Numerous data breaches throughout 2014 forced American consumers to be more vigilant and proactive of their own personal accounts. As shoppers head online and into local stores to purchase Christmas gifts, more security experts are providing a friendly reminder to look after their own financial safety.

A recent survey found 55 percent of shoppers will head to a local store or mall to purchase items, while 36 percent will be searching for and purchasing gifts online. Specifically, 55 percent of consumers will use their credit cards, and 24 percent will use debit cards, checks, mobile payments, and other forms of payments to make purchases.

"Unfortunately, the threat of fraud is a reality, but it doesn't mean you're helpless," said Phil Hatfield, Capital One Vice President of Fraud. "Ensuring that you're monitoring your accounts and getting alerts to make you aware of unauthorized activity are simple steps and things you should do year-round and especially during the hectic holiday shopping season."

Retailer GameStop wouldn't mind seeing the aging Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles receive a price cut, as gamers largely choose the next-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. Analysts believe both manufacturers should slash prices on both platforms, but nothing has been promised.

However, even with no price cuts imminent, GameStop doesn't believe Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware and software sales to simply drop completely off a cliff.

"We think it would be excellent and definitely would increase the sell-through rate on the old-generation consoles," said Tony Bartel, GameStop President. "We definitely think that would help. Year to date in the US, Xbox 360 and PS3 software and hardware are down 57.8 percent on a dollar basis. That's clearly significantly more than we anticipated at the beginning of the year."

Sony doesn't believe its PlayStation Network was hacked, despite a recent report from a hacker group that they "released a log of customer logins" of usernames and passwords for PSN, Windows Live and Origin. It's possible the user logins were repurposed from previous security breaches, so it would appear gamer PSN accounts are still secure.

"We have investigated the claims that our network was breached and have found no evidence that there was any intrusion into our network," Sony said in a statement. "Unfortunately, Internet fraud including phishing and password matching are realities that consumers and online networks face on a regular basis. We take these reports very seriously and will continue to monitor our network closely."

Even though data breaches are something consumers are increasingly more aware of, there also has been an increase in the amount of fake reported attacks.

The rise in popularity of e-cigarettes in the United States and Western Europe has led to the potential of malware infection from e-cigarettes made in China, according to recent reports. Cybercriminals have become more creative in their attempts to compromise devices, and ensuring devices from Chinese production facilities are pre-loaded with malware has become increasingly popular.

"The Made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer's USP port the malware phoned home and infected the system," according to a report posted on Reddit.

Trend Micro security consultant Rik Ferguson seems to agree with the assessment: "Production line malware has been around a for a few years, infecting photo frames, MP3 players and more. For consumers it's a case of running up-to-date anti-malware for the production line stuff and only using trusted devices to counter the threat."

Encryption and security was a big part of the push toward Android 5.0 Lollipop, with the first version of Android that enables Full Disk Encryption (FDE) by default on new devices.

AnandTech has now discovered that this forced security actually kills read/write performance on some devices, testing a Nexus 6 with some benchmark numbers to prove it. The benchmarks, below, are using AndEBench, where FDE has a really bad hit on performance. When FDE is enabled on AnandTech's Nexus 6 smartphone, random read performance drops by 62.9%, while random write speeds slump by 50.5%. That's not the worse of it, where sequential read speeds are hit by a huge 80.7% drop in speeds.

FDE is only enabled by default with devices that ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop, so if you're upgrading to Lollipop, FDE isn't enabled by default, thus you're not affected by these slowdowns. When FDE is enabled, all writes to the flash are encrypted before before being saved, and then decrypted when they're being read and sent to RAM. Worse yet, are those who enable FDE with it requiring a key to decrypt, which is protected by a lockscreen password. This means people who opt out of the passcode on the lockscreen, still experience the performance hit on their Lollipop-powered device, without the benefits of FDE's encryption.

Acer and ASUS have been the two big manufacturers standing behind NVIDIA's G-SYNC refresh rate technology, with Acer and its 4K 60Hz G-SYNC monitor, and ASUS and its 1440p 144Hz G-SYNC monitor, but according to new reports, Acer is preparing its own 2560x1440, or QHD 144Hz G-SYNC gaming monitor.

The QHD monitor would use the same AU Optronics 'M270Q002' panel that is baked into the ASUS ROG Swift, which means it'll bring along most of its features, too. So we should see Ultra-Low Motion Blur (ULMB), 8-bit color with 16.7 million colors, a 1000:1 static contrast ratio, 350 nits of brightness, 170/160-degree viewing angles, and W-LED backlighting. Acer will provide its 'Eye Care' technology, which uses flicker free light, being better on your eyes.

We should see Acer unveil the monitor at CES 2015 in January I'd say, with a release schedule of Q1 2015.

The PC version of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is finally being shown off in the form of world-first screenshots from NVIDIA, unveiling the first 1080p in-game screenshots from the PC version of the stealth game. NVIDIA has listed "what's new" for the PC version of MGS V: Ground Zeroes, below:

Better yet, NVIDIA has side-by-side screenshot comparisons between the PC and PS4 versions of the game, which you can check out here. To be honest, the PC version doesn't look that much better, especially considering just how beefy a GeForce GTX 980 SLI setup can be versus the all-in-one APU baked into the PlayStation 4.

The legal battle between NVIDIA and Samsung is really heating up now, with Samsung firing back at NVIDIA with a lawsuit, complaining to the US International Trade Commission to block sales of NVIDIA's GeForce and Tegra products.

We don't know which parts Samsung took under consideration, but the dispute does name many third-party device makers that sell GeForce-powered goods. Video card designers would be hit first, with companies like EVGA now in hot water. Tegra-based devices would be affected too, which isn't as big as the GPU side of things, but it's still going to affect NVIDIA if it happens.

Bloomberg spoke with NVIDIA, which said that it hadn't looked at the complaint just yet, but the company "look[s] forward" to going to the ITC with its own dispute.

We've been all over the Ubisoft scandal over the last year or so, since Watch Dogs began experiencing its delays and problems, but it's great to see more of the mainstream sites out there tackling this glaring issue. Forbes contributor Erik Kain has come out with a very damning article, titled ''Assassin's Creed: Unity' Makes A Strong Case For Video Game Recalls'.

His article talks about everything game-related, with multiple games like Watch Dogs, Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed: Unity all being released before they were ready. Kain does say that "Ubisoft obviously has the ability to release great video games. Far Cry 4 is great as was Far Cry Blood Dragon and Child of Light and the Rayman series", but Assassin's Creed: Unity has "undermined much of the good will the publisher built with its consumer base recently", and I'd have to agree.

Kain finishes his article saying: "It's time to make that right. Refund anyone who has purchased the game. Recall the copies still on shelves. Fix the game before releasing it to the public. Half-finished, buggy releases like this have no place in today's industry". This statement right there is something that I'm sure many of you will agree with.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is now out, with the franchise itself generating over $10 billion in sales for Activision, but the studio is now going after people who are uploading glitch videos and game-breaking issues onto video-sharing sites like Machinima and YouTube.

Activision is flagging the videos for possible copyright if they show off glitches in the new first-person shooter, with Machinima saying Activision is very trigger happy with takedowns right now. YouTubers and other video-sharing users aren't happy, even if Activision claims they're only going after glitch videos that highlight cheats and exploits in their powerhouse title.

Activision explains: "We're excited that so many fans are having fun playing the game and posting videos of their gameplay. We love watching the videos ourselves. Occasionally, some folks post videos that promote cheating and unfair exploits. As always, we keep an eye out for these videos-our level of video claims hasn't changed. We are appreciative of the community's support in helping to ensure that everyone has the best playing experience possible".