Appeals Court Rules for Gay Dating App Grindr in Lawsuit Over Fake Profiles

A U.S. federal appeals court refused to hold Grindr liable to a New York man who said his former boyfriend used the gay dating app to post fake profiles, in a harassment campaign that caused more than 1,000 men to approach the victim for sex. The 3-0 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against Matthew Herrick came in a closely watched case over how far the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 federal law meant to restrict pornography while allowing other speech online, should shield Internet-based companies from user abuses.

U.S. Census Bureau Seeks Help from Tech Giants to Combat 'Fake News'

The U.S. Census Bureau has asked tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter to help it fend off “fake news” campaigns it fears could disrupt the upcoming 2020 count, according to Census officials and multiple sources briefed on the matter. The push, the details of which have not been previously reported, follows warnings from data and cybersecurity experts dating back to 2016 that right-wing groups and foreign actors may borrow the “fake news” playbook from the last presidential election to dissuade immigrants from participating in the decennial count, the officials and sources told Reuters.

Facebook Says White Nationalist Content Has 'No Place on Our Services'

Facebook said that it would ban white nationalist content from its platforms, a significant policy change that bows to longstanding demands from civil rights groups who said the tech giant was failing to confront the powerful reach of white extremism on social media. The threat posed by white nationalism on Facebook was violently underlined this month when a racist gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand, using the platform to post live video of the attack. Facebook removed the video and the gunman’s account on Facebook and Instagram but the footage was widely shared on YouTube, Twitter and Reddit.

EU Countries Required to Start Sharing 5G Cybersecurity Risks

EU nations will be required to share data on 5G cybersecurity risks and produce measures to tackle them by the end of the year, the European Commission said, shunning U.S. calls to ban China’s Huawei Technologies across the bloc. The aim is to use tools available under existing security rules plus cross-border cooperation, the bloc’s executive body said, leaving it to individual EU countries to decide whether they want to ban any company on national security grounds.

FTC Announces Investigation of Privacy Practices at Internet Providers

The Federal Trade Commission announced a broad inquiry into the privacy practices of internet service providers requesting large companies like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to hand over nonpublic information describing how they handle consumer data. It’s a major step toward monitoring and regulating how much data ISPs are allowed to collect on their customers, and how widely that data can be shared.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal from Zappos on Class-Action Data Breach Suit

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Amazon's online shoe retailer Zappos, a move that will allow a class-action lawsuit over a hack that exposed the personal data of 24 million customers to move forward. Zappos was seeking to appeal a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that said the lawsuit should continue because the 2012 data breach left customers vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.

French Muslim Group Sues Facebook, YouTube Over Christchurch Shooting Video

A group representing French Muslims is suing Facebook and YouTube over their handling of a video showing the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this month, Agence France-Presse reported. The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) filed the suit against the U.S. tech giants for "broadcasting a message with violent content abetting terrorism, or of a nature likely to seriously violate human dignity and liable to be seen by a minor," according to the complaint, which was seen by AFP.

European Digital Chief Wants to Share More Data, Reject U.S. Ban on Huawei

The European Commission will urge EU countries to share more data to tackle cybersecurity risks related to 5G networks but will ignore U.S. calls to ban Huawei Technologies, four people familiar with the matter said. While the guidance does not have legal force, it will carry political weight which can eventually lead to national legislation in European Union countries.

Family Tracking App Exposed Locations Without Password Protections

A popular family tracking app was leaking the real-time locations of more than 238,000 users for weeks after the developer left a server exposed without a password. The app, Family Locator, built by Australia-based software house React Apps, allows families to track each other in real-time, such as spouses or parents wanting to know where their children are.

FEMA Says Sensitive Information on 2 Million U.S. Disaster Survivors Disclosed

The Federal Emergency Management Agency shared personal addresses and banking information of more than 2 million U.S. disaster survivors in what the agency acknowledged was a “major privacy incident.” The data mishap, discovered recently and the subject of a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, occurred when the agency shared sensitive, personally identifiable information of disaster survivors who used FEMA’S Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, according to officials at FEMA.

Founder of 8chan Says Website Has Gone Too Far After Christchurch Shootings

Fredrick Brennan founded the website 8chan more than five years ago as a no-holds-barred bastion of unconstrained speech devoted to critiquing what he saw as the authoritarianism of leftist culture and politics. Now, he says, it has gone too far. Mr. Brennan, a former Brooklynite who cut ties with the site in December, said he believed 8chan’s administrators were too slow to remove the post from Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter Brenton Tarrant and posts on the site’s message boards that incite violence.

Homeland Security Warns Heart Devices Contain Cybersecurity Vulnerability

As many as 750,000 heart devices made by Medtronic PLC contain a serious cybersecurity vulnerability that could let an attacker with sophisticated insider knowledge harm a patient by altering programming on an implanted defibrillator, company and federal officials said. The Homeland Security Department, which oversees security in critical U.S. infrastructure including medical devices, issued an alert describing two types of computer-hacking vulnerabilities in 16 different models of Medtronic implantable defibrillators sold around the world, including some still on the market today.

Facebook Employees Aware of Cambridge Analytica Woes Earlier Than Reported

Facebook employees were aware of concerns about “improper data-gathering practices” by Cambridge Analytica months before the Guardian first reported, in December 2015, that the political consultancy had obtained data on millions from an academic. The concerns appeared in a court filing by the attorney general for Washington, D.C., and were subsequently confirmed by Facebook.

Facebook Left 'Hundreds of Millions' of Passwords Exposed to Employees

Facebook Inc. said that it had left “hundreds of millions” of users’ passwords exposed in plain text, potentially visible to the company’s employees, marking another major privacy and security headache for a tech giant already under fire for mishandling people’s personal information. Facebook said it believed the passwords were not visible to anyone outside the company, and had no evidence that its employees “internally abused or improperly accessed them” — but said it would notify users of its namesake social network, and of its photo-sharing site Instagram, that they had been affected.

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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.