Over the weekend, Mark Zuckerberg set out what he described as "four ideas to regulate the internet". Were these ideas put forth by someone else, it might be possible to refer to this as an impassioned plea -- but this is Zuckerberg we're talking about.

He suggests GDPR-style privacy regulation in the US. He wants more control of hate speech. He believes more needs to be done about political advertising, particularly around the time of elections. And he likes the idea of data portability. These are reasonable ideas and -- importantly -- there is nothing to stop Facebook from implementing them now. To lead the way. There is no need to call for, or wait for, legislation.

Continue reading →

VPNs are frequently used by people to increase security, improve privacy, to browse the internet as if in another country, and to bypass restrictions put in place by ISPs and governments. Aware of this, authorities in Russia have ordered ten big-name VPNs to block access to various sites banned in the country.

Among those to have been contacted by the authorities are NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish, HideMyAss and TorGuard. At least one of these VPN providers has decided to pull out of Russia.

Continue reading →

According to a report from Kaspersky Lab, 56 percent of internet users feel that complete privacy in the modern digital world is impossible.

For many people, their worries about digital privacy may come from personal experience. Kaspersky's research finds that 26 percent of people have had their private data accessed by someone without their consent, rising to almost a third (31 percent) among 16- to 24-year-olds.

Continue reading →

Many things go viral online these days -- funny cat videos, memes, stupid "challenges", and all manner of helpful hints and tips. Something that's doing the rounds at the moment encourages Twitter users to change their birthday to a date in 2007.

This might sound like a strange thing to do, but there is the promise of secret new color schemes or rainbow mode being unlocked to lure people in. There are also claims that changing your birthday will get your account verified and earn you a prestigious blue tick. It is -- of course -- not true, but this is not stopping Twitter users from trying it... and regretting it.

Continue reading →

The European parliament has voted in favor of major changes to copyright law, including two highly controversial clauses -- article 11 and article 13.

Known respectively as the "link tax" and the "upload filter", these two clauses have generated a great deal of interest from internet users and the technology industry alike. In particular, article 13 has proved especially controversial, holding websites responsible for material uploaded without a licence -- something critics say could only be adhered to with content filters.

Continue reading →

We have known for a little while that Microsoft is planning to release a Chromium-based version of its Edge browser, and a new leak gives us our first glimpse at it. With Chromium at its core, it is perhaps no surprise that this version of Edge bears more than a passing resemblance to Google Chrome.

The leak also confirms much of what we thought we already knew about the upcoming browser -- support for Chrome extensions, a dark mode, synchronization of favorites, and more

Continue reading →

The Zippyshare file hosting service is currently blocked for users in the UK. Anyone visiting the site will be presented with a '403: Forbidden' message when they try to access the site.

Users on a number of ISP forums are asking whether this is due to some blocking action on the part of service providers, but it appears that for some reason the site is blocking itself from UK IP addresses.

Continue reading →

When Flickr announced changes to its free accounts, many users were upset to find that they were going to be limited to 1,000 photos unless they were willing to pay for Pro account. On top of this, Flickr said it would be deleting any images that took users over the limit.

But now the company has announced something of a loosening of the rules. Flickr says that all public Creative Commons works on the site are now protected from deletion. There are also new "in memoriam" accounts for deceased members.

Continue reading →

A House of Lords committee has called for the creation of a new Digital Authority to help co-ordinate existing regulators, as well as recommending new powers. The "super regulator" would have oversight over the current range of digital regulators, and would help to tackle problems of online harm which the UK government feels technology firms have not done enough about.

There is a strong feeling from the government that self-regulation by technology companies has failed, and a report entitled Regulating in a Digital World sets out a series of principles that would underpin a new approach.

Continue reading →

Most of the Skype-related news of late has been about Microsoft killing off Skype Classic and moving people to Skype 8 -- but now there's news about the web version of the communication tool. While there are a number of new features to explore -- including hi-def video calling, new notifications and call recording -- Microsoft has taken the decision to reduce the number of supported platforms.

The latest version of Skype for Web only works in Windows 10 and macOS 10.12 or newer, and only in the Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. Firefox and Opera users are left out in the cold, and anyone running Chrome OS or Linux will be disappointed to learn that their operating systems are no longer supported.

Continue reading →

Given the number of high profile security breaches that make the headlines, you'd expect people to be wary about online security.

But a new study by Malwarebytes Labs shows a mismatch between people's confidence in their own privacy and security practices and their actual behavior.

Continue reading →

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the FIDO Alliance have today announced that the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification is now an official web standard.

W3C's WebAuthn recommendation, a core component of the FIDO Alliance's FIDO2 set of specifications, is a browser/platform standard for simpler and stronger authentication.

Continue reading →

Amid mounting fears about child predators and pedophile rings operating online, YouTube has announced that it is disabling comments on videos that feature minors.

For now, the efforts are focused on videos that feature young children, but in the coming months it will expand to include older minors that YouTube says "could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior". The site is also stepping up its use of algorithms to not only identify videos that contain children, but also to monitor and moderate comments.

Continue reading →

Google recently launched the new top-level domain, .dev. When the TLD was introduced, pricing was a little out of the reach of most people -- there are few who would be willing to part with $11,000.

Now, however, pricing has dropped dramatically. The crazy pricing was only part of the Early Access registration period, but now the domain is available from a range of registrars for a far more reasonable $12-$15.

Continue reading →

Once you sign up for Amazon Prime, it's hard to imagine how you ever lived without it. Well... that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's easy to fall in love with the service. Now Amazon is giving would-be subscribers another reason to sign up, and an added bonus for those who already have.

Amazon Day is a US-only service -- for now, at least -- that gives subscribers the option of consolidating all of their deliveries for the week on a day of their choice.

Continue reading →