Senators Urge Trump to Avoid Hurting U.S. Chipmakers Amid Pandemic

A group of Senate Republicans is urging U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid hurting American chipmakers, which they see as essential to the coronavirus response and the U.S. economy, as the administration cracks down on chip exports to China. In a letter, six senators, including Susan Collins, John Cornyn and Todd Young, expressed concern over rules released by the Commerce Department last week that could curb exports of chips and other technology to China in a bid to keep them from its military.

Facebook Announces First Members of Oversight Board

Facebook announced the first 20 members of its Oversight Board, an independent body that can overturn the company’s own content moderation decisions. The oversight board will govern appeals from Facebook and Instagram users and questions from Facebook itself, although it admitted it will have to pick and choose which content moderation cases to take due to the sheer volume of them.

  • Read the article: CNBC

Twitter to Notify Users Replying to Tweets with 'Offensive or Hurtful Language’

Twitter Inc. will test sending users a prompt when they reply to a tweet using “offensive or hurtful language,” in an effort to clean up conversations on the social media platform, the company said in a tweet. When users hit “send” on their reply, they will be told if the words in their tweet are similar to those in posts that have been reported, and asked if they would like to revise it or not.

Facebook Removes 'Threat Actors' That Leveraged Coronavirus Pandemic

Facebook removed 1,887 accounts, pages and groups tied to Russia, Iran, the U.S. and other countries in April that misled users about their identity and purpose, and some of these users shared posts about the coronavirus pandemic to attract more followers. "We have seen threat actors leverage the coronavirus pandemic and discussion about the coronavirus pandemic in the same way that we've seen threat actors leverage other types of major events around the world," said Nathaniel Gleicher, who heads cybersecurity policy at Facebook.

  • Read the article: CNET

GoDaddy Breach Compromised Data on 28,000 Hosting Customers

A breach at GoDaddy.com LLC, the domain name registrar and website hosting company, compromised usernames and passwords of approximately 28,000 of the company’s 19 million customers. GoDaddy “immediately reset the affected usernames and passwords,” which were used only by customers for accessing remotely hosted servers, rather than their main GoDaddy accounts, according to a company statement.

Facebook Says Iran's State Broadcaster Spread Info via Fake Accounts

Iran’s state broadcaster has used hundreds of fake social media accounts to covertly spread pro-Iranian messaging online since at least 2011, targeting voters in countries including Britain and the United States, Facebook said. In a monthly report of accounts suspended for so-called “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, Facebook said it had removed eight networks in recent weeks, including one with links to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Corporation (IRIB).

Judge Orders FCC to Disclose Info About Fake Net Neutrality Comments

The Federal Communications Commission may be forced to disclose more information to reporters about the fraudulent comments filed in the agency's 2017 net neutrality repeal after a federal judge in New York ordered the agency to turn over records about the comments to The New York Times. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai acknowledged in late 2018 that roughly 500,000 comments submitted during the debate over the controversial repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules were fraudulent and linked to Russian email addresses.

  • Read the article: CNET

Three States to Allow Some Voters to Case Ballots Online

A few states are allowing some voters to cast ballots over the Internet in coming elections, overriding concerns from cybersecurity experts about tampering or technical glitches as election officials grapple with voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. At least three states — Delaware, New Jersey and West Virginia — will allow small slices of their electorates to use an online voting tool in presidential primaries or local elections.

Tumblr to Delete Reblogs Containing Hate Content from Terminated Blogs

Tumblr announced an update to its hate speech policy, announcing on its blog that it would start cutting down on the reach of posts considered hate speech by removing all reblogs of terminated content. Tumblr says it’s specifically targeting speech from Nazis and other white supremacist groups, which it says still be amplified on its platform through reblogs even after the original post was removed for violating its hate speech policies.

Apple, Google to Ban Location Tracking in Coronavirus-Tracking Apps

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google said they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Apple and Google, whose operating systems power 99% of smart phones, said last month they would work together to create a system for notifying people who have been near others who have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Supreme Court Hears Arguments, by Phone, in Booking.com Trademark Case

The U.S. Supreme Court hear arguments for the first time via telephone, with the first case from online travel search engine Booking.com, which is appealing a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refusal to grant a trademark to the company. Solicitor General Erica Ross said "the core problem with Booking.com is that it allows [Booking.com] to monopolize booking on the Internet" to the exclusion of other sites like hotelbooking.com.

  • Read the article: NPR

House Committee Wants Bezos to Testify About Using Data from Sellers

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee called on Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos to testify to the panel about allegations that the online retailer uses data from its own third-party sellers to create competing products. In a letter to Bezos signed by Democratic and Republican members of the panel, the lawmakers referred to an April 23 Wall Street Journal story about Amazon, saying, “If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious.”

Goldman Sachs Cybersecurity Czar to Help Capital One After Data Breach

One of Wall Street’s top cybersecurity czars is leaving Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to help take charge of the cleanup at Capital One Financial Corp., which was left reeling after one of the largest data breaches at a major U.S. bank. Andy Ozment, previously a senior cyber official in President Barack Obama’s administration, is leaving Goldman three years after becoming the firm’s leading information-security executive.

Security Lapse Reveals Coronavirus Database at Indian Cell Network

India’s largest cell network Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance, launched its coronavirus self-test symptom checker in late March, just before the Indian government imposed a strict nationwide lockdown to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. But a security lapse exposed one of the symptom checker’s core databases to the internet without a password, TechCrunch has found.

Breach at Australian Home Affairs Department Discloses Migrant Data

Privacy experts have blasted the home affairs department for a data breach revealing the personal details of 774,000 migrants and people aspiring to migrate to Australia, including partial names and the outcome of applications. At a time the federal government is asking Australians to trust the security of data collected by its Covid-Safe contact tracing app, privacy experts are appalled by the breach, which they say is just the latest in a long line of cybersecurity blunders.

Social Media Sites Refuse to Remove Trump's Comments on Disinfectants

After President Trump suggested that disinfectants and ultraviolet light were possible treatments for the virus, his remarks immediately found their way onto Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites, and people rushed to defend the president’s statements as well as mock them. But Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have declined to remove Mr. Trump’s statements posted online in video clips and transcriptions of the briefing, saying he did not specifically direct people to pursue the unproven treatments.

ADL Report Says 'Steam Platform Harbors Extremists'

The Anti-Defamation League, a 107-year-old nonprofit founded to fight identity-based discrimination, released its report on “how the Steam platform harbors extremists.” “It was disturbingly easy for ADL’s researchers to locate Steam users who espouse extremist beliefs, using language associated with white supremacist ideology and subcultures, including key terms, common numeric hate symbols, and acronyms,” the report reads.

In Antitrust Move, Facebook to Let Users Transfer Photos to Google

Facebook Inc. will allow users in the United States and Canada to transfer photos and videos to a rival tech platform for the first time — a step that could assuage antitrust concerns by giving users an option to easily leave the company’s services, the social media network said. The tool lets Facebook users transfer data stored on its servers directly to another photo storage service, in this case Google Photos — a feature known as data portability.

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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.