Does AVG Respect Your Privacy?

AVG has been answering questions about its new privacy policy after accusations that the firm is about to sell its users down the river.

FCC To Tighten Rules On Robocalls

The top U.S. telecommunications regulator wants to make it more difficult for telemarketers and other businesses to robocall and text messages consumers under changes to autodialing rules being proposed.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on June 18 on the proposal, which would give legal cover to telephone companies to offer consumers technologies that would block robocalls, regardless of where they originate.

“The FCC wants to make it clear: Telephone companies can – and in fact should – offer consumers robocall-blocking tools,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post.

The wireless carriers have worried that blocking automated calls could be construed as violations of the law that requires them to ensure that all calls placed over their networks reach their intended recipients.

The proposal would also reassert that consumers have to agree to receive automated calls and texts and clarify that they can revoke their consent in any “reasonable” way, including a simple request for calls to stop, without the need to file convoluted paperwork.

Robocalls and robotexts are by far the most common cause of consumer complaints at the FCC, topping 215,000 in the last year alone. Consumer advocates and the majority of U.S. states attorneys general had pressed the FCC to clarify the robocall rules.

Numerous business associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have also pushed for clarifications, facing a growing number of lawsuits prompted by violations such as calling cellphone users whose numbers used to belong to someone else.

The FCC’s proposal would reassert that companies should try to avoid numbers reassigned to consumers who have not agreed to receive their calls. If they do not know that a number has been reassigned, they are allowed one call to find out.

The business community had also complained that some lawsuits unfairly target them for using dialing technologies that could be modified to become autodialers. FCC officials said any technology with the capacity to dial random or sequential numbers qualifies as an autodialer, even if it would require modification.

U.S. law prohibits telemarketing calls to both landline and cellphones of consumers who have not given written consent.

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Judge Rejects Silicon Valley Settlement

A California judge has rejected the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over no-hire agreements used by top Silicon Valley tech firms, saying the amount being offered to compensate workers is too low.

The remaining defendants in the case — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems — had reached a deal with the worker’s lawyers to settle the case for US$324.5 million, but Judge Lucy Koh of the federal district court in San Jose, California, said that amount is too low.

After subtracting the fees for the workers’ lawyers — they’re allowed to keep up to a quarter of the award, or $81 million, as well as other money — each worker would be left with an average of only $3,750.

“The Court finds the total settlement amount falls below the range of reasonableness,” Koh wrote in her order, issued Friday.

She said she was troubled that the workers would get less money than under a previous settlement with companies that settled earlier in the case, even though the case has been progressing in the workers’ favor since then.

Last year, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar settled with the workers before the case came to trial.

All of the companies were accused of striking secret deals to not poach each others’ workers, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act that reduced the workers’ potential to earn higher wages.

An expert hired for the case has estimated that the workers’ should receive damages of $3 billion, for wages they could have earned if the no-hire agreements hadn’t been in place.

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Is Skype Involved In Spying?

Luxembourg’s data protection authority is investigating Microsoft-owned Skype for its alleged cooperation with the U.S. NSA’s Prism spying program, according to the agency.

Luxembourg’s data protection authority, CNPD, is investigating Skype’s links to NSA spying programs after receiving several complaints, said Tom Kayser, a spokesman for the authority. “I can’t really talk about the details of the investigation because it is still ongoing,” he said.

Skype, which has its European headquarters in Luxembourg, allegedly cooperates with the NSA through a program exploring the legal and technical issues involved in making customer calls available to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Guardian newspaper first reported the investigation.

The CNPD has powers to ensure that multinational companies based in Luxembourg respect national law, and often receives complaints from the data protection authorities of other European Union member states.

Privacy campaign group Europe-v-Facebook filed one of the complaints in June. That filing was part of a barrage of complaints filed in various countries against European subsidiaries of tech companies that are allegedly involved in the NSA’s spying program, including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Under Luxembourg data protection law service providers and operators are required to ensure the confidentiality of communications and related traffic data.

“No person other than the user concerned may listen to, tap or store communications or the traffic data relating thereto, or engage in any other kinds of interception or surveillance thereof, without the consent of the user concerned,” reads the law’s unofficial English translation.

Violators can face up to a year in prison and/or a fine up to a!125,000 ($170,000). The court dealing with the matter can also order companies like Skype to stop any processing that conflicts with the law on pain of a periodic monetary penalty determined by the court.

“We regularly engage in a dialogue with data protection authorities around the world and are always happy to answer their questions,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email. “It has been previously widely reported that the Luxembourg DPA was one of the DPA’s that received complaints from the ‘Europe v Facebook’ group so we’re happy to answer any questions they may have.”

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Court Sides With Aereo

Streaming television service Aereo does not infringe the copyrights of over-the-air TV stations, and a request from several stations to shutter the New York-based service isn’t warranted, an appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was right to deny a request for a preliminary injunction from Fox, ABC, WNET and other TV stations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Monday.

The TV stations had argued Aereo, a service that allows subscribers to record and play over-the-air TV programs on Internet-connected devices, violated their so-called public performance right, their exclusive right in U.S. copyright law to “to perform the copyrighted work publicly.”

But Judge Christopher Droney, writing for the appeals court majority, noted that Aereo makes use of technology already found by courts to be legal. The service combines Aereo-designed mini TV antennas, DVRs, and a Slingbox-like streaming service, he noted.

Aereo users, by making personal copies of TV programs for their own use, were not creating public performances, Droney added.

The TV stations “have not demonstrated that they are likely to prevail on the merits on this claim in their copyright infringement action,” Droney wrote in rejecting the request for an injunction against the service. “Nor have they demonstrated serious questions as to the merits and a balance of hardships that tips decidedly in their favor.”

Aereo praised the decision. The decision “again validates that Aereo’s technology falls squarely within the law, and that’s a great thing for consumers who want more choice and flexibility in how, when and where they can watch television,” Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s CEO and founder, said in a statement.

Lawyers for the TV stations weren’t immediately available for comment.

Digital rights group Public Knowledge cheered the ruling, saying it is a “victory for consumer choice and video innovation.”

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FCC Warns Against Jammers

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has issued warnings to 20 online retailers offeriing illegal mobile phone jammers, GPS jammers, Wi-Fi jammers and other signal jamming devices, the agency said Wednesday.

The sale and use of devices that jam the signals of authorized radio communications are illegal in the U.S., the FCC said in its enforcement action. The agency will “vigorously” prosecute violations going forward, it stated in a press release.

“Our actions should send a strong message to retailers of signal jamming devices that we will not tolerate continued violations of federal law,” Michele Ellison, chief of the FCC’s enforcement bureau, said in a statement. “Jamming devices pose significant risks to public safety and can have unintended and sometimes dangerous consequences for consumers and first responders.”

Jammers, sometimes used in classrooms, theaters and churches, are prohibited because they can prevent individuals from contacting police and fire departments or family members during an emergency, the FCC said. “Use of jamming devices can place you or other people in danger,” the agency said.

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China Debuts Apple iPhone Knock-Off

The latest version of Apple Inc’s popular iPhone has already hit the Chinese market — the counterfeit market that is.

The ‘hiPhone 5′ is selling for as little as 200 yuan ($31) on China’s top e-commerce platform Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba Group.

But one has to pay around 800 yuan for a more “genuine” one, according to some store representatives at a mobile phone market in Shanghai.

“Look at this. It’s not the same as the 300-400 yuan ones,” Shanghai-based daily Metro Express quoted a clerk as saying, pointing to one originally priced at 850 yuan.

The ‘hiPhone 5′ is based on leaked images of the yet-to-be-launched iPhone 5 and is thinner and with less rounded edges than the existing iPhone 4, according to the newspaper. However, it is extremely light, almost like a plastic toy, like most pirated mobile phones, it said.

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