Web

Biggest Fine Yet: French Watchdog Slaps Google With a $57M Fine Under the New GDPR Law

France's data privacy watchdog has fined Google 50 million euros ($57 million) under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) making it the most significant regulatory enforcement action since the law came into effect in May. more

A Data Dumb Exposes 773 Million Unique Email Addresses, 22 Million Passwords

Close to 773 million unique email addresses and 22 million unique passwords were found to be hosted on cloud service MEGA. more

Who Played a Major Role in Advancing the Internet? Nominations Open for 2019 Internet Hall of Fame

Do you know someone who has played a major role in the development and advancement of the Internet? Now is the time to recognize their contribution. Nominate them for the 2019 Internet Hall of Fame. With more than 100 inductees, the Internet Hall of Fame celebrates Internet pioneers and innovators who have pushed the boundaries to bring the Internet to life and make it an essential resource for billions of people today. more

The Internet Society Names Former ICANN Board Member Rinalia Abdul Rahim as Senior Vice President

Abdul Rahim's Internet governance experience spans over 20 years and most recently she served on the Board of Directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). more

Facebook Used VPN App to Collect Competitive Data on App Usage, According to Reports on Leaked Docs

U.K. Parliament today released 250 pages of internal emails between Facebook and other tech companies regarding accessing user data through the social network's system. 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

Half of Phishing Sites in the Wild Have SSL Certificates and Show Padlock Security Icon, Study Finds

A new study by anti-phishing company PhishLabs reveals 49 percent of all phishing sites in the third quarter of 2018 had Secure Sockets Layer or SSL with HTTPS in their URL. more

Berners-Lee Launches Global Campaign to Save the Web From Destruction

Tim Berners-Lee has called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new "Contract for the Web" that aims to protect people's rights and freedoms on the internet. more

US Senator Wyden Proposes Bill That Could Jail Executives Over Repeated Data Privacy Violations

U.S. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden released an early draft of a bill today that would subject company CEOs and senior executives to tough penalties including 10 to 20 years of imprisonment for failing to protect consumer data. more

Berners-Lee Warns About the Danger of Concentration Regarding Growing Dominance of Tech Giants

World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee speaking during an interview this week, warned Silicon Valley technology giants have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up. more

Internet Watch Foundation Uses Hashes to Block Child Abuse Material

Last week during the ICANN meeting in Barcelona I attended a short presentation from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Their mission is pretty simple: ...eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online. Fortunately, the presentation I was at did not include any of the actual material (which would have been illegal anyway) but even without seeing any of it the topic is one that I think most people find deeply disturbing. more

Yahoo Agrees to Pay $50M and Other Costs for the Massive Security Breach Disclosed in 2016

Yahoo today announced it has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and will offer two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the massive security breach. more

Facebook Security Vulnerability Allowed Attackers to Steal User Access Tokens Affecting 50 Million

Facebook alerted users today that its engineering team on Tuesday had discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. more

Internet Will Split Into Chinese-Led and US-Led Versions Within the Next Decade, Says Eric Schmidt

Speaking at a private event hosted by Village Global VC, tech luminary and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that the internet will split into Chinese-led and US-led versions by 2028. more

EU Authorities to Give Internet Companies 1 Hour to Take Down Extremist Content or Face Hefty Fines

European authorities proposed new laws today subjecting internet companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook to big fines if the extremist content is not taken down within one hour. more