A judge dismissed a suit in which there were allegations that Google “violated computer users’ rights by slipping electronic “cookies” into their Web browsers to facilitate placement of advertising” and thereby Google ‘tricked Apple and Microsoft browsers into accepting cookies’ according to a report by Bloomberg.

On October 9

Continue Reading Google Wins Cookie Battle

As two class actions are pending for violation of the Federal Wire Tap Act against Google and Yahoo! for harvesting contact lists, now it appears that NSA has also been harvesting “hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them

Continue Reading Not Just Google and Yahoo! Harvesting Webmail Contacts Lists Also the NSA


California enacted a law which allows minors to request websites to remove content from websites, but the law does not address data stored on the websites servers, only what it available for view on the Internet. Given the nature of the Internet, it is unlikely any law will ever be

Continue Reading Privacy Law Allows Minors to Scrub Indiscretions, But the Content is Not Deleted


A criminal indictment was filed against “part of the online group ANONYMOUS in a campaign dubbed “OPERATION PAYBACK” …to engage in a coordinated series of cyber-attacks” with one charge of Conspiracy to Intentionally Cause Damage to a Protected Computer (18 U.S.C. § 371).

The New York Times reported that the

Continue Reading 13 Hackers Indicted in Cyber-Attacks


In the wake of the Google class action for scanning gmail and violating the Federal Wiretap Act, a new class action suit was filed against Yahoo! for “…unlawful, wrongful, and intentional reading and/or learning of the contents.” The class action was filed by John Kevranian and Tammy Zapata on

Continue Reading Free Webmail May be Coming to an End as Yahoo! is Sued for Scanning eMails


Google told the EU that the EU Privacy Laws did not apply to Google’s services and the EU now plans to impose a sanction for “breaches of the French Data Protection Act of 6 January 1978, as amended (French Data Protection Act) which, in practice, prevents individuals from knowing how

Continue Reading Google to be Fined for Failing to Comply with EU Privacy Laws


Many schools require children to use apps on the cloud, and as a result privacy groups are asking the cloud providers to promise better privacy protection. On September 23, 2013 SafeGov.org issued a Report about EU data privacy for students which among other things that among other things stated that

Continue Reading Cloud Used in Schools Pose Risk to Student Privacy


A class action was filed alleging that LinkedIn’s advertising revenues are based on “LinkedIn’s practice of breaking into its users’ third party email account, downloading email address…without consent,…and indefinitely stores email addresses…” Perkins et al v. LinkedIn was filed on September 17, 2013 in US District Court for the Northern

Continue Reading LinkedIn Sued for Harvesting eMail Addresses