online

Nine in ten Americans are now online according to new figures. But it's the United Kingdom that is "most online" and least subject to Internet restrictions. The figures come from Proxyrack, a company with a clear interest in places where users may ... want to disguise their identity of location. It wanted to see if there was any connection between how widespread Internet use was and how freely people could use the Internet. (Source: proxyrack.com ) The usage figures came from Statista and shows 99,231 out of every 100,000 people in the UK had used the internet recently. That was followed by Japan ... (view more)

Internet users who find themselves distracted online can pay up to $9 a month to block certain websites. The service has some obvious limitations but does prompt debate about Internet addiction. The Freedom service offers users four types of block: ... block all Internet access, block specific websites, block specific apps, or block all sites except those the user has specifically listed. It can cover computers, phones and tablets. After a free trial of seven "block sessions" users must pay for some features. This includes use on an unlimited devices and scheduling. This carries a subscription ... (view more)

A US official has beaten a Russian opponent to become head of a major Internet body. The result could make a big difference to online technology, particularly on the issue of blocks and censorship. Doreen Bogdan-Martin beat out Rashid Ismailov to ... lead the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). She prevailed 139-25 in an election where every country had one vote. (Source: politico.eu ) The ITU is a United Nations agency that started in 1865 as a way to make sure telegraph systems in different countries could use a compatible system. It now oversees many cross-border tech issues, ... (view more)

One of the key ways online advertising works has led to a court case alleging a breach of Internet users' privacy. A civil liberties group is taking legal action saying current regulations are too slow to have any effect. The Irish Council for Civil ... Liberties (ICCL) says IAB Tech Lab, which operates one of the world's main ad set-ups, is sharing revealing data about online activities without user consent. IAB is based in New York, though the legal case is against its branch in Hamburg, Germany to benefit from tighter rules in Europe. (Source: reuters.com ) Real Time Bidding Relies On Data The ... (view more)

A court has ruled a grocery store did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to make its website accessible to blind people. The ruling creates a confused national picture that may well end up in the Supreme Court. The ... current case involves a chain called Winn-Dixie. A blind man brought the case forward after finding three features of the website were incompatible with his screen-reading software: online prescription filling, a store locator and a digital coupon tool. Carlos Gil said this had a discriminatory effect as it meant that visits to physical stores in order ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Franco I. writes: " Dear Dennis, Someone is threatening to post a video of me on Facebook . A few weeks ago I was on Omegle (a chat website) and suddenly, a girl sent me a private message. After 30 minutes or so into the ... conversation, things started getting hot and heavy. That's when she requested we move over to Google Hangouts to continue. Once there, we went into video chat and she was already fully unclothed. She then asked me to participate. Not long after that, the video chat ended abruptly and that's when she made threats to ruin my life, my career, and my reputation ... (view more)

World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee wants to rethink the way people control online data. He says his "pods" proposal would bring the online world closer to his original vision of the web. Berners-Lee has launched an open-source project and ... associated business to try to counter what he sees as the web's biggest problem: major companies collecting user data and exploiting it as a core part of their business. His new idea is "pods", or personal online data store. This would involve users having a space on a server that acted like a digital safe and contained a range of data. This could be ... (view more)

Tech giants such as Facebook could face eye watering fines or even be blocked if they don't do enough to remove "illegal content." The proposals in the United Kingdom highlight the difficultly every government faces in balancing online freedoms and ... responsibilities. The measures, set out in the Online Harms Bill, would affect websites and services around the world. If it becomes law, it raises the question of whether the UK is a significant enough market that websites change their practices worldwide to avoid headaches, similar to the way many US business decided it was better to ... (view more)

Human tiredness could be the key to spotting automated fake posts online, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. They are developing systems to distinguish between posts by humans and those posted by automated programs, ... otherwise known as 'bots' - which is a short form for robots. Since most of the online world gets their news using smartphones these days, fake news is a serious problem. It's also an incredibly serious issue for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where news is often talked about, debated, and forwarded to others. Bots Designed To ... (view more)

Google says it will block third-party cookies, which can track Internet users in ways they don't expect. But it could be up to two years before the block is fully in place. A cookie is a small text file placed on a user's computer by a website. The ... idea is the site can check for the cookie later on and customize the users' web experience. Examples of 'legitimate' cookie use would be an online store that holds items in a virtual 'shopping basket', and a movie theater chain's site 'remembering' a user's location to automatically show them local listings. The more controversial variant is third- ... (view more)