Twitter Suspending Millions of Accounts to Fight Disinformation

Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day in recent months, a major shift to lessen the flow of disinformation on the platform, according to data obtained by The Washington Post. The rate of account suspensions, which Twitter confirmed to The Post, has more than doubled since October, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.

Jury Convicts Two Men for Illegally Trading on Hacked Press Releases

A federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted two men for their roles in an international scheme to make millions of dollars by illegally trading on corporate press releases that were stolen by computer hackers before they became public. Vitaly Korchevsky, a Pennsylvania pastor and former Morgan Stanley (MS.N) vice president, and co-defendant Vladislav Khalupsky were each found guilty on two securities fraud and three conspiracy counts, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue in Brooklyn said.

New Zealand Court Ruling Upholds Kim Dotcom's U.S. Extradition

The internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom lost another bid to avoid extradition to the United States on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering, after New Zealand’s Court of Appeal upheld rulings allowing for his deportation. Mr. Dotcom, an online renegade who along with three associates faces the charges relating to a defunct file-sharing website, Megaupload, plans to appeal the ruling.

California Legislators Agree on 'Strongest Net Neutrality Protection'

California Democratic legislators ended a dispute over a proposed net neutrality bill, agreeing on a measure that would bar internet service providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down websites and video, as well as charging websites fees for fast lanes. “Collectively this will be the most comprehensive and the strongest net neutrality protection in the United States,” State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said at a Capitol news conference.

EU Lawmakers Vote Against Fast Track for Digital Copyright Directive

European lawmakers have rejected the fast-tracking of a piece of legislation that critics say would significantly damage internet freedom. Parliamentarians in Strasbourg, France, cast their votes on the European Union’s new copyright directive that is an update to a 2001 directive on copyright, and is aimed at modernizing those rules for the digital age.

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Court Says Yelp Not Required to Take Down Defamatory Review

Online review site Yelp.com cannot be ordered to remove posts against a San Francisco law firm that a judge determined were defamatory, a divided California Supreme Court ruled in a closely watched case that Internet companies had warned could be used to silence online speech. Justices agreed in a 4-3 opinion, saying removal orders such as the one attorney Dawn Hassell obtained against Yelp "could interfere with and undermine the viability of an online platform."

Federal Investigation of Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Broadens

A federal investigation into Facebook’s sharing of data with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica has broadened to focus on the actions and statements of the tech giant and now involves multiple agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the official inquiries.Representatives for the FBI, the SEC and the Federal Trade Commission have joined the Department of Justice in its inquiries about the two companies and the sharing of personal information of 71 million Americans, suggesting the wide-ranging nature of the investigation, said five people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a probe that remains incomplete.

Google Lets Outside Software Developers Scan Gmail Users' Messages

Google continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools. Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers -- and, in some cases, employees -- to read their users’ emails, a Wall Street Journal examination has found.

Q&A About California's New Consumer Privacy Law

Facebook. Yahoo. Equifax. Over and over, millions of consumers have seen companies they had trusted with their personal and financial information admit that data had been hacked, stolen or otherwise used without their permission. But a new California law, the California Consumer Privacy Act, approved this week under threat of a ballot initiative, will give consumers unprecedented power to protect their data and hold companies accountable for breaches.

U.K. Leader Accuses Facebook of 'Evasive Behavior' with Cambridge Analytica

Facebook continues to be evasive in its answers to a British parliamentary committee examining a scandal over misuse of the social media company’s data by Cambridge Analytica, the committee’s chair said. Britain’s digital and media (DCMS) committee is examining fake news, and what the consultancy, employed by Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, did with the Facebook data, which was improperly obtained.

Breach Exposes Data on Thousands of U.S. Law Enforcement Officials

A data breach at a federally funded active shooter training center has exposed the personal data of thousands of U.S. law enforcement officials, ZDNet has learned. The cache of data contained identifiable information on local and state police officers, and federal agents, who sought out or underwent active shooter response training in the past few years. 

California Lawmakers Approve Data Privacy Bill Opposed by Tech Firms

California state lawmakers unanimously passed a data privacy bill aimed at giving consumers more control over how companies collect and manage their personal information, a bill that Google parent Alphabet Inc. and other big companies have opposed. Under the proposal, large companies, such as those with data on more than 50,000 people, would be required starting in 2020 to let consumers view the data they have collected on them, request deletion of data and opt out of having the data sold to third parties.

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.