Privacy and anti-monopoly advocacy groups launched the Freedom from Facebook campaign on Monday, demanding that the Federal Trade Commission force the social media giant to break up into four separate companies. Sensing a moment of weakness, activists hope to establish stronger privacy protections and cross-platform…
Here’s some good news for massive corporations that have violated the public trust by exposing the personal data of millions of American consumers, as if they needed it: the government’s new chief watchdog is one of their own. Andrew Smith, a lawyer who has represented dozens of firms including Facebook and Equifax,…
First lady Melania Trump presented her long-awaited “Be Best” initiative on Monday, which entails something about protecting children from social media cyberbullies and also the opioid crisis. And boy, was said presentation a doozy, laden with the kind of Hallmark card-inspired language and dramatic music that one…
Mankind, in their arrogance, once thought they had conquered their immortal enemy: The scam robocall. Unfortunately, thanks in large part to laziness by cell phone carriers, they’ve been back with a vengeance in recent years. Internet-powered robocalling systems are making it cheaper and easier than ever to launch…
When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress last week, several lawmakers grilled him on Facebook’s failures to comply with a 2012 consent decree that required the social media company to submit routine privacy audits to the Federal Trade Commission.
The notorious Florida Man is at it again, this time allegedly placing nearly 100 million robocalls offering fake travel deals, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
The nation’s biggest telecoms will offer a public demonstration of the latest technology for blocking illegal robocalls at an expo in Washington, DC, later this month.
In an amusing bit of irony, several companies in the United States are being urged by the Federal Trade Commission to remove the “Warranty Void if Removed” stickers and scrap other onerous policies that appear on their products because they are unenforceable garbage.
The Zuckerberg empire is burning from all directions at once. Yes, the man who once called his users “dumb fucks” for entrusting him to be the steward of their personal data is in the midst of a disastrous and very public reckoning. Take a moment to process this unexpected turn of events if you must.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against the operators of MyEx.com, a website that encourages people to upload photos and information about their ex. The FTC and the state of Nevada are charging the operators for uploading explicit images of people without their consent. Revenge porn has been a…
In recent years, a number of toy makers have come under fire for developing children’s smart devices that turn out to be privacy nightmares, and a company called VTech Electronics has just settled the Federal Trade Commission’s first case involving an internet-connected toy. VTech will pay the FTC $650,000 over…
With less than a week before this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Chairman of the Federal Communications Comission Ajit Pai has decided to bail on a scheduled appearance.
You’re not the only one who has noticed an uptick in annoying robocalls seemingly coming from your same area code.
In January, Uber settled claims by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it misled drivers about how much money they could make on the platform. But in a letter obtained by Gizmodo under the Freedom of Information Act, Uber argued that drivers were fundamentally at fault for earning less than the advertised rates…
The Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission and its chair, industry-adjacent hack Ajit Pai, have been charging towards a vote to repeal Barack Obama-era net neutrality rules on Thursday that seems all but guaranteed to result in a victory for ISPs. Part of the plan involves cutting a deal with ISPs to…
Review site TripAdvisor may have frantically backpedaled after a Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal expose showed that it had a habit of censoring reviews mentioning blackouts, rape, and suspicious deaths or injuries incurred at certain resorts—specifically Mexican ones, though it remains unclear if other destinations were…
Facebook subsidiary Instagram, the Twitter for people who only want to tweet about how hot and rich they are, has long been overrun with paid product endorsements from both genuine celebrities and nebulously influential “influencers”—and so many of them have openly flaunted Federal Trade Commission rules requiring…
Anyone who’s spent any considerable amount of time on Tinder knows that, like any service promising random lonely people quick and easy access to a horde of horned-up singles over the Internet, it kind of sucks. It’s filled with fake profiles, tries to sell you on premium services, and even if you do meet someone,…
In the capitalistic nightmare we live in, everything has to be a transaction. So, when Pact launched its fitness app that let you make money for working out—or else pay a fee for failing to do so—it seemed to be the perfect motivational tool. There was just one problem: The company apparently wasn’t that great at…
Users who purchased a Lenovo PC between September 2014 and January 2015 got an extra special surprise in the form of adware that left them wide open to malicious attacks. After two and a half years of legal wrangling, the Federal Trade Commission settled its lawsuit against the company, and it’s hard to imagine that…
