RIM’s Troubles May Not Be Over

Law firms in the United States and Canada are considering possible consumer lawsuits against Research In Motion Ltd for last week’s BlackBerry outages, which for three days crippled email and messaging for tens of millions of users around the world.

Consumer lawyers say they are investigating whether customers have common claims against the BlackBerry manufacturer and might be able to band together in a single lawsuit.

While the outage did not rise to the level of seriousness comparable to a dangerous medication or tainted food, it inconvenienced and angered customers. Frustrated BlackBerry users, turning to blogs, message boards, Twitter and Facebook, complained about losing important emails and missing meetings last week.

Law firms are considering breach-of-contract or consumer-fraud claims, attorneys said.

A breach-of-contract claim could argue the company failed in its obligations to provide service and could include carriers for BlackBerry service as additional defendants, said attorneys exploring litigation against RIM.

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Will eBay Cozy Up With Facebook?

EBay Inc is attempting to strengthen its relationship with social network leader Facebook at a developer conference this week, a person familiar with the e-commerce company said on Tuesday.

EBay will also debut a new online identification service for shoppers named PayPal Access, the source added.

The company expects almost 4,000 people to attend its X.commerce conference in San Francisco on October 12, 13 and 14. The event marks the official launch of the company’s new X.commerce division, which will target e-commerce software developers.

EBay is trying to encourage outside developers to create applications for its e-commerce platforms and is making a particularly strong push in mobile commerce.

At the end of September, Katie Mitic, head of Platform and Mobile Marketing at Facebook, joined eBay’s board of directors, sparking speculation that the two companies were working on new partnerships.

Mitic is scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers at the X.commerce conference on Wednesday. Facebook Platform, which Mitic helps run, is the company’s developer unit, so any new partnership will focus on this area, the person said on condition of anonymity because the plans aren’t public yet.

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Did Google Increase Microsoft’s Ad Rates?

Google might have increased Microsoft’s ad rates 50 fold, a Bloomberg report says.

Someone familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into the rate increase.

It will also be looking into other allegations against Google about advertising as a result of complaints from Microsoft.

This is part of a larger antitrust probe into Google that began earlier this year, the source told Bloomberg.

An antitrust lawyer at Doyle Barlow & Mazard PLLC in Washington, Andre Barlow, told Bloomberg that, if true, the Microsoft allegations could be used to help the FTC build a case showing that Google has abused its power as the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, violating the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws.

He said, “A lot of this conduct, when put together with a firm with market power, could be viewed as a violation” of antitrust laws.

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India Wants To Monitor Twitter & Facebook

India’s Communications Ministry has received a request from the Home Ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to organize attacks.

The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to expand the scope of its online surveillance for national security purposes.

Telecommunications service providers in India provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communications on their network, including communications from social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, in accordance with their license agreements, Milind Deora, the minister of state for communications and IT, told Parliament, according to the country’s Press Information Bureau.

But there are certain communications which are encrypted, Deora said Friday.

The government did not provide details of what encrypted data they would like to have access to. A spokesman for the home ministry said on Monday that additional
information can only be provided in Parliament while it is in session.

Under new rules to the country’s IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.

Most companies, however, are not willing to share information with law enforcement agencies unless they have a court order.

Twitter states in its guidelines for law enforcement that “non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we have received a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process document.”

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Twitter Security Lagging,Says Experts

The fast-growing microblogging site Twitter is lagging behind some other Internet services in using methods to help secure the accounts of users, security experts say.

Weaknesses in Twitter’s security became apparent on the U.S. July 4 Independence holiday as a still unidentified hacker took control of a Fox News Twitter account and tweeted falsely claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama was dead.

While the hijacking of Twitter accounts is not new, the false Tweets about Obama generated headlines around the world.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter. Fox News has said does not know how the attacker gained control of its account, but complained that it took Twitter more than five hours to return control of the account to Fox.

“What Twitter needs to do now is to commit to a thorough review of their security practices,” said Daniel Diermeier, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “For Twitter this is a very serious problem.”

Security experts said the attack might have been prevented if Twitter had offered two-factor authentication technology to secure its accounts.

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Twitter Toying With Money Making Ideas

Twitter is considering the option of placing ads into the live stream of messages, according to the Financial Times. The addition of “promoted tweets” — a more palatable way to say advertising — within the live Twitter stream is bound to turn off many users, at the same time as it attracts businesses looking to reach some of the company’s 300 million users.

Twitter’s executives have been in discussions with strategists at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France this week to find a way to increase revenues, which disproportionately trail those of social media companies such as Facebook.

Twitter is expected to generate revenues of about $100 million this year. Facebook, by contrast, reaps $3.5 billion from display advertising, according to a forecast by Enders Analysis.

A few other ideas leaked out of these meetings. One was that Twitter would offer mass coupon deals, which hold potential given the real-time nature of interacting on Twitter. A brand profile, which would allow advertisers to pre-schedule their company’s Tweets, is also being considered.

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Facebook Is Display Advertising King

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will reach roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, toppling Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest portion of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study.

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.

Last year Facebook garnered 12.2 percent share of the U.S. market.

The figures highlights the growing clout of Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network. It has seen its valuation soar to roughly $80 billion in recent transactions for its shares on the private markets as some investors anticipate it could have an initial public offering next year.

While Facebook has grabbed the top ranking, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said the overall market for display ads, which include banner ads, video ads and Web page sponsorships, is growing robustly enough that it is benefiting numerous companies.

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Cell Phones Can Be Dangerous

It appears that an Australian brain surgeon has called the latest report in reference to the report on the potential harmful effects of mobile phones as a wake-up call to users and the telecommunications industry.

Dr Teo, said he was “pleased” that at last there came conclusive proof that mobile phones caused brain tumours. He also went on to say that the report should serve as a ”wake up call’ that should alert both the public and the mobile phone industry to the link between mobile use and cancer.”

As you know a report was released by the World Health Organisation’s cancer research wing that said radio frequency electromagnetic fields generated by cell phones are “possibly carcinogenic to humans” and heavy usage could lead to a possible increased risk of glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer.

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Microsoft’s IE Latest Flaw: ‘Cookiejacking’

A technology security researcher has discovered a flaw in Microsoft Corp’s widely used Internet Explorer browser that he said may allow hackers to steal credentials to access FaceBook, Twitter and other websites.

He coined the technique as ”cookiejacking.”

“Any website. Any cookie. Limit is just your imagination,” said Rosario Valotta, an independent Internet security researcher based in Italy.

Hackers can exploit the flaw to access a data file stored inside the browser known as a “cookie,” which holds the login name and password to a web account, Valotta wrote.

Once a hacker has that cookie, he or she can use it to access the same site, said Valotta, who calls the technique “cookiejacking.”

The vulnerability affects all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 9, on every version of the Windows operating system.

To take advantage of this flaw, the hacker must first persuade the victim to drag and drop an object across the PC’s screen before the cookie can be hijacked.

That sounds like a difficult task, but Valotta said he was able to do it fairly easily. He built a puzzle that he put up on Facebook in which users are challenged to “undress” a photo of an attractive woman.

“I published this game online on FaceBook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server,” he said. “And I’ve only got 150 friends.”

Microsoft said there is little risk a hacker could succeed in a real-world cookiejacking scam.

“Given the level of required user interaction, this issue is not one we consider high risk,” said Microsoft spokesman Jerry Bryant.

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Bill Had A Hand In Microsoft Buying Skype

One of the world’s richest people, Bill Gates had given his blessing for Microsoft to buy Skype for $8.5 billion dollars.  Actually, Bill Gates pressed other executives on the board of directors to support or back the idea of gobbling Sky which has yet to turn a profit.

Word on the street is that Bill told the Gates BBC in an interview which will be televised this weekend that he played an instrumental role in getting this deal approved by the board of directors. So this really squashes any rumors that Steve Ballmer was the force behind the deal getting approved by the executive team.

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