Yahoo and AOL will merge to form a new company called Oath

Image Credit: Twitter, Tim Armstrong, @timarmstrongaol

AOL and Yahoo will be combined into a unit called Oath after telecom titan Verizon buys the pioneering internet firm, according to a tweet Monday by the AOL chief. Confirmation of a new name for what the world has long known as Yahoo was tweeted from a verified @timarmstrongaol account after reports of the new name leaked in US media reports.

“Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017,” the Twitter post read. A price cut early this year kept Verizon on track to consummate the purchase of Yahoo’s internet business, and share the costs from a pair of epic hacks that threatened to derail the deal.

Yahoo slashed the price of its core internet business by $350 million. Under revised terms of the delayed deal, Verizon’s purchase of Yahoo assets will total $4.48 billion. Yahoo announced in September that hackers in 2014 stole personal data from more than 500 million of its user accounts. And in December it admitted to another cyber attack from 2013 affecting more than a billion users.

The US Justice Department last month charged two Russian intelligence operatives and a pair of hackers over one of the largest cyber attacks in history, which had apparent twin goals of espionage and financial gain. The Kremlin denied any official Russian involvement in cybercrimes after the US indicted two FSB intelligence agents over cyber attacks on Yahoo that compromised 500 million accounts.

Under the terms of the revised acquisition agreement, Yahoo will continue to cover the cost of a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe into the breaches as well as shareholder lawsuits. However, other government investigations and third-party litigation related to the hacks will be shared by Verizon and Yahoo.

The deal with Verizon was expected to close by July, and will end Yahoo’s run of more than 20 years as an independent company. Yahoo is selling its main operating business as a way to separate that from its more valuable stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which will become a new entity, to be renamed Altaba, Inc., and will act as an investment company.

Yahoo boasted having more than a billion users monthly in 2016. Yahoo’s most recent earnings report showed the company swung to profit in the final three months of last year, after a massive $4.4 billion loss in the same period of 2015. Yahoo reported a loss of $214 million for 2016 on revenue that inched up to $5.2 billion from $5 billion in 2015.

Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer will quit the company’s board after the merger with Verizon that creates Oath, according to an SEC filing, though she is expected to remain with the core Yahoo business.

AFP

Publish date: April 4, 2017 2:49 pm| Modified date: April 4, 2017 2:49 pm

Internet providers in US say that they are not going to sell their consumers’ internet browsing history

Representational Image : Reuters

Comcast Corp, Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc said Friday they would not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information, days after the US Congress approved legislation reversing Obama administration era internet privacy rules.

The bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under former President Barack Obama requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s Google or Facebook Inc . The easing of restrictions has sparked growing anger on social media sites.

“We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so,” said Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer. He added Comcast is revising its privacy policy to make more clear that “we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties.”

Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so in the future, said spokesman Richard Young. Verizon privacy officer Karen Zacharia said in a blog post Friday the company has two programs that use customer browsing data. One allows marketers to access “de-identified information to determine which customers fit into groups that advertisers are trying to reach” while the other “provides aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses.”

Republicans in Congress Tuesday narrowly passed the repeal of the rules with no Democratic support and over the objections of privacy advocates. The vote was a win for internet providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast and Verizon. Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules. The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump plans to sign the repeal of the rules, which had not taken effect.

Under the rules, internet providers would have needed to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children’s information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. Websites do not need the same affirmative consent. Some in Congress suggested providers would begin selling personal data to the highest bidder, while others vowed to raise money to buy browsing histories of Republicans.

AT&T says in its privacy statement it “will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period.” In a blog post Friday, AT&T said it would not change those policies after Trump signs the repeal. Websites and internet service providers do use and sell aggregated customer data to advertisers. Republicans say the rules unfairly would give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet providers.

Trade group USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in an op-ed Friday for website Axios that individual “browser history is already being aggregated and sold to advertising networks – by virtually every site you visit on the internet.” This week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans “believe that their private information should be just that.”

Reuters

Publish date: April 3, 2017 12:54 pm| Modified date: April 3, 2017 12:55 pm

Verizon to use 4G LTE-equipped drones to provide emergency cell service

By Shawn Knight on October 6, 2016, 1:30 PM



Verizon believes the next frontier for the Internet of Things won’t happen in our homes or even on land. Instead, it’ll play out in the sky.

For the past two years, the nation’s largest cellular provider has been working on its Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) initiative which involves outfitting both manned and unmanned aircraft (drones) with 4G LTE wireless connectivity.

Unlike Facebook and Google which intend to use unmanned craft to provide wireless Internet access to remote and underserved regions, part of Verizon’s goal is to use drones to provide mobile connectivity during emergency situations when land-based towers aren’t an option.

In 2012, for example, Hurricane Sandy had a major impact on the communications infrastructure on the East Coast. Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski said shortly after the storm that around 25 percent of cell phone towers across 10 states had been damaged or destroyed beyond repair.

In an initial controlled trial, Verizon partnered with American Aerospace Technologies Inc. (AATI) to test connectivity between aerial platforms and Verizon's 4G LTE network using a 17-foot wingspan unmanned aircraft system.

Verizon’s initiative isn’t just for emergency situations. Come next year, the telecom hopes to offer a new suite of services through its ThingSpace IoT platform that could be used for all sorts of tasks such as inspecting pipelines and high-voltage power lines, gathering traffic data and keeping tabs on farmland through aerial imaging.

‘Google Magic’ seen on Verizon’s leak of its Google Pixel listing; and there’s a Really Blue variant as well

Image: Carphone Warehouse (via 9to5Google)

By tech2 News Staff /  04 Oct 2016 , 12:24

The Google event which will see the launch of the Pixel and Pixel XL handsets is scheduled for tonight, but details about these phones are leaking all over the internet. The latest leak is from US telecom giant Verizon, which had accidentally posted the product page of the Pixel and Pixel XL.

Image: Verizon

While most of the hardware details of the Pixel and Pixel XL are pretty much known by now, the Verizon listing had a feature listing which mentioned something called

US Securities and Exchange Commission may make Yahoo the test case of data breach disclosure rules

#YAHOO

 

 01 Oct 2016 , 11:01

Yahoo’s disclosure that hackers stole user data from at least 500 million accounts in 2014 has highlighted shortcomings in U.S. rules on when cyber attacks must be revealed and their enforcement. Democratic Senator Mark Warner this week asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Yahoo and its senior executives properly disclosed the attack, which Yahoo blamed on Sept. 22 on a “state-sponsored actor.”

The Yahoo hack could become a test case of the SEC’s guidelines, said Jacob Olcott, former Senate Commerce Committee counsel who helped develop them, due to the size of the breach, intense public scrutiny and uncertainty over the timing of Yahoo’s discovery. Yahoo has not specifically addressed when it learned of the 2014 attack. And the vagueness of SEC’s 2011 rules on disclosure and its failure to enforce them are drawing equal attention, privacy lawyers and cyber security experts said.

The agency has “been looking for the right case to bring forward,” said Olcott. The agency in 2011 told publicly traded companies to report hacking incidents that could have a “material adverse effect on the business” but did not define that. SEC has never acted against a company for failing to disclose a cyber security incident or threat, and it has brought just two enforcement actions against companies for insufficient data protection, an agency spokesman said. Lawyers said this reflected difficulty in determining if breaches were material and many companies’ belief that reporting on cyber threats generally satisfies the disclosure requirement.

Yahoo has not offered a precise timeline about when it was made aware of the breach. On Sept. 9, it said in an SEC filing it did not know of “any incidents of, or third party claims alleging … unauthorized access” of customers’ personal data that could have a material adverse effect on Verizon Communication Inc’s planned $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo’s core business. Since then, Yahoo has not clarified if it knew of the attack before that SEC filing. “Our investigation into this matter is ongoing and the issues are complex,” a Yahoo spokesman said last week.

In his letter, Warner asked the SEC to evaluate whether the current disclosure regime was adequate. He cited reports that fewer than 100 of 9,000 public companies disclosed a material data breach since 2010. “I don’t know that we need new rules. But in certain situations, you may need more aggressive enforcement,” said Roberta Karmel, a Brooklyn Law School professor. The SEC in 2014 examined whether cyber disclosure rules needed to be strengthened and imposed new requirements for broker-dealers and investment advisers but not public companies.

‘Punish the victim’

Some policymakers worry rules compelling prompt disclosure of cyber attacks could deter companies from cooperating with authorities.“We cannot blame executives for worrying that what starts today as an honest conversation about a cyber attack could end tomorrow in a ‘punish the victim’ regulatory enforcement action,” Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said this week. Congress last year expanded liability protections for companies that share cyber information with the government, and Pritzker urged granting companies temporary immunity during the response to a hack.

Amid SEC inaction, the Federal Trade Commission has brought 60 successful data security cases since 2001 in part, lawyers said, because its authority is clearer than the SEC’s. Those cases have dealt with deceptive statements by companies and security lapses. The FTC is hampered by the lack of a national requirement for companies to notify the public about data breaches. That idea got widespread support after the 2013 hacking of shoppers’ credit card information from Target Corp. But legislation proposed by President Barack Obama in 2015 fizzled.

Reuters