Internet

Facebook is testing tools to make it easier to combat "fake news" posted to the site. It's using Germany as a test bed for the tools, which will include making it harder for scammers to make money from false stories. The term "fake news" came to ... prominence last year and has been applied to all sorts of types of writing, including opinionated pieces and legitimate articles with unintended factual errors. However, what Facebook is targeting is material that has the appearance of legitimate news reporting but is largely completely fictional and designed either to spread ... (view more)

Major changes to privacy laws in Europe could affect the way websites deliver advertising. The move is meant to protect user privacy, but critics claim it could make ads more annoying and intrusive. The proposed changes would affect websites used by ... people in European Union countries, but the regulatory impact could be so severe that sites find it easier to change their policies worldwide. According to European officials, the changes are designed to take existing rules that affect telecommunications companies and apply them equally to Internet companies. The main principle of the change is ... (view more)

Some of the biggest Internet firms say they'll work together to remove images and videos that promote the message of terrorists. The announcement comes in the same week that European officials have criticized companies for failing to live up to a ... promise to tackle hate-based speech online. The agreement involves Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube. They'll build a joint database of images and videos that they have removed from their site after human moderators have flagged them as being either violent imagery produced by terrorists, or imagery specifically designed to recruit ... (view more)

Facebook users have been warned to watch out for bogus links in messages that appear to be from friends. While Facebook appears to be on top of the problem for now, it's an approach that could lead to personal data being siphoned off, or computers ... locked. The problem was highlighted by security researcher Bart Parys who became aware of the problem this weekend after a tip-off from a friend. It involves Facebook messages which appear to consist only of an image but are actually a type of file called SVG (scalable vector graphics). 'YouTube' Video Next Step In Scam Normally such ... (view more)

Facebook has denied claims that it allows racial discrimination in advertisements based on houses and jobs. A lawsuit may come down to interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. The lawsuit is filed against Facebook and "up to 9,999" unnamed ... co-defendants, though that appears to be a legal procedural move. It says Facebook has violated both the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act. The legal action follows an investigation by "public interest journalism" group ProPublica, which bought an advertisement aimed at house buyers to check out claims of racial bias. Test Ad ... (view more)

One in five people say social media posts have changed their minds on political issues this year. But many of those changes have been to a negative position. The statistic comes from the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys Internet users on ... their online activities. It found that 20 percent of the social media users it questioned in its latest study said they have changed their minds about a social or political issue because of something they saw on a social media service, while 17 percent said they have changed their minds about a specific candidate. (Source: washingtonpost.com ) In ... (view more)

Facebook has blocked plans by a British insurance company to use customer posts on Facebook to help determine motor premiums. Admiral Insurance claims no customers would have lost out from the policy. The plan was for customers to give the insurer ... automated access to their Facebook posts (but not photographs) to help decide whether to offer discounts. It would have been aimed mainly at young drivers who had no insurance history to show if they were safe or dangerous drivers. Language Could Indicate Risk Factors The precise details of the algorithm to figure out risk are confidential, but it ... (view more)

Yahoo has blocked users from automatically forwarding incoming emails to an account with a rival provider. Many are interpreting it as an attempt to stop users jumping ship after revelations of a major security breach. The forwarding feature is ... pretty much a standard feature across the webmail industry, and means users can change from one account to another without having to worry about missing out on an important message during the switchover. Officially Yahoo says the feature is only temporarily disabled. It says the move was planned in advance and is to allow it to work on a range of ... (view more)

North Korea has just 28 websites, an audit has revealed. It includes sites for education, travel and cookery. What information was already known about the secretive country showed that it has its own Intranet: a restricted, internal network that ... appears to be the only information accessible to the few North Koreans with access to computers. However, the country does have a few sites on the worldwide Internet, all with addresses ending in .kp in the same way that many Canadian sites often end in .ca. Until now, nobody was sure exactly how many such sites existed. Full Domains List Exposed Like ... (view more)

Facebook users in the US may be able to find out if the site thinks they are conservative- or liberal-leaning. It's a side-effect of a new tool that makes it easier to influence advertisements which appear on the users' newsfeed. As reported ... recently, Facebook recently added new options which allow users to indicate that they don't want to see advertisements in the news feed related to specific topics. The new changes come as Facebook also prepares to roll out additional measures to prevent ad-blocking software from working on the site. To view the settings, users can visit their ... (view more)