Once the scourge of e-mail providers and the Postal Service, spammers have infiltrated the last refuge of spam-free communication: cellphones. In the United States, consumers received roughly 4.5 billion spam texts last year, more than double the 2.2 billion received in 2009, according to Ferris Research, a market research firm that tracks spam.
Twitter took a new step in its fight against spammers, filing a lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court against companies that create tools to automate posting to and following people on Twitter. The suit names five defendants: TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, James Lucero and Garland Harris -- which Twitter claims are the biggest offenders in the Twitter spamming racket -- arguing they are the arms dealers to those who fill the service with fake profiles and unwanted @ messages.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that New York has partnered with several tech companies to purge thousands of registered sex offenders from online gaming networks in what he dubbed "Operation: Game Over." So far, more than 3,500 accounts of registered sex offenders in New York have been removed from online video game platforms such as Xbox Live or games like World of Warcraft.
Accused LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty in federal court in California to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Kretsinger, a 24-year-old who used the moniker "Recursion," pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in a deal with prosecutors.
A federal appeals court reversed a lower court’s decision to throw out a $1 billion lawsuit filed against YouTube by Viacom and other media companies five years ago. The copyright infringement suit, which has become a symbol of the clash between entrenched media companies and the upstarts that compete with them, sought damages for unauthorized video clips from shows like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” that had been uploaded by users to YouTube.
Anonymous has recently turned its attention to the human rights struggle in China, hacking and defacing hundreds of government and commercial Web sites in that country. The online hactivist group claims to have compromised more than 500 Web sites over the past couple of days, defacing them with messages claiming responsibility for the breach while The Who's "Baba O'Riley" plays in the background.
More than half a million Macs are infected with the Flashback Trojan, a malware package designed to steal personal information, according to a Russian antivirus company. The company -- Dr. Web -- originally reported that 550,000 Macintosh computers were infected by the growing Mac botnet.
Talks to resolve U.S. and European price-fixing probes into e-books are heating up, with three international publishers inclined to settle the matter, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple Inc., another target of the investigation, and two publishers appear reluctant to settle on the terms sought by antitrust authorities in both the U.S. and Europe, those people said.
Eager to marry the popularity of social gaming with real-life betting, Zynga is in talks with casino company Wynn Resorts about a potential online gambling partnership, The New York Post has learned. Zynga, which sees huge revenue potential in moving from pretend to real-life wagering, needs to form partnerships with casino operators in a number of states if it is to cash in on an expected boom in Internet gambling.
A federal court has thrown out a 2010 Colorado law meant to spur online retailers like Amazon to collect state sales tax. The law had already been temporarily blocked in federal court last year, but U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn's ruling permanently handcuffs it.
Paul Ceglia, the guy who in 2003 commissioned Mark Zuckerberg to work on a Web site that he says now entitles him to 50 percent of Facebook, is fighting back in response to Facebook's request to get the case thrown out of court. Ceglia is asking the court to dismiss Facebook's request to dismiss the case.
Facebook has failed to meet a deadline to improve its privacy policies that was set by the data commissioner in Ireland, home to it overseas headquarters, an Austrian advocacy group said. "Now it seems that Facebook is not even sticking to the obligations under this report," said Europe-versus-Facebook, a group set up by an Austrian student, Max Schrems, who has fought a long battle against the social networking website.
Research In Motion Ltd. can add a willful patent infringement claim to its long list of troubles after a Dutch semiconductor company said it had filed suit against the BlackBerry maker, sending its shares tumbling. An affiliate of NXP Semiconductors NV alleges that versions of RIM's BlackBerry phone and the PlayBook tablet infringed on patents issued to the Dutch company between 1997 and 2008.
Apple may be sued for misleading consumers about the 4G capabilities of the new iPad in the UK. The company has already been found guilty of misleading advertising in Australia, and has been instructed to offer a refund to buyers of the new iPad there.
An Australian court ruled that Google Inc. breached consumer-protection laws in relation to a number of advertisements on its search results pages. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which had brought the case, said in a statement that the Full Federal Court upheld its appeal of an earlier decision.
The European Union’s competition office opened two antitrust cases against Motorola Mobility for possible patent abuses following complaints by two rivals, Microsoft and Apple. The European Commission opened two cases in order to look at separate allegations by Microsoft, which is concerned about access to video and wireless patents for its products including the Xbox, and by Apple, which is concerned about access to separate wireless patents for the iPhone and iPad.
Facebook mounted its own legal offensive against Yahoo by accusing Yahoo of infringing 10 of Facebook's patents, according to a court filing. The counterclaim from Facebook, filed in a San Francisco federal court, comes after Yahoo sued Facebook for patent infringement last month.
Federal efforts to crack down on intellectual property infringement increased across the board last year, according to a new report by the White House. "Protecting what we invent, create and produce is always important, but at this time, when every job matters, it is especially important that we stop theft that harms our businesses and threatens jobs here at home," U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel wrote in her second annual report to Congress.
Microsoft Corp. is moving its European logistics operations, run by an outsourcing service provider, from Germany to the Netherlands due to its legal dispute with Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., a spokesman said. The moves make Microsoft the first major technology player to shift a business arm out of Germany over fears potential court rulings on patents could harm business.
U.S. law enforcement and counterterrorism officials are trying to figure out the significance of recent occurrences on websites believed to have close links to al Qaeda, including a graphic some fear could be an attack threat directed at New York City. The graphic contained a picture of the Manhattan skyline superimposed with a Hollywood-style caption that says: "ALQAEDA - coming soon again in New York."
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