British hackers get jail terms
Two separate and very different cases in the UK saw hackers receive jail terms of twelve and eighteen months. In one case a 21-year old British man, Gareth Crosskey of West Sussex, plead guilty to hacking into a US citizen's Facebook account and gaining access to that person's email account in January 2011. The Metropolitan Police Service's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) was informed of the breach via the FBI and arrested Crosskey in July 2011 under the Computer Misuse Act. The PCeU says that "By taking swift action" it was "able to quickly detain Crosskey thereby preventing further disruption to the victim", and says it hopes the prosecution acts as a deterrent. Read more...
Q&A Site ChaCha Cancels UK Expansion After Poor User Take-Up
Can a reasonably successful, U.S.-based mobile content brand find equal success for its English-language service in the UK? It’s a question that could have been asked on the Q&A service ChaCha, and unfortunately it looks like the company has figured out the answer the hard way.
ChaCha, which launched in the UK in September 2011, has now quietly shut down operations in the country after failing to find enough people to use the service to make it cost-effective. Read more...
Google+ gets its first UK TV ad campaign, while its advertising budget in the US reaches $12m
With the continuous back-and-forth on Google+, with its critics calling it a ghost-town, and some fighting back, Google is pulling out the big guns, with its first TV ad campaign in the UK.
Marketing Week reports that the company’s first UK above-the-line campaign focuses on what Google+ has to offer, and what Facebook and Twitter don’t.
This is not Google’s first foray into the traditional advertising space. While it, unsurprisingly, relies almost entirely on online advertising, the company has produced its fair share of TV ads. It spent a whopping $70 million on them in the US last year, accounting for almost 33% of of its entire $213 million advertising budget, according to the Wall Street Journal. The year before, Google spent a mere $6 million on TV ads in the US. Read more...
Ask Jeeves launches its ‘Question of the Day’ iOS app for UK trivia fans
With Google pretty much owning the search market space around the world, it’s easy to forget there are other search engines out there. And I’m not talking about Bing or Yahoo.
Ask Jeeves launched as a question-and-answer based search engine in 1996 and, well, it’s still ambling along. Today, it’s officially announcing the launch of its new mobile app, bringing its ‘Question of the Day’ direct to iOS users in the UK.
The Question of the Day app allows users to access stimulating questions and answers, such as ‘what bird barks like a dog?’, ‘how many hairs does a person lose a day?’ and ‘are the eyes the window of the soul?’. Read more...
UK Internet Blacklist Censors Fileserve File-Hosting Service
UK users of the popular Fileserve file-hosting service are currently unable to download any files as the site is being blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation. Since early this week the blacklist, which aims to disable access to sexual child abuse content, has been preventing users from accessing their personal files and downloading those uploaded by others. Fileserve expects the issue to persist for at least a couple of days.
With hundreds of millions of page views each month, Fileserve is listed among the 10 most-visited file-sharing sites on the Internet. The site allows users to store files in the cloud for personal use or subsequent sharing with the rest of the world.
For the past several days, however, many Fileserve users from the UK have noticed they are unable to download files to their computers using the service. Read more...
‘Mental act’ computerisations no longer automatically unpatentable
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has changed its guidance on how its reviewers will consider the 'mental act' exemption to patentability when assessing patent applications for computer-implemented inventions.
Under the UK's Patents Act inventions must be new, take an inventive step that is not obvious and be useful to industry in order to qualify for patent protection.
An invention cannot be patented, according to the Patents Act, if it is "a scheme, rule or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business, or a program for a computer … as such". Other inventions that cannot be patented include "a discovery, scientific theory or mathematical method", according to the Act.
Reviewers will not automatically rule that the computerisation of what would be a purely mental act if done without the aid of a computer is unpatentable, the IPO said. The IPO's amended guidance reverses a previous approach it said its reviewers would adopt. It also follows a recent High Court ruling on the application of the 'mental act' exclusion to patentability of computer simulation software. Read more...
Will ISP ‘Child Protection’ Website Filtering Hit File-Sharing Sites?
Today, UK media regulators launched ParentPort, a website which will allow parents to complain more easily about TV shows, adverts, products and Internet sites which they believe are inappropriate for their children. As part of the deal four leading ISPs will offer a porn-filtering service when new customers sign-up. But will file-sharing sites be censored too?
There can be little doubt that the architects of the ParentPort website have the best interests of children, the most important and vulnerable people in our society, at heart. That can only be a good thing – after all, we’ve all seen things online that we wished we could unsee. As adults, however, we hopefully have the experience to deal with the fallout. Read more...
‘Stop throwing your computing heritage away – ignore Alan Sugar,’ Google boss tells UK
The UK gave the world some of the most important technological innovations of the last two centuries but it's now squandering its computing heritage, according to Google boss Eric Schmidt.
Speaking at the 2011 Edinburgh TV festival, Schmidt - the former CEO of Google and now its chairman - said the UK is wasting its technological talents.
"The UK is the home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice (it's not widely known but the world's first office computer was built in 1951 by Lyon's chain of tea shops!) Yet today, none of the world's leading exponents in these fields are from the UK," Schmidt said as part of the conference's annual MacTaggart lecture. Read more...
Third Man Charged in Crackdown on ‘Anonymous’ Hackers
U.K. authorities charged a third man on Thursday as part of a global law-enforcement probe into online activist group Anonymous and its offshoots.
On Thursday, London's Metropolitan Police Service said it charged 22-year-old Peter David Gibson with a computer-related offense. Mr. Gibson, who is a student in Hartlepool, in the northeast of England, was arrested in early April. He been released from police custody on bail and is due to appear at a London magistrates' court on September.
Law enforcement agencies in the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands and elsewhere are probing Anonymous and offshoot groups, ...
(Source: wsj.com)
Will limits on overseas tech workers hurt UK plc?
The government's policy on immigration risks damaging the competitiveness of UK businesses by restricting the flow of skilled technology professionals, business leaders have warned.
Dr Richard Sykes, chair of the Outsourcing Group at tech trade body Intellect, said while the UK is still a net exporter of technology skills, the competitiveness of UK plc is being put at risk by govern
ment policy targeting migration by capping the number of non-EU skilled migrants who can work in the UK.
"We should have an absolute policy for qualified professionals of absolutely open borders," says Dr Richard SykesPhoto: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
Speaking at a conference on IT skills held at City University's Cass Business School, Sykes said: "How do we maintain that competitiveness unless we keep very open borders to the free movement of the professional?" Read more...
UK is developing a cyber-weapons programme: report
Armed forces minister Nick Harvey acknowledges that the country is working on a cyber-weapons programme with offensive capabilities
The UK is reportedly developing a cyber-attack programme with a range of offensive capabilities.
According to the Guardian, the cyber-weapons programme is aimed to make a shift from cyber defences to cyber offences so that the government can tackle increasing threats to national security from cyber attacks.
In an acknowledgement of the development, armed forces minister Nick Harvey told the Guardian that "action in cyberspace will form part of the future battlefield." Read more...
PSN Problems Earn Sony Telling Off from UK Government
But UK government won't be drawn in on whether Sony should be fined
Sony must make online security a new priority, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has said in response to the PlayStation Network data breach.
But he insisted the Government would not interfere with the Information Commissioner’s Office on whether to fine Sony.
LAst month a hack into the PlayStation Network compromised sensitive details of over 100 million customers. Read more...