New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit seeking that FanDuel and DraftKings return all money won by the fantasy-sports sites in New York state, officials confirmed. Mr. Schneiderman is asking that the money be returned to the users who lost it and that the sites pay a fine up to $5,000 a case.
BlackBerry Ltd said it has decided to continue its operations in Pakistan as the government dropped a request for access to users' data. The company, which has faced similar problems in the past in India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, had said last month it would delay shutting down its operations in Pakistan until Dec. 30.
Ukraine will investigate a suspected cyber attack on its power grid, the energy ministry said, an incident the country's secret service has blamed on Russia. A power company in western Ukraine, Prykarpattyaoblenergo, said on Dec. 23 that a swath of the area it serves had been left without energy, including the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk, due to "interference" in the work of the system.
All the BBC's websites were unavailable early on New Year's eve morning because of a large web attack. Sources within the BBC said the sites were offline thanks to what is known as a "distributed denial of service" attack.
Microsoft Corp. said it will begin warning users of its Outlook.com email service when the company suspects that a government has been trying to hack into their accounts. Microsoft told Reuters about the plan in a statement. It comes nine days after Reuters asked the company why it had decided not tell victims of a hacking campaign, discovered in 2011, that had targeted international leaders of China's Tibetan and Uighur minorities in particular.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is issuing a more direct challenge to technology companies in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and California, urging them in blunter terms to allow investigators to decrypt private communications during terror probes. Hoping to escape a continuing debate over the technical feasibility of decryption, which they fear plays into Silicon Valley’s hands, FBI Director James Comey and others are pushing executives to move away from a policy they say values customers’ privacy over public safety.
AVG's "Web tuneup" add-on for the Google Chrome browser also exposed browsing history and other personal data to any would-be hacker who knew how to grab it. The problem has been fixed, but it's unclear how many of the 9 million people who use the software might have had their information stolen.
Apple has reached a deal with Italian tax authorities over a dispute about how much tax the American technology company should have paid in the European country. A spokesman for Italy’s tax authority declined to comment on the amount of owed taxes, though local news reports suggested that the figure could reach as much as $350 million.
A program that had been giving free basic Internet services to over three million Egyptians was shut down, social media site Facebook said. In a statement to The Associated Press, Facebook said it hoped to "resolve this situation soon" so the program, which it had launched with Etisalat Egypt some two months ago, could be restored.
Vietnam sought to discourage its Internet-savvy public from reading Web postings that disparaged its Communist Party, warning of an increase in "toxic" activity just weeks away from its scheduled leadership shakeup. Using its new Facebook page, the government vowed to tackle social media criticism of the party without interrupting the Internet ahead its five-yearly congress in January, and said most attacks originated from outside of the country.
Piracy was on the rise in 2015. The movies and TV shows that were most illicitly downloaded this year aren’t too much of a surprise — they’re some of the most popular genre titles among the demographic that stereotypically can be found on torrent sites. But the number of downloads was up — way up.
A New York state appeals court threw out Facebook Inc.'s unusual malicious prosecution lawsuit against DLA Piper and two other law firms that have represented a fugitive who claimed a 50 percent stake in the social media company. Reversing a lower court ruling, the Appellate Division in Manhattan rejected "conclusory" allegations by Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, that the firms knew or should have known that their client Paul Ceglia's case was fraudulent and based on a forged contract.
Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery, retaining the law firm of Michelman & Robinson, LLP, has filed a class action lawsuit seeking at least $150 million in damages against Spotify, alleging it knowingly, willingly, and unlawfully reproduces and distributes copyrighted compositions without obtaining mechanical licenses. The lawsuit comes amidst ongoing settlement negotiations between Spotify and the National Music Publishers Assn. over the alleged use of allowing users to play music that hasn’t been properly licensed, and also without making mechanical royalty payments to music publishers and songwriters.
Twitter has had something of a rocky history with dealing with abuse and harassment on its platform, but recently the company has been making some moves to mitigate that. Its latest action comes today in the form of an update to the official Twitter rules, laying out clearer language to emphasize the company “will not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice.”
Facebook Inc. Chairman Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal in one of India’s leading newspapers for the country to allow a free Internet service that has stirred controversy and invited questions from regulators. The backlash in India centers on net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible.
A U.S. appeals court cleared Cisco Systems Inc. of infringing another company's wifi technology, reversing a near $64-million judgment against the networking equipment maker in the long-running patent dispute. After eight years of litigation that also included a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Cisco was not liable for directly infringing or inducing others to infringe a patent held by Commil USA LLC on a way to help spread wireless signals over a large area, where multiple access points are needed.
Security bloggers and researchers claim to have uncovered a publicly available database exposing the personal information of 191 million voters on the Internet. The information contains voters’ names, home addresses, voter IDs, phone numbers and date of birth, as well as political affiliations and a detailed voting history since 2000.
Turkish banks reported sporadic disruption to credit card transactions as hackers stepped up a two-week barrage of cyberattacks, believed to be the worst the country has seen. Local media have suggested that the bombardment of public and financial websites could be coming from Russia, after a sharp worsening of tensions between Moscow and Ankara, or staged by hacking group Anonymous.
In response to the Islamic State’s success in grooming jihadists over the Internet, some legal scholars are asking whether it is time to reconsider the constitutional line on freedom of speech. A few legal scholars are questioning what does clear and present danger mean when terrorists are provoking violence over the Internet? Should not the government have a way, they ask, to block messages that facilitate terrorist acts?
The number of attacks by cybercriminals against businesses doubled in 2015, research by Kaspersky Lab has revealed. The research found that, in 2015, some 58% of corporate PCs were hit with at least one attempted malware infection, which represents an increase of three percentage points on 2014.
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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.