I often use public wifi networks to access my Facebook account and am a bit paranoid about my privacy and security. Is there some way to force Facebook to use SSL (https) to securely connect me each time, encrypting information both sent and received?

A friend of mine told me that by including Google Analytics code on my site I am leaving open doors for hackers to break into my site and deface my pages or hijack the server entirely. Now I'm kinda freaked out. Is this true?

I just received an email from Facebook telling me about a new login system that they're implementing in a few days, and telling me I need to log in and update my profile. I'm skeptical. Is this legit, Dave, or bogus?

I'm really wanting to get into the field of hacking. It's something I've always wanted to do. It seems, however, that whenever the question of "how do I learn to hack" is asked, it is usually responded to with the over-used statement "Teach yourself."

I know that hacking is a skill that is built over time, and I'm well aware that it cannot simply be taught. Still, there has to be some form of advice that you can give me as to where to begin. I simply have no idea how i would go about hacking a website or database. It's hard to teach yourself something when you don't even know the basics.

At this point, I'm still pretty clueless. I have a general working understanding of Batch and HTML coding, but nothing more. I'm just wondering if you can give me some tips on where to begin. Where can i learn the basics, and what sort of code/programs would be most helpful?