In the summer of 2011 Facebook set up their own bug bounty program to encourage more of their users to find and help prevent any bugs or glitches found within the social media site. With security being paramount to the success of many companies it is vital that social media companies are careful with the data their users have entered.

This is an intuitive method of software testing in which Facebook only have to pay out when users find bugs – much cheaper than hiring a whole software development team. Having access to a huge variety of software testers is also an advantage as they combine different skills and experiences to find bugs that others may miss.

Last year Sony revealed last year that 12700 credit card details were stolen by hackers, leading to the closure of their PSN online network for 23 days to the dismay of millions of its users. The cost of the outage was huge to the massive technology firm’s reputation, as well as its wallet, having to give out compensation packs to lure its tiring and agitated user base of over 77 million back in. This shows that even the biggest companies in the world can make oversights in testing and as a result be held hostage by hackers.

These flaws are more important to the users, whose information they willingly give up to sites and is at risk of being exposed and stolen against their will. And when that comes to bank details many users will find that to be a deal breaker when it comes to using that service again in the future.

To find out more about what bugs are common in software take a look at our Top 10 Reasons for Bugs in Software post.

Facebook’s new method to prevent information leakage is to offer hackers who have found an exploit within the social network, of over 800 million members, is to give them a debit card. Read the rest of "Hackers to Receive Debit Cards From Facebook"

Your computer going down without a backup is something people think will never happen to them – but when it does it can be devastating.

Whether you’re a home user with lots of personally valuable data (photos, personal e-mails etc…) or a professional with hours (and days) of work on your hard drive – the impact can be HUGE.

Having some sort of regular backup in place is a MUST for any computer user today – but what should you back up?

The main types of files on a computer are user data (your documents, photos etc…) and system data (program files, configuration data).

Many people focus on backing up their user data – but system data can be just as important and is often neglected.

So – which files should you back up – how can you do it and how can you restore them…?

This short guide is aimed at individual Windows users – if you work for a large organisation and want to backup everything across the enterprise, this is a job for your server admins (and to be honest they should be doing it already!!) Read the rest of "Which Files Should You Backup?"