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For Privacy Advocates, Facebook's 'Next Best Thing' Doesn't Cut It February 06, 2010 
Just over two years ago now, Facebook began deploying a behavioral tracking service it called "Beacon," which automatically enabled the tracking of Facebook users' behavior but shared that data with advertising partners. It wasn't an "opt-in" service by anyone's definition, and after Facebook took down most of the service, customers filed a class-action suit against the social network.
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How Cozy Are Google and the NSA? February 05, 2010 
Google has allegedly requested help from the National Security Agency in tracking down hackers who attacked its infrastructure. The development has raised concerns among privacy advocates. The Washington Post broke the story that Google had turned to the NSA on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
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US Intel Chief Paints Dark Picture of Cyberattack Defense February 04, 2010 
As the United States' private and public sectors increasingly leverage the Internet, the U.S. intelligence community fears that they are severely endangering the country's critical infrastructure. On its own, neither the public nor private sectors can combat this threat, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told Congress this week during an annual threat assessment briefing on national security.
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Sen. Durbin Prods Tech Giants to Back Google's China Stance February 03, 2010 
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wants to know if Google's current dustup with China has the potential to create more cracks in that country's Great Firewall. So late Tuesday, the Illinois Democrat sent letters to 30 top technology companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon and Amazon -- asking them to attend a new round of congressional hearings next month.
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Twitter Smells a Password-Snatching Rat February 03, 2010 
Twitter users have come under attack from scammers once again, and the microblogging site has asked several users to reset their passwords. This latest attempt came through torrent file-sharing sites that contained hidden security exploits and backdoors. Opinion is divided as to whether these security holes were the result of bad coding or were deliberately created so the coder could later activate them.
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Facebook: A Tempting Danger Zone for Businesses February 02, 2010 
Social networking sites are a threat to online security, and Facebook is the worst offender, a report from Sophos states. The number of businesses hit by malware and spam attacks through social networks rose by 70 percent in 2009, the report found. More than 72 percent of businesses believe employees' behavior on social networking sites could endanger security.
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Google Stamps Social Search With Beta Status January 28, 2010 
Google promoted its Social Search experiment to beta status on Wednesday. Social Search adds information and images from users' public pages to the results of online searches conducted by members of their social network. Users need a Google profile to get results from Social Search.
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Google and the Freedom Business January 22, 2010 
We're now in week two of Google's high-profile battle with China, and the stakes have risen high enough to catch the attention of no less than the U.S. Secretary of State herself, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She cheered on Google's stance in a speech Thursday, saying, "Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere, and in America, American companies need to make a principled stand."
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Creepy Ways Your Social Media Data Can Be Used January 21, 2010 
People who use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not known for their reticence -- many put just about any personal information imaginable out there. The risks to such openness are clear -- from inviting tailored phishing attacks to appalling potential employers with one's late-night party habits -- but many users who are tech-savvy appear willing to brave them.
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Bing's User-Data Life Span Trimmed to 6 Months January 19, 2010 
Microsoft has said it will change Bing's search data retention policies, promising to hold users' IP address data for only six months instead of 18. The change in policy is due to a number of trends, including growing pressure from regulatory authorities, Bing Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen acknowledged. In particular, he referenced the standards set by the Article 29 Working Party.
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Does Google Have an Enemy Within? January 18, 2010 
Google is reportedly looking into the possibility that one or more staff members at its office in China helped enable the attack on its infrastructure in mid-December. After the attack was discovered, some Google China employees were denied access to internal networks, while others were put on leave, and still others were sent off to offices elsewhere, according to Reuters.
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The Accidental Hacker January 17, 2010 
A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling place: Strangers' accounts with full access to troves of private information. The glitch -- the result of a routing problem at the family's wireless carrier, AT&T -- revealed a little known security flaw with far-reaching implications for everyone on the Internet, not just Facebook users.
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Google to China: Tear Down This Wall January 15, 2010 
For lots of U.S. Internet companies, doing business in China is virtually a no-brainer -- the market opens up well over a billion new potential customers. The only downside is the Chinese government's pet peeve regarding public dissent. It sponsors what has to be the biggest censorship operation on the planet.
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Is China Sweating Over Google's Threat? January 14, 2010 
Following a hack attempt on Google originating in China, the Web search powerhouse stood up to the country's government and declared it would no longer cooperate with its censorship laws. In fact, it may stop doing business in China altogether. Doing that would cost Google hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, as well as any future growth opportunities there.
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VigLink Aims to Turn Hyperlinks Into Gold January 12, 2010 
A startup developer of technology that helps publishers better connect sales with affiliate marketers has closed on seed funding from First Round Capital, Google Ventures, and such individual investors as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. The financing for the company, VigLink, will be used to take the product out of beta and into the general market within the next few months.
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TSA Isn't Telling the Whole Truth About Scanners, Charges Privacy Group January 12, 2010 
Pushback against the deployment at airports of digital image scanners that show people's naked images through their clothes is gaining steam, bolstered by the Electronic Privacy Information Center's publication of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
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