Internet

US Marshals are to auction off almost 30,000 Bitcoins, a controversial "virtual currency." The coins have a current market value of around $18 million dollars. The government confiscated the virtual currency when it raided an underground online ... trading site named Silk Road. Silk Road was not part of the ordinary World Wide Web, and could only be accessed using special web browser software. That made it extremely difficult to trace anyone using the site and their activity. The site was well known in the digital underground community for buying and selling services of both a legal and ... (view more)

Facebook is facing a serious backlash over a new feature that allows it to listen in on its smartphone users. When activated, the feature uses the device's microphone to detect a user's activity and automatically updates their "status" accordingly. ... For example, if a user is listening to a new U2 album on their stereo in the background, Facebook will use a smartphone's microphone to update a user's status to "Listening to U2". It can also detect movies and television shows and update a user's status to read "Watching Iron Man" or "Watching ... (view more)

Facebook wants its users to carry out regular 'privacy checkups' in hopes of winning back trust. The privacy checkup features allows users to choose how much of their personal information is visible to the general public, including photographs, ... email addresses, and smartphone numbers. According to The New York Times, Facebook's new privacy checkup is a response to user and investor concerns that the social networking site's privacy settings are too complicated , making it difficult for many users to protect their personal data. Privacy Checkup to Include Walkthrough of New App ... (view more)

It appears as if one of the largest cable and home Internet service providers in the United States is planning to reinstate monthly bandwidth limits on its many customers. The news is raising new and old questions about net neutrality , Internet ... fairness, and bandwidth usage caps in general. Recently, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen told a New York audience that his company plans to reinstate monthly bandwidth caps sometime in the next five years. Bandwidth Cap System More Fair, Says Exec Bandwidth is loosely defined as is a measurement of available or consumed data communication ... (view more)

Iowa Democrats are considering using online voting in primary elections for 2016. It follows two separate moves to increase online voting in Utah. The Iowa Democrat officials raised the idea during a meeting of the Democrat National Committee. They ... want to introduce online voting for the primaries, in which local Democrat supporters indicate which candidates they want to represent the party in the presidential election. The Iowa officials believe adding online voting could help involve people who are state residents but can't vote in person, such as military staff away on service or those ... (view more)

Popular video streaming service Netflix has announced plans to raise its monthly service price. Meanwhile, Amazon says it has acquired the rights to HBO (Home Box Office) shows for its Amazon Prime streaming service. For the past three years, ... Netflix has offered its video streaming services to customers for $7.99 per month -- an affordable price that has helped Netflix generate revenue of $1 billion. Netflix's total profits for the first quarter of 2014 are an estimated $53 million. (Source: bbc.com ) Premium Content Means Higher Prices, Netflix Says Netflix chief executive officer Reed ... (view more)

Facebook has officially released a new and somewhat controversial feature that allows users to track the location of their friends. But if used maliciously, the app raises major privacy concerns. The application is called "Nearby Friends" and it ... uses location information collected by smartphones. Facebook says its goal is to make it simple for people to find their friends and meet up in real life. When it's enabled, Nearby Friends shows users a list of Facebook friends who have agreed to share their location. The app can also alert a user if a friend comes within range (such as ... (view more)

Mozilla's co-founder, Brendan Eich, is stepping down after only one week as the company's chief executive officer (CEO). Eich is abandoning the post amidst controversy surrounding a $1,000 donation to a same-sex marriage ban. Eich is a US-born ... computer programmer who started his career in California's Silicon Valley during the late 1980s. In the 1990s he worked on Netscape, one of the Internet's earliest web browsers. Eich was also a key figure in the development of JavaScript, an exceptionally popular programming language. Brendan Eich is arguably best known for founding the ... (view more)

Facebook is introducing new rules governing the way its users can offer to sell guns online its website. While it's not banning such posts altogether, Facebook is taking steps to ensure its users are complying with the law. According to Facebook ... policy chief Monika Bickert, the subject of gun sales means the site faces "a difficult challenge balancing individuals' desire to express themselves on our services, and recognizing that this speech may have consequences elsewhere." (Source: fb.com ) Facebook already has several policies on the sale of goods, which don't always ... (view more)

One of the largest businesses that allowed people buy the online currency Bitcoin is filing for bankruptcy protection. The collapse means customers have almost certainly lost nearly half a billion US dollars in "real money." Mt Gox is a Tokyo-based ... business founded in 2009 as a trading card exchange (Source: wikipedia.org ). It has recently filed for bankruptcy protection because it has debt worth $63.6 million, but assets worth only just half over that. Customers had a total of around 750,000 Bitcoins stored in the Mt Gox equivalent of a bank account, which translates to around $ ... (view more)