A privacy watchdog group probably will complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that a new Google search feature raises privacy and antitrust concerns. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said his group is considering filing a letter with the FTC.
A memo that triggered a U.S. investigation into a possible cyber-attack by Indian military intelligence is probably a fake, but it is clear from leaked documents that serious security breaches did take place. A little-known hacker group, 'Lords of Dharmaraja', began posting the documents last year, but only drew widespread attention after the anti-virus software firm Symantec confirmed that a segment of its source code had been accessed by the group.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document. A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards."
Companies and law enforcement agencies nervous about a huge expansion in Internet domains -- adding to .com, .net and others -- will have many ways to protect trademarks and identify website owners, the head of the organization that organizes the Internet said. Following complaints from the Federal Trade Commission and others that registries of website owners were sometimes poorly maintained, making it difficult to shut down scams, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom pledged that the top executives of all new registrars would undergo criminal background checks.
A lawsuit filed against Symantec Corp. claims that the software maker seeks to persuade consumers to buy its products by scaring them with misleading information about the health of their computers. The complaint alleges that Symantec distributes trial versions of its products that scan a consumer's system, then invariably report that harmful errors, privacy risks and other problems exists on the PC, regardless of the real condition of the machine.
The struggling Eastman Kodak Co. sued Apple Inc., whose market value is more than 2,400 times greater, accusing it of infringing four patents related to digital camera images. Kodak also sued Taiwan's HTC Corp., alleging violations of the four patents as well as a fifth.
A legal battle between HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and a company run by one of its former chief executives is putting the spotlight on a key issue in book publishing today: Who owns the e-book rights to decades-old titles? Two days before Christmas, HarperCollins filed a copyright-infringement suit against Open Road Integrated Media Inc. in federal court in New York, seeking to block Open Road from selling an e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's 1972 children's novel "Julie of the Wolves."
The FBI issued a warning on one such new Internet blight called "Gameover," which, once ensconced on your PC, can steal usernames and passwords and defeat common methods of user authentication employed by financial institutions. The FBI said it has seen an increase in the use of Gameover, which is an e-mail phishing scheme that invokes the names of prominent government financial institutions -- the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), the Federal Reserve Bank or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Google is profiting from ads for illegal products generated by its flagship automated advertising system, the BBC has found. The ads include unofficial London 2012 Olympics ticket resellers, as well as cannabis and fake ID card sellers.
Rising cybersecurity threats are pushing big banks to do something that doesn't come naturally for these secrecy-steeped institutions: share information with one another. This month, security officials from Wall Street financial firms, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., are expected to meet with researchers from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University to discuss the creation of a new type of center that would sift through mountains of bank data to detect potential attacks, people familiar with the situation said.
Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Tex., lashed out at Facebook for failing to clearly explain how -- and why -- the social networking giant systematically compiles tracking data on its 800 million members, and millions more non-members. Markey and Barton were left unsatisfied by a six-page explanation they recently received from Erin M. Egan, Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer.
Amazon.com and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels unveiled an agreement that may mean that the world's largest Internet retailer starts collecting sales tax in the state in 2014. Amazon will voluntarily begin collecting Indiana sales tax on Internet purchases on Jan 1, 2014, or 90 days from any federal online sales tax legislation that may pass before that time, according to a statement from Daniels' office.
A Web-expansion program that may add hundreds of top-level domains such as .apple and .nyc to the Internet needs a “Do Not Sell” list to protect brand names, an advertising group said. Companies and organizations should be able to register their brands at no cost on a temporary list in a first round of applications for new domains beginning Jan. 12, the Association of National Advertisers wrote in a letter to the nonprofit group that manages the Internet’s address system.
An actress who filed an anonymous lawsuit against Amazon.com and its Internet Movie Database for revealing her age identified herself in a federal court filing. Huong Hoang of Texas (better known by her stage name, Junie Hoang) filed a million-dollar claim against Amazon last fall, saying the company mined her IMDb account to learn her age, 40, and then posted it on her profile -- causing her offers for roles to dry up.
Members of Congress may be on vacation, but that hasn't calmed critics who say an effort to stamp out online piracy would create an unprecedented threat to free speech on the Internet. Far from fading from memory, the Stop Online Piracy Act (along with a related Senate bill) has become a rallying point for Web freedom advocates in a debate that has pitted Hollywood and other business interests against some of the biggest titans of the technology world.
Israel said the online publication of thousands of its citizens' credit card details by a hacker who says he is based in Saudi Arabia was comparable to terrorism, and promised to hit back. The data theft, which appeared to focus on commercial websites, was one of the worst Israel has said it has faced.
Iran is mounting new clampdowns on Internet expression, including rules that will impose layers of surveillance in the country's popular Internet cafes, as Tehran's political establishment comes under increasing strains from economic turmoil and threats of more international sanctions. In the most sweeping move, Iran issued regulations giving Internet cafes 15 days to install security cameras, start collecting detailed personal information on customers and document users' online footprints.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest group, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible privacy violations in the new Facebook Timeline feature. “Facebook is changing the privacy settings of its users in a way that gives the company far greater ability to disclose their personal information than in the past,” the group wrote.
Hackers have posted a file online that they claim is a confidential glimpse into Symantec’s Norton Antivirus program and have threatened to release source code for the security giant’s flagship antivirus product. The hacker group, which calls itself the Lords of Dharmaraja, posted a file on Pastebin that it said described the confidential workings of Symantec’s Norton Antivirus threat-detection product.
A pervasive worm has expanded its reach to now steal login and password details for Facebook users, warned security vendor Seculert, which found a server holding 45,000 login credentials. The worm, called Ramnit, infects Windows executables, Microsoft Office and HTML files, according to a profile published by Microsoft.
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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.