Europe's moves to rein in Google — including a court ruling this month ordering the search giant to give people a say in what pops up when someone searches their name — may be seen in Brussels as striking a blow for the little guy.
But across the Atlantic, the idea that users should be able to edit Google search results in the name of privacy is being slammed as weird and difficult to enforce at best and a crackdown on free speech at worst. "Americans will find their searches bowdlerized by prissy European sensibilities," said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "We'll be the big losers. The big winners will be French ministers who want the right to have their last mistress forgotten."
Read moreThe indictment of five Chinese military hackers by a grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania illustrates the increasing importance of cyberspace in the great power relationship between the United States and China.
It also shows that four years of talking about cyber-espionage, including at the presidential level, have lead to nowhere. All five of the alleged offenders are purported to be members of the secretive Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army in Shanghai. They are accused of computer hacking, economic espionage and other offenses targeting the U.S. private sector. According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: “This is a case alleging economic espionage by members of the Chinese military and represents the first ever charges against a state actor for this type of hacking.”
Read moreAn Iranian court ordered the photo-sharing app Instagram be blocked in the Islamic Republic.
The agency said a court order, stemming from a private lawsuit, had been given to Iran's Ministry of Telecommunications to ban the site. However users in the capital, Tehran, still could access the application.
The decision to block the photo-sharing app Instagram was accepted by the court due to privacy concerns, the latest in a series of websites to be banned in the Islamic Republic. Citizens of the country complained that the social network breaks confidentiality of their data.
Read moreFacebok has recently launched a new feature that tries to identify television or music content while using the device's microphone to listen to the environment when posting a status update.
To utilize this option, the user has to click the “mood” icon when starting to create a status update and the app will start listening to identify a song, a movie or a TV show. It is possible to turn off the feature by tapping the microphone icon at the top right of the screen. Facebook assures that none of the sound data is saved and the user is given the choice whether to add it to the post or not, but adding will only be possible if the program identifies the content.
Read moreThe U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to reform the methods of monitoring the NSA, but it falls short in the attempt, experts say.
In Washington, the House voted 303 a 121 on Thursday morning for the U.S. FOIA, which includes a provision that, the authors of the project stop the massive collection of telephone metadata by U.S. Government. The bill is Congress' response to President Barack Obama, who promised to reform the NSA after the scandalous revelations of espionage of U.S. intelligence agencies at local and international levels made by Edward Snowden in exconsultor 2013. If approved by the Senate, NSA could not force more U.S. operators to continuously release all metadata (time, duration, dialed number) calls made on their networks.
Read moreGoogle is gearing up to offer businesses WiFi at a subsidized price. Google will offer the “commercial-grade” WiFi service to businesses like restaurants, medical offices, and gyms at a “steep discount,” according to the report.
It could unveil this worldwide as soon as this summer. This would allow businesses to offer better WiFi service to its customers, which fits in part with Google’s mission to provide internet access to the entire world. Developed by the Google Access unit that runs Google Fibre, the WiFi offering would use a kind of technology called Hotspot 2.0, which enables automatic connections to WiFi networks after logging in just once.
Read moreOnline auction site eBay has advised its clients to change their passwords after a cyber-attack allowed hackers to gain access to one of its databases. Information stolen included personal details of “a large number of accounts.”
The California-based company has been asking its users “to change their passwords because of a cyber-attack that compromised a database containing encrypted passwords and other non-financial data,” according to a statement released on the company website. “For the time being, we cannot comment on the specific number of accounts impacted. However, we believe there may be a large number of accounts involved and we are asking all eBay users to change their passwords,” spokeswoman Kari Ramirez told.
Read moreiOS users in Russia began to face attacks by hackers who steal passwords to block smartphones and tablets and extort money for their unlock. To prevent this, you need to make your passwords long and complex, and not to impose them on suspicious sites, "Kaspersky Lab" recommends.
The exact number of hacked phones is unknown. The representatives of Apple declined to comment.
The attackers use the fact that in the new version of iOS 7 has become possible to block stolen smartphone that cannot be removed with help of a reset or flashing devices. If you want to use this feature, you must know the user‘s name (Apple ID, also known as e-mail address) and password.
Google already generates a significant amount of money from ads on search results, but its ads could reach further than desktop and smartphone screens.
In a letter to the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) sent in December, the company said it could be serving ads and other content on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses and watches, to name just a few possibilities.” The reason for this statement was because Google was justifying why it didn’t reveal what revenue it generated through mobile, even though other companies like Facebook and Twitter did. It said that the definition of ‘mobile’ is changing and could evolve further as smart devices are added into the mix.
Read moreDutch group of hackers named doulCi can activate blocked by means of Activation Lock function iPhones, using false iCloud servers.
Team DoulCi published a workaround that requires users to plug a bricked device into their computer and alter the "hosts" file inside. The iPhone or iPad is then tricked into connecting to the hacked server, which unlocks the gadget. Then the device is enough to be connected to iTunes and to dump Activation Lock regularly. DoulCi system works only partially: in attempt to unblock iPhone by their method, GSM module remains disconnected because hackers have no corresponding activation keys, however they promise to correct a problem shortly. The user gets access only to device operating system and Wi-Fi.
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