Internet

Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined more than a billion dollars for failing to protect user data. The case involves the way Facebook transfers customer data between Europe and the United States. Under the European Union's privacy rules, ... businesses are restricted in the way they transfer personal data to non-EU countries. In principle this can only happen when the non-EU country has laws that offer a similar level of privacy data protection. Some counties have a "data adequacy" agreement with the EU, meaning the country's privacy rules are officially classed as strong enough. In ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may put a temporary ban on any new products from Facebook's parent company, Meta. It could also ban Facebook from making any money from data involving children. The FTC says "Facebook has repeatedly violated its ... privacy promises." Those promises came in a 2020 agreement when Facebook promised to change its behavior. That agreement, which included a $5 billion civil penalty, came after Facebook allegedly breached the terms of a previous agreement from way back in 2012. (Source: ftc.gov ) Kids Could Chat to Strangers According to the FTC, an independent ... (view more)

Google is testing a Chrome feature that could heavily reduce the time users spend completing CAPTCHA tests. The tests are designed to reduce spam and other automated mischief but can irritate genuine human users. CAPTCHA stands for "Completely ... Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It's designed to use a test that's relatively simple for a human to do, but difficult for a computer. Often such tests take advantage of the fact that humans are better at recognizing images and patterns, for example spotting pictures with varying backgrounds that contain a bicycle. Other ... (view more)

A company that manipulated Amazon listings to deceive customers has been fined $600,000. It's the first time the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has punished a business for "review hijacking." The Bountiful Company sells a range of nutritional ... supplements. According to the FTC it listed more than 1,000 products on Amazon. (Source: ftc.gov ) One of the tactics it used took advantage of the way Amazon groups "variation" products. This is meant to cover situations such as an identical t-shirt that's available in multiple colors, or a medicine that's available in different size bottles. ... (view more)

An investigation has revealed the tactics of a company that offers to hide negative information about clients on the Internet. A newspaper has accused Eliminalia of using "unethical or deceptive methods" to achieve its goals, sometimes helping ... serious criminals. The company says its main approach is taking advantage of the European Union's "right to be forgotten". This gives people the right to ask websites to remove information that is inaccurate or no longer relevant. The site doesn't have to comply but may have to justify a refusal later on. While the law is theoretically about websites ... (view more)

Governments in 35 countries imposed complete blackouts of the Internet at some point in 2022 according to a new report. It's the highest figure in the seven years that "digital rights group" Access Now has been compiling data. Perhaps surprisingly, ... China only had one Internet shutdown, while Russia had just two. That's slightly misleading as Russian forces imposed 22 shutdowns in parts of Ukraine during the ongoing war. (Source: accessnow.org ) The country with the most blackouts (for the fifth straight year) was India, with 84. That's a hugely controversial topic as officials say the ... (view more)

Netflix has rejected proposals that would help fund network infrastructure by companies responsible for large amounts of Internet traffic. It says the European idea would effectively mean customers paying twice for the same technology. Officials in ... Europe are currently consulting on the proposals. The idea is that companies which deliver the most traffic would pay a tax with the proceeds going towards projects to expand and improve Internet connections. The officials argue that companies such as Netflix benefit from the wide availability of Internet connections, but don't currently contribute ... (view more)

A bizarre court ruling means that emojis can legally count as financial advice. It's a side effect of the latest case involving regulation of digital assets. The case centers on non fungible tokens, also known as NFTs. In short, an NFT is something ... that only exists digitally, can be bought and sold, and the ownership of which is recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain - similar to how bitcoin operates. In this case, the NFTs were a limited edition collection of digital clips of famous basketball moments. The effect was much the same as owning a rare trading basketball card except ... (view more)

Microsoft has experimented with one of its most audacious attempts yet to persuade users to prefer the Edge browser over Google Chrome. It appears the plan, which effectively involved full-size banner "ads" on the Chrome website, will not proceed ... after the tests. Technically speaking, the Microsoft Edge browser is built using "Chromium" code (which is open source), which is the exact same code that Google's Chrome browser uses. The only difference between Edge and Chrome is that Edge has been customized with its own set of unique features and is branded as being Microsoft Edge. That ... (view more)

Chrome users will soon have two new modes that could significantly increase performance and battery life. The Energy Saver and Energy Saver modes are the first major changes since users of Windows 8 and earlier editions lost access to Chrome ... updates. While Google probably won't acknowledge things quite so bluntly, the new modes are an attempt to solve one of the most frequent complaints about the widely used browser. Many users find having too many tabs open at once means Chrome quickly starts using a lot of system memory. This can slow performance and even increase battery use on laptops. ( ... (view more)