Facebook

There's no need to hit panic stations though, as it turns out the hacker responsible isn't a total wrong-un.

Instead of targeting Facebook with malicious intent, hacker Orange Tsai used his firewall-dodging wizardry to find a weakness in the social network's internal server systems in order to earn money.

Not by selling the usernames and passwords he managed to extract either, but by alerting Facebook to the weaknesses.

Screenshots teased on Twitter have shown that Facebook is trialling a number of serious changes to its news feeds, with traditional, breaking news to be catalogued under separate headers to your usual, friend-populated feed.

According to the leaks, there will be feeds dedicated to "World & US News" (in America), "Sports" and "Food" amongst others.

Users' own, bespoke news feeds will remain their Facebook landing points, with the additional options to be clickable extras.

The country has announced that it is officially banning Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all South Korean sites.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications made the announcement this week in a move to highlight its worry over the spread of online information.

Although few North Koreans have internet access, with some able to access a government-sanctioned intranet, foreigners had previously been able to browse with little restriction.

The move will inevitably make it more difficult to spread information about the country to the outside world.

Lae metropolitan police Commander Anthony Wagambie Junior says in a recent case, a woman had her Facebook profile posted in a group with the administrator of the group alleging that there was some indecent material linked to the victim.

The wrongly identified woman was then sent an inbox message by the page administrator and told to pay some money or risk having her photographs posted on the FB page.

Fortunately, the woman brought the matter to police and had it registered.

With hackers increasingly targeting Facebook as a primary source of collecting user information, and corporations using your information to make decisions about your rates (see this article about insurance companies raising premiums of social media users), you really should have a plan for protecting yourself.

Here are some tips to prevent getting hacked:

But the social network's policy on deceased users could come back to haunt it many years from now, when the dead outnumber the living.

According to calculations by PHD researcher Hachem Saddiki, deceased Facebook users will overtake their alive counterparts this century - by 2098, to be precise.

The University of Massachusetts student came to this conclusion after studying the rate that Facebook is growing and measuring it against death-rate data from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reaction Packs for Chrome and Firefox let users replace the social network's reactive emoji with their own custom symbols.

With the extension installed, users can create their own emoji or replace the Reaction smileys with packs created by others.

There are already some absolute crackers to choose from, including Pokemon and Donald Trump. Nothing says 'I disapprove' quite like the outrageous presidential candidate's snarling face.

The figures from Morning Consult indicate that Zuck is top dog, with more likes than second-placed Tim Cook of Apple, Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft boss Satya Nadella.

Hoody enthusiast Zuckerberg had an approval rating of 48%, while Cook's topped out at 39%, Bezos at 38% and Nadella at 29%.

The Facebook founder is also the best known CEO, with only 31% of the 1,935 respondents stating that they had no opinion or had never heard of him.

Instead of the coveted thumbs-down decal - something Facey-B says is too negative - we've now all been treated to an array of Facebook Reactions buttons.

Available when you hover over the tradition thumbs-up 'Like' on a post, there's a variety of emotion-based emojis to choose from.

Feel like a 'Like' doesn't quite justify just how much you love that cat video? You can drop a 'Love' heart instead.

Want to show your ire in support of a friend's post bemoaning Jeremy Hunt's treatment of junior doctors? You can now throw down a scowling 'Angry' emotion.

The question is at the forefront again after a French court ruled Friday that a French art teacher can sue the social media service after it suspended his Facebook account. Although Facebook hasn't given a reason, the account suspension came after he posted an image of a classical painting featuring a female nude.