Internet Association Sends High-Tech Priority List to Trump

U.S. internet companies including Facebook and Amazon have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet's Google, Uber and Twitter, represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign.

Google Probing Top Search Result with False Election Count

A Google representative told Business Insider that the company was looking into an issue that displayed an inaccurate source of the popular-vote tally for Tuesday's U.S. election in its top search result. The most recently updated popular vote tally, according to the Associated Press, shows Hillary Clinton with a lead over Donald Trump. Though Clinton leads in votes by 61,039,676 to 60,371,193, Trump secured the presidency by winning the Electoral College.

Chinese Newspaper Warns of Trade 'Countermeasures' Against U.S.

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump would be a “naive” fool to launch an all-out trade war against China, a Communist party-controlled newspaper has claimed. During the acrimonious race for the White House Trump repeatedly lashed out at China, vowing to punish Beijing with “defensive” 45% tariffs on Chinese imports and to officially declare it a currency manipulator.

ACLU Says FBI Ran Child Porn Sites to Install Malware

The FBI reportedly ran 23 child pornography websites to try to ensnare users, according to an affidavit from the agency acquired by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). It was previously reported that the FBI had seized and maintained the child pornography website Playpen to install malware on its users’ computers. The malware was intended to help law enforcement gain users' identities and apprehend them.

Bangladesh Central Bank Recovers Part of Funds from Cyber Heist

Bangladesh's central bank has retrieved just under a fifth of the $81 million that was stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve in February, a Bangladesh Bank official said. Philippines authorities handed over $15.25 million to Bangladesh's ambassador to the Philippines, said the Bank's deputy governor Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit.

Kaspersky Accuses Microsoft of Anti-Competitive Behavior

Billionaire Russian anti-virus developer Eugene Kaspersky has penned an angry blog post titled "That's It. I've Had Enough!" to complain about Microsoft and Windows 10. Specifically, Kaspersky argues that the way Microsoft bundled Defender with Windows 10 is anti-competitive: he says that Microsoft has created obstacles to third-party products and is acting against the interests of the developers of third-party security software.

EU Wants Information from U.S. on Yahoo Email Scanning

The European Commission has asked the United States about a secret court order Yahoo used to scan thousands of customer emails for possible terrorism links, following concerns that may have violated a new data transfer pact. Under the Privacy Shield agreement that came into force in August, the United States agreed to limit the collection of and access to Europeans' data stored on U.S. servers because of EU concerns about data privacy and mass U.S. surveillance.

Facebook to Stop Racial Exclusions on Some Ad Targeting

Facebook says it will no longer allow advertisers to exclude specific racial and ethnic groups when placing ads related to housing, credit or employment. "We are going to turn off, actually prohibit, the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment and credit," Erin Egan, Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, told USA Today.

Trump Could Reverse Obama Policies on Net Neutrality, Privacy

President-elect Donald Trump could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Obama's Internet agenda and undoing years of effort by lawmakers, tech companies and consumer advocates to limit the power of large, established corporations, analysts say. In particular danger are key initiatives of the Obama years, including net neutrality and a pivotal series of Internet privacy regulations that came along with it.

Russian Court Upholds Decision to Block LinkedIn Over User Data

A Russian court upheld a decision to block the website of social networking company LinkedIn Corp., Interfax news agency reported, setting a precedent for the way foreign internet firms operate in the country. Russia's Roskomnadzor communications watchdog has said LinkedIn, which has more than 6 million registered users in Russia, was violating a law requiring websites which store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so on Russian servers.

U.K. Bank Hacking Undermines Trust, Gov't Official Says

The theft of money from accounts at Tesco Bank is a threat to national security and undermines public trust in financial firms, Britain's interior minister Amber Rudd said. Retailer Tesco's banking arm said that 2.5 million pounds ($3.1 million) was stolen from a total of 9,000 customers last weekend in what cyber experts say is the first mass hacking of accounts at a western bank.

Amid Election Criticism, Facebook Vows to Address 'Misinformation'

Facebook has responded to widespread criticism of how its Newsfeed algorithm disseminates and amplifies misinformation in the wake of the Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election. Multiple commentators were quick to point a finger of blame at Facebook’s role in the election campaign, arguing the tech giant has been hugely irresponsible given the role its platform now plays as a major media source, and specifically by enabling bogus stories to proliferate — many examples of which were seen to circulated in the Facebook Newsfeed during the campaign.

Google Tells EU That Android Encourages Competition

Google responded to formal charges from the European Commission that the Internet giant abuses its market dominance with Android, saying the mobile operating software has encouraged, not stifled, competition. "The rapid innovation, wide choice, and falling prices we see in smartphones represent the hallmarks of robust competition," Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in a blog post.

House Committee to Hold Hearing on DNS Cyberattack

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce announced that it will hold a meeting regarding last month’s cyberattack against Dyn, a domain name system (DNS) provider. The hearing will be jointly held by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade chaired by Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Texas).

Yahoo Investigating New Claim That Hacker Got User Data

Yahoo! Inc. is investigating a new claim that user account data was obtained by a hacker, the latest security challenge for the company as it prepares for the planned acquisition of its core web services by Verizon Communications Inc. Law enforcement authorities began sharing certain information they indicated was provided by a hacker who claimed it was Yahoo user account data, the company said in a regulatory filing.

High-Tech Industry Worried About Impact of Trump's Platform

The short-term prospects for the tech economy and Silicon Valley are grim according to economists with knowledge of Donald J. Trump's platform, now that he is the President-elect of the United States after one of the most surreal and unlikely campaign victories in American history. While Trump was vague about his platform on the campaign trail, the broad strokes with which he painted his economic policy don’t bode well for venture capitalists or the broader tech community.

U.K. Cyber Security Centre Warns of More Small Bank Attacks

British cyber security authorities are investigating the theft of money from thousands of Tesco Bank accounts as experts warned that other small banks could also be vulnerable to attack. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a new government body, said that it was working with criminal investigators and Tesco to understand the nature of an attack described as "unprecedented" by the financial regulator.

FBI Says Attacks on Internet Devices Likely to Continue

Online attacks launched from thousands of connected devices, such as one that disabled parts of the internet in October, are here to stay, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning. “The exploitation of the 'Internet of Things' (IOT) to conduct small-to-large scale attacks on the private industry will very likely continue,” the FBI wrote in an Oct. 26 bulletin to private companies.

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.