Buy an Android phone – or even better yet, a Blackberry. No, they don’t have any crazy criminal-prevention apps or burglar whistles built in; thieves just don’t want them. Or at least one pair of thieves in Manhattan don’t want them. Apparently, two robbers have been accosting Columbia University students for their iPhones. No other phone will do! The crooks even let one victim keep a perfectly good Droid, police say.

Everywhere you turn these days, it seems as though the headlines are filled with horror stories of Android phones riddled with malware. Even apps you snag on Android Market can infect your phone (although those are rare and often quickly removed). Microsoft has been paying attention to the news and decided to kick Google where it hurts with a new social media campaign. Have you been bitten by some Android malware and want to switch to (possibly) greener pastures? If you share your sob story on Twitter, Microsoft might just send you a shiny new Windows Phone as a technological band-aid.

In case you missed it the first time around, research has already proved that your password probably sucks. That research, by Microsoft MVP Troy Hunt, was based on a sampling of roughly 37,000 leaked Sony Pictures passwords leaked by LulzSec earlier this year. 37,000 password is chump change to Splashdata, the makers of a password management app, who sifted through millions of passwords that were dumped online during the hacktastic year that was 2011 and came up a list of the 25 passwords used most often by hacking victims. Is yours on the list?

Battlefield 3 isn’t The Sims; no matter how you decide on approaching the game, a ton of virtual people are going to die gory virtual deaths. That doesn’t faze the German arm of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, though. No, what really grinds PETA’s gears is a scene in the game in which a rat is stabbed and then tossed into a trashcan, and the organization has written a press release to let the world know of its outrage. OUTRAGE!