Security

eBay may expand its customer base by opening the site to online shoppers under the age of 18. The etailer is considering plans that would allow users between the ages of 13 and 17 to buy and sell eBay's offerings online. Children under the age of 13 are protected under the Children's Online Privacy ...

Moscow resident Dmitry Olegovich Zubakha, 25, suspected of launching two denial-of-service attacks against Amazon in 2008, has been arrested in Cyprus via an international warrant. Amazon experienced a sharp drop in orders during the attacks as legitimate customers were unable to complete their tran...

The burgeoning market for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is not only affecting consumer use of information technology, but also having an impact on the private sector workplace. The mobile IT market is clearly hot. Worldwide shipments of major brand smartphones increased by 50 percen...

Google is about to be smacked with the highest fine ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission -- $22.5 million -- according to reports. The search engine is expected to agree to the stiff penalty to put to rest the agency's concerns over its apparent privacy violations in connection with Apple's S...

In response to increasingly aggressive ads in free mobile apps, mobile security firm Lookout on Monday released guidelines to protect consumer privacy and security and promote responsibility among advertisers. The guidelines offer mobile ad providers information about how to target advertising, whil...

The U.S. government's push to utilize cloud-based technology will eventually lead to some blockbuster contracts -- many well over $10 million and others for even more than $100 million. Consider that just one contract in the current batch -- a cloud deal for email services at the U.S. Interior Depar...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested dozens of alleged cybercriminals in an international sting to crack down on Internet fraudsters. The arrests were the result of a two-year global sting operation conducted by the FBI and designed to nab hackers in "carding" crimes, in which perpe...

Facebook is shelling out $10 million in a settlement that will allow it to keep its Sponsored Stories advertising program on the site but will saddle it with new restrictions. The Sponsored Stories system on Facebook is meant to help ads get more exposure. When a user checks into a location or "like...

Social media giants are teaming up with nonprofit website StopBadware to create the Ads Integrity Alliance, which will counter so-called bad ads and work to create trust within the online advertising industry. Facebook, Google, Twitter, AOL and the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced Thursday t...

LinkedIn has reported that some of its users' passwords have been stolen and published on the Internet. The company is withholding details, including exactly how many passwords were compromised. Members with accounts associated with the compromised passwords will find that their LinkedIn account pas...

Facebook is opening its proposed policy changes to a vote, inviting users to review and approve or disapprove of the newly revised documents. The social network will consider results binding if 30 percent or more of its active user base participates. Facebook's current proposed changes don't include...

Botnets represent a major security threat to e-commerce. The effectiveness of this malicious software has gone far beyond the realm of simple annoyance and inconvenience to a major global, technical and economic challenge. The botnet security issue has become so difficult that federal agencies and t...

As Facebook launched its IPO on Friday, it was hit with yet another class action lawsuit over its practice of tracking of users even after they had logged out of its website. The amended consolidated class action complaint was filed by Stewarts Law in a San Jose, Calif., federal court. The timing of...

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry even...

Social network MySpace settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Tuesday over charges related to how the site was using members' personal information. The social network had access to personal data from users, including their full names, ages and genders. MySpace promised users it would not sha...