Consumer watchdog sues FTC to Stop Google privacy rules changes

A consumer watchdog group is suing the Federal Craft Commission in an endeavor to prevent Google from making sweeping changes to its privacy policies next month.

The planned revisions would enable Google to bundle the personal info gathered by its Internet hunting engine and other services, such equally Gmail, YouTube and Plus, hence the fellowship may gain a meliorate understanding of its users and potentially sell more advertising. Google has pictured the switch as an improvement that will make its privacy policies easier to understand and help deliver more helpful info to users.

But the Electronic Privacy Info Core (EPIC) contends that Google’s new policies would violate restrictions imposed in an agreement reached with the FTC lastly year. Google submitted to the rules to resolve complaints that the society had improperly discovered users’ e-mail contacts in a now-defunct service promised Buzz.

A cause filed Wednesday by EPIC maintains that the agreement gives FTC the power to stoppage Google from making the planned privacy change. The complaint too is seeking an society from a Washington federal court to block Google’s policy changes from taking effect March 1.

European regulators already get required Google to delay the policy changes.

Among other things, EPIC says Google’s new privacy guidelines expect users’ consent. The group besides says Google hasn’t thoroughly explained the motives for the changes, making it an “unfair and deceptive job practice.”

In a statement, Google said it has gone to nifty lengths to explicate the changes to users since announcing the planned switch two weeks ago.

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Hackers Essayed $50,000 from Symantec for anti-virus blueprint

The fellowship said the emails were in fact between the hacker and law enforcement officials posing as a Symantec employee.

“The communications with the person(s) attempting to extort the payment from Symantec were part of the law enforcement investigation,” company spokesman Cris Paden said, adding that no money was paid.

Paden refused to name the law enforcement agency, locution it may compromise the investigation.

Symantec had previously confirmed the hacker, portion of a group promised Lords of Dharmaraja and affiliated with Anonymous, was in possession of source code for its products, obtained in a 2006 breach of the company’s networks.

An email commutation released by the hacker, who is known equally YamaTough and claims to exist based in Mumbai, India, shows drawn-out negotiations with a purported Symantec employee starting on January 18.

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The email negotiations echoed conversations in past years, considered by Reuters, in which police agencies steered talks between victims and hackers.

“We can’t remuneration you $50,000 at erstwhile for the reasons we discussed previously,” said333 one email from a purported Symantec employee Sam Thomas, who offered to salary the full quantity at a afterwards date.

“In exchange, you will build a public command on behalf of your grouping that you lied nigh the hack.”

The hacker enounced he never meant to take the money and warned he would presently release the blueprints for Symantec’s pcAnywhere and Norton antivirus products.

“We tricked them into offering us a bribe thence we could humiliate them,” YamaTough said Reuters.

In late weeks, the hacker has posted segments of code for Norton Utilities and other programs. A software maker’s intellectual property, specifically its generator code, is its almost precious asset.

Symantec’s Norton Internet Security is among the almost popular software available to occlusion viruses, spyware, and online identity theft.

Symantec said the version of the source code in the hacker’s possession from 2006 no longer placed a threat to its customers eventide if the full blueprint to the software is released.

After the hack was created public in January, Symantec necessitated its customers to temporarily disable pcAnywhere. It later declared it safe to exercise afterward offer liberal upgrades.

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Google, Facebook Censor Themselves in India Afterward Courtroom Guild

Google India and Facebook experience removed web pages thought offensive to India’s political and religious leadership to satisfy a courtroom club in a censorship case. Indian prosecutors are suing a host of Internet companies on behalf of a Muslim religious leader who has accused them of hosting substance that insults Islam.

Google India did not expose which sites were removed, simply the companionship has stated it will have down anything which violates Indian law. Reuters reports Facebook likewise removed message from some Indian domain websites and that the society would make a command later.

According to Indian media and the Associated Press, a New Delhi court Monday issued Google, Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot and other Internet companies a two-week ultimatum for delivering plans to actively supervise their networks.

The Indian authorities has been aggressively lobbying 22 online companies to scrub substance deemed anti-religious or anti-social. Indian officials consider American Internet standards unacceptable for the country’s 100-plus million online citizens.

The Indian government’s efforts to censor the web get alarmed proponents of online loose speech about the world. Only Indian regime officials dismissed those fears, citing a goal of national unity in a land with over 2,000 ethnic groups and subscribers to every major religion.

There is no interrogation of any censorship, articulated Indian communications minister Sachin Pilot. They totally get to operate within the laws of the country.

Pilot claimed to get adequate evidence to accuse 21 sites for promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration, and he believes that anyone hurt by online substance should experience a legal recourse to action.

The movement is the latest chapter of India’s struggle to hold contain over its development online community, which is the 3rd largest of any country. (But with 1.17 billion people, Internet penetration per capita remains low.)

Last April, the Indian government occurred regulations that taken websites to remove any textile believed grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous,ethnically objectionable,disparaging or that impersonates individual else. And in December of finally year, India’s government foreboded for Internet companies to screen substance444333 ahead users posted it, a task thought impossible by many.

According to Google’s Transparency Report, the Indian authorities demanded the society to withdraw content 68 times between Jan and June of lastly year, and 51% of those requests were at least partially complied with.

Earlier, Facebook India gave a compliance account to the court Monday while likewise expression that no public complaints get been lodged against the company. India, with more than 43 million Facebook users (second highest in the world) is Facebook’s third-fastest ontogeny market.

Do you believe the Indian authorities is justified in trying to take objectionable message from the Internet? Sound perish in the comments below.

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Hackers Intercept FBI Outcry With U.K.

The Federal Office of Investigation enounced cybercriminals hacked into a cybercrime conference vociferation between its agents and law enforcement officials overseas.

The 16-minute cry was posted on the Internet on Friday. The hacker collective Anonymous claimed responsibility, though the FBI didn’t mention the grouping and said a criminal investigation was under way.

Anonymous said it made the call public equally part of a series of like actions against law enforcement around the world. The group is a loose affiliation of hackers and activists with no formal construction or membership.

The breach is an embarrassment for law enforcement, which is wrestling with how to closure cybercrime that crosses borders. One Twitter history that claims to be associated with Anonymous suggested hackers have been monitoring FBI communications for some time.

The cry mostly consists of FBI agents in the U.S. and Scotland M counterparts in Britain discussing developments in investigations.

The FBI enounced666 the breach wasn’t made on the agency’s secure email or other computer systems. Instead it appeared to be consequence of a law enforcement policeman overseas who was invited to be on the FBI vociferation333 and who forwarded the information to his private email account, which was compromised by hackers.

“The info was meant for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained,” the FBI said. “A criminal investigation is under fashion to identify and delay accountable those responsible.”

On the call, the British officers discussed efforts to assist U.S. investigations into hackers, some of whom are too facing charges in the U.K. They discussed what they described as impressive investigative mold to recover data from difficult drives of suspects.

British officers likewise provided info nigh a U.K. teenage suspect in a reported breach of Steam, a U.S.-based gaming website. In November, Steam advised its customers that its site received been defaced and that accounts may have been compromised. The FBI agent on the outcry told his counterparts that agents in Baltimore were investigating.

It appeared from the word that the British police didn’t have the suspect, who uses the moniker TehWongZ, likewise seriously, referring to him equally a “wannabe” and a “pain in the butt.”

A Scotland Thou spokesman articulated the authority was aware of the intercepted outcry and that “no operational risks receive been identified.” The issue is being investigated by the FBI, the spokesman said.

A Twitter run purportedly for TehWongZ enunciated he suspected his hard drive was in the hands of the FBI but, “Still, I never became arrested.”

The parent society of Steam didn’t forthwith respond to a request for comment.

Much of the outcry involves joking and conversational asides that aren’t work-related.

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Facebook Timeline and Apps Act users Perish with over-sharing

Facebook Timeline and the Capable Graphs apps are proving more turn-off than value-add to users, granting to research by security house Sophos and SlashGear, with many regarding deleting their Facebook account after the recent profile changes. Over 51-percent of Facebook users said Sophos they were worried by Timeline, which lists entirely your activity on the site in chronological order; meanwhile, 45-percent of respondents to a freestanding SlashGear poll articulated they might abandon the social network

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Google Defends Privacy Changes Equally Questions Mount

Users even have moderate over what information Google sees; Google is not collecting any more data virtually users than it has in the past; and users can utilisation as much or as short equally they desire of Google, Google Policy Manager Betsy Masiello declares in a companionship blog on Thursday.

She explains that a routine of Google services — search, maps, and YouTube, for illustration — could be utilised without persons identifying themselves through a login. For services that require logins, a turn of tools and options are available to reduce the data being collected by Google.

Google isn’t collecting more data from its users under the young policy, Masiello maintains. “Our new policy simply makes it realize that we use data to refine and better your have7 on Googlewhichever productions or services you use,” she writes. “This is something we have9 already been doing for a long time.”

“We’re making things simpler and we’re trying to exist upfront almost it,” she adds. “Period.”

Not everyone buys Google’s “simpler” line. In the U.S. Congress, for example, leading privacy advocates in both the House and Senate get vowed to have a nigher look at the touch of the policy changes on consumer privacy.

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NZ Courtroom bails two associates of Megaupload founder

Dutchman Bram van der Kolk, 29, and Finn Batato, a 38-year-old German, who were arrested lastly Friday along with Megaupload’s founder, Kim Dotcom, were freed on bail. A decision on another accused, Mathias Ortman, was put conk until Friday pending further submissions on his bail application.

“I am quenched that the risk of flying here is minimal and such risk as remains may exist met by the imposition of strict bail conditions including electronic monitoring,” Evaluator David McNaughton pronounced in a composed judgement.

A lawyer for the servicemen had argued their role in the company was different from that of Dotcom, and they did not get secret sources of funds or multiple identities.

The United States wants to extradite all four on charges of Internet piracy, copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering.

Dotcom, 38, was refused bail on Wednesday because the judge thought there was a significant risk he could endeavour to flee Young Zealand. He will reappear in court on Feb. 22. His lawyer is preparing to appeal that decision, maintaining that Dotcom does not have the agency to leave the country.

The defendants experience pronounced they are innocent of the piracy and other charges, asserting the company just offered online storage.

An extradition application must be lodged within 45 days of an arrest, and the U.S. must establish the alleged offences would exist crimes in New Zealand punishable by at least 12 months in jail.

Legal experts get enunciated the extradition appendage is likely to be long and complex.

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Apple CEO: ‘Amazon Flame didn’t dent our sales’

If purchases of the successful-if-flawed Amazon Fire routine into iPad sales during the holiday season, Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t see it.

“I looked at the data especially in the US on a weekly basis subsequently Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, and in my see there wasn’t an obvious effect on the [iPad sales] numbers,” Cook stated analysts and reporters during a vociferation later Apple declared its impressive first-quarter financial results on Tuesday.

When one analyst needed him if he received discovered the speculation that some customers received looked at the $199 Fire, felt it wanting, then impressed up the price ladder to the $499-to-$829 iPad, Make enunciated that, yes, he received seen that theory, just he discounted it.

“Whether that’s happening on a very, selfsame big basis, I don’t know,” he said. “Again, my own regard is – look at our data in the US – there was no obvious change.”

But if the iPad didn’t tempt prospective purchasers dead from lower-priced fondleslabs, it did experience an outcome on the sales of another of Apple’s offerings: the Mac.

“There is cannibalization, clearly, of the Mac by the iPad,” he admitted – although with 5.2 million Macs sold during the quarter, a 26 per centime increase over the year-ago quarter, that outcome was scarcely fatal to Apple’s Mac Os X boxes.

Cook added that Apple believes that if anyone is suffering from the iPad’s success, it’s PC manufacturers. “And there’s many more of them to cannibalize,” he said, “and so we love that trend. We believe it’s cracking for us.”

That said, the iPad is making inroads into traditionally strong Mac markets. In K-12 education, for example, Prepare enounced that Apple sold double as many iPads as Macs – though he didn’t render a time frame. “Generally speaking,” he said, “education adopts young technologies evenhandedly slowly, therefore that’s jolly surprising.”

Cook characterized equally “remarkable” the sale of over 55 million iPads since the “magical and revolutionary” Cupertinian fondleslab shipped in early April 2010.

iPad sales will keep to grow, Ready said. “I understandably believe, and many others in the companionship believe, that there will got a daylight when the tablet market, in units, is larger than the PC market,” citing IDC’s late inquiry that pictured tablet sales have already exceeded desktop-PC sales in the US.

And when Make says tablet, he means iPad, and not “limited-function tablets and e-readers” that he relegated into a different category altogether. “There’s clearly customers that will buy those,” he said, “and I think they’ll sell a fairly act of units, merely I don’t think that people who desire an iPad will settle for a limited-function [device].”

As for competition from full-function tablets such as, say, the Motolola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, the less-than-concisely named Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, and their ilk, Fix was sanguine. “Y’know, finally yr was supposed to be the twelvemonth of the tablet,” he said. “I consider about people would harmonize that it was the yr of the iPad – for the second year in a row.”

But when he was involved if the tablet market was simply a “two-horse race” between the iPad and Android-based devices, Make did admit that not totally important players had yet joined that race.

“There’s a horse in Redmond that forever suits up, and constantly runs, and will proceed running,” he said. But no topic how many horses there will eventually exist in that race, “We merely desire to remain ahead and be the principal one

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YouTube reports 4 billion video downloads

People of the Internet, you love your YouTube.

On an ordinary day, you ticker 4 billion videos on YouTube. And the future day? You watch 4 billion videos on YouTube. That’s a 25% increase over the turn of daily video views merely eight months ago, and it shows what form of huge numbers we can see when a popular Web destination becomes eve more popular.

It’s kind of amazing — and variety of frightening.

When it comes to how much video people are uploading to the site, the numbers are likewise mind-boggling: YouTube reports that 60 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute, compared with 48 hours eight months ago.

What’s behind this maturation of activity? Reuters points away that parent society Google is pushing the video-sharing service beyond the personal computer, with versions of the site forthwith compatible with smartphones and televisions. The company too has been making an attempt to have more professional-grade message on the site.

Does altogether of this translate to money? Well, some of it does. But, Reuters reports, Google enounced exclusively near 3 billion videos a week are monetized.

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Twitter acquires social news service Summify

Twitter has acquired Summify, a Canada-based social news aggregator, in a bid to make the micro blogging site more utilitarian to its development members.

Summify scans a person’s social media accounts and produces a casual email summary of the top tales their supporters receive shared across the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter bought the society for an undisclosed sum, in a bid to helper improve curate the content being shared across the site for each its members, The Telegraph reports.

According to the report, the deal has needed consequence immediately, with Summify’s operations being closed down and its squad relocating to Twitter’s

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