Advertising Board Says Comcast Should Stop 'Fastest' Claim

Comcast's claims that it offers the “fastest Internet in America” and the “fastest in-home WiFi” risks misleading consumers and should be stopped, according to an advertising watchdog administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The ruling from the National Advertising Review Board found that Comcast's reliance on Ookla's Speedtest.net data masks important details that undermine the cable giant's marketing.

'Fileless Malware Attacks' Discovered at 140 Banks

Fileless malware attacks, which were recently discovered in the networks of at least 140 banks, telecoms and governments, account for about 15% of known attacks today and have been around for years in different forms. "Fileless malware attacks are becoming much more common and circumvent most of the endpoint protection and detection tools deployed today," Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan said.

Facebook Moves to Stop Housing Discrimination Ads

Facebook said that it's making three changes to stop housing, employment and credit-related ads on its network that discriminate based on personal attributes. The company came under fire last fall, following a ProPublica article that showed it was possible to make housing ads on Facebook that explicitly excluded certain racial groups, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

Microsoft Lets Cloud Customers Use Its Patents for Defense

Microsoft has thought up another way to attract potential customers to its cloud computing service: deterrent against patent trolls. Companies new to the cloud are vulnerable to non-practicing entities, which do not make any products themselves but use their arsenal of broad technology patents to sue other firms in order to extract royalties or a cash settlement.

Agreement Could Expand Online Subscription Access Across EU

European Union institutions moved a step closer to letting consumers access their online subscriptions for services like Netflix or Sky when they travel across the bloc. The agreement between the European Parliament and Malta, which acts on behalf of all 28 EU states as the bloc's current presidency, is another step in an EU drive to knock down barriers in the single market of 500 million people.

Ireland Wants EU to Review Facebook's Data Transfer Tool

Ireland's privacy watchdog has launched a bid to refer Facebook's data transfer mechanism to the European Union's top court in a landmark case that could put the shifting of data across the Atlantic under renewed legal threat. The move is the latest challenge to the various methods by which large tech firms such as Google and Apple move personal data of EU citizens back to the United States.

House Approves Email Privacy Act Requiring Search Warrants

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to require law enforcement authorities to obtain a search warrant before seeking old emails from technology companies, a win for privacy advocates fearful the Trump administration may work to expand government surveillance powers. But the legislation was expected to encounter resistance in the Senate, where it failed to advance last year amid opposition by a handful of Republican lawmakers after the House passed it unanimously.

British Mobile Operator BT Supports Google v. Apple

BT has backed Google in its competition battle with Brussels over the tech giant’s smartphone operating system, Android, in an intervention that signals the nervousness of mobile operators over the power of Apple. It is understood that BT, Britain’s biggest mobile operator following its takeover of EE, has written to the European Commission rejecting antitrust charges it has levied against Google.

Syrian Refugee Sues Facebook Over Fake News in Germany

Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee whose 2015 selfie with Chancellor Angela Merkel came to symbolize her decision to allow hundreds of thousands of unscreened migrants into Germany, is seeking to prevent Facebook from allowing users to repost the image after it repeatedly showed up in fake news reports. The case is one of several high-profile cases against Facebook in Germany.

100 High-Tech Companies File Brief Against Travel Ban

A group of nearly 100 technology companies including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are banding together to fight the Trump administration’s controversial travel ban. In a joint amicus brief filed in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the firms challenged President Donald Trump’s executive order which temporarily restricts citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

Judge Orders Google to Comply with Email Search Warrants

A U.S. judge has ordered Google to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored outside the United States, diverging from a federal appeals court that reached the opposite conclusion in a similar case involving Microsoft Corp. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter in Philadelphia ruled that transferring emails from a foreign server so FBI agents could review them locally as part of a domestic fraud probe did not qualify as a seizure.

FCC Drops Investigations of Free Phone Data Programs

Under recently departed chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC opened inquiries into how companies might be using free data programs to anti-competitively favor certain streaming music and video services. But a new, President-Trump-appointed chairman recently took over at the FCC, and according to letters just posted by the agency, the inquiries have been dropped.

Malware Installed on 12 Servers at Hotel Company

InterContinental Hotels Group said that a malware in the servers at 12 of its hotels in the United States tracked payment card data if the card was used at the hotels' restaurants and bars between August and December last year. The company said that the malware searched for track data -- the cardholder's name, card number, expiration date, and the verification code -- read from the magnetic stripe of a card as it was being routed through the affected server.

High-Tech Startups Worried About Impact of Trump's Travel Ban

The extent of the impact of President Donald Trump's immigration executive order on startups is still unclear, but more than 15 venture capitalists and technology company founders described immediate concerns about the consequences of the travel ban. More than half of all "unicorns" -- or startups valued at $1 billion or more -- have at least one immigrant founder, according to a 2016 study by the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in Arlington, Virginia.