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Europe Investigating Google’s Privacy Policy
March 6, 2012 by admin
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France’s data protection watchdog is questioning the legality and fairness of Google’s new privacy policy, which it said breached European laws.
The CNIL regulator told Google in a letter dated February 27 it would lead a European-wide investigation of the web search giant’s latest policy and would send it questions by mid-March.
Google said in January it was simplifying its privacy policy, consolidating 60 guidelines into a single one that will apply for all its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+.
The U.S. Internet company also said it will pool data it collects on individual users across its services, allowing it to better tailor search results and improve service.
Users cannot opt out of the new policy if they want to continue using Google’s services.
“The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services: they have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation,” the French regulator wrote to Google.
Google plans to put the changes into effect March 1 and has rebuffed two requests from European regulators for a delay.
The tussle over data privacy comes at a delicate time for Google, whose business model is based on giving away free search, email, and other services while making money by selling user-targeted advertising.
It is already being investigated by the EU’s competition authority and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over how it ranks search results and whether it favors its own products over rival services.
Experts Think iPad 3 Coming in March
February 18, 2012 by admin
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Apple will debut a new iPad some time in early March, and will start selling it the following week, according to reports and industry analyst expectations.
The March debut of the iPad 3, as some have called it, was first reported today by AllThingsD, the blog owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the blog said Apple will host a launch event the first week of March, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a regular venue for the company’s press announcements.
Last year, then-CEO Steve Jobs returned from medical leave to lead the launch event of the iPad 2 on March 2. Apple started selling the new tablet on March 11, 2011 via its online store.
If Apple follows the same timeline, it will probably conduct the event the week of March 5-9, and begin selling the new model the following week.
It’s possible that Apple will trot out a new iPad on one of the first two days of March — Thursday, March 1 or Friday, March 2 — but Apple usually hosts events earlier in the week.
Next month’s iPad introduction, if it does take place, will be the first without Jobs, who died last October at the age of 56 of complications from his long-running battle with pancreatic cancer.
GoDaddy To Drop SOPA Support
Giant domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has yanked its support from the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act after owners of several websites stated they would take their business elsewhere.
Negative feedback about SOPA from a number of customers forced GoDaddy to take a second look at the legislation, said Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO. Go Daddy has concerns about the free speech and Internet security implications of the legislation, but until now, has worked with lawmakers to address those issues, he said.
“It’s clear to us the bill’s not ready in its current form,” Adelman said Friday. “Looking at this over the last 20 hours, we’re not seeing consensus in the Internet community, we’re hearing the feedback from our customers.”
On Thursday, Reddit user selfprodigy said he was pulling 51 domain names from GoDaddy because of the registrar’s support of SOPA. The same day, Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger family of humor websites said said his company would move its 1,000-plus domains off Go Daddy unless it dropped its support for the bill, known as SOPA.
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Facebook’s Users Info Was Leaked
May 12, 2011 by admin
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Facebook users’ personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past several years, Symantec Corp said in one of its blog postings.
Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, the security software company stated.
“We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,” the blog post said.
” … Over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties,” posing a security threat, the blog post said.
The third-parties may not have realized their ability to access the information, it said.
Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website, was notified of this issue and confirmed the leakage, the blog post said.
It said Facebook has taken steps to resolve the issue.
“Unfortunately, their (Symantec’s) resulting report has a few inaccuracies. Specifically, we have conducted a thorough investigation which revealed no evidence of this issue resulting in a user’s private information being shared with unauthorized third parties,” Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said in a statement.
Google Launches Online Magazine
March 27, 2011 by admin
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Google has decided to launch its own quarterly online magazine, Think Quarterly, out of its centers in the U.K. and Ireland, saying that “in a world of accelerating change, we all need to take time to reflect.”
The first issue of Think Quarterly is already freely available online and is focuses on data, including data obesity, data impotence, data overload and open data.
“Think Quarterly is a unique communications tool that brings together some of the world’s leading minds to discuss the big issues facing businesses today,” the magazine says on its Twitter bio.
The magazine’s Twitter feed says it launched on March 21, though there is no mention of the magazine on Google’s blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page or newsroom.
In a note on the magazine’s website, the managing director of Google’s U.K. & Ireland Operations, Matt Brittin, said, “Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.”
Hackers Go After WordPress
March 6, 2011 by admin
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We found out Bloggers using the WordPress platform was shutdown by a DDos attack yesterday that apparently affected many blog sites.The DDos hostilities began in the morning and lasted for a couple of hours. The estimates on the DDos attack was thought to be “multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second”, according to sources, WordPress is working with their providers to prevent such acts from ever taking place again.WordPress the attack is over, though in Chicago, Dallas and San Antonio. The good news is that the site is back up. However, while the attack was in progress sources say it was on of the “largest” the organization has ever seen. Even centersThe attack unfortunately hit main three data. Read More…..
Goo.gl Link Spreading Malware via Twitter
February 21, 2011 by admin
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As if we don’t have enough to worry about when it comes to potential attacks of all kinds. First there were reports about the social media site Facebook and its highly infected news feeds now there appears to be yet another mischief seeking internet fiend sending out infected Goo.gl links via Twitter. Users are being warned not to click these suspicious links as they might direct you to malicious sites.