SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Facebook Graph Search: Welcome to the Phishing Pool

Facebook may have given phishers a reason to rejoice last week when it announced a new way to search for information about its billion members. Graph Search allows a Facebook member to use semantic search to find and aggregate information about people on the social network. Because Graph Search can ...

Facebook's introduction of Graph Search has been greeted with -- wait for it -- complaints about privacy. Graph Search is a feature Facebook introduced to allow users to enter parameter-based searches to find friends -- and friends of friends -- who share certain interests. A search for "friends who...

Google seems to have had a dustup with a donkey -- literally. Images plucked from Google Street View have raised questions about whether a Google Street View car ran over a donkey in the African nation of Botswana. Images culled from Street View show a donkey lying in the road. One of the images als...

Finding anything on Facebook has been a difficult exercise for years, but that's about to change. After a year of intense, secret development, the social network on Tuesday rolled out its new search technology called "Graph Search." The technology is designed to make it easier for Facebook members t...

The visit to North Korea this week by a team led by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has stirred up controversy. The U.S. State Department has criticized the move, while Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has described Richardson and Schmidt as "useful idiots." McCain'...

France reportedly has stymied an Internet service provider's attempt to let users block ads. Free, a French telecommunications company with more than 5 million users, had said it would allow its customers to block online advertising. Google, the world leader in online advertising, was mum about Free...

The U.S. State Department gave a measured but clear rebuke of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's upcoming trip to North Korea. News broke this week that Schmidt will join former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson on a humanitarian mission to the impoverished nation. The itinerary and exact purpose of t...

TECH TREK

Mr. Schmidt Goes to North Korea

Don't expect google.nk anytime soon, but hey, it's a start. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, will travel to North Korea for a private, humanitarian mission. The trip, to be led by former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, will mark the first time a top exec from Google has gone to N...

Google is a company that's always in Beta, goes the joke, but there's some truth to it. The company began its latest search field trial a few months ago, and it just added a few new capabilities to make it more interesting: the ability to search for personal information stored in Gmail and Google Dr...

Path, a social networking startup designed for the mobile environment, on Thursday launched a new social search feature that is both simple and highly intuitive -- and that plays to Path's unique strengths as a private mobile social network. Here's how it works: A user launches the search function...

The postponement of Google's deal with the Federal Trade Commission may have been caused, at least in part, by Europe's tough stance with the company. As of a few days ago, reports suggested that Google was close to hashing out a deal with the FTC, but that the European Commission's two-year antitru...

The European Union gave Google a January deadline to devise detailed proposals to resolve a two-year antitrust investigation into whether Google used its market dominance to thwart rivals. The Union's antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia, issued the deadline Tuesday in Brussels to Google Executive Chair...

While Google is poised to agree to changes in the way it displays search results and skirt an antitrust investigation in the U.S., things are still unresolved with the European Commission. Google is reportedly still negotiating with European Commission antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia. The EC is app...

Surveillance of Internet users by governments around the world is on the rise, Google concludes in its latest Transparency Report, which details government requests it receives for information about its users. The United States tops the list of countries making requests for user data. "This is the s...

Google appears to be back and functioning in China after a temporary shutdown that's being linked to the Communist Party's major meeting. Services including Gmail, maps, documents and search were reportedly slow or blocked in many parts of China for about 12 hours beginning Friday evening, according...

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