Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Facebook has been the source of much privacy-related controversy over the years, particularly over the last year or so. The past few days have been no different, with the social networking giant facing questions over the level of access it granted partners to private user data.

Of particular concern to users is the suggestion that Facebook gave the likes of Spotify and Netflix access to users' private messages. Having already gone on the defensive about some of the allegations leveled at it, Facebook is now trying to defend itself about the messaging allegations -- or, as the company puts it "we wanted to provide more facts about our messaging partnerships".

While it has been possible for some time to give iOS apps to others as a gift, you have not been able to do the same with in-app purchases.

Now, however, if you want to buy in-app content as a Christmas present for friends or family (what greater sign of affection, eh?!) you can do so. Apple has changed its App Store Review Guidelines giving developers the option to enable the gifting of in-app purchases.

iPhone and iPad have long been subjected to bend tests to see how they hold up to abuse. But what about if your iPad Pro arrived with a bend in the casing? You'd send it back and ask for a replacement or a refund, right? But Apple does not believe that an iPad Pro that arrives bent is defective.

The company has confirmed that a number of 2018 iPad Pro tablets have a "slight bend" in their aluminum casing, blaming the defect on the manufacturing process. Only it's not a defect, remember?

Microsoft has issued an emergency, out-of-band patch for an Internet Explorer zero-day that was being actively exploited in targeted attacks.

The company says that it learned about the vulnerability through a report from Google. CVE-2018-8653 affects a range of versions of Internet Explorer from 9 to 11, across Windows 7 to 10 and Windows Server.

Details have come to light about the deals Facebook struck with the likes of Microsoft, Spotify, Netflix, Apple and Amazon. A report by the New York Times revealed that the social network had given numerous companies access to a plethora of private user data, ranging from the names of friends, to private messages.

Facebook has responded by saying that no access was granted to third parties without user permission, but questions remain about whether users were fully aware of the level of access companies had to their data, or whether they knew they were agreeing to sharing private data.

Microsoft has announced an upcoming security feature which it hopes will take the fear and risk out of running unknown software. Windows Sandbox is an isolated desktop environment which functions much like a virtual machine; any software installed to it is completely sandboxed from the host operating system.

Aimed at businesses, enterprises and security-conscious home users, Windows Sandbox will be part of Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise. It is not clear exactly when the feature will debut, but it could make an appearance in Windows 10 19H1 next year.

Twitter has discovered what it describes as "unusual activity" stemming from China and Saudi Arabia. The social networking company says that it noticed a large number of enquiries involving a support API coming from individual IP addresses in the two countries.

The discovery came as Twitter investigated a bug in a support form. The problem, Twitter says, dates back to November 15, and it was fixed the next day, but a security researcher says he reported the issue two years ago. As a result of the bug, Twitter says that the country code of users' phone numbers could have been discovered by malicious actors.

For those who like simple chronology, Twitter's insistence on delivering tweets in an algorithm powered order that is seemingly random has long been a source of frustration. Today, the social site launches a new way to switch between reverse chronological order or the algorithm-driven "top tweets" ordering.

To allow for easy switching between the two modes, Twitter is rolling out a new "sparkle" button to its mobile app. The change is being made available to iOS users first, but Android owners will not be far behind.

We're coming up to the time of year when a little extra money is welcome. Well... that's true of pretty much any day of the year, but with Christmas presents to buy, it is particularly true now. So how about some free money from Microsoft?

It seems that you may already have a free gift certificate worth $10 sitting in your inbox. Microsoft included the gift cards in emails it sent out to people, but rather than making an announcement, the company decided to stealthily hide the money.

Apple has made iOS 12.1.2 available to iPhone users, just two weeks after the public release of iOS 12.1.1. The fourth update to the iPhone operating system since it was launched includes fixes for problems with eSIM and connectivity.

But while iPhone owners around the world will be pleased to receive another update, Qualcomm remains unhappy with Apple. The company complained that Apple was violating two of its software patents, and last week a Chinese court banned the sale of certain older iPhones. Apple said that this week's update would "address any possible concern about our compliance with the order"; Qualcomm says the company is still violating the court order.

Earlier in the year open-source software startup Whitewater Foundry brought WLinux to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Not content with creating the first native Linux distribution for WSL, the company has now gone a step further, targeting enterprise users with WLinux Enterprise.

Whitewater Foundry says that WLinux Enterprise is the first product to support the industry-standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Subsystem for Linux.

When you're taking a flight, you can check the arrivals and departures section of your airport website to see if you're going to take off on time, or just rely on an airline announcement. Or you could just ask Google Assistant.

Google has announced that it will start to predict flight delays, using a combination of historic flight information and machine learning. The company says that it is able to deliver predictions with 85 percent confidence.

Facebook is borrowing more features from Instagram and will be pushing a Facebook Messenger update to users starting today. The camera-focused update sees the arrival of not only a new selfie mode, but also support for Boomerang looping videos and AR stickers.

The update is heavily inspired by Instagram, to the point that the new Selfie mode that automatically blurs backgrounds is practically identical to Instagram's Portrait mode.

A lawsuit has been filed with the District Court of the Northern District of California accusing Apple of misleading advertising for the iPhone XS.

The lawsuit claims that not only does Apple disguise the fact that the iPhone XS has a notch, but also that the company made false claims about the pixel count of the handset's screen. The class action lawsuit, Sponchiado & Davis vs Apple, runs to some 55 pages and it makes observations that have been made by fans and critics of Apple alike.

Another week and yet another in a seemingly endless stream of Facebook privacy issues. The social networking giant has found itself apologizing, yet again, for leaking users' private data. This time around, an API bug meant that private photos of millions of users may have been exposed to app developers.

The bug was present for nearly two weeks and it went further than simply giving developers access to photos users had posted to their accounts -- it also exposed photos that had been uploaded but not actually posted.