Yahoo gave its employees the early Christmas present of a week's vacation ... in the form of a mandatory, worldwide shut down.

The struggling Internet company said it will shut down all offices, except for "essential functions," from December 25 through January 1, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

The Supreme Court this week said it will decide a case involving the privacy of an individual's communications made from an employer-issued device that could dictate employees' privacy rights going forward.

According to an article in the Washington Post, the case involves a California police officer who was given a pager for work use and claims his privacy was violated because his employer read personal text messages that he had sent from the device - some of which included sexually explicit content in texts to his girlfriend. A federal appeals court in California found in favor of the police officer, but a written dissent has attracted the interest of the Supreme Court.

On Thursday an official with Mozilla made a statement that raised many an eyebrow in the industry:  He recommended users of Mozilla's Firefox browser change their search engine from Google to Microsoft's Bing.

A surprising recommendation, coming from Mozilla's director of community development Asa Dotzler, since Google and Mozilla are partners while Microsoft and Mozilla compete fiercely in the browser market.  What sparked Dotzler's statement was a comment regarding privacy made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt during a recent interview with CNBC.

A recent blog post by Forrester Research addresses an issue that seems to be on IT professionals' minds (and the topic of discussion forums such as this one) these days - should they allow employees to access social-networking sites?  Although Forrester makes the point that IT professionals have good right to be concerned about granting such access  -- since the risks associated with it are real - the answer is still yes.

Forrester outlines what it believes are the three main threats posed by social networking sites:  The potential for letting malware and phishing attacks into the organization, since these sites have become new hot spots for cyber attackers to hide dangerous code; data loss, because the company has no way to control what information employees post to these sites; and damage to a company's image that can happen when unauthorized Facebook pages or Twitter feeds are posted by someone other than a company official, with the intent of damaging the company's reputation.

Malware parading as antivirus software is turning up everywhere on the Web. Security vendor Symantec in mid-October counted 250 variations of this malicious code that pretends to scan users' PCs for viruses, but instead installs Trojans or other malware.

But few would suspect a CD that came with a webcam purchased at a well-known retail outlet would include a link to a site that downloads such malicious software.  According to an article by IDG News Service, a Web designer in Washington ran into that scenario after purchasing a Markvision webcam from Office Depot last week at the "door crasher" sale price of $10.

Of all the gifts I'd like to find under the Christmas tree from Saks Fifth Avenue this year, Windows 7 is not one of them.

Yet it appears Microsoft wants Windows 7 on the minds of Saks' shoppers this holiday season, as the two companies have partnered to give the legendary display windows of its Manhattan store a Windows feel.