The security enhancements came on Wednesday immediately after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page was hacked.

A bogus message was posted on Zuckerberg’s page, calling Facebook to become a “social business” instead of a for-profit company, followed by a link to a Wikipedia page that explains the term.

The message was taken down quickly, but media reports say more than 1,800 Facebook users gave a thumb-up to the post by clicking a “like” button under it.

Facebook announced the new security features include the availability of one-time passwords that U.S. Facebook members could use on public computers.

Users in the U.S. sending a mobile phone text message reading “otp” to 32665 can get a response containing a password that works only once and expires in 20 minutes.

Facebook will also enable members remotely check whether they are still logged onto the service at other computers and then sign out from afar.

Recently Facebook has drawn increasing scrutiny for its security controls. On Monday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Facebook account was hacked with a false message saying he would not run for re-election in 2012. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-01/27/c_13709923.htm

David Barksdale, a 27-year-old engineer in Google’s Seattle offices, used his position to break into four teenagers’ Gmail and Google Voice accounts, according to media reports.

Google confirmed that it dismissed the engineer in July, but declined to provide details about the incident.

“We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies. We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls,” Bill Coughran, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, said in a statement.

“That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems, if we are to operate them properly — which is why we take any breach so seriously,” he added.

Analysts say the privacy breach comes at an awkward time for Google. Recently U.S. federal regulators and lawmakers are weighing whether to make Internet privacy rules more stringent — a move opposed by Google and other Internet companies that argue the industry can regulate itself.

Google previously said in a white paper that the company’s hiring process includes criminal background checks. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-09/16/c_13514935.htm

At the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference Thursday, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said his company has adopted a “people first” approach to the Internet.

Zuckerberg said the challenge his company faces is to strike a balance between personalizing websites while giving users control over how their information is shared across the Internet.

“Making these products that people can share and that people have control and that are simple to do both is this balance, and opt in versus opt out is one part of that balance,” he said.

Zuckerberg pledged to continue to make the “right changes” even if some of them might be considered controversial.

Facebook has come under scrutiny of privacy controls after some of its recent changes exposed more of its users’ personal information online. 

On Xinhua Web site: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2010-06/04/c_13333530.htm