After publicly announcing that it may rethink its China strategy after an attempted breach of its servers and stopping censoring content from its search results, Google has given all of its employees based in China a holiday as the company steps up its security of its networks.

"We are currently running tests and scans internally to ensure that the network is safe and secure," a spokesperson for the company wrote to Bloomberg.

The network security tests come as Google was one of the 33 websites attacked by Chinese hackers in an attack to target human rights campaigners, with Google announcing in a blog post that it may shut operations down in China, including offices and its websites. Google has struggled with market leader in China, Baidu - and Google is also facing similar trouble in Japan and South Korea, as localised search engines beat Google.

Google, however, is likely expected to shut down operations, given how public this has become. But given China's stance on censoring the internet, allowing Google to not filter could set a precedent that could also see Bing and Yahoo follow.

NEWS IN BRIEF: A New Zealand poll conducted by UMR Research found that watching porn online while married is "morally acceptable" than downloading copyrighted material. Asking 1000 New Zealanders, 21 percent of the respondents believed that it was acceptable for a married person to watch porn without telling their spouse (and it has been made easier to hide it because of new private browsing modes on all of the browsers).

Meanwhile, 18 percent felt that it was acceptable to download copyrighted music was acceptable, while 13 percent believed downloading copyrighted video was morally acceptable. However, a strong 31 percent felt that watching TV programs "on Youtube or similar" was acceptable.

Watching porn while single, however, is more morally acceptable - if that's even possible - with 41 percent saying it is. However, more of the males opted to select that opinion than females. Flirting online and internet dating also had high percentages saying it was acceptable, with 82 percent and 69 percent of the poll results respectively.

NEWS IN BRIEF: The big four record labels are seeking one million Swedish kronor from two of the Pirate Bay founders, Gottfird and Fredrik; claiming that they have failed to comply with a court order by the Stockholm District Court to cease operating the site. Despite an appeal granted; Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony Music and Warner Music argue that the since that the site is operational, the two must still be involved one way or another and intend to get their fine of 500,000 kroner each for failing to comply with the court, which was the fine outlined in the court ruling.

According to TorrentFreak, the two currently live outside of Sweden, and proving that either one is still involved in an active role on the site will be difficult without monitoring every step they make.

Analytics firm Flurry has said that the Nexus One has sold around 20,000 in its first week. However, compared to the iPhone 3GS first week sales, it is relatively minor - the 3GS sold 80 times that numbers. As well, the myTouch 3G outsold it by 3 times that number, while the Droid outsold it by more than 12 times. In actual numbers, the 3GS sold more than 1.6 million, the myTouch sold 60,000 and the Droid sold 250,000.

"As a product, the Nexus One boasts the most advanced Android OS to date as well as unique features, such as Google Voice and Google Maps," Flurry said.

"However, potentially due to the heightened "promise" created by early buzz, the handset has ultimately fallen short on sales expectations. Without the "wow factor" now expected with each new challenger to the iPhone, especially the first smartphone with Google's own branding, demand generation has been modest."

Flurry has noted that the distribution method and pricing should be considered when comparing the phones, as the factors make an "apples-to-apples" comparison difficult (in other words, comparing them purely by looking at the numbers").

Facebook currently is the most popular social networking tool, but many don't realise that it hosts a lot of personal data - from birthdays to embarrassing pictures from your friend's 21st birthday party. This, of course, means that many don't realise the how dangerous it can be by posting that much personal information.

In a recent interview to The Rumpus, an anonymous employee of the social network reveals how Facebook staff can access your profile, even as far as typing your user ID and typing a master password comprising of "upper and lower case, symbols [and] numbers" that would spell out Chuck Norris.

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AOL has announced that it will be laying off 1,200 employees as it failed to meet its target of 2,300 - or a third of total employees in the company - in reducing its workforce, as many refused to accept buyouts. According to spokeswoman Tricia Primrose, only 1,100 volunteered to leave the company. The cuts affect both its US and European operations; and layoffs are set to start today, though most will occur on Wednesday.

Cuts include shutting offices in Spain and Sweden, though it still have a presence in Sweden via Adtech AG. Other than that, the cuts have not been broken down, but is expected that many of the cuts could come from under-performing sites and its dial-up division.

At the height of the dot-com boom, AOL bought media conglomerate Time Warner, but that ended to be a disastrous merger as the merged company dropped AOL from its name, and after years of decline in its dial-up business, decided to revamp its business model to a content company - which has turned to be successful, as it owns popular blogs Engadget, Download Squad and Joystiq. Thanks to the acquisition of Weblogs Inc, the company has used the blogging technology to power its massive content network. AOL was spun off by Time Warner in December last year.

A bug in the Android OS version 2.0.1 can allow unauthorised access to your phone, bypassing the locking mechanism on the Motorola Droid (or Milestone in Europe and Australia), with a simple phone call to the device.

The Android OS has a unique way of locking the device. Instead of a PIN, you have an 3x3 grid of circles and you create a pattern of 4 to 9 circles. According to The Assurer, which broke the news of the leak, this results in 3,024 to 362,880 different combinations. It sounds secure, and it is - unless you have an incoming calls.

Unlike other devices, the Motorola Droid has a back button when you are asked to put in your pattern combination, and pressing that takes the user back to the Home screen without being asked for the pattern, allowing full access to applications and data. However, it will proceed to ask you to type in the pattern when the call ends.

This is, basically, the easiest way to steal someone's personal data from the phone, and another person, if technically capable to do so, can access your e-mail messages and financial information, like your credit cards and e-statements from banks.

It is unknown if the Nexus One has this similar flaw, and it has not been tested since it uses Android OS version 2.1.

Google has acknowledge the problem and is looking on a fix. A spokeswoman told Techcrunch's Jason Kincaid, "We are aware of the issue and we're working to deliver a fix to Motorola Droids shortly."

Two call centre operators have been given the sack as an investigation gets under way on why a commuter's Go card, Queensland government's paperless ticketing system for its public transport network, was stripped of funds and the money transferred to another account belonging to a different commute. The commuter that was affected was Nick Smith, who works as a cameraman for Channel Nine.

This incident has now raised questions on how secure the system is, which contains information of linked bank accounts and credit card details.

While acting Queensland Premier Paul Lucas has said that security protocols were not followed, he tried to ease concerns.

"People have raised a number of concerns about how the Go Card was rolled out in the last week or so and I've got to say we have to do better with that and Translink has got to make sure that it is doing everything in its power to make sure that people get appropriate and proper levels of service," he told the ABC.

The Go Card, like the myki card system implemented in Victoria, has been marred in controversy, including forcing commuters to pay higher fares because of the lack of availability - upping the fares by 40 percent for those who don't have a Go card, and 20 percent for those who have. As well, there were a lack of places to actually get the card, with only 34 of the 144 train stations around Queensland sell the Go card.

For me, however, it does raise questions on the security of the myki system.