A federal judge today found that Google may have breached federal and California wiretapping laws for machine-scanning Gmail messages as part of its business model to create user profiles and provide targeted advertising.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh was rendered in a proposed class-action alleging Google wiretaps Gmail as part of its business model. Google sought to have the federal case in California dismissed under a section of the Wiretap Act that authorizes email providers to intercept messages if the interception facilitated the message’s delivery or was incidental to the functioning of the service in general.
Is the GMail Model Legally a Wiretapping Scheme?
According to at least one court, it may well be. From Wired:
Newsflash: Significant Percentage of Online Reviews Are By Paid Flacks
In case you hadn't realized already, a significant proportion of online opinion is nothing more than paid advertising. Is there an app that detects bullshit? From Market Watch:
On Monday, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that 19 companies agreed to cease their practice of writing fake online reviews and pay hefty penalties for false advertising and deceptive business practices. Dubbed “Operation Clean Turf,” his investigation found that these businesses – ranging from bus companies to teeth whitening services — systematically tried to game the system by paying freelance writers from Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe between $1 to $10 per review. Schneiderman’s office cited a 2011 study by Michael Luca, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, which said a one-star rating hike on Yelp can mean a 5% to 9% rise in restaurant revenue.
Hacked Identity Theft Service Reveals Breaches of Numerous Consumer Data Aggregators
We're all up for sale online. From Krebs on Security:
An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America’s largest consumer and business data aggregators, according to a seven-month investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.
The Web site ssndob[dot]ms (hereafter referred to simply as SSNDOB) has for the past two years marketed itself on underground cybercrime forums as a reliable and affordable service that customers can use to look up SSNs, birthdays and other personal data on any U.S. resident. Prices range from 50 cents to $2.50 per record, and from $5 to $15 for credit and background checks. Customers pay for their subscriptions using largely unregulated and anonymous virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin and WebMoney. Until very recently, the source of the data sold by SSNDOB has remained a mystery. That mystery began to unravel in March 2013, when teenage hackers allegedly associated with the hacktivist group UGNazi showed just how deeply the service’s access went.
Spain to Criminalize Linking
Coming off a recent proposal to tax sunlight, the government of Spain appears to be on a roll, and is poised to criminalize linking to allegedly infringing copyrighted content. From ZDNet:
Spain is introducing tough new penalties for owners of websites that link to pirated versions of copyrighted material, after pressure from the US over its piracy record.
Under new legislation introduced as part of a wider reform of the country's penal code, owners of sites found to be making money from linking to pirated material will face prison sentences of up to six years and the closure of their site.
Sophos: Firefox Voted Most Trustworthy Browser
What's your preferred browser? A Sophos survey finds Firefox in the lead. From Naked Security:
About a month ago I asked Naked Security readers Which web browser do you trust? Your answer was emphatic: it's Firefox. I asked this question because trustworthiness has become an important selection criteria for web browsers and there is no objective test for it.
Modern web browsers are mature and complex products and, despite inflated version numbers and conspicuously busy release cycles, their feature sets evolve quite slowly.
Selecting the right web browser is no longer a question of what the software can do, it's about whether or not it can do the things we expect it to do quickly, securely and with due regard for our privacy.Image source: The Bandwidth Blog.
Our poll offered readers the chance to vote for one of the six most popular web browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Chromium - and asked which you trusted the most.
LinkedIn Accused of Hacking Users Address Books to Spam Their Contacts
Is anyone else sick and tired of getting spammed with email requests to join LinkedIn from family, friends and co-workers? It appears that LinkedIn users are now sick and tired of having their contact lists surreptitiously mined and exploited by the service. From Bloomberg:
LinkedIn, owner of the world’s most popular professional-networking website, was sued by customers who claim the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts’ addresses.
The customers, who aim to lead a group suit against LinkedIn, asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to bar the company from repeating the alleged violations and to force it to return any revenue stemming from its use of their identities to promote the site to non-members, according to a court filing . . .
Copyright Extremists Seek Censored Search
Copyright extremists and their lobbying organizations such as the MPAA and the RIAA are at it again. From Tech Dirt:
Remember how back after SOPA ended, the MPAA's Chris Dodd kept going on and on about how he was going to take a more conciliatory and partnership-based approach to the tech industry (which he mistakenly seems to believe is defined by "Google")? Apparently that's out the window. Today both the MPAA and the RIAA have launched a one-two punch on Google, which is clearly designed to do one thing: get Google to start censoring its search results so that it no longer returns what people are looking for, but instead returns what the MPAA and RIAA think should be the right search results. The fundamental problem, of course, is that the MPAA and RIAA both seem to think that Google is supposed to deliver the answers they want the public to see, when everyone else recognizes Google's role is to return the results its users are searching for.
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