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Google has come out with a new security feature today for Gmail that addresses some common email scams.

Many of these email scams involve a hijacked account being remotely accessed and Gmail's new feature addresses specifically that - remote unauthorized access.

The US Department of Justice this week released slides from a presentation deck titled Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites. The document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The DoJ presentation describes Facebook as much more co-operative with law enforcement requests for user information than Twitter and MySpace are. Update: Facebook's Barry Schnitt contests this interpretation of the document, says the company is resistant to illegitimate government requests for user information and offers one example of that resistance in a comment posted below. The document also explains to officers what the advantages of going undercover on social networking sites are. The EFF posted IRS training documents for using various internet tools as well, including Google Street View, but those were much tamer than the Justice file.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy which allows all users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain access to popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube among others. This change in policy effectively reverses the previous ban on accessing these types of sites - a ban that had been in place for nearly three years. In embracing the new policy, the department also launched its own social media hub, a blog-like site complete with live Twitter feeds, Tweetmeme buttons and "share on Facebook" links.

Do you like social aggregation and tracking services like FriendFeed, Google Buzz and Cliqset? If so, there's another startup launching today that wants your attention: Strings. This service is focused less on social content sites like flickr and YouTube (although supported) and more on traditional online activity like clothing purchases from JCrew or Saks, groceries from Amazon Fresh, beauty products from Sephora and a slew of other purchases from web-based shopping sites.

But before you rush to sign up with yet another activity aggregation service, it may be time to pause and think. Do the benefits of seeing your friends' purchases on sites like Strings and the online shopping tracker Blippy outweigh the risks of handing over login credentials to these third parties?

Over the last few days, there has been a lot of buzz about how much private information your public Google profile contains if you don't choose the right settings. The URL of your profile alone can already give away your Gmail address. To hide this address from public view, you can switch your profile URL away from showing your name to using an address that features a 21-digit number instead of your username. However, as it turns out, this isn't a foolproof method either. By using a very simple trick, anybody can quickly figure out your Gmail address from these numbers.

Are you using your real name on your social network profiles? According to the European Union's Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), that's a big mistake. A new report, published to coincide with Europe's Safer Internet Day, details the dangers of using social networks and lays out 17 "golden rules" for keeping safe on social networks. The report's authors are especially worried about the proliferation of mobile social networks and, among other things, recommend that users turn off all location-based services whenever they are not absolutely needed.

Swiss researcher Nicolas Seriot claims it's possible for "rogue" applications to make their way into the iTunes App Store where they could then be used to steal personal data from victims' iPhones. According to Seriot's research, the problem has to with Apple's lax approval process for applications as well as a flaw in an iPhone security feature that provides access to more data than is necessary. If a malicious application was installed on someone's iPhone, it could use this loophole to quietly harvest personal data including phone numbers, address book information, the phone's unique identifier and more. Then, using the phone's Internet connection, it could send that data back to remote servers, all unbeknownst to the iPhone's owner.

Are you goofing off on Facebook at work? As it turns out, this sort of "time theft" may be no longer be your company's top concern when it comes to social networking in the workplace. According to a new study from security firm Sophos, the real problem with social networks - and most of all Facebook - is the security risk they pose to organizations.

After Facebook's recent privacy settings "adjustment," the social network is now reporting that 35% users who had never before engaged with their privacy settings took the initiative to do so instead of accepting the updated suggestions put before them by the social network. To Facebook, this number is a very, very good thing. Although nowhere near a majority of users, this engagement rate is much higher than industry averages. Plus, as Facebook's director of public policy Tim Sparapani points out, "35% of 350 million users is an extraordinary number."

But should Facebook really be proud here? What about the other 65% of users who blindly accepted the defaults?

Google has just launched a new program aimed at improving security for its new Web browser, Google Chrome. Developers who find a bug in either Chrome or Chromium, the open source codebase used as the testing grounds for Chrome, will receive anywhere from $500 to $1,337 for reporting the issue. The amount of the reward will vary depending on the severity of the security hole discovered, says Google. Those bugs deemed "particularly severe or particularly clever" will receive the higher amount.