Private Facebook messages are being sold on the internet

• People's private Facebook messages are being sold on the internet for anyone to read.
• Tens of thousands of people's secret chats are being traded without their knowledge, according to a BBC report.
• In all, at least 81,000 people's messages are being swapped online, the report claimed. Many of them came from Ukraine and Russia, but many more besides were from users in the UK, the US, Brazil and elsewhere.

How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you

Compromised accounts that were caught up in the hack are being sold for just $0.10 each, according to the report.
The leak does not appear to have come from Facebook itself, despite a series of data scandals. Instead, it appears to have been the consequence of malicious browser extensions, which install themselves onto people's computers and are then able to watch their activity and break into their account.

More

The hackers claimed to have access to 120 million accounts, but they appear to have been exaggeration the scale of the attack. However, the hackers showed some evidence of having the messages of some 81,000 people, a number of which were checked with account holders and confirmed to be genuine.
Facebook said it had contacted browser companies to ensure that the malicious extensions were no longer used. But it advised its users to check the extensions they have installed and remove any that might be malicious.

“Based on our investigation so far, we believe this information was obtained through malicious browser extensions installed off of Facebook,” Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of product management, said in a statement emailed to a number of outlets.
“We have contacted browser makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores and to share information that could help identify additional extensions that may be related,” Rosen said. “We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts.”
“We encourage people to check the browser extensions they’ve installed and remove any that they don’t fully trust. As we continue to investigate, we will take action to secure people’s accounts as appropriate.”

Artificial intelligence technique can boost brain scans to predict Alzheimer early - details inside

The results showed that the algorithm was able to teach itself metabolic patterns that corresponded to Alzheimer's disease.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve the ability of brain imaging techniques to predict Alzheimer's disease early, according to a study. Researchers from the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) trained a deep learning algorithm on a special imaging technology known as 18-F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET).

They included more than 2,100 FDG-PET brain images from 1,002 patients and on an independent set of 40 imaging exams from 40 patients. The results showed that the algorithm was able to teach itself metabolic patterns that corresponded to Alzheimer's disease.

It also achieved 100 per cent sensitivity at detecting the disease an average of more than six years prior to the final diagnosis. "We were very pleased with the algorithm's performance. It was able to predict every single case that advanced to Alzheimer's disease," said Jae Ho Sohn, from UCSF's Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Department.

"If FDG-PET with AI can predict Alzheimer's disease this early, beta-amyloid plaque and tau protein PET imaging can possibly add another dimension of important predictive power," he added, in the paper detailed in the journal Radiology. While early diagnosis of Alzheimer's is extremely important for the treatment, it has proven to be challenging.

Although the cause behind the progressive brain disorder remains unconfimed yet, various research has linked the disease process to changes in metabolism, as shown by glucose uptake in certain regions of the brain.  These changes can be difficult to recognise.

"If we diagnose Alzheimer's disease when all the symptoms have manifested, the brain volume loss is so significant that it's too late to intervene," Sohn said.  "If we can detect it earlier, that's an opportunity for investigators to potentially find better ways to slow down or even halt the disease process," he noted.

Sohn explained that the algorithm could be a useful tool to complement the work of radiologists - especially in conjunction with other biochemical and imaging tests - in providing an opportunity for early therapeutic intervention.