data

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says it wants consumers to know exactly what private details about them a company is collecting, storing, using, and sharing. The new regulations would be part of a plan to encourage businesses to be more ... transparent, open and honest about how they treat their customers' personal information. The FTC already has sufficient powers to establish mandatory regulations about how businesses treat their customers. In this matter, however, the agency has sought approval from Congress, suggesting that the contemplated changes would be substantial enough to go beyond ... (view more)

Members of the international hacking group LulzSec ("Lulz Security") have discovered their worst nightmare may have come true. It appears that one of the group's leading figures was working as an undercover FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) ... informer for the past nine months. The news emerged this week with the arrest of five suspects in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. All those arrested are said to be members of the LulzSec group, which emerged last summer and quickly made a name for itself as a leading organization of highly proficient hackers ... (view more)

Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its online user tracking system, claiming to make its services more useful. However, critics fear the changes, set for March 1, 2012, will allow for more effective snooping of user data and online activities. ... The changes center around the way the company keeps track of activity data, and the way it's then used. Google Pools Online Tracking to 'Improve' Advertising, Search Under the old system, someone who receives a lot of emails about football will see advertisements for football. Someone who watches a lot of comedy clips on YouTube will see lots of ... (view more)

The Swedish government has formally recognized a church based on the belief that people have the right to copy digital data. The Church of Kopimism claims that information is holy, with an inherent value, and the act of copying information, known as ... "kopyacting" is a religious activity that increases the value of information by passing it to more people. The group even claims keystrokes CTRL + C and CTRL + V as religious symbols, the common key combination used for copying and pasting data using a computer keyboard. Cynical observers, however, suggest the Church of Kopimism exists not to ... (view more)

Facebook has been ordered by Ireland to give users greater control over their privacy settings. The order comes after a privacy practices audit that took 3 months to complete. The order will indirectly affect all Facebook accounts, except those held ... inside the US and Canada. (Source: washingtonpost.com ) Facebook Data Commissioner Issues Order The order comes from Billy Hawkes, the data protection commissioner for the Republic of Ireland. His order has such wide effect because all of Facebook's data, outside of North America, is held by a subsidiary based in Ireland and is thus subject to ... (view more)

Update 2012/10/06: Announcing Acronis True Image Home 2013. It's finally here!!! Currently we are working on Acronis True Image 2013 review, so please read the below previous version's review. It explains how Acronis True Image disk imaging works ... and why it's completely different than standard backup software (and why it's critically important to understand this concept). Have you ever wanted to upgrade to a newer, larger hard drive and have all your data moved over, but didn't know how? Has your computer ever been infected with spyware / malware and it made Windows inoperable or full of ... (view more)

A US Senator is demanding answers from a company accused of producing smartphone spyware . The firm, Carrier IQ, denies the accusation, and claims its software is designed solely for tracking service faults on the portable phones. The software ... appears to be installed without consumer knowledge or permission on millions of the handsets. It's usually installed in rootkit form , before the customer takes possession, and is difficult for ordinary users to discover or delete. Officially, the software is intended to track activity on the phone and report back to cellular networks. When faults are ... (view more)

Facebook is reportedly on the verge of agreeing to a settlement with the federal government over claims it misled users regarding its privacy policies. The settlement wouldn't involve a formal admission of guilt, but would have lengthy consequences ... for the social networking company. The case, brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is based on allegations that Facebook does not always obtain a user's permission before changing the way it handles that user's personal data. Instead, Facebook simply applies the changes it wants on an opt-out basis, in effect asserting that it can apply ... (view more)

Valve Corporation, which is behind the major online video game retailer and social networking platform Steam, has been hacked. According to reports, gamer credit cards have been compromised, as well. Steam is a major online gaming platform that ... provides nearly 2,000 games for play by some 35 million users based in 237 countries. Not only can visitors to the site download games, but they can also use the platform to easily organize multiplayer sessions, and can interact with one another through instant messaging. User Database Infiltrated by Hackers Given the massive size of Steam's user base ... (view more)

The number of wireless devices in use in the United States now outnumbers the nation's human population. The figures include tablet devices but the numbers are mainly driven by cellphones. If anything, the numbers are an understatement as they are ... based on subscriptions to wireless services. That means people who have devices such as the iPad but only use them via a WiFi connection aren't considered. On the other hand, the numbers do include people who have 3G data subscriptions for portable computers. According to CTIA, the wireless industry's trade body, there were 327.6 million wireless ... (view more)