Facebook, the world's largest social playground, is partnering with Websense to protect its netizens from malicious links. Starting soon, when you click on a URL posted to Facebook, it will be checked for a number of red flags. If none are found, you'll proceed to the destination just as you always have. But if it appears suspicious for any reason, a security alert will warn you that "This link may not be safe!"

Symantec noticed an uptick in social engineering attacks in September, a trend the security outfit attributes to a rise in polymorphic malware in email, the company said in its recently released "Symantec Intelligence Report: September 2011." Spam levels dipped slightly in September to 74.8 percent of all email, a decrease of 1.1 percent from August, but a "deluge of malicious email-borne malware" more than made up for the drop in spam.

We've always known that Macs are susceptible to malware, but without a significant portion of market share, why should anyone bother? Now that numbers are up, Mac users are finding out that their platform of choice is also vulnerable, and it's not just Windows users who have to be on the lookout. The latest threat eating away at Apple PCs is a trojan horse that tries to dupe users into thinking it's a harmless Flash Player installer.