Google said the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program. Google Inc. said its engineers have determined there are no technical problems with the email service or its main website.
Sony Corp. was unapologetic about its delay in informing the more than 100 million customers of its PlayStation Network whose account information was stolen by hackers last month. In a stark departure from the remorseful tone struck just two weeks ago, when senior executives including heir apparent Kazuo Hirai bowed in apology in Tokyo, Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer fired back at critics of the company's actions that led up to the attack and its response time to the crisis.
Location-based services, the mobile-phone applications that make use of a person’s geographic location, are attracting growing attention in Washington following reports that phone and software companies might have been sharing location information with third parties. To try to help consumers understand and navigate the services and their privacy implications, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission will conduct a public education forum on June 28 at FCC headquarters in Washington, the agencies said.
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy unveiled legislation that would require the government to obtain a search warrant to access location information gathered by companies from their customers' wireless devices. The bill seeks to update the 25-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and wrote the original law.
The vast majority of devices running Google's Android operating system are vulnerable to attacks that allow adversaries to steal the digital credentials used to access calendars, contacts, and other sensitive data stored on the search giant's servers, university researchers have warned. The weakness stems from the improper implementation of an authentication protocol known as ClientLogin in Android versions 2.3.3 and earlier, the researchers from Germany's University of Ulm said.
A federal lawsuit over rights to a Twitter feed might sound like a case of bringing a grenade launcher to a squirrel hunt. But the court fight over OMG Facts reminds that the power of a tweet can extend well beyond 140 characters.
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city of Atlanta in a dispute over hotel occupancy taxes owed by online travel companies. In a unanimous decision, the justices agreed with a lower court that Hotels.com LP and other online companies should pay city taxes based on the retail room rate they charge their customers.
A complaint was filed with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the popular Dropbox file-sharing service has been misleading users about the security and privacy of their files. Dropbox offers cross-platform file synchronization and online backup.
A new bill proposed in California could force Facebook and other social networking sites to strip out personal information for children at a parent's request. SB 242 -- also known as the Social Networking Privacy Act -- would require Facebook and others to carefully police which pieces of information on individuals under age 18 are accessible to the public.
Private/public partnerships are the most effective way to secure most of cyberspace, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told National Journal. He said there is no question that cyberattacks are taking a toll on the American economy and he said he considers cyberattacks as one of the two greatest threats to the country, along with biological attacks.
Thousands of people in more than 30 cities around Turkey took to the streets to protest a new system of filtering the Internet that opponents consider censorship. The Information and Communications Technologies Authority, known by its Turkish initials as B.T.K., is going to require Internet service providers to offer consumers four choices for filtering the Internet that would limit access to many sites, beginning in August.
The European Commission's advisory panel on data protection plans to urge governments in the European Union to treat the geographic location of cellphone users as personal data, deserving of the highest level of privacy protection. The statement is unlikely to have an immediate influence on the collection of cellphone location data by smartphone makers like Apple, which is being investigated by several European countries for its practices.
Twin brothers who accused Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for the social networking website lost their bid to have a federal appeals court void a settlement of their claims. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss failed to convince the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to reconsider its April 11 ruling upholding the $65 million cash-and-stock settlement they reached with Facebook in 2008.
Disney's Playdom social-gaming service has been ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to pay $3 million in fines for collecting and disclosing children's information without parental approval. According to the FTC, many of Playdom's games, most notably the child-focused Pony Stars, attracted over 400,000 kids between 2006 and 2010.
One administrative law judge of the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that Kodak did not infringe Apple patents in its cameras, possibly setting the stage for dismissal of a complaint by Apple. Apple filed a complaint with the ITC last April, saying Kodak had infringed two of its patents and asking the agency to bar Kodak from importing products containing the technology into the U.S.
A U.S. appeals court found memory chip designer Rambus wrongly destroyed documents related to patent lawsuits it filed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it was clear that Rambus had destroyed documents but it was not clear that the destruction was so serious that a lower court should have tossed out one of its lawsuits.
A British judge has banned Twitter users from identifying a brain-damaged woman in one of the first attempts to prevent the messaging website from revealing sensitive information. The ruling follows the publication on Twitter of a list of celebrities alleged to have tried to cover up sexual indiscretions by obtaining court gag orders.
Google is considering shutting down Street View in Switzerland if the supreme court there fails to throw out an April court order mandating that the tech giant give an "absolute guarantee of anonymity for people" photographed in Street View photos, according to a report. Patrick Warnking, Google's country manager for Switzerland, told the Associated Press that the company will ask the Swiss Federal Tribunal to overturn the court decision, which also would require Google to make unrecognizable not only people, but license plates as well, before images are published in Street View.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins challenging a $65 million settlement with Facebook Inc., must face a lawsuit filed by a Boston businessman over a failed partnership, a judge ruled. The businessman, Wayne Chang, claims in a lawsuit filed in December 2009 that a former partnership with the Winklevosses’ ConnectU project entitles him to part of the Facebook settlement.
Square Enix has confirmed up to 25,000 e-mail addresses were swiped during a hack of its Eidos Montreal Web site and two product sites, one of which is for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Also taken: the resumes of 350 people submitted to the Web site by people interested in working for the studio.
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