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Facebook is loosening its controls on teenaged users. The social networking site says it will now allow the 13- to 17-year-old crowd to do most everything their older counterparts can, including sharing photos, updates, and comments with the general ... public. Teenagers will also be able to enable the 'Follow' feature, which allows friends and non-friends to track their Facebook activity. The changes also mean third parties, including advertisers, can track these young users' Facebook activity. Facebook says it has already initiated the change. But Facebook isn't dismissing all controls on its ... (view more)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested and charged a man accused of running a notorious Internet "underground market" that let users trade illegal drugs and weapons. The "Silk Road" site combined a range of technologies to offer users ... greater secrecy. The site was part of the so-called "dark Internet": the collection of sites that were part of the Internet but were not reachable through ordinary links. Users could only visit the site by using software known as TOR, or The Onion Router. The name came from the way that data sent through the software was redirected through thousands of ... (view more)

A new security report reveals that most 'hacktivists' (or politically-motivated hackers) aren't looking to inflict long-term damage on their victims through cyberattacks. Instead, their primary goal is to draw attention to their own cause. But ... that's not necessarily a good thing -- in fact, experts say it makes devising a foolproof security strategy extremely difficult. "What we have seen with hacktivists is that attacking a website tends to be more about generating media coverage about their cause than it is about which site they targeted or what the impact was," says Michael Smith, incident ... (view more)

Facebook is planning to use profile pictures to automatically recognize users when they appear in photos taken by somebody else. The firm has also made it clear to users that it has every right to use members' pictures in its own advertisements ... without compensating them in any way. The proposed changes are detailed in a Facebook post that, following a court order, more clearly explains how the site uses data from its users. Facebook already uses facial recognition software but in a more limited manner. Once you have been "tagged" in a photograph (that is, somebody has labeled you as being one ... (view more)

Both Google and Amazon experienced significant outages a few days ago, and the ripple-effect these issues have caused has been no less than astounding. Amazon's site went down for somewhere between 20 and 45 minutes on Monday, August 19, 2013. Only ... the amazon.com and amazon.ca sites, aimed at US and Canadian visitors, were affected. Other Amazon national sites, along with some specialist sites the company owns, remained online. Sources estimate the outage cost Amazon almost $5 million. That's based on the length of the outage and the average amount of money the company makes in sales every ... (view more)

The Pirate Bay, which is arguably the world's most controversial site, has introduced its very own Internet browser. Setting this browser apart from rivals like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox: one-click features that allow users ... to avoid censorship. Sweden-based The Pirate Bay provides users with access to torrent files and facilitates peer-to-peer file sharing. Since it was founded a decade ago, The Pirate Bay has often been accused of helping users exchange copyright-protected material -- such as music, movies, and TV shows -- illegally. The Pirate Bay has also faced a ... (view more)