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Is Google Going After Facebook?
December 12, 2016 by admin
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The word on the information street is that Google wants to buy Facebook. It is entirely speculative, but could have legs.
Information leaked suggests that talks are well advanced between the two companies.
Anecdotal evidence from many Facebook users suggests that talks are well advanced and the companies are already sharing experimental data, between themselves, of user data. Other sources suggest that Microsoft (Vole) is also interested in Facebook and, conversely, that Facebook is interested in buying Microsoft.
None of the companies cared enough to comment to Fudzilla at press time.
Courtesy-Fud
Did Sears Suffer A Data Breach?
Sears Holdings Corp acknowledged it has launched an investigation to determine whether it was the victim of a security breach, following Target Corp’s revelation at the end of last year that it had suffered an unprecedented cyber attack.
“There have been rumors and reports throughout the retail industry of security incidents at various retailers and we are actively reviewing our systems to determine if we have been a victim of a breach,” Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said in a statement on Friday.
“We have found no information based on our review of our systems to date indicating a breach,” he added.
He did not say when the operator of Sears department stores and Kmart discount stores had begun the investigation or provide other information about the probe.
Sears Holdings Corp operates nearly 2,500 retail stores in the United States and Canada.
Bloomberg News reported on Friday that the U.S. Secret Service was investigating a possible secret breach at Sears, citing a person familiar with the investigation. The report did not identify that source by name.
The Bloomberg report said that its source did not disclose details about the scope or timing of the suspected breach.
A spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service declined comment when Reuters asked if the agency was investigating a possible breach at Sears.
The Secret Service is leading the U.S. government’s investigation into last year’s attack on Target, which the company has said led to the theft of some 40 million payment card numbers as well as another 70 million pieces of personal data.
Is Skype Involved In Spying?
Luxembourg’s data protection authority is investigating Microsoft-owned Skype for its alleged cooperation with the U.S. NSA’s Prism spying program, according to the agency.
Luxembourg’s data protection authority, CNPD, is investigating Skype’s links to NSA spying programs after receiving several complaints, said Tom Kayser, a spokesman for the authority. “I can’t really talk about the details of the investigation because it is still ongoing,” he said.
Skype, which has its European headquarters in Luxembourg, allegedly cooperates with the NSA through a program exploring the legal and technical issues involved in making customer calls available to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Guardian newspaper first reported the investigation.
The CNPD has powers to ensure that multinational companies based in Luxembourg respect national law, and often receives complaints from the data protection authorities of other European Union member states.
Privacy campaign group Europe-v-Facebook filed one of the complaints in June. That filing was part of a barrage of complaints filed in various countries against European subsidiaries of tech companies that are allegedly involved in the NSA’s spying program, including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Under Luxembourg data protection law service providers and operators are required to ensure the confidentiality of communications and related traffic data.
“No person other than the user concerned may listen to, tap or store communications or the traffic data relating thereto, or engage in any other kinds of interception or surveillance thereof, without the consent of the user concerned,” reads the law’s unofficial English translation.
Violators can face up to a year in prison and/or a fine up to a!125,000 ($170,000). The court dealing with the matter can also order companies like Skype to stop any processing that conflicts with the law on pain of a periodic monetary penalty determined by the court.
“We regularly engage in a dialogue with data protection authorities around the world and are always happy to answer their questions,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email. “It has been previously widely reported that the Luxembourg DPA was one of the DPA’s that received complaints from the ‘Europe v Facebook’ group so we’re happy to answer any questions they may have.”
Google Rewrites Web Pages For Speed
August 2, 2011 by admin
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Google has created a hosted service that analyzes Web pages, rewrites their code to make them perform better and serves them up from Google servers.
To use the Page Speed Service, Web publishers must sign up and point their site’s DNS entry to Google. The service grabs the site’s content, optimizes it for speed and delivers the pages to end users.
Visitors will continue to access a site in the same way as before but could see speed enhancements of 25% to 60%, according to Google.
The service is currently being offered free to a limited number of hand-selected webmasters. Google will announce pricing and other details later. Webmasters can sign up to receive information.