Tag Archives: Google

As anyone who’s ever used Facebook knows, it’s not exactly a bastion of the private: Users voluntarily cough up unbelievable amounts of personal information about themselves on a daily basis. Everyone has read a post by a friend and thought, “I would never put that on Facebook!” But when it comes to what Facebook itself does with all that information, it’s a whole other ball game, and now the feds are watching. Facebook settled charges on August 10 brought by …

A man convicted of child sexual abuse may walk free because someone else spent a few minutes  on Google. Ali M. Abdi was convicted of aggravated sexual assault for touching and raping his then-9-year-old niece in 2006. But one of Abdi’s jurors went online to research his Somalian culture and religion before the trial was over, and used what he found as “information to interpret facts in evidence,” according to court documents. That outside research prevented Abdi from having a …

So long as someone else isn’t making money on your name or defaming other people, it can be OK for them to impersonate you on Twitter. The recent revelation that a faker had been impersonating Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy on Twitter prompted a flurry of mostly amused discussion in literary and cyber circles. But it’s also raised questions about the legality of such pretenses. Michael Crossan, an unpublished writer, created a fake Twitter account, @CormacCMcCarthy.com, which attracted 6,000 followers, …

SOPA and PIPA stole the headlines yesterday when popular websites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing went dark for the day in protest. The self-censorship came in response to two controversial anti-piracy bills being considered by Congress: The House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect IP Act. It was the first that many Americans had heard of the bills, which would block access to websites accused of intellectual property infringement. But was the SOPA blackout effective? Tell …