A promising executive at IBM was recently placed on leave following insider trading charges brought on earlier this month. The charges involved five other individuals. The scandal involved companies like Google, Intel, AMD and two major hedge funds. This news has shocked many in the tech industry as it involved well known individuals.

One of the most annoying things about Facebook is the amount of spammers attacking the social media site. As popularity in social communities rise, spammers have started to target these sites aggressively. One online marketer recently got slammed with a hefty suit awarding Facebook $711 million in damages.

Posting a hoax about someone dying on the Internet is clearly a sick thing to do. Not only can fans and followers be tricked into believing it’s true, so also can family and friends. But there’s another bad result, which is that hackers quickly pick up on the hoax and use it to their advantage. Which is what happened with the RIP Kanye West prank which journeyed from 4Chan to email to Twitter to malware in the space of just a few hours.

Six individuals will be facing charges by Federal prosecutors for insider-trading. The insider-trading scheme involves some of the biggest tech companies in the world such as Intel, Google and IBM. Some of the individuals involved in the scheme are also well known throughout the tech industry.

There are some very basic rules for venturing online, such as installing anti-virus software and a firewall, and keeping your wits about you at all times. But anyone can fall victim to a cleverly designed piece of malware or phishing scam. And I mean anyone. Even the director of the FBI isn’t immune, though his wife seems to be.

A total of 101 people have been arrested and charged over their alleged involvement in phishing scams. The suspects, from the US and Egypt, are accused of tricking users into handing over online bank passwords which may have led to the theft of up to $2 million.

Analysis of the list of Hotmail passwords recently published online suggests they may have been gathered by phishing attacks aimed at the Latino community. It also suggests many people are either unimaginative or lazy when it comes to choosing a password.

Scammers who put together a list of 10,000 stolen Hotmail passwords may also be responsible for collecting 20,000 passwords from other e-mail providers. AOL, Comcast, Earthlink, Gmail and Yahoo are all said to be affected.

It’s a sad fact of life that the Internet has had one major negative impact on our lives – giving fraudsters and scammers new ways to try and trick us out of money. The Nigerian scam, or 419 fraud, has been sprung via email for years, but it’s now come to social networking sites as well, particularly Facebook. In fact, it’s become such a regular occurrence that the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has issued a warning.

West Virginia’s governor is hoping a generous supporter is responsible for five laptops which arrived at his offices without warning. But it’s looking suspiciously like a truly old-school Trojan tactic which could be being used nationwide.

Researchers are warning of malicious Adobe PDF documents circulating online. The documents cause Adobe Reader to crash and allow hackers to exploit a hole in Adobe’s Flash player.

As more and more software packages, clients, and businesses move their data into the cloud, more and more cyber-attacks and fraud will be done in the cloud, says a cyber-crime federal prosecutor.

The virtual CEO of a virtual bank in virtual world game, Eve Online, has embezzled virtual currency to pay some very real bills. But he only broke the rules by attempting to make a real world profit from the scam.

Prior to the official announcement that Michael Jackson was dead, there was a flurry of rumors going across the Web causing much confusion. Many sites were reporting that Michael Jackson was in a state of deep coma while others were reporting of his passing. It has been found that devious hackers have taken advantage of this confusion by leveraging virus and spam attacks disguised as Michael Jackson information.

A man who used spam to manipulate stock prices may spend more than seven years behind bars. Alan M. Ralsky is one of five men to plead guilty to a rare combination of spam and wire fraud charges.

Scientists examining the email recovered from Enron suggest that we can can predict corporate meltdowns by looking at communication patterns within the organization. Others suggest counting the number of emails that read, “Oh sh-t!”

Even if you have never used the PayPal service to make a purchase, the odds are that the Web-payment processing giant knows more than a little about you, and it’s for your own good.