The great deplusification of Google continues as a Google+ has been removed from yet another Google product. This time it’s the Play Store, which has dropped Google+ votes from apps and nixed the G+ account requirement from app reviews. There was an entire Google+ focused “People” section on the Play Store that showed apps and ratings from people you follow on Google+. The Play Store also...
Data thieves used a massive “botnet” against professional networking site LinkedIn and stole member’s personal information, a new lawsuit reveals. The Mountain View firm filed the federal suit this week in an attempt to uncover the perpetrators. “LinkedIn members populate their profiles with a wide range of information concerning their professional lives, including summaries (narratives about themselves), job histories, skills, interests, educational background, professional awards, photographs and...
Google has been hit by a $6.75 million antitrust fine in Russia for requiring phone manufacturers to preinstall its apps on Android mobile devices. The majority of smartphones and tablets solid in Russia run on Android, and domestic search engine rival Yandex filed a complaint last year that the US company was abusing its position. The fine itself is small — less than what the...
Another day, another case of Facebook silencing a video that it should have left up. A politician in Hong Kong says that Facebook banned him from the site for 24 hours for a “terms of service violation” after he posted a video of him confronting men who had been following him around for weeks. The video uploaded by Leung on August 7 showed him...
It’s been a rough few days for people looking for alternatives to their current internet providers. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission issued a report documenting what many of you already know: You don’t have much choice when it comes to broadband. In fact, most of you have only one or no companies selling high-speed internet. Then on Wednesday, a court ruling held the FCC can’t...
On August 9th 2016, Facebook issued a press release stating they intend to change the way they deal with adblocking on their web site. Andrew Bosworth, VP of Ads & Business Platform for Facebook states: “We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software. When we asked people about why they used ad...
Adblock Plus launched a workaround to Facebook’s ad block bypass today that ham-handedly removes posts from friends and Pages, not just ads, according to a statement provided by Facebook to TechCrunch. “We’re disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don’t just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages. This isn’t a good experience for people and we plan...
In a very quick turnaround, the Adblock Plus community has already blocked the intrusive Facebook ads. Yesterday we posted a story that Facebook was going to force using on desktops to see ads whether they had an adblocker or not. We promised that the open source community would have a solution very soon, and, frankly, they’ve beaten even our own expectations. A new filter...
Facebook is making the HTML of its web ads indistinguishable from organic content so it can slip by adblockers. But in exchange for taking away this option for controlling ads from people, its allowing them to opt-out of ad targeting categories and Custom Audience customer lists uploaded by advertisers. Today all desktop users will see an announcement atop the News Feed explaining that while...
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have identified a weakness in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) of all Linux operating systems since late 2012 that enables attackers to hijack users’ internet communications completely remotely. Such a weakness could be used to launch targeted attacks that track users’ online activity, forcibly terminate a communication, hijack a conversation between hosts or degrade the privacy guarantee...
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