Dangerous vulnerabilities are present in a large number of today's websites, and the percentage is only going to keep on growing, according to a new report by Acunetix.

The automated web application security software company released its annual Web Application Vulnerability Report 2016, based on 45,000 website and network scans, done on 5,700 websites over the past year. The results are worrying.

YouTube 'personality' (or walking, talking, narcissistic ego with a webcam, depending on your point of view) PewDiePie has been kicked off Twitter -- just like @Nero. It comes just a day after the internet star was stripped of his blue verification checkmark.

The debacle kicked off when Pewdi… sorry, Felix Kjellberg... lost his blue badge and he subsequently posted a video in which he revealed the 'reason' for this. A fake news story had popped up suggesting he had links with ISIS, and Kjellberg used his video to 'joke' that he had in fact joined ISIS. The ban hammer swiftly followed.

Amazon Dash Button is now available in the UK. For anyone who finds logging into their Amazon account to place an order for everyday things like loo roll and coffee difficult, this physical button (thought by many to be an April Fool a couple of years ago) does the 'hard' work for you.

Available exclusively to Amazon Prime members, the Amazon Dash Button is available for a number of top brands and is (effectively) free. Amazon describes the button as "the Wi-Fi-connected device that conveniently reorders your favourite products with the simple press of a button", but it's hard not to see it as a product that panders to the terminally lazy and those under the illusion that their time is the most valuable.

Software-defined networking will enable today’s explosive data growth to continue by making telecoms more agile and scalable.

Network traffic is growing at an astonishing rate. We attribute this to video conferencing, dynamic cloud workloads and unified communications. Data traffic on the AT&T wireless network grew more than 150,000 percent between 2007 and 2015. This is only the beginning, though. New technology will continue to push bandwidth demand even higher in the future. This includes the Internet of Things, 4K video, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Kim Dotcom has never been a man to shy away from the public eye, and his upcoming trial is not going to see that change. Facing extradition to the US where he faces numerous charges, Dotcom has won the right to have the hearing live streamed on YouTube.

It's fair to say that there will be a good deal of interest in the content and outcome of the hearing, but the judge who agreed to the live streaming has insisted that a few restrictions be put in place. Firstly there will be a 20-minute delay (so not technically a 'live' stream), and comments will be disabled as well.

Iran, much like China, is not a country that has the best reputation when it comes to granting citizens unfettered access to the internet. Now, a new initiative is underway, which sees the roll out of its own 'domestic internet', dubbed the National Information Network.

The country is rolling out its own national internet in a bid to provide affordable internet access to people, but there are concerns that there will be severe limits placed on online activity. Iran already blocks access to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and a government-controlled internet, it is feared, could lead to a further erosion of privacy and individual control.

Google is scaling back a project because it's too expensive for the company. No, really, something is too expensive for Google. The project in question is Google Fiber, the fiber-to-the-premises service currently being developed and deployed in the US.

According to a report by The Information, Google has basically failed -- it only has 200,000 subscribers at the time, and knowing that it set a goal of five million by the end of 2015, it's obviously not enough. Instead of fiber, the company will shift its focus towards wireless technology, as it's much cheaper. It was also said that the unit, previously called Google Fiber, and now called Access, will have to cut its staff in half, from 1,000 down to 500.

Facebook's Trending Topics feature has faced a good deal of criticism in recent months, including claims that it showed a liberal bias. A little while back the company announced that it was to change how the feature works, and now there is a further change which sees human headline writers being defenestrated, and algorithms ushered in the front door.

What this means is that the Trending Topics list will no longer feature an explanation or description next to it, only the topic heading or hashtag will be displayed. Facebook will no doubt hope that this will help to eliminate future complaints of human intervention into the topics that are pushed on the social network.

Opera Software is advising all users of the sync feature of its Opera browser to change their passwords following a security breach. Details are a little scant at the moment, but the company says that servers were breached earlier in the week and user data may have been compromised.

Opera Sync is used to synchronize user data between different computers but it is apparently used by under "0.5% of the total Opera user base". However, with a user base of 350 million this means that upwards of 1.7 million people could be affected.

You’re watching the Game of Thrones episode you’ve been looking forward to all week, and just when you get to the pivotal scene, the stream cuts out, forcing you to adopt the salty language the show itself is known for. Your slow internet connection and your modem might face your wrath! Deep breath. Keep calm. Changes are afoot and internet connections are getting faster. How much faster?

Gigabit internet is the next generation of broadband technology and it is 159 times faster than the global average of 6.3 Mbps. A cross section of wired and wireless operators are all racing to deploy gigabit connectivity to feed our insatiable appetite for bandwidth. After all, Game of Thrones is renowned for building whole new worlds that were hardly possible on a television show just a few years ago, and communication service providers realize they’ve got to keep up.

The United States Has a Speed Problem! If you’ve spent any time checking your email or surfing the internet while traveling in other countries, you probably noticed the internet was faster. When it comes to internet connection speeds, the United States doesn’t even crack the top twenty.

The fastest internet in the world is found in South Korea, where the average connection speed is 26.7 Megabits per second (Mb/s). Countries like Romania, Thailand, and Bulgaria all offer faster speeds than the United States. Incredible as it seems, if you rely on the internet for your work, you may be able to get more done on that beach vacation in Thailand than in your office at home.

A review into mass surveillance and bulk data collection by the UK government has concluded that there is a strong case for allowing such activity. The privacy-invading activities of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ were the subject of a report by independent reviewer David Anderson QC, and the findings have been welcome by prime minister Theresa May.

The report is likely to concern privacy advocates, particularly when Anderson goes on to say that he agrees 'in principle' that there could be cases for hacking phones and computers. It gives heavyweight backing to the controversial Investigatory Powers bill (snooper's charter).

China's overarching control of the internet, technology, and its people in general is nothing new. The Great Firewall of China is famous for placing huge restrictions on what citizens are able to access online, and recently the government banned the use of social media as a news source.

The latest target for the Chinese government is the increasingly popular activity of live streaming. The proposal includes a requirement for all live streamed content to be monitored around the clock.

There are many complaints levelled at Twitter, but two crop up time and time again. The first is that if you follow a lot of people, you're likely to be overwhelmed with notifications; the second is that there's just too much crap out there.

Twitter is introducing a couple of changes to address both of these problems with an update that's rolling out today. Arguably the more interesting of the two is the "quality filter setting".

People are risking a lot when they connect to a free Wi-Fi, which is particularly important knowing how many people use mobile devices for work. According to a new report by NordVPN, a company selling VPN services, Wi-Fi networks can be hacked easily and attackers could steal valuable data, including corporate information, credit card information or identities.

"Hackers often position themselves as Wi-Fi hotspots and easily steal personal information of each individual that logs in", says NordVPN. "In addition, identity thieves have lately been using wireless sniffers, a software designed to intercept and decode data when it is transmitted over a network".