Social Networking, Internet Lifestyle And Security News

Passionate about net neutrality? Facebook privacy issues freaking you out? Want to know more about the latest security breach? Here we'll cover the headlines that matter in our ever evolving digitally-connected lives and lifestyles around the world.

The US Department of Justice and eight state attorneys general have filed an antitrust case against Google. If you're thinking this has happened before, you'd be right. However, this time the DOJ is going after Google's crown jewel: the ad tech business. According to the complaint, filed in federal court in Virginia... Read more...
The humble webcam has seen a surge to prominence fueled by the rise of web conferencing and remote work, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Only a few short years ago, a webcam could be buried away below the display of a laptop and few users would complain or even notice. With those days behind us, consumers and professionals alike have been... Read more...
Last weekend, we wrote about Ello, a proposed "Facebook-killer". Despite its myriad of lacking features and minimalistic interface, the service has grown incredibly in the past couple of weeks, all thanks to a bad move made by Facebook: Forcing people best-known under an alias to use their real names. The drag... Read more...
Here's a story that just keeps getting stranger. Lizard Group, a hacker group that claimed responsibility for Sony's PSN downtime over the weekend, has created a stir that'll no doubt have the FBI involved. As if claiming that it took PSN down wasn't enough, it tweeted earlier today to American Airlines that it had... Read more...
People have a tendency to get ticked off if you mess with their heads, especially without their permission. Facebook, the world's largest social network, found this out the hard way when it revealed that it had altered nearly 700,000 user feeds to study people's emotions. Not cool, but are these types of studies... Read more...
The Heartbleed Bug illustrated just how vulnerable our global communications structure really is, and now a glut of important tech companies in collaboration with the Linux Foundation are launching a new initiative called the Core Infrastructure Initiative to better support the open source projects and technologies... Read more...
The U.S. government might not negotiate with terrorists, but it is willing to use social media as a tool to engage in conversation with jihadists and their sympathizers online. Why bother? The U.S. government hopes that it can convince potential terrorists to go in another direction. It's an ugly world the... Read more...
As unfortunate as it is, DDoSing is as easy to pull off as it is frustrating. With enough computers at their disposal, anyone could force enough traffic to a website in order to take it down, and even massive services are not immune. A perfect example of this is ongoing, with popular social networking site Meetup... Read more...
Understanding Facebook’s privacy settings is notoriously difficult. Facebook’s services are constantly evolving (wait, we’re “poking” each other again?), therefore by nature altering which privacy settings alter what aspect of the service, and of course the privacy settings and policies... Read more...
Some people stay in relationships simply because they are afraid that their prospects aren't good. They don't have the confidence to leave. For them, there's a new Facebook app, which launched last Friday.  It's called WaitingRoom. Some criticized the Facebook app Breakup Notifier, which would let a user know via email if someone they... Read more...
Yesterday, Nov. 17 was National Unfriend Day (NUD). The brainchild of Jimmy Kimmel, the day is supposed to a day when you unfriend the faux friends you have on Facebook (or any other social networking site). Kimmel gave us some guidelines to use to determine who to unfriend on National Unfriend Day. They were: If you wouldn’t loan someone... Read more...
Delta Air Lines and Alvenda are teaming up to give users the ability to book flights with friends directly on Facebook. Touted as the travel industry’s first ecommerce capability on Facebook, this initial release of Delta's Ticket Window lets users book a flight and share arrival times with their Facebook friends directly from the confirmation... Read more...
Hey, Twitter -- you know that business model you've been searching for? Yeah, this may be it. In a new report from NYTimes' 'Bits' blog, Dell has admitted to generating around $3 million in sales that could be directly attributed to Twitter. $3 million! That's the amount that Dell has garnered since it began using Twitter in 2007, using its... Read more...