News Briefs

FCC Proposes Over $200 Million in Fines Against Four Largest Wireless Carriers

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed fines against the country's four largest wireless carriers for apparently selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to that information. more

Google’s .APP TLD Sunrise Period Ends With Possibly a Record-Breaking Registration Numbers

The sunrise period for Google Registry's .app new gTLD closed today with possibly the biggest sunrise of the 2012 round to date. more

Ransomware Causes 15 Schools in Arizona To Stay Closed For a Second Day

The Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD), in Arizona which consists of 15 schools and over 9,600 students, canceled classes on both Thursday and Friday after a ransomware virus was found on multiple servers. more

Close to 3.1 Million Domain Names Registered in the Third Quarter of 2015

Approximately 3.1 million domain names were registered in the third quarter of 2015, bringing the total number of registered domain names close to 299 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Sept. 30, 2015, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief by Verisign. more

NATO Announces 58 Million Euro Investment in Cyber Defence

The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) has announced the award of a contract for upgrading the NATO cyber defence capabilities. The award to private industrial companies will enable the already operating NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) to achieve full operational capability by the end of 2012. At approximately 58 million Euro, it represents NATO's largest investment to date in cyber defence. more

No Dates for the Next gTLD Round Yet, Says ICANN

According to a letter sent from ICANN's chair to the Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) this week, the agency will not be setting a date for the next round of new gTLD applications anytime soon despite keen interest from registry operators. more

Broadband Companies Take Connectivity Pledge Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Broadband and telephone service providers of all sizes in the US have signed on to a "Keep Americans Connected Pledge" aimed at maintaining connectivity for citizens amid disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. more

China Sets Up $14.6 Billion Internet Investment Fund

China's government has established a 100 billion yuan (US$14.5 billion) state fund to invest, nurture and support internet companies and spearhead the country's technological innovations and economic transformation into the so-called 'Internet Plus' era. more

Restraining Order Filed by US States’ Attorneys in the Final Hours of IANA Transition

With less than 24 hours to go before the historic contractual relationship between the US government and ICANN is set to expire, a motion hearing is expected to be held today based on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas by four states' attorneys general which could lead to NTIA facing the possibility of a temporary injunction. more

ICANN Proposes Exclusive TLD: .INTERNAL for Private Use

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is considering the introduction of a new top-level domain (TLD) named .INTERNAL. Unlike traditional TLDs, .INTERNAL is designed exclusively for internal use, akin to the private IPv4 block 192.168.x.x. more

Amazon Launched Its First Two Internet Satellites Into Orbit

Amazon launched its debut prototype satellites, Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2, from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Friday. This marks the tech giant's initial foray into space, aiming to rival SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.  more

Akamai: DDoS Attacks Increased 71 Percent in Q3 2016 as Compared to Q3 2015

Akamai releases its Third Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet / Security Report, providing analysis of the current cloud security and threat landscape, including insight into two record setting DDoS attacks caused by the Mirai botnet. more

China Spurs eSIM Boom as Global Connections Set to Quadruple by 2030

Global eSIM connections are projected to reach 4.9 billion by 2030, driven by China's rapid adoption, new provisioning standards, and growing demand across smartphones, industrial devices, and the expanding Internet of Things ecosystem. more

US, European Consumer Groups Call on FTC to Investigate Google for Deceptive Tracking of Users

Over 75 consumer groups in U.S. and Europe have asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google for unfairly and deceptively manipulating users of mobile phones with its Android operating system by constantly tracking location. A letter sent to the FTC by the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a forum of US and EU consumer organizations, says Google manipulates users into constant location tracking. more

NJ Man Arrested for Domain Name Theft and Sale on eBay

A man from the northern New Jersey area was charged and arrested for stealing a domain name belonging to the owners of P2P.com. According to reports, he allegedly transferred the ownership of the domain name to himself and succeeded in reselling it on eBay to a professional basketball player Mark Madsen of the Los Angeles Clippers. more