European Union regulator will complete the Yahoo email hack investigation in ‘next couple of weeks’

Image Credit: Yahoo

Yahoo’s European regulator said it is preparing to give the U.S. Internet company the results of an investigation into the 2014 theft of data from 500 million users, including any remedial action to avoid a repeat of the breach. Yahoo said in September last year that hackers had stolen the data in 2014, prompting criticism from U.S. politicians into the delay in notifying customers.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, the lead European regulator on privacy issues for Yahoo because the company’s European headquarters are in Dublin, told Reuters she would issue the report “in the next couple of weeks”. “We are preparing to serve the final report on Yahoo EMEA Ltd and require of them any remedial actions we have identified,” Helen Dixon said in an interview. It will be up to Yahoo whether to make the report public, she said.

A new EU-wide data protection law coming into force in May 2018 allows fines of up to 4 percent of global turnover. Until then, however, the office of the Data Protection Commissioner said it has no administrative capability to fine a company. A spokesman for Yahoo said it has been cooperating with the commissioner’s office on the investigation and will review the findings carefully when they are available.

Reuters

Publish date: April 12, 2017 12:17 pm| Modified date: April 12, 2017 12:17 pm

European Commission asks Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to comply with EU consumer rules

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By tech2 News Staff /  20 Mar 2017 , 12:13

Media reports last week indicated that the European Commission was on the verge of making social networks amend their terms of service to comply with European Union (EU) regulations. EU consumer authorities and the European Commission have met with the representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to discuss proposed solutions.

The European Commission has given the companies one month to finalise their proposals, after which the authorities will review them. The companies stand to face enforcement action if the final proposals are not satisfactory.

The companies have agreed to amend unfair terms of service, as well as take measures to protect consumers from frauds and scams that are perpetrated through the social networks. The social networks have been directed to ensure that the users can sue the companies in their respective states of residence, and it is illegal for the terms of service to deprive users of the right to take the companies to court. The social media companies also cannot deprive users of mandatory rights, such as the right to withdraw from an online purchase.

Social media companies cannot totally exclude themselves from the liability of providing adequate performance of the service. Sponsored content has to be easily identifiable as such, and cannot be hidden. The companies cannot change the terms of service without giving a notice period to users to withdraw from the contract if they choose to, and without providing clear reasoning behind the changes. The social media companies cannot have complete discretionary powers on the removal of content.

The social networks have been ordered to establish a direct channel of communication with consumer protection authorities. The channel will be used to alert the social networks of scams and frauds on the networks. The networks are required to pull down such content as and when they become aware of the misleading content.

Misleading discounts, fake promotions, free apps with hidden costs, are some of the kinds of content that the EU wants to protect its users from. Sale of counterfeit products through social networks has also been banned.

Nokia sues Apple in US and Germany for infringing patents

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By tech2 News Staff /  22 Dec 2016 , 08:54

Nokia has announced that it has registered several complaints in the US and Germany against Apple. Nokia is alleging that Apple is infringing on a number of patents owned by Nokia. Nokia has three valuable patent portfolios that are commonly used in various consumer electronics such as tablets, mobile phones and personalCOMPUTERS.

Nokia has invested EUR 115 billion (roughly Rs 8 lakh crore) in research and development over a course of twenty years in the industry, with tens of thousands of patents to its name. Nokia also owns the patents of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent in mid 2016 and bought out NSN in 2016.

“Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today’s mobile devices, including Apple products. After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple’s use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, head of Patent Business at Nokia.

This is not the first time that Nokia has sued Apple. In fact, Nokia alleging patent infringement by Apple was the first salvo fired in the smartphone patent wars, in 2009. Apple countersued, and Nokia sued Apple over infringements of additional patents in 2009 itself. In 2011, Apple and Nokia agreed on a settlement. Nokia claims Apple has declined to license several other patents it uses since the 2011 agreement.

Smartphone patent wars as visualised by George Kokkinidis at Design Language.

Nokia has registered the complaints in Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the US. Nokia alleges infringement of 32 patents covering the display, user interface, software, the antenna, chipsets and video encoding. Nokia has said that it is in the process of filling complaints in other jurisdictions as well.

Google rubbishes EU claims of Anti-Competitive practices in online shopping

By tech2 News Staff /  04 Nov 2016 , 09:19

Google has called EU objections to its improved shopping results in searches as baseless. The European Commission had accused Google of using its dominant position to take business away from price comparison and price aggregating sites, based on complaints it had received from these sites. Google contends that the most dominant position is held by Amazon itself, which competes for traffic with price aggregation sites more than Google does.

The counter argument was that as Amazon pays these sites for listings, it should not be considered as a competition. Google provided data to show that a staggering majority of users start shopping online by checking the prices on Amazon, irrespective of whether or not they end up making a purchase from the site. Google came in a second place for users looking for prices, and only a fraction of users opted to check price comparison sites.

Google also alleges that most of the shopping activity is conducted through native apps on smartphones. Google claims that it has improved its search results to deliver ads with pictures and prices, a process that helps Google, its partnered advertisers as well as the end users.

Google claims there is no relation between the evolution of its search engine, and the performance of price comparison sites.

EU-US Privacy Shield data transfer agreement under scrutiny by privacy advocacy groups

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  03 Nov 2016 , 13:51

A new EU-U.S. pact governing the transfer of personal data faces a second legal challenge, putting the details of the deal which underpins billions of dollars of transatlantic trade in digital services under further scrutiny. French privacy advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, non-profit Internet service provider French Data Network and its Federation FDN industry association have now challenged the adoption of the Privacy Shield pact by the European Commission at the Luxembourg-based General Court, following in the steps of Irish group Digital Rights Ireland.

The Privacy Shield agreement was reached earlier this year after the European Union’s highest court struck down the previous Safe Harbor Principles used by companies to enable them to transfer Europeans’ personal data to the United States, due to concerns about intrusive U.S. surveillance of online data. The new agreement gives businesses storing Europeans’ data on U.S. servers – from human resources information to people’s browsing histories and hotel bookings – an easy way to do so without falling foul of tough EU private data transfer rules.

More than 500 companies have signed up to Privacy Shield so far, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, while over 1,000 are being processed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The agreement seeks to strengthen privacy protections for EU citizens by giving them a means of seeking redress in the case of disputes, including through a new privacy ombudsman within the State Department who will deal with complaints from Europeans about U.S. spying.

But the objectors say that restrictions on U.S. surveillance activities – in particular the bulk collection of data and the purposes for which the data can be used – are inadequate and therefore the Privacy Shield agreement should be annulled. Under EU law companies or individuals may challenge EU acts before the EU courts if they are directly concerned within two months of the act coming into force, otherwise they have to go through national courts, a process which takes longer.

However both challenges face a strong risk of being declared inadmissible if the court finds that the associations are not directly concerned. In their challenge the French groups say that the U.S. ombudsman is not an effective mechanism for dealing with complaints. “The fact that it relies on so-called ‘independent’ instruments is in no way sufficient to consider it an independent judicial entity,” they said.

A spokesman for the European Commission, which negotiated the Privacy Shield with Washington, said it was aware of the new complaint. “We don’t comment on ongoing court cases. As we have said from the beginning, the Commission is convinced that the Privacy Shield lives up to the requirements set out by the European Court of Justice, which have been the basis for the negotiations,” Christian Wigand said.

The U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to questions about the second challenge.

Reuters

Microsoft enterprise products to get costlier in UK after pound falls

  24 Oct 2016 , 10:36

Microsoft Corp said it will be increasing pricing for its enterprise software and cloud services in the UK in the wake of the sterling’s plunge since Britons voted to leave the EU. The price increase, from Jan. 1 2017, will be 13 percent for its enterprise software and 22 percent for its enterprise cloud services, it said.

Pricing changes will not apply to consumer software or consumer cloud services, the company said in a blog post. The vote to leave the EU took many investors and company executives by surprise, triggering the biggest one-day fall in sterling against the dollar. The pound’s fall has affected profitability for many companies, as imported goods have become even more expensive.

Recently, Britain’s biggest grocery chain, Tesco, pulled dozens of Unilever brand products from its website after a disagreement over prices, in the wake of a the slump in the British currency. Unilever had been trying to raise the prices it charges Britain’s big four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – across a wide range of goods by about 10 percent, saying it needs to offset the higher cost of imported commodities.

Reuters

Facebook signs controversial EU Privacy Shield treaty after Google and Microsoft

  17 Oct 2016 , 10:06

Social networking giant Facebook has agreed to adopt a new European Union (EU) data accord that allows personal information to be transferred to the US, potentially sparking yet another privacy row, the media reported. Facebook has quietly signed the Privacy Shield — a controversial treaty that allows US technology companies to transfer EU citizens’ details abroad. It will apply to certain advertising data and its new Workplace service for businesses, the Telegraph UK reported on Saturday.

Privacy Shield, a replacement deal that was designed to provide extra safeguards for Europeans, came into force in July. Google and Microsoft have already adopted the treaty. Facebook signed up at the end of September, although only two aspects of the social network use it. The first is Workplace, a special version of Facebook that allows company employees to communicate, which was launched last week. The other is its “Ads and Measurement” technology that uses customer data supplied by other companies to target adverts.

Other user data is not covered by the treaty, although it can be transferred to the US under secondary legal measures, the report said. “We have signed up two important parts of our business to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework – Facebook at Work and our relevant Ads and Measurement services,” a Facebook spokesman confirmed the report.

Facebook’s adoption of the treaty is significant because the prior US-EU agreement, Safe Harbour which was abolished by the European Court of Justice as a direct result of legal action against the social network by privacy campaigners. However, it is likely to lead to further scrutiny of the Privacy Shield deal from Facebook’s critics, the report stated.

IANS

Qualcomm to attempt to fight EU antitrust charges during a hearing in November

  01 Oct 2016 , 12:09

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm will attempt to fend off EU antitrust charges at a hearing on Nov. 10 that it used anti-competitive methods to squeeze out a rival, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The European Commission may take Qualcomm’s arguments at the hearing into account in the