For more than two and a half years, the Russian Anonymous Marketplace, or RAMP, has maintained a thriving business in the Dark Web drug trade, offering one of the Internet’s widest arrays of narcotics to its Russian-speaking clientele. That’s roughly as long a tenure online as the original Silk Road achieved before it was seized in an FBI bust in October of last year.
Motorola Mobility LLC lawyer Thomas Goldstein, in a Chicago courtroom seeking to pursue a U.S. price-fixing lawsuit against overseas suppliers, instead found himself defending the phone maker’s tax structure. U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner asked whether the company, in its lawsuit accusing Samsung Electronics Co., Sharp Corp. and others of fixing prices on mobile phone displays sold to its foreign units, was seeking the benefits of U.S. antitrust protection while shifting its tax burden to other countries with lower taxes.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is seeking assurances from Apple Inc. that it will prevent sensitive health data collected by its upcoming smartwatch and other mobile devices from being used without owners' consent, two sources told Reuters. The two people, both familiar with the FTC's thinking, said Apple representatives have met on multiple occasions with agency officials in recent months, to stress that it will not sell its users' health data to third-party entities such as marketers or allow third-party developers to do so.
The U.S. government warned iPhone and iPad users to be on the alert for hackers who may exploit a vulnerability in Apple Inc.'s iOS operating system that would enable them to steal sensitive data. There was the potential for hacks using a newly identified technique known as the "Masque Attack," the government said in an online bulletin from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Teams.
Facebook has simplified and shortened its privacy policy by more than two thirds in hopes of getting its 1.35 billion users to read and understand how it targets advertisements to them. The world’s largest social network previously had a 9,000-word privacy policy, which overwhelmed many users and led to confusion about what kinds of user data the company collected and how these data were used.
Google is collecting more information on users while spending more to influence politics, raising questions about whether the Internet giant can be held accountable, according to a report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit group that seeks to limit corporate influence in politics. As Google collects more information, it becomes more powerful, Public Citizen said in the report titled “Mission Creep-y.”
Amazon.com Inc. and Hachette Book Group resolved their dispute over the sale of print and digital books with a multiyear agreement in the U.S., ending a standoff that cut off supplies of some of the publisher’s offerings. Hachette will set consumer prices of its e-books, and benefit from “better terms” when it delivers lower prices for readers, the companies said in a statement.
Hours after President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission to pass tougher regulations on high-speed Internet providers, the agency’s Democratic chairman told a group of business executives that he was moving in a different direction. Huddled in an FCC conference room with officials from major Web companies, including Google, Yahoo and Etsy, agency Chairman Tom Wheeler said he has preferred a more nuanced solution.
Brick-and-mortar retailers who had hoped Congress would pass a bill to effectively end tax-free online shopping are likely to be disappointed. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) indicated that he would block the measure, which would give states the ability to compel many online retailers to collect sales tax for them.
The U.S. agency that operates the National Weather Service said four of its websites were hacked in recent weeks, becoming the latest federal agency to fall victim to a cyber attack. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff detected the attacks and responded immediately, performing maintenance on the sites, which were restored to full service, said NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has accused Nvidia Corp. of infringing several of its semiconductor-related patents and for making false claims about its products, counter-suing after Nvidia filed a lawsuit against the Korean company in September. Samsung is seeking damages for deliberate infringement of several technical patents, including a few that govern the way semiconductors buffer and use data.
Europe's new antitrust chief said that she would take some time to decide on the next step of a four-year-long investigation into Google after her predecessor scrapped a proposed settlement with the Internet giant. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who took over from Joaquin Almunia on Nov. 1, said she would take a representative sample of views from parties involved in the case and check on the latest developments in the sector before taking any action.
Just two days after introducing a tool allowing users to deregister their phone numbers from iMessage, a judge has ruled that Apple will face a federal lawsuit over the issue. Apple allegedly failed to notify consumers that leaving the iMessage system and switching to an Android phone would prevent them from receiving messages from other iPhone owners.
The Obama administration said that it had achieved a breakthrough in negotiations with China to eliminate tariffs on an array of information technology products, from video-game consoles and computer software to medical equipment and semiconductors. The understanding, reached during a visit to China by President Obama, opens the door to expanding a World Trade Organization treaty on these products, assuming other countries can be persuaded to accept the same terms.
A Silicon Valley company is offering to protect startups from patent suits, through insurance. RPX, which buys and licenses patents to deter suits, plans to charge startups $7,500 to $10,000 a year for its separate insurance service, under which RPX will pay up to $1 million in legal fees and settlement costs of patent litigation.
Over the last four years, malicious hackers have been stealing data from company executives while they stay in luxury hotels in an attack known as "Darkhotel," security research firm Kaspersky Lab revealed. The hackers gain access to executives' computers when they connect to a hotel's wireless Internet, the report said, though no specific hotels are named.
Cybersecurity researchers have warned that a bug in Apple Inc.'s iOS operating system makes most iPhones and iPads vulnerable to cyberattacks by hackers seeking access to sensitive data and control of their devices. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. published details about the vulnerability on its blog, saying the bug enables hackers to access their devices by persuading users to install malicious applications with tainted text messages, emails and web links.
Chinese government hackers are suspected of breaching the computer networks of the United States Postal Service, compromising the data of more than 800,000 employees -- including the postmaster general’s. The intrusion was discovered in mid-September, said officials, who declined to comment on who was thought to be responsible.
President Obama put the full weight of his administration behind an open and free Internet, calling for a strict policy of so-called net neutrality and formally opposing deals in which content providers like Netflix would pay huge sums to broadband companies for faster access to their customers. In a statement, and a video on the White House website, Mr. Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt the strictest set of neutrality rules possible and to treat consumer broadband service as a public utility, similar to telephone or power companies.
A Texas man has been arrested on wire fraud and securities fraud charges for his operation of what authorities allege was a Bitcoin-related Ponzi scheme that raised millions of dollars through a purported online digital hedge fund. Trendon Shavers, known in Bitcoin forums as “Pirateat40,” was arrested this morning on one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud.
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