Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Playdom, the Online Gaming Company of Walt Disney, Pays $3 Million in Fine for Charges of Illegally Acquiring Data


The U.S. regulatory authorities made the announcement on Thursday declaring that Playdom, online children game company recently acquired by Walt Disney, has agreed to pay a fine of $3 million in order to settle the charges proved against the online game star. The major allegation in the lawsuit accused Playdom of illegally gathering information regarding their underage users without their or their parents consent. The officials informed that Playdom actually went against the law, when it asked the underage players to fill up information with the proper approval of their parents or guardians. Furthermore FTC, Federal Trade Commission, stated that this information was than even shared publically in the online game community.
The Apex Building, headquarters of the Federal...                           Image via Wikipedia
The chairman of FTC, Jon Leibowitz, was addressing the media in a press conference when he stated that "Let's be clear: Whether you are a virtual world, a social network, or any other interactive site that appeals to kids, you owe it to parents and their children to provide proper notice and get proper consent." He went on elaborating that "It's the law, it's the right thing to do, and, as today's settlement demonstrates, violating COPPA will not come cheap."

Apple Faces another Lawsuit Regarding the Sharing of iOS Users’ Location and and Personal Data Sharing with Third Party Advertisers


Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...
                      Image via CrunchBase

Apple has been dragged into a new major lawsuit once again, this time  Apple has been accused to be using its devices, like iPad and iPhone, to not only track their users’ location data along with personal information but also sharing it with other mistrusted third-party advertisers. Apple is further also blamed to not only helping these third-party advertisers but also supporting them for the "intentional taking and transmitting" of this user data. This is a very major allegation and the lawsuit is filed in the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico. The lawsuit has also mentioned other services, including Pandora Media and The Weather Channel, with similar allegation and also has left a kind of door open to enlist more companies too.

Google Previews Its New Automated Home Control System with Android@Home at the I/O Conference 2011


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Google made another huge announcement on its years’ I/O conference, introducing yet another new innovative idea of using technology, called Android@Home. It has been building a new more adaptable framework for Android OS, which will allow the programmers to use the new technology in order to communicate with other various electronic home devices which not necessarily run on Android, take light bulbs, thermostats, washing machines and more, for example. It declared Android@Home to be brand new phenomena which will make use of a completely open wireless protocol, letting the OS easily connect with basically any electricity powered device.
Google's engineering director, Joe Britt, was the one who presented the idea in front of the large audience and even larger online viewers of the conference. He used the everyday examples of the Android@Hone system to be working with an alarm clock app in your Android device, which can be connected with appliances like lights and speakers, and could be perhaps used to slowly raise the lights after the alarm has gone, or even raise the volume of a separate stereo device lying in the room. Moreover, Britt went on stating that if general users adapt the idea and Android@Home is successful, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine an Android device completely controlling an giant irrigation system wirelessly, he said the users can have their own ‘kind of a real-world FarmVille app.’

Mark Zuckerberg an Indianapolis Attorney, Hopes One Day He Will Be Allowed To Join Facebook


Mark ZuckerbergImage by jdlasica via Flickr
A non-celebrity resident of Indianapolis, who happens to be an attorney rather than the founder Facebook though still sharing the same name, is living with the consequences of his name, being without any Facebook account. Yes, the attorney Mark S. Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile was lifted from by social media company soon after he joined the network. He said he has is surprised to see the allegations from his friends, who claimed that he has de-friended them on Facebook, where the truth of the matter is that social media giant actually de-friended him. His Facebook account was removed, considered a fake account impersonating the founder of Facebook, named Mark Zuckerberg too.
Zuckerberg explained that he received an email from the Facebook officials, which asserted that his account was being removed because it was found having ‘false identity’. He seemed stunned to take it, that such large company like Facebook has not yet figured out how to accommodate several users with the same name, after all, he exclaimed, I wonder if the same treatment was given to me if I shared a name with someone else on Facebook. The lawyer claims to have done every possible thing in his series of attempts in convincing the Facebook heads regarding his identity. He said in an official statement that “He was originally denied an account with Facebook two years ago because of my name, and I had to send them copies of my driver’s license, birth certificate, and Indianapolis Bar Association license just to get them to believe that I exist and to allow me to set up my page.”

Symantec Point Outs Facebook Apps Also Leak Data Unintentionally


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Symantec, one of the most trusted security firms, has declared that its engineers have discovered a secretive security flaw in the system of Facebook. It claims that this loophole involuntarily allows the advertisers and other third-party applications to gain unnecessary and unintended access to people's accounts exposing their personal information. Addressing to these claims, Facebook asserting that it has already solved the problem being identified, it further added that it has confirmed and was not able to identify any evidence which would indicate that any private information is being exposed currently, to any kind of third-party except the users and Facebook.
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase
It was on Tuesday, that Symantec officials made the announcement through their official blog asserting that these third-party app developers might not even be aware that they have this extra access to the users' personal information including their profiles, photos and even chats. Symantec researcher, Nishant Doshi, went on elaborating his theory in the blog post, saying that the root of the problem was leaking "access tokens," which it to give an example he compared with a set of spare keys, allowing the apps developers to access the users profile easily since they have than unnecessary permission. Additionally Doshi mentioned that he his calculations have found that almost 100,000 applications on the Facebook’s platform have this ‘spare key’ access allowing them to access this leaked data since April. He added that this recovery has just been made, it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume that over these years, and any app developer might have used this ‘spare key’ access and even accidentally leaked millions of access tokens to theird-parties.
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