Data breach interactive chart shows major increase in security flaws

If you didn’t believe us that hackers have been keeping themselves really busy in the last few years, this interactive graphic might just be the visual proof you need.
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful created the graphic with coder Tom Evans. It shows all the different “data breaches” that have occurred since 2004 affecting more than 30,000 people. Each attack is displayed as a bubble, based on that victim-count. You can also filter by year, method of leak, what was stolen, and the type of organization.
Pretty much any article about a hack you might read includes some mention of how “cyberattacks are growing,” and “the amount of hacks have increased in the last X amount of years.” This graphic gives those call-outs merit, but also highlights some of the internal mistakes companies have made that let regular folks accidentally leak out data .
As you scroll up from 2004, the size of the breaches actually seem to diminish slightly, but the frequency definitely increases and varies from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of victims. You can click on each bubble to get a little more information about the breach and click through to a report.
Check it out and let us know what you think of the interactive graphic.

Facebook working on a news-reader app like Flipboard

The report states that the social network has been quietly working on a service, internally called Reader, that displays content from Facebook users and publishers in a new visual format tailored for mobile devices, people with knowledge of the matter said.
It is not clear when Facebook when launch the service or whether there will be a desktop version of the service. For now, it seems to be geared toward smartphones and tablets.
Previously TechCrunch had reported that Facebook was working on such a service and that it would be launched during its 20 June event. However, Facebook launched the Videos for Instagram feature.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in this file photo. AP

TechCrunch had reported that lines of code referring to rssfeeds were spotted inFacebook’s Graph API code. Linking the RSS feed to a user’s Facebook ID, the code schema also covers such aspects as title, URL and update time. Each RSS feed subsequently has entries and subscribers.
If Facebook does launch an app for news aggregation, it could make a lot of sense in terms of monetisation for the site. For publishers, the app could provide a new platform for them to highlight their content from their FB pages without worrying that their content will be lost in the often-never-ending NewsFeed.
But the competition won’t be easy for Facebook. Flipboard, Zite, Pulse and Google Currents are among the endless competitors awaiting it.
The fact that the app is currently only for mobile also highlights the direction Facebook is headed in. Zuckerberg has already said that Facebook is now a mobile company and while some of its mobile products such as Facebook Home on Android may not have received the best reviews, mobile is the company’s best bet for increasing revenues.