Internet

Consumer groups say YouTube is breaking the law by collecting data about pre-teens without parental permission. They've asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate. The alleged breach is of the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act ... (COPPA), a federal law that significantly restricts the way sites can handle data about users aged under 13. That's why many major websites that have user accounts officially ban pre-teens from signing up with their services. That's not quite the case with YouTube. Users do have to be 13 or older to get a Google account, which is necessary for some ... (view more)

Facebook users have been shocked to discover it stores the phone numbers of people who've never signed up to the site, along with the SMS and voice call histories of some users. But Facebook insists that users have explicitly given permission for ... such data storage. The site's data storage and sharing policies came back under the spotlight with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a journalist revealed that information gathered about users and their friends for a psychological study was shared without permission for use in political ad targeting. Since then, many users have been taking ... (view more)

Facebook has made a survey in which it asked if adult users should be allowed to ask children for 'explicit' pictures. The survey question appears to be a horrific mistake, albeit one that's hard to explain. The survey was seen by a journalist at ... the UK's Guardian newspaper, who posted screenshots of the questions. One of the questions read "There are a wide range of topics and behaviors that appear on Facebook. In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for ... (view more)

Google has removed more than a million web pages from its search index under European privacy guidelines. It's published detailed statistics on its handling of the "right to be forgotten." The "right" is actually a set of legal guidelines ... established by the European Court of Justice and covering searches made within Europe. The idea is to balance the right to privacy with the right to freedom of expression. It was sparked by a case where a man complained that searches for his name brought up a 1998 newspaper article about his house being foreclosed over a debt. Although the article was untrue ... (view more)

An independent website is listing companies that have failed to publish clinical trials results, despite being legally required to do so. The site could help reduce the problem of drug companies keeping quiet about results that don't help their ... business. Critics of the pharmaceutical industry say that although published trial results may be genuine, they can still be misleading. That's because a company might publish the results of a trial that suggests their drug is effective while not publishing trials that are less clear-cut. That's led to calls for all clinical trial results to be made ... (view more)

Facebook is increasingly becoming a site for older users according to an online measurement company. eMarketer says last year saw a drop in younger users that was nearly three times bigger than it forecast. This time last year the company predicted ... that the number of 12-17 year olds using Facebook would drop by 3.4 percent. That was significant as it was the first time it predicted any form of drop among any age group. Retirees The Main Growth Area A new report from the company says in reality the drop was 9.9 percent. It also says there was an overall fall in users among under-25s, something ... (view more)

Facebook is to give more priority to local news stories when deciding which links to feature prominently. But Mark Zuckerberg's argument that this will reduce divisions and argument has been rejected by some critics. It's the latest in a series of ... changes to the algorithm Facebook uses to decide the order in which a specific user sees content. Originally all content such as posts from friends and shared links was shown in chronological order. Facebook later decided that the average user would not be able to see all of the content in chronological order (due to the volume of posts ... (view more)

An Internet provider has warned customers that "pirating online content could affect thermostats and security cameras." But the explanation is something of a stretch. The warning comes from Armstrong Zoom, an Internet Provider that serves several ... states from Ohio over to the Washington DC area. It's written to customers whose connections have reportedly been used to infringe copyright. The letter says customers won't face immediate action but will face sanctions for repeat offenses. That's similar of an industry-wide effort that tried to cut down on piracy (including a 'six strike' ... (view more)

Social media sites could face fines of almost $60 million if they don't remove hate speech and other illegal posts within 24 hours of receiving a report. The new German law has prompted Facebook to recruit hundreds of staff. It's the result of the ... Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz law, which is known as NetzDG for short, and literally translates as Network Enforcement Act. (Source: BBC.com ) Libel And Hate Speech Both Covered The law doesn't change what content is allowed and not allowed. Instead, it says that sites must remove any content that is "obviously illegal." A prime example is ... (view more)

The Library of Congress has abandoned a project to archive every post made on Twitter. It blames the sheer number of "tweets" now being made, along with an increasing reliance on images and videos. The library is the world's largest and collects all ... manner of documents from newspapers to government forms. As a general rule it, doesn't aim to collect all possible data from a source but made an exception for Twitter in 2010. At that point it reached an agreement with Twitter to get a copy of its complete archive of posts, then dating back to 2006. The idea was to "document the emergence of ... (view more)