Cyberlaw

Present in Google's corporate code of conduct since 2000, the "Don't be evil" motto was changed to "Do the right thing" in 2015 for use in Alphabet's code of conduct. However, Google did not drop this slogan until late April/early May, when all references to it have been apparently removed.

A very promising new entry into the cryptocurrency world has just announced a pre-ICO sale that offers some impressive bonuses to those who sign up in time. HoweyCoin claims to combine blockchain technology with elements of the luxury sector and has already received several celebrity endorsements. Early-bird Platinum investors can receive a double 25% discount, but there is a catch...

A class action law suit against Apple was filed in the Northern District Court of California by two plaintiffs who have been at the receiving end of the Apple MacBook Pro faulty keyboard fiasco. The suit alleges that Apple intentionally promoted and sold these laptops knowing very well that the keyboards were inherently defective.

In a statement issued to stockholders today, ZTE said that the it was suspending all "major operating activities" due to the sales ban placed on the company by the U.S. Department of Commerce. While ZTE has enough cash on hand to fulfill its current commercial obligations, the future looks bleak for the Chinese smartphone manufacturer.

It appears neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett are the greatest fans of bitcoin. Both men have been recently reported saying rather disparaging things about the famous cryptocurrency, which may have prevented bitcoin from achieving a five-figure value for the first time since March. Regulation concerns are believed to have also contributed to the slight dip in price.

Nvidia has decided to cancel the controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP). A blog post by John Teeple, the person responsible for Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Marketing, has the very unambiguous title “Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce.” The program has attracted a considerable amount of criticism since its introduction barely two months ago.

A Swiss technology company has started rolling out smart banknotes called Tangem Notes that offer a physical presence for cryptocurrencies. The "banknotes," which are actually plastic cards, have been launched for sale in a large store in Singapore and there are plans for a wider rollout throughout 2018 and 2019. Currently available Tangem banknotes are valued at 0.01 BTC and 0.05 BTC.

A report by the Wall Street Journal has stated that Telegram has scrapped plans to carry out an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for the public. Apparently, because the two coin presales that have already been carried out for private investors have attracted US$1.7 billion in funds, there is now no need for the instant messaging service to engage in a public ICO.

A press release from Cambridge Analytica and parent company SCL Group has stated that all the firm's operations have ceased. Insolvency applications have been filed in the UK and bankruptcy proceedings will soon commence in the USA. The company’s closure has been attributed to “damage caused to the business by the unfairly negative media coverage” in relation to the ongoing Facebook data scandal.

A report from a leading investment banking firm has forecast that cryptocurrencies are heading for a 90% correction within the next 12 months that will devastate the cryptocurrency market. Many virtual currencies could be wiped out, although those that survive the predicted market turmoil will enjoy impressive growth in the resulting less-cramped environment.

It looks like a certain type of governments does not like Telegram at all since Iran is now banning the popular encrypted messaging service that was recently taken down in Russia. Telegram has about 40 million users in Iran and has been apparently used to organize the protests that took place back in January.

It has been reported that Huawei is working on a possible replacement of the ubiquitous Android OS. Anonymous sources talking to the South China Morning Post have commented that the Chinese tech giant is developing the alternative operating system in case the company ends up receiving a similar US-imposed ban to the one that ZTE is currently facing.

YouTube has released a Community Guidelines enforcement report that states the video-sharing website removed over 8.28 million videos from the platform during the last quarter of 2017. The majority of these videos, 6.68 million of them, were flagged by automatic processes rather than human flaggers. The company’s official blog states that almost 76% of the machine-flagged videos were taken down before receiving a single view.

After getting hit with a 7-year ban barring them from buying anything from a U.S. company, ZTE released a new statement today. The statement calls the Department of Commerce's ban unfair and says that it will not only severely damage ZTE but will harm ZTE's partners, including some U.S. companies.

A department of the Quebec government has stated that Bitcoin is not a “magnet” for illicit transactions and that the widely believed perception of the cryptocurrency being mainly connected to criminal activity is erroneous. In other reports, Russian police busted an illegal Bitcoin mining facility, a woman has been arrested for arranging a Bitcoin-funded hit, and the alleged mastermind behind Iceland’s “Big Bitcoin Heist” has escaped from prison.

ZTE's poor fortunes continue, as a British government agency claims the use of ZTE manufactured equipment would cause a national security risk and mitigate measures currently in place to allow the use of equipment from Huawei.

The New York Times has published an article detailing Cambridge Analytica’s plans to create its own virtual currency (VC). The British consulting firm is now deeply embroiled in the Facebook data breach. In other cryptocurrency news, a VC known as Verge has agreed on a potentially lucrative partnership with one of the world’s most popular websites.

AMD's Scott Herkelman took to pen a blog post regarding AMD's stance in providing choice to the PC gamer. Although his post does not directly mention the controversial NVIDIA GeForce Partner Program, there is enough information in the post to convey that AMD will not take NVIDIA's route in the garb of ensuring a great PC gaming experience.

According to a report from Reuters, ZTE may lose its Android license. As the current seventh-largest Android-based smartphone manufacturer, this would be a massive blow against the Shenzhen-based corporation. Even just losing access to the Google Play Store application would be incredibly detrimental to the beleaguered telecommunications-equipment maker.

Law enforcement agencies in the US and UK have accused Russia of attempting to hack routers on a global scale. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has released an alert today entitled “Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices.” Apparently, millions of network devices have been targeted.

The United States Department of Commerce has banned all American companies from selling components to Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE. This includes Qualcomm and Dolby, both of whom have made major contributions to previous ZTE phones. The loss of Qualcomm-made SoCs is sure to damage the salability of ZTE phones.

An internal memo warning Apple employees about the consequences of leaking information has been leaked. The tech giant has suffered from a considerable number of leaks in the past, and the memo warns that leakers face losing their jobs and may be fined and even imprisoned. Apparently, the Cupertino-based firm caught 29 leakers in 2017.

Less than a month since it managed to reach 200 million users within a 30-day period, Telegram Messenger has to take a serious blow as the Russian authorities decide to ban its use in the country. The reason for this decision is the company's unwillingness to provide the keys required by the Federal Security Service to decrypt the users' messages.

Bitcoin’s price rocketed for a short period on April 12, soaring from US$6,852 to US$7,834 in the space of barely two hours. The virtual currency’s value has been dropping consistently since December 2017, when it enjoyed record prices of over US$19,000. The latest close for the famous digital coin was US$7,819.

In a statement made yesterday, the Federal Trade Commision stated that it had sent warnings to six major manufacturers of cars, mobile phones, or video game consoles. The warning stated that policies requiring users to repair their products via a preset list of vendors or replacement parts in order to maintain a product's warranty is, in fact, illegal.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed one of the worst abuses of personal information by a corporation in history, trust in Facebook's handling of private information has plummeted. This is evidenced by a new survey run by Recode and SurveyMonkey, where 56% of those surveyed stated they trusted Facebook the least. The next choice was Google at a mere 5%.

Hackers have managed to deface or delist many popular YouTube videos, including the highly popular 'Despacito' by Fonsi and Yankeee. Some videos have entirely disappeared while some had their titles changed. The affected videos were uploaded to the artists' YouTube Vevo accounts.

The Chrome Web Store has updated its policy concerning extensions with crypto-mining scripts, outright banning such extensions from the store. Any existing extensions that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies will be removed by the end of June 2018. While the policy will prevent future extensions that are obviously used for crypto-mining, it remains to be seen if this will solve the problem of surreptitious mining scripts hidden in otherwise innocuous extensions.

Although Apple also had some problems with inflated batteries lately, the class action lawsuit involving no less than 63,767 South Korean customers has been filed to seek damages because of the company's intentional CPU throttling on older models to increase their battery life. The amount Apple might pay is the equivalent of almost US$12 million.

Bitcoin has suffered yet another turbulent day in regard to its market value. Within the last 24 hours the virtual currency’s worth has dropped from a high of US$7382 to a close of US$6822, reaching a low of US$6660 at one point. The leading cryptocurrency was valued at US$11,645 on March 5, so its considerable drop in the space of just a few weeks will be disconcerting for investors.

The popular fitness app MyFitnessPal has suffered a data breach that has affected the accounts of an estimated 150 million users. The company behind the food and nutrition application, Baltimore-based Under Armour Inc., has issued a press release in regard to the unauthorized acquisition of user data. The hack apparently took place in February, with MyFitnessPal workers noticing the breach on March 25.

The instant messaging service Telegram has apparently filed more papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that it has now raised a total of US$1.7 billion during its Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The service already filed with the SEC back in February after raising US$850 million. Telegram has a native cryptocurrency token known as the Gram.

There has been a reported malware attack on a Boeing production plant involving the infamous ransomware cryptoworm WannaCry. A spokesperson for Boeing described the event as “a limited intrusion of malware” as there were concerns about the worm affecting production and even airplane software. The destructive WannaCry attack of 2017 affected computers in over 150 countries.

Intel took a dig at Uber by claiming that its driver assistance technology can detect and prevent pedestrian impact more accurately than Uber's version. This comes in the wake of a tragic incident involving the collision of a self-driving Uber vehicle with a woman pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona last week.

It seems actor Steven Seagal is no longer the brand ambassador for the cryptocurrency Bitcoiin. Agents for the virtual currency (VC) have claimed that a soft cap of US$75 million has now been reached, meaning that both the founders of Bitcoiin and Seagal will “exit” from any further direct involvement with the controversial VC. The State of New Jersey recently issued a cease and desist order to the token’s founders.

A teardown of Facebook's user data archive has revealed the fact that the company collects private user data including well-detailed call logs and text metadata. The company has been involved in a number of cases pertaining to privacy issues, and this is just another icing on the cake.

Since Vladimir Putin will be in charge for a few more years, it looks like Telegram might end up being blocked in Russia. A set of laws introduced back in 2016 required Telegram to give the government a way to decrypt all user conversations, and they received a fine of US$14,000 for failing to do so. Now, Telegram users in Russia should prepare for the worst.

Bitcoin has received a significant boost in market value that has been put down to “very productive” discussions about cryptocurrencies and regulation at a G-20 meeting. The leading cryptocurrency has seen its value battered recently due to a number of market-related events, including pressure from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for tighter regulation.

Broadcom has officially withdrawn from plans of acquiring Qualcomm. The now Singapore-based semiconductor giant tried its might to cajole Qualcomm with enticing offers but the latter did not budge. Despite losing the dangling carrot, Broadcom said it will still continue its redomiciliation process and shift base to the United States soon.

Researchers at a cyber-security consulting company in Israel have claimed that they have found 13 serious vulnerabilities in AMD processors. CTS-Labs has published details about the flaws after only giving AMD 24 hours to comply. More oddities regarding the previously unhead-of company are elaborated below and in the attached video.

Intel is apparently viewing the possible acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom as a potential threat to its communications semiconductor business according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The company is also reportedly exploring various fallback options in the event the Qualcomm takeover materializes.

Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency has been called “illegal” and “unconstitutional” by the country’s National Assembly. Bitcoin has suffered another fall in its current exchange value, with the virtual currency's latest closing price standing at US$9434. In Japan, the Financial Services Agency has been throwing its weight around and has issued business suspension orders to two cryptocurrency exchanges.

A report published by the highly respected journal Science has estimated that fake news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than true news. The study found that false information which was rapidly shared online through social media reached more people than the truth did. The research also pointed out that fake news travels much faster than real news.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a stern statement in regard to potentially unlawful online trading platforms. The statement includes a warning to investors that they should use “SEC-registered and regulated marketplaces” for virtual currency (VC) trading. The value of Bitcoin, and other VCs, dipped dramatically after the statement’s publication.

BlackBerry Ltd has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook and its companies WhatsApp and Instagram for improperly implementing BBM IP in the social network's messaging apps. While BlackBerry is seeking to protect the interests of its shareholders, Facebook is not in a mood to give up and is ready to challenge the suit in court.

A seemingly coordinated series of burglaries has taken place in Iceland leading to the loss of around US$2 million worth of computing equipment used to mine Bitcoin. The thefts actually occurred back in December and January, but they have only just been reported as Iceland’s police did not want to reveal details until their investigation had been completed. An estimated 600 devices were taken.

According to a report, technology company Broadcom Limited could be redomiciling to the US in the near future, possibly by May. The company is currently based in Singapore and has a co-headquarters in San Jose, California. Broadcom was bought out by Avago Technologies in 2015 for a deal worth US$37 billion and the newly combined company was then renamed Broadcom Limited.

Could central regulation for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, be coming sooner rather than later? Canadian economist and current Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, brought up a number of issues about cryptocurrency during a speech at the Scottish Economics Conference held at Edinburgh University. These concerns included the current volatility of cryptocurrency values, the relation crypto-assets have with illicit activities, and the need for some form of regulation.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressed concern that the social network has a problem with trolls and bots infesting the platform often fueling hate and abuse. The CEO is inviting proposals from users on how to improve the platform and encourage civil behavior.

VeganCoin and Sovereign have become two of the latest additions to the ever growing cryptocurrency world. VeganCoin was founded by the people behind VeganNation, who claim the currency will be “cruelty free”. The Sovereign is a virtual currency that will be launched by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a country in the Pacific Ocean. The Sovereign will be accepted as legal tender in the island nation.