A cheap brand of Chinese-made smartphones carried by major online retailers comes preinstalled with espionage software, a German security firm said. G Data Software said it found malicious code hidden deep in the propriety software of the Star N9500 when it ordered the handset from a website late last month.
In a broad legal rationale for collecting information from Internet use by its citizens, the British government has asserted the right to intercept communications that go through services like Facebook, Google and Twitter that are based in the United States or other foreign nations, even if they are between people in Britain. The British position is described in a report released by Privacy International and other advocacy groups.
Democratic lawmakers planned to unveil a piece of bicameral legislation that would force the Federal Communications Commission to ban fast lanes on the Internet. The proposal, put forward by Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), requires the FCC to use whatever authority it sees fit to make sure that Internet providers don't speed up certain types of content (like Netflix videos) at the expense of others (like e-mail).
Finnish telecoms equipment company Nokia paid several million euros to criminals who threatened to reveal the source code for part of an operating system used in its smartphones some six years ago, Finnish TV station MTV said. The police confirmed to Reuters that they were investigating a case of alleged blackmail and that the case was still open.
Apple Inc. reached a settlement with U.S. states and consumers seeking damages over the company’s fixing of electronic book prices, avoiding a trial in which it faced as much as $840 million in claims. The trial set for July involved cases related to a ruling last year that company had orchestrated an illegal scheme with publishers to raise e-book prices.
A former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader should not have been allowed to sue an Arizona-based gossip website over online posts about her sexual history, an appeals court ruled in a case watched closely by Internet giants including Google and Facebook. The ruling from the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Kentucky federal judge's decision that allowed the cheerleader's lawsuit to proceed and further strengthens broad immunities enjoyed by Internet providers for content posted by third parties.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up a free-speech case that examines what it means to threaten someone in the Internet age. The court said it would consider an appeal from a Pennsylvania man convicted of making threats on Facebook against his estranged wife, law enforcement and local elementary schools.
Facebook successfully defended itself against a lawsuit that claimed the social media company infringed on patents held by a Dutch programmer who launched a website called "Surfbook" more than a decade ago. A holding company called Rembrandt Social Media had alleged that a now-deceased Dutch computer programmer, Joannes Van Der Meer, developed and patented methods for running a Web-based personal diary before Facebook came into existence in 2003.
Hackers have stolen data on more than 600,000 Dominos Pizza Inc customers in Belgium and France, the pizza delivery company said, and an anonymous Twitter user threatened to publish the data unless the company pays a cash ransom. Customer names, delivery addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords were taken from a server used in an online ordering system that the company is in the process of replacing, Dominos spokesman Chris Brandon said.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler unveiled a new approach to ensure that the nation's communications networks are protected from foreign hackers and other threats during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. Like most of the Obama administration's cybersecurity policy, the plan is voluntary, and relies on companies to take the lead in ensuring their networks are secure against cyberattacks.
FBI agents have recorded raids by operatives in China and in Russia and Iran, all apparently looking for security weaknesses that could be employed to disrupt the delivery of water and electricity and impede other functions critical to the economy, according to former intelligence officials with knowledge of the investigation. The incursions spurred a debate in the Obama administration over whether and how to respond, and raised alarms among lawmakers briefed on the incidents.
LinkedIn Corp. must face a lawsuit claiming the company violated customers’ privacy rights for marketing purposes by accessing their external e-mail accounts and downloading their contacts’ addresses. The decision by U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California, means LinkedIn members who sued can continue to pursue damages for revenue the company made using their e-mail address books as they try to expand the case to include thousands of other customers.
Rejecting government fears of a “crime-friendly Internet,” the Supreme Court of Canada said anonymity is vital to personal privacy in the digital era. It told police they need a judge’s permission before asking Internet providers for basic information that would identify their customers -- such as a suspected child pornographer at the heart of a 2007 Saskatchewan investigation.
Handsets made by ZTE Corp and Nokia, now owned by Microsoft Corp, do not violate InterDigital Inc's patents for wireless phones, a U.S. International Trade Commission judge said in a preliminary ruling. The full commission is expected to issue a final ruling in October.
U.S. regulators will review agreements between Netflix, Verizon, Comcast and other content and Internet providers to figure out whether they are causing slow web download speeds for some consumers, especially for streaming video content. Consumers have complained to the Federal Communications Commission about the ongoing spat between Netflix and Internet service providers (ISPs).
A former Microsoft employee will serve three months in prison and pay $100 before he is deported to Russia after leaking company secrets to a French blogger. Alex Kibkalo, a Russian national, made headlines in March when he was arrested for allegedly leaking software code for an edition of the Windows 8 operating system to a French blogger.
Facebook will soon start tracking what users in the U.S. do not just on Facebook but also on other websites and apps to more effectively target them with ads. The practice is common -- even for some ad networks Facebook partners with -- but the social network had previously based its ads mainly on what people did on Facebook, such as what pages they liked.
The U.S. government plans to auction about 30,000 bitcoin, the electronic currency, valued at about $17.4 million, on June 27 the U.S. Marshals Service said. The bitcoin were seized during an FBI raid in October on the Internet marketplace Silk Road, known as a hub for transactions involving illegal drugs and criminal activities.
A Romanian citizen has been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on charges that he, as the hacker "Guccifer," posted data stolen from email and social media accounts of U.S. celebrities and politicians, the U.S. Justice Department said. Marcel Lazar Lehel, a former taxi driver, is already in a Romanian jail after being sentenced there last week to serve up to seven years in prison for hacking crimes against Romanian citizens.
A new paper from MIT’s Sloan Business school finds that hyperactive patent litigators robbed the tech industry of billions in investment dollars. “[Venture capital] investment would have been at least $8.1 billion higher over the course of five years but for litigation brought by frequent patent litigators,” professor of marketing Catherine Tucker wrote in the paper.
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