Tech groups question new do-not-track bill
New legislation in the U.S. Senate that would allow Internet users to tell companies to stop tracking them is unnecessary and could slow e-commerce growth, some tech groups said.
Senators John "Jay" Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, reintroduced do-not-track legislation on Thursday. The Do-Not-Track Online Act, similar to legislation Rockefeller introduced in 2011, would require all online companies to honor do-not-track requests from consumers.
Online companies have failed to live up to promises to honor do-not-track requests, Rockefeller said in a statement. Read more...
Facebook says mobile ads successful; analysts say challenges remain
Facebook seemed to answer at least one burning question about its mobile business on Thursday -- it doesn't plan to build its own smartphone -- but it's still not entirely clear how it will capitalize on its rapidly expanding base of mobile users.
"Building out a whole phone wouldn't really make much sense for us to do," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, when asked about Facebook's mobile strategy during a conference call to discuss its first financial report as a public company.
The number of people who access Facebook's service from mobile devices is expanding rapidly. The company had 955 million monthly active users at the end of June, of which 543 million accessed Facebook from a mobile device, the company said Thursday. That was up 67% from the same quarter last year, it said. Read more...
Office 2013 shifts security focus from devices to identities
Business users may find the productivity-boosting potential of Office 2013 tantalizing; its ties to the cloud and support for devices beyond PCs means on-the-go users are never far from their important documents. IT admins, on the other hand, may feel more wary than excited by Microsoft's move to untether its ubiquitous productivity suite from the desktop because it represents a significant shift from traditional end-user security.
Microsoft summarizes the nature of the shift pretty well in a security overview of Office 2013: "[This release] makes a fundamental change from computer-centered identity and authentication to user-centered identity and authentication. This shift enables content, resources, most recently used lists, settings, links to communities, and personalization to roam seamlessly with users as they move from desktop, to tablet, to smartphone, or to a shared or public computer." Read more...
Facebook user base drops in U.S., says report
Facebook appears to be losing users in the U.S. and other major markets, though its user base in parts of Asia is growing, according to an investment company report.
Facebook saw its U.S. user base drop by 0.7% over the past three months and 1.7% over the last six months, according to a report from Rory Maher, a senior Internet analyst at Capstone Investments.
The report was based on research that used proprietary software to analyze Facebook user growth in more than 200 countries. The report also noted that Hong Kong had a 1.7% drop in users and Singapore had a 1.1% drop.
In all three areas -- the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore -- Facebook has more than 50% market penetration. Read more...
Symantec revises panicky crash notice
Symantec put out a report June 15 that caused a double-take.
Here’s what it originally said before it was revised:
“KNOWN ISSUE: Altiris Agent service is crashing on a high percentage of computers after upgrading from Symantec Management Platform 7.1 SP1 to 7.1 SP2.”[Emphasis added, not that high percentage needs extra emphasis.]
Altiris, which was acquired by Symantec in 2007, is an asset management tool. It is used to manage patches, maintain compliance with software licenses and remove unauthorized software, among other functions.
A user of this system alerted us to the problem. His Altiris agents, which are on the clients, were crashing after the upgrade. He has since been unable to patch his systems, something that is becoming increasingly worrisome.
When the user first sought help from the Symantec help desk, the support tech was unaware of the alert. That increased the user's concern. Read more...
Comparing Pre-IPO Facebook To Pre-IPO Google: Fair, Or A Case Of Apples And Oranges?
Facebook, in its updated S-1 released on April 23, dazzled us with more milestone user numbers: 901 million monthly active users, and 500 million on mobile. But it also reported a “seasonal” decline in revenues — $1.058 billion compared to $1.131 billion in the quarter before — and (perhaps more importantly ) annual revenue growth slowed down: in Q1 2011-Q1 2012 it was 44.7 percent, nearly half of the 88 percent for the same period the year before.
Some new data from Privco teases out those revenue growth numbers even further by comparing Facebook’s financials to those of pre-IPO Google, in an attempt to show that it is not seasonality but more particular issues with Facebook. The picture is not pretty — and some might wonder if it’s fair.
With Facebook expected to go public in the next quarter, Privco notes that when Google was in the same position, its revenues were still on the rise — albeit at a smaller rate. Facebook’s decline of 6.4 percent, Read more...
Google expands revenue but misses forecast
Google's fourth-quarter revenue climbed 25% from a year earlier but was less than analysts had expected, pulling its stock price down 9% in after-hours trading.
Google's revenue for the three months to Dec. 31 came in at $10.58 billion, up from $8.44 billion a year earlier, the company announced Thursday. Subtracting commissions and fees paid to partners, revenue was $8.13 billion, below the consensus analyst forecast of $8.41 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
Its net income before one-time charges, at $9.50 a share, was also below the consensus estimate, which called for $10.50 a share.
Google's shares dipped 9% in after-hours trading, to $583.48 at the time of this report, as investors reacted to the news. Earlier, Google's stock ended the regular trading day up 1%, at $639.57. Read more...
Firefox devs mull dumping Java to stop BEAST attacks
Firefox developers searching for a way to protect users against a new attack that decrypts sensitive web traffic are seriously considering an update that stops the open-source browser from working with Oracle's Java software framework.
The move, which would prevent Firefox from working with scores of popular websites and crucial enterprise tools, is one way to thwart a recently unveiled attack that decrypts traffic protected by SSL, the cryptographic protocol that millions of websites use to safeguard social security numbers and other sensitive data. In a demonstration last Friday, it took less than two minutes for researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo to wield the exploit to recover an encrypted authentication cookie used to access a PayPal user account. Read more...
Browsing and privacy: How to not get tracked
If you're old enough to remember the Cold War, you know what an arms race is. One side comes up with a new weapon, the other side matches it, and then the first comes back with something even bigger and so on and so on. That also describes the ongoing battle between computer users who value their privacy and the Web sites and their advertisers that don't.
Every time browser developers and others come up with a defense against tracking -- the use of tiny bits of computer code that tells Web sites where you've been on the Internet -- the other side ups the ante with a new trick. And it's happening again. Read more...
Google feels the pain of users who can’t get on Google+
Google is keenly aware that many people are eager to set up profiles in Google+, the company's new social network, but the site will remain in a limited trial while the company works feverishly toward a broader rollout that can accommodate a larger number and wider variety of users.
So said Bradley Horowitz, the Google+ vice president of product, during a webcast interview on Tuesday with Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media.
In addition to regular people, there are a number of specialty user groups that are anxious to try out Google+, like application developers, Google Apps customers, corporate marketers and even minors, but the site isn't yet ready for them, he said. Read more...
Facebook gets creative with mobile phone data harvesting app
Facebook wants to hook into mobile phone users who don't necessarily have a profile set up on the dominant social network.
Yesterday the company launched a service in the US that's a separate app linking messages in Facebook with texts, chats and emails on a mobile phone.
In effect, the Web2.0 outfit has tapped into the SMS market by fanning out its existing messaging service to a mobile phone app that's available on Google's Android and Apple's iPhone, but, somewhat surprisingly, not on the Windows Phone. Read more...