Microsoft and Yahoo said that their online search deal has received approval from U.S. and European Union regulators, paving the way for the two companies to combine much of their Internet search business. Under the 10-year deal, which was announced in July, Yahoo.com and Bing.com will maintain their own branding but search results on Yahoo.com will say "powered by Bing."
Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach. The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property.
The International Trade Commission said it launched an investigation of Research In Motion and Apple smartphones that contain digital cameras after receiving a complaint from Eastman Kodak Co. The trade body said it voted to open an investigation after Kodak alleged patent infringement by Canada's Research In Motion Ltd, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, and Apple Inc, maker of the iPhone.
The rush to share our lives over Twitter or our exploits over Foursquare and other social media sites could have the unintended consequence of inviting real world burglaries. At least that's the premise of a new website called Pleaserobme.com, which is aimed at educating users about the dangers of location sharing on sites like Twitter and Foursquare.
Malware-carrying spam and attacks via Twitter and Facebook grew dramatically in the second half of 2009, says a report by security company M86 Security. The volume of spam shot up last year to more than 200 billion messages each day, or 80 percent to 90 percent of all inbound e-mail sent to organizations, said M86.
Rod Tuason has become the latest person to learn that it's not very wise to post threats, especially ones involving killing someone, on a Facebook page believed to be private. Tuason is an East Palo Alto police detective who allegedly posted a note on Facebook threatening to kill anyone he found openly carrying a handgun, even if that person was carrying it legally.
Ten former White House advisors and other top officials joined forces in a rare public cyber war game designed to highlight the potential vulnerability of the nation's digital infrastructure to crippling attack. The results were hardly reassuring.
Bank of America has won a court judgment barring a self-described cybersquatter from using the "bofaml.com" and "mlbofa.com" Internet domain names following the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan found that J. Taikwok Yung, through his business Webadviso, had registered the names in bad faith, hoping to sell them back to the largest U.S. bank and cash in on publicity from the merger.
Spammers began targeting Google Buzz just days after it was launched, according to security company Websense, Inc.
A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher -- and was later suspended -- had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled. The ruling not only allows Katherine "Katie" Evans' suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Google’s new social networking service Buzz violates federal consumer protection law. It is urging the FTC to open an investigation into the service because it "violated user expectations, diminished user privacy, contradicted Google's privacy policy, and may have violated federal wiretap laws."
When Apple launches its iBook store to sell titles for its new iPad device in March, many of its titles are expected to come with a set of handsome digital locks designed to deter piracy. Veteran iTunes customers will recognize the locks as FairPlay, a digital rights management software that once limited how many times digital songs can be copied onto different computers.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said the agency will propose in an upcoming report a minimum Internet speed for American households. Dubbed the "100 Squared Initiative," Genachowski said that he hopes to bring speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million households, a speed that is significantly higher than what many households receive.
Apple has banned at least two prominent iPhone hackers from accessing its App Store. The move sparked concerns that Apple might ban all jailbroken iPhones was accessing the App Store.
All week long, officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation watched with growing dismay as a YouTube video ricocheted around the Internet. Finally, FDIC officials decided they had had enough, issuing a statement that the video contains "blatantly false claims."
A San Francisco man who had more than 1.8 million stolen bank and credit card numbers on his home computers was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison and ordered to repay $27.5 million to the banks and credit card companies he victimized. Max Ray Vision, who legally changed his last name from Butler, had pleaded guilty in June to his role in an online clearinghouse where identity thieves shared stolen information.
After taking steps to stem the public backlash against its social-networking service Buzz, Google Inc. is planning further updates and considering changing how it tests new Buzz features. Google product manager Todd Jackson said in an interview that the amount of people initially uncomfortable with the service underscored that the company's approach of testing Buzz among its employees hasn't been sufficient.
A new team is being created to tackle online fraudsters operating in Britain amid a failure to secure any conviction under existing measures. The "cyber enforcement team" will be set up as part of a £4.3m investment by the government over three years to tackle Internet and e-mail cons.
A French judge has issued an international arrest warrant against American rider Floyd Landis for suspected hacking into an anti-doping laboratory computer, French anti-doping agency head Pierre Bordry told Reuters. In an interview, Bordy said the judge Thomas Cassuto believed Landis, whose 2006 Tour de France title was stripped after he failed a dope test, wanted to prove the laboratory where his samples were tested was wrong.
A proposed bill in Annapolis, Maryland, would require companies that provide telephone service over the Internet to warn customers four times a year that 911 service will be cut off if the Internet signal dies. "More and more people are going to be using these services, so it's prudent to be proactive and make sure people are notified," said County Executive John R. Leopold, who introduced the measure weeks ago.
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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.