Despite congressional criticism, Facebook is planning to resume the aborted rollout of a feature that allowed the optional sharing of addresses and mobile phone numbers. Facebook said in a letter that it is evaluating different ways to "enhance user control" over information sharing that would go into effect "once the feature is re-enabled."
Sen. Charles Schumer called on major U.S. web site operators such as Amazon and Twitter to switch to a more secure protocol to prevent identify theft and other security breaches in places like coffee shops. The New York Democrat told a news conference held at a Manhattan coffee shop that growing WiFi access at such shops, restaurants and other businesses was helping hackers gain user information like credit card numbers and account passwords.
The Obama administration has failed in its bid to allow it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a proposal before ICANN that raised questions about balancing national sovereignty with the venerable Internet tradition of free expression. A group of nations rejected that part of the U.S. proposal, concluding instead that governments can offer nonbinding "advice" about controversial suffixes such as .gay but will not receive actual veto power.
In a hit job, Craigslist rivak Oodle.com circulated a study linking Craigslist activity to 330 crimes, including 12 murders and 105 robberies or assaults during a 12-month period. However, the report in many ways backfired on Oodle, with blogs and online commenters criticizing the company for its tactics.
In an effort to take some of the legalese out of a legal document, Facebook Inc. unveiled a new draft of its closely watched privacy policy. The new policy doesn't change the social network's data-handling practices, said Edward Palmieri, a privacy and product counsel at Facebook.
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. filed a lawsuit challenging TiVo Inc.'s "time warp" patents and claiming it owns the rights to digital-video recording technology that was invented first. The complaint in federal court in Texarkana, Texas, contends TiVo infringes patents and seeks a ruling that Motorola Mobility customer Verizon Communications Inc.'s set-top boxes don't use TiVo inventions.
Internet crime has become increasingly pervasive and 2010 had the second-highest number of complaints of any year in the past decade, according to a new government report. Last year the Justice Department's Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, received 303,809 reports of Internet Crime.
Access to the networking site LinkedIn has been restored in China, a day after it was blocked following calls for Middle East-inspired protests in the country. A spokesman for LinkedIn based in the United States said: "We are seeing indications that access to the LinkedIn service is being restored in China."
A secondary story has come out of the events in Libya, affecting users in a way few people have ever thought about. The top-level domain .ly, used by the popular URL-shortening site bit.ly and others, is the TLD of Libya. As Libya has intermittently shut down its Internet access in a curfew-like fashion, it raised questions about the security of Web sites that use foreign TLDs for their sites.
Microsoft's "do not track" browser proposal got a boost when the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards body, gave Microsoft's plan its stamp of approval. The W3C has accepted and published Microsoft's submission, which W3C called "timely and well-aligned with the consortium's objectives and priorities."
The Anonymous hacking collective defaced the Web site of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in the middle of a live radio show that included a church spokeswoman and a member of Anonymous. The defacement came just days after Anonymous issued a statement saying that it had no plans to attack the Church's Web site.
Switzerland's top administrative court said it will rule on whether Google Inc.'s Street View service is legal in Switzerland in coming weeks, following a public hearing in court. Switzerland's Federal Data Protection Commissioner Hanspeter Thuer and Google have been locked in a battle over the Internet search giant's popular Street View application ever since the mapping service went live here in 2009.
Facebook just released a 26-page retort to the Federal Trade Commission's preliminary report on privacy regulation -- a report that social media firms see as an ominous approaching storm of chaotic bureaucracy. In summary, Facebook fears that government meddling could stifle both its ability to profit and smother the industry's progress on yet-unknown technological advancements.
A Texas man has admitted hacking into servers owned by an e-commerce company and making off with about $275,000. Jeremey Parker of Houston also copped to charges of breaking into servers maintained by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and causing some $43,000 of damage.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against a Huntington Beach man who it says sent millions of illegal text spam messages advertising a mortgage modification website that claimed to offer government-affiliated services. The FTC said in the court document that Phillip A. Flora sent out text messages at a "mind boggling" rate of about 85 messages a minute, every minute of every day for a 40-day period that began on Aug 22, 2009.
With smartphones outselling PCs for the first time -- 421 million of the hand-held computers are expected to be sold worldwide this year, according to market analysts at IDC -- the long-predicted crime wave on hand-held devices appears to have arrived. According to the mobile-security firm Lookout, malware and spyware appeared on 9 out of 100 phones it scanned in May, more than twice the 4-in-100 rate in December 2009.
A federal judge in New York ordered Internet TV service Ivi to shut down, finding that it violated the copyrights of a group of broadcasters and Major League Baseball. It was yet another example of a tech company trying in vain to stretch the boundaries of copyright law to avoid paying as much for content as its more conventional competitors.
The Federal Trade Commission said it will review the marketing and delivery of mobile applications that charge users for products and services, such as through Apple's iTunes store. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz wrote in a letter to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the practice of "in-app purchases" for certain applications on Apple iPhones, iPads and iPods raised concerns that consumers may not fully understand the ramifications of those charges.
The Xinhua News Agency, China's main government news agency, launched its own Internet search site. The site will offer a state-approved version of the Internet in the wake of Google's closure of its China-based search engine last year.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc. in an interview published for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.
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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.