Apple has been awarded a patent that can keep you from sending or receiving "objectionable" text-messages. The patent will allow certain content to be filtered, based on parental controls. The description of the patent doesn't mention sexting, although that may be the main thing many parents would want to forbid.
A suburban Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using school-issued laptops has agreed to pay $610,000 to settle litigation stemming from its controversial practice. Under the proposed settlement, the Lower Merion School District will pay $185,000 to two high school students who had sued the district earlier this year for allegedly snooping on them.
Microsoft issued its biggest-ever security fix, including repairs to its ubiquitous Windows operating system and Internet browser for flaws that could let hackers take control of a PC. The new patches aim to fix a number of vulnerabilities including the notorious Stuxnet virus that attacked an Iranian nuclear power plant and other industrial control systems around the world.
Meizu CEO Jack Wong posted on a Meizu forum that Apple's lawyers have convinced China's intellectual property office to shut down production of the M8 and ban the sale of existing devices because they bear too much similarity to Apple's phone.
Criminals who use the Zeus banking malware may be working on an new angle: corporate espionage. That's what worries Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who has been closely monitoring the various criminal groups that use Zeus.
Online health information and disease-risk tests can mislead, confuse and create needless anxiety, and governments should do more ensure the people who use them know what they are buying, experts said. A report by a British medical ethics group said private DNA tests may be "medically or therapeutically meaningless" and could give false results or information that is "unclear, unreliable or inaccurate."
The market for personal data about Internet users is booming, and in the vanguard is the practice of "scraping." Firms offer to harvest online conversations and collect personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online forums where people might discuss their lives.
Apple’s “There’s an app for that” slogan is so catchy that it’s endlessly parroted by the media, so it’s understandable why the company would request a trademark for the phrase. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently complied.
A conversation on Facebook has led to criminal charges against two 13-year-old students in New Milford, Conn. An 8th-grade boy at Schaghticoke Middle School threatened an administrator on Facebook, then a female student responded by suggesting they bomb the school, police told the Danbury News-Times.
When Europe settled an antitrust case over Web browsers with Microsoft in December 2009, it hoped to dislodge the world’s biggest software maker from its dominant position in the market by requiring it to offer rivals’ products. Six months into the process, the initiative appears to be having only a minor influence on consumers, prompting a renewed debate about the effectiveness of such antitrust remedies.
President Obama signed the 21st Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act into law. The legislation modernizes disability accessibility requirements in the Communications Act, updating existing mandates as TV and phone services connect via the Internet and use new digital and broadband technologies.
A host of major American companies that operate websites have defended their online privacy practices in letters to Congress, saying their consumer protections are robust while asserting that some collection of information is essential to their business model.
A Duke University graduate student has become a much-discussed topic on blogs, Web sites and even morning shows after her so-called thesis, chronicling her sexual escapades during her undergraduate years at Duke, went public on the Internet. "Our foremost concern is to provide for the well-being of our students, and to respect their privacy," said Duke's Vice President for Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld in a statement.
Following a deal with the United Arab Emirates to avert a ban of key BlackBerry services, Research In Motion Ltd. said that it can't discuss the details of confidential regulatory matters in specific countries. The U.A.E. government said that Blackberry services "are now compliant with the U.A.E.'s telecommunications regulatory framework," and that a "regulatory compliant solution" has been "applied."
Three prominent tech companies have come out in support of privacy legislation offered by a key House lawmaker, saying the bill provides "the appropriate balance." Intel, eBay and Microsoft wrote Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, voicing support for his privacy legislation, which was introduced in July.
Many e-mail users around the world have been unable to send messages because of ongoing technical problems with a popular service designed to prevent spam from reaching its intended destination. As a result of the problems at SORBS -- short for the Spam and Open Relay Blocking System -- messages sent from a huge number of legitimate mail servers were labeled as junk mail and returned to sender.
Microsoft Corp has licensed some technology relating to rival Palm Inc's smartphones, the latest move in a complex web of deals and litigation in the fast-growing phone sector. The world's largest software company, which is about to launch its new range of smartphones, licensed the patents from ACCESS Co Ltd and a unit of Acacia Research Corp.
After taking a beating from users over privacy issues this year, Facebook got the message and gave users more control over their information. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced several new tools for the social networking site, including one designed to enable users to download any of their information from the site. Another new tool is a dashboard that allows users to monitor what applications they've used on Facebook and delete them more easily.
A school bus driver had no idea she was risking her job with Buford (Ga.) City Schools when she posted a link to a local newspaper article in March. She was shocked when administrators fired her on the last day of the 2009-10 school year -- an act she believes was in retaliation for the Facebook post.
Following a growth in the number of Web addresses that include the word "Bing," Microsoft has filed three lawsuits in the past two weeks that claim their targets infringed on the Bing trademark through cybersquatting. The cases, all filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, allege the defendants bought the domains to capitalize on Web users who look for Microsoft's Bing search engine.
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