Gadgetory

Facebook wants you to believe that two Facebook apps are better than one I am Bridget Carey and this is your scene that updates in social media there is a universal truth that we all could agree on Facebook is annoying it's constantly making drastic changes to its design and privacy it's a hassle to keep up with it all and they feel like you can't walk away because everyone you know is on it we don't want to feel cut off from friends so that's why we put up with Facebook's bad behavior well CEO Mark Zuckerberg is at it again but this time the change will be a bigger annoyance and it could drive some people away in the coming days you will no longer be able to send private messages in the main Facebook app if you want to ever have a private chat with someone you'll have to download a second app it's called messenger Facebook has been pushing this app for some time now but it used to be optional for those of us who didn't like jumping back and forth between two apps Facebook is putting us through this headache because it's facing pressure to better compete with chat apps Facebook buying whatsapp the most popular private chat app was not enough it has beefed up its own messenger app and last week messenger added the ability to make free Wi-Fi calls to anyone on Facebook that's a nice feature for folks who want to avoid the high cost of international calling last year the free Wi-Fi calling was for Android only but now iOS devices can join in and if you don't have Wi-Fi a call on the app will use your 3G or 4G data connection messenger may be important to Facebook but Facebook has not been very successful at making its own secondary apps home for Android was designed to take over your Android home screen and that flopped there's also the news centric app called paper but that has not been a hit either I don't need Facebook editors picking what news I should be reading thanks but no thanks so this just continues the trend of Facebook wanting to take over your phone with more apps let's move on to news about an even bigger headache in the last update I explained the serious nature of the heartbleed bug that impacted countless websites it's a security flaw that could have potentially exposed your personal info your passwords and your credit cards to hackers for the past two years and now everyone's patching it up so if you want to be safe log out of all websites and before logging back in check to see if the site has been fixed CNET has a list of the status for the top 100 websites but you should still do some homework for the smaller services you use like perhaps your community bank website there are few tools to test a website one is at SSL labs calm and if the site is patched up then you should change your password that's your tech news update you can head to cnet.com for more details from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey