You may think the only people capable of snooping on your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up in his parents’ basement. But some simple software lets just about anyone sitting next to you at your local coffee shop watch you browse the Web and even assume your identity online.
Westboro Baptist Church faked a letter threatening a DDoS attack, according to people associated with Anonymous. The controversial Westboro Baptist Church is in the middle of a row with Anonymous.
In a major change in policy, Microsoft has decided to allow marketers to use other companies' trademarks to trigger search ads. "To come in line with search industry practices, as of March 3rd, Microsoft will cease editorial investigations into complaints about trademarks used as keywords to trigger ads on Bing & Yahoo Search in the United States and Canada," the company says.
Twitter announced that it had cracked down on several third-party apps, including UberTwitter, UberCurrent, and Twidroyd -- all of which, Twitter reps alleged, "have violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways." Twitter reps have remained vague on the specific nature of the infringements, saying only that "the violations include, but aren't limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users' Tweets in order to make money."
The New York Academy of Art, a graduate university that has been teaching figurative art since 1982, is not the kind of institution you would expect to get into trouble for mischief on Facebook. Yet Facebook apparently had determined that an image the academy had uploaded to its Facebook page ran afoul of its ban on nudity.
Internet service has been cut off in Libya for a second consecutive day as protesters step up demonstrations against longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, a U.S. company that monitors Internet traffic said. Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks said data collected from 30 Internet providers around the world showed that online traffic in and out of Libya was disconnected abruptly at 7:15 p.m. EST on Friday after two partial interruptions earlier that day.
As protests have erupted in Bahrain over the last several days, the government has severely restricted the access of its citizens to the Internet, new data from an organization that monitors Internet traffic strongly suggests. The data, collected by Arbor Networks, is the first quantitative confirmation that Internet traffic into and out of Bahrain has suffered an anomalous drop over the past days.
The founder of the Drudge Report website has settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with a company that sued on behalf of the Denver Post newspaper over a photo showing an airport pat-down, federal court documents in Las Vegas showed. Righthaven LLC filed a notice of dismissal in U.S. District court in Nevada, saying a written agreement was reached with website operator Matt Drudge.
The FBI said that it's not calling for restrictions on encryption without back doors for law enforcement. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told a congressional committee that the bureau's push for expanded Internet wiretapping authority doesn't mean giving law enforcement a master key to encrypted communications, an apparent retreat from her position last fall.
The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned company officials about legislation to combat online infringement and intellectual property theft. Executives representing Verizon Communications Inc., Go Daddy.com Inc., Rosetta Stone Ltd., The Authors Guild of America and Visa Inc. testified about the impact illegal Web sites have on their businesses and offered their ideas about how new legislation could help curb the problem.
A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities. The data, released by the Commerce Department, also found that 5 to 10 percent of the nation does not have access to connections that are fast enough to download Web pages, photos and videos.
The U.S. has defended its request for the personal details of three Twitter users, as part of its inquiry into Wikileaks. At a court in Virginia, the Justice Department said it was seeking the account information of three associates of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
When picking a jury, lawyers always try to stack the panel with people likely to take their side. Now, some are taking the vetting process to a new level: they're quietly trawling social networks and other sites to ferret out the most intimate details of potential jurors' lives, from their sexual orientation to their income level and politics.
Apple’s new subscription service for iPad and iPhone applications, which has drawn complaints from some publishers, has also drawn the attention of federal antitrust regulators, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The person, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the government inquiries were confidential, said that the regulators' interest was preliminary and might not develop into a formal investigation.
House Republicans voted to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to carry out net neutrality regulations created last December. The vote was on an amendment to the continuing resolution introduced by Communications and Technology subcommittee chairman Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
After several setbacks, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, the law firm that last year filed copyright suits against thousands of accused illegal file sharers on behalf of independent filmmakers, has made good on promises to push on with the cases. Dunlap has begun to refile lawsuits across the country against people accused last year of pirating movies via peer-to-peer networks.
The FBI is expected to reveal that because of the rise of Web-based e-mail and social networks, it's "increasingly unable" to conduct certain types of surveillance that would be possible on cellular and traditional telephones. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in backdoors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it.
A day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pledge to promote Internet freedom world-wide, Chinese censors tried to snuff out efforts by U.S. diplomats to generate debate on the issue on Twitter-like microblogs in the country with the world's most Internet users -- and its most sophisticated censorship system. The virtual tussle highlighted the growing importance of such microblogs in China as a new frontier for lively discussion and information sharing that is so fast-paced that censors often have difficulty keeping up.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said they want Google to appear before them to discuss upcoming antipiracy legislation as well as complaints from some copyright owners that the search company is in a position to profit from the illegal sharing of copyrighted works. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's chairman, invited a Google, Verizon and The Authors Guild and other companies with a stake in the online copyright fight to appear to give their views about legislation Leahy is preparing to reintroduce in the Senate this year.
Facing pressure from Republican lawmakers who want to take away funding, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and his Democratic colleagues defended their controversial December Internet access rule known as net neutrality. In a hearing before the House Communications and Internet subcommittee, Genachowski stood by his first-time Internet rules and said a dispute between content delivery service Level 3 and Comcast over traffic delivery charges don't fall under the new rules.
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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.