update

Facebook  has revamped the way its users share information with third-party applications and Web sites in an effort to make the process easier, the company said Wednesday.

With the changes, a new permissions box will pop up whenever a Facebook user installs a new application or first logs into an external Web site through their Facebook account, wrote Bret Taylor, the social-networking site's CTO, in a blog post.

About 550,000 applications work within Facebook and about 1 million Web sites are integrated with the site, Facebook said.

"In order for these applications and Web sites to provide social and customized experiences, they need to know a little bit about you," Taylor wrote. "We understand, however, that it's important you also have control over what you're sharing."

Three out of four companies will soon face more security risks because they continue to run the soon-to-be-retired Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), a report published today claimed.

Toronto-based technology systems and services provider Softchoice Corp. reports that 77% of the organizations it surveyed are running Windows XP SP2 on 10% or more of their PCs. Nearly 46% of the 280,000 business computers Softchoice analyzed rely on the aged operating system.

"This is a red alert," said Dean Williams, services development manager at Softchoice. "This isn't something you can safely ignore, like you might have before."

Microsoft confirmed today that a security update for its Excel spreadsheet had turned English text in an important Windows tool into Chinese.