terms

Thu
08
Aug
John Lister's picture

'Contractors' Listen to Live Skype Calls

Microsoft contractors listen to some Skype calls to check the accuracy of translations, a whistleblower has revealed. Although Microsoft says it meets privacy laws, critics say its terms and conditions don't clearly warn users about this. The human ... listening takes place on some calls that use Skype's "automatic" real-time translation service. Until now, most users have assumed that the translation is done entirely by a combination of speech recognition and artificial intelligence to work out the context of a sentence and find the correct translations. While that's largely the case, a ... (view more)

Thu
24
May
John Lister's picture

Google Autocomplete Could Breach Court Orders

Google has inadvertently revealed the names of rape victims whose identity is legally secret. It's all down to over-enthusiastic behavior by the search engine's "autocomplete" feature. Autocomplete works when a user starts typing a term into the ... Google search bar, then the search bar presents a drop-down menu with suggested terms based on what is being typed in. The user can then click or tap on any of these terms to carry out the search without having to type out the search query in full. As they continue typing more characters, the list of suggested terms will update to become ... (view more)

Wed
02
Mar
John Lister's picture

Critics Say Kids Search Engine Too Judgmental

A search engine designed specifically for children has caused controversy, thanks to its filters. Critics say the creators are wrong in their choice of "bad words" to block. The site, named "Kiddle," takes several steps to make itself suitable for ... children. For example, it deletes its entire logs of user searches once every 24 hours and doesn't store any personal details. Of course, this also means it can't refine results like Google does. For example, the search engine won't automatically learn if a user searching for "football results" wants to know ... (view more)

Thu
20
Jun
Dennis Faas's picture

Officials Want Google to Block Drug, Piracy Sites

Google has been accused of not doing enough to stop a) illegal pharmacy sales, and b) Internet piracy. Mississippi's attorney general says he plans to demand Google hand over confidential documents to see if the firm has breached any laws. The ... complaints come from Ken Cuccinellli, Jim Hood and David Louie, the attorneys general of Virginia, Mississippi, and Hawaii. Together, they're alleging that Google is guilty of "assisting in the sale of prescription drugs without a prescription and intentionally ignoring reports of rogue pirate sites selling stolen music, movies, software and video games ... (view more)

Wed
13
Mar
Dennis Faas's picture

Amazon, Authors Battle Over '.Book' Domain Name

The Authors Guild has formally objected to Amazon's plans to take control of a new website domain dedicated to books. They say it is inappropriate for a private company to control such an important (and generic) domain name. The dispute centers on ... the new top level domain system. Until this year, all website addresses had to have an ending (or top level domain) that was either '.com' or '.org,' or a specific country code, such as '.ca' for Canada. Under the new system, organizations can apply to take control of virtually any term. For example, a technology site could move to a ".site" address ... (view more)

Fri
14
Sep
Dennis Faas's picture

Pirate Bay Faces New Threats from Courts, Google

On top of an existing jail term, one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay website is facing even more legal trouble in his native Sweden. Meanwhile, Google has taken additional steps to make The Pirate Bay website less visible. Gottfrid Svartholm is ... one of four men convicted of copyright-related offenses linked to The Pirate Bay. Although it doesn't host any content, the website allows users to search for torrent files, which can then be used to share copyright protected data files. Svartholm Charged with Piracy, Hacking Prosecutors said The Pirate Bay site owners profited from illegal ... (view more)

Wed
08
Dec
Dennis Faas's picture

eStore Owner Charged With Bullying Customers

The owner of an online eyeglasses store has been charged with making electronic threats to disappointed customers. However, in doing so, Vitaly Borker believes the threats actually helped to boost the site's position in Google search rankings, and ... thus bring more traffic to his website. Borker, who operates decormyeyes.com, has been charged with four offenses: cyberstalking, making interstate threats, mail fraud and wire fraud. In at least one case, he is accused both of delivering a counterfeit pair of "designer" spectacles and vastly overcharging the customer. When the New York Times ... (view more)

Sun
28
Nov
Dennis Faas's picture

Online Holiday Shopping? Read Dennis' Top 10 Recommendations

With over 30 years in computing experience, I'm often asked my opinion about computer hardware. Questions like, "What can I do to speed up my computer?", or "What type of laptop should I buy?" and things of that nature. Like anyone else, I love a ... good deal. In order to find the best deal possible, sometimes I spend an entire day shopping online to compare prices and features of similar components. Unfortunately, many of the "recommendations" I've read recently appear to be forged for the sake of making a sale, which means there's an awful lot of time wasted wading through ... (view more)

Fri
24
Apr
Dennis Faas's picture

Just 0.32% of Facebook Users Turn Out for TOS Vote

Facebook's Terms of Service vote wrapped up yesterday, and although participation fell far short of what the social networking company had hoped, by a vote of three-to-one users supported its new TOS. Earlier in the week, Facebook attempted to right ... earlier wrongs over its Terms of Service by throwing the issue open to a massive vote. Controversy erupted earlier this year when the site tried to introduce a new policy that could have left accounts in Facebook's possession, even if a user terminated his or her association with the database. Some even feared Facebook would take users' personal ... (view more)

Fri
27
Feb
Dennis Faas's picture

Facebook Opens Forum to Discuss Terms of Use Policy

Facebook is taking criticisms of its recent terms of use debacle to heart. According to reports, the social networking company is now asking members to help contribute to a more popular policy by making their own suggestions. Last week the popular ... social networking site faced condemnation from members after it was reported that its new terms of use policy would allow third parties to access user information even after they terminated an account. Although some felt users had long surrendered their privacy by joining such a network, most members were outraged with Facebook and demanded ... (view more)

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