The Federal Communications Commission voted to dismantle landmark rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the Internet, granting broadband companies the power to potentially reshape Americans’ online experiences. The agency scrapped the so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content.
Online-advertising agency AdTrader filed a lawsuit accusing Google of fraud and deceit. The agency claims the Mountain View tech giant made “fraudulent promises” to refund or credit advertisers whose ads were targeted in scams, while the company was just keeping the money.
The French government is to ban students from using mobile phones in the country’s primary, junior and middle schools. Children will be allowed to bring their phones to school, but not allowed to get them out at any time until they leave, even during breaks.
A former Rutgers University student and two other men pleaded guilty to computer crimes related to the creation, sale and use of the Mirai botnet, a network of infected electronics equipment used to knock major websites offline in massive 2016 cyber attacks, according to court documents. Paras Jha pleaded guilty during an appearance in federal court in New Jersey on Tuesday to charges involving writing code that allowed him to infect and control devices with Mirai.
President Donald Trump signed into law legislation that bans the use of Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence. The ban, included as part of a broader defense policy spending bill that Trump signed, reinforces a directive issued by the Trump administration in September that civilian agencies remove Kaspersky Lab software within 90 days.
Protests to preserve net neutrality, or rules that ensure equal access to the Internet, migrated online, with numerous online companies posting calls on their sites for action to stop a vote. Reddit, Etsy and Kickstarter were among the sites warning that the proposal at the Federal Communications Commission to roll back so-called net neutrality rules would fundamentally change the way the internet is experienced.
Facebook Inc. is changing its tax structure so that it will pay taxes in the country where sales are made, rather than funneling everything through its Irish subsidiary. The company said it will move to a “local selling structure” in countries where it has an office to support sales to local advertisers.
SEC chairman Jay Clayton released an official statement urging caution on cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings. “If an opportunity sounds too good to be true,” the statement reads, “or if you are pressured to act quickly, please exercise extreme caution.”
Read the article: The Verge
A previously undetected group of Russian-language hackers silently stole nearly $10 million from at least 18 mostly U.S. and Russian banks in recent years by targeting interbank transfer systems, a Moscow-based security firm said. Group-IB warned that the attacks, which began 18 months ago and allow money to be stolen from banks’ automated teller machines (ATMs), appear to be ongoing and that banks in Latin America could be targeted next.
A group of early Internet and computing pioneers have called on the Senate’s FCC oversight committee to censure its net neutrality vote. In an open letter to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, 21 signatories said that FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s “rushed and technically incorrect” plan to repeal net neutrality “is an imminent threat to the internet we worked so hard to create.”
A new Facebook chat app designed for kids is raising concern among lawmakers and children's groups over data privacy and safety. The app, Messenger Kids, is targeted toward children aged 6-12, who are still too young to use Facebook.
The FCC is declining New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s request to turn over records related to the agency’s net neutrality proceeding, citing concerns over privacy and security. The FCC’s general counsel, in a letter to Schneiderman, also dismissed his concerns that the volume of fake comments or those made with stolen identities have “corrupted” the rule-making process, and its Dec. 14 vote on Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to repeal existing net neutrality rules should be delayed.
As automakers turn their vehicles into app-laden computers on wheels, there’s one habit they don’t want to acquire from Silicon Valley: fighting over patents in court. Manufacturers from BMW AG to Hyundai Motor Co. to Ford Motor Co. are trying to learn from the smartphone wars, which cost technology companies hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees, as they prepare to revolutionize their vehicles.
A Slovenian cryptocurrency mining marketplace, NiceHash, which lost about $64 million worth of bitcoin in a hack on its payment system on Wednesday, said the attack was probably made from a non-EU IP address. NiceHash matches people looking to sell processing time on computers in exchange for bitcoin.
More than $70 million worth of bitcoin was stolen from a cryptocurrency-mining service called NiceHash following a security breach, causing the company to halt operations for at least 24 hours. Andrej P. Škraba, head of marketing at NiceHash, said to The Wall Street Journal that approximately 4,700 bitcoin had been stolen from a bitcoin wallet, an online account that stores the digital currency.
The government of Mecklenburg County, N.C., which includes the city of Charlotte, said that it would not pay a $23,000 ransom to a group of hackers who seized control of several government computer systems. The breach was announced on Tuesday when the county government said on Twitter that it was “experiencing a computer-system outage.”
Protesters gathered outside hundreds of Verizon stores throughout the nation as part of a last-ditch effort to save net neutrality rules. Protesters, who are posting photos on social media with the hashtag #StoptheFCC, are targeting Verizon because FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — appointed to his position by President Donald Trump — is a former Verizon lawyer.
More regulation and some degree of security are needed to make cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin a serious new asset class for investors, Deutsche Bank Chief Investment Officer Christian Nolting said. "Cryptocurrencies currently represent a highly speculative and unregulated risk investment," Nolting said in a presentation published on Deutsche Bank’s website.
Luxury brands can restrict retailers from selling their products on web platforms like Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. to protect their image, the European Union’s top court ruled. The decision gives luxury companies a powerful tool in Europe to safeguard their exclusivity, which has become a key concern as the sector expands online sales.
Internet groups such as Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Twitter need to do more to stem the proliferation of extremist content on their platforms, the European Commission said after a meeting. Julian King, EU security commissioner, said that while a lot of progress had been made, additional efforts were needed.
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