Internet

A single complaint about a five-year-old article forced almost 1.5 million educational blogs offline for a time. Although they have since been restored, the company responsible for the blogs says common sense should have prevailed. The affected ... pages were all part of the mammoth Edublogs site that allows teachers and students to publish their own blogs and network with their counterparts at other schools. Last month, educational publisher Pearson complained that an Edublogs blog originally posted in November 2007 contained a questionnaire called the "Beck Hopelessness Scale" (which ... (view more)

One of the most tragic news stories in recent days involves 15-year-old Amanda Todd, who committed suicide after being bullied online. Now, 'hacktivist' group Anonymous has attempted to expose the person it feels was responsible for Todd's death. ... It's believed Todd committed suicide after being bullied by a man who posted unseemly photos of her online. According to reports, the man even sent the pictures to Todd's friends. That prompted Todd to release a YouTube video indicating that the photo had completely ruined her reputation, making it impossible for her to make or maintain friendships ... (view more)

A new campaign is designed to make better use of 404 Page Not Found error messages. Some of those messages, which appear when an Internet website cannot be located, are to be accompanied with photos of missing children from around the world. This ... "NotFound project" is the work of a coalition of various international organizations, including Missing Children Europe, Child Focus, and the European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children. 2012's Milk Carton Message Even though Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have in the past helped locate missing ... (view more)

Business groups are objecting to government proposals to restrict the way websites collect data about children. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly prepared to disregard that opposition. Back in early August the commission ... announced its proposed changes, designed to bring old rules (written in the 1980s) up-to-date. Advertisers Forced Into Major Changes The new rules dramatically change how online advertising works. Under the new scheme, advertisers could no longer show children behavioral ads, which are selected based on the child's browsing history. In addition, for ... (view more)

Facebook has flatly denied that private messages sent between 'Friends' on that social network have appeared on users' public profile pages. Despite widespread reports of this problem in France, Facebook says the claims are a technical impossibility ... and may be the result of confusion. The claims were first reported by the French newspaper Metro, which wrote that "private messages dating from 2007, 2008 and 2009 now appear directly in user's timelines." However, Metro noted the "problem is not systematic." (Source: metrofrance.com ) Cheaters Exposed by Facebook Problem Following the reports, ... (view more)

Web hosting company GoDaddy suffered an outage this week that knocked thousands of small business websites offline. It appears hackers may have been responsible, but at the moment it's unclear exactly who was behind the attack. GoDaddy is best known ... for helping users register domain names, also called URLs or website addresses. However, GoDaddy also hosts millions of large and small websites, physically storing the data for the site's pages on GoDaddy's computers. GoDaddy Sites Down For Hours GoDaddy's customer websites and email services began suffering "intermittent outages" on ... (view more)

Bitcoin currency exchange BitFloor is in big trouble after a security blunder resulted in the theft of $250,000. The heist at the BitFloor "exchange" came after operators did the online equivalent of leaving the keys in the door. Bitcoin is a ... virtual currency that isn't controlled by a government and therefore isn't subject to any seizure of funds. With no government backing, Bitcoin has value only so long as enough people agree to use it. Unlike most currencies, Bitcoin exists only online, with no physical currency (like coins or bills). Each Bitcoin exists solely as a unique identification ... (view more)

Tim Berners-Lee, the man many people credit with creating the World Wide Web, says Sweden has benefitted most from Internet usage. Berners-Lee ranks the United States and United Kingdom in second and third place, respectively. His rankings are based ... on data from multiple sources, including more than 80 factors across seven categories. The categories range from the availability of technology that allows the web to flourish (such as broadband cabling) to whether national laws and regulations promote or hinder the web. Berners-Lee's rankings also consider how useful and relevant the sites in ... (view more)

If you're not convinced that every Facebook fan page really earned all of its "Likes," you are not alone. That's why Facebook's management team has decided to weed out and remove any fake "Likes" that can be identified. For years Facebook has ... offered users the ability to indicate they "Like" individual pages and posts. Facebook members can "Like" their favorite celebrity, their favorite band, their friends' vacation photos, and even a witty status update. The problem is, "Likes" became a form of currency for Facebook spammers. To artificially spike interest in certain pages -- ... (view more)

A privacy protection group based in Germany is threatening court action against Facebook. The group says the social networking site's new "App Center" feature doesn't give users enough information about how their personal data will be shared with ... software developers. The complaint comes from the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (VZBV), which translates as the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. The VZBV is made up of consumer groups based throughout Germany. The VZBV is most concerned with Facebook's App Center, which launched in July, and which covers the various smartphone-style ... (view more)