DOT dismisses privacy complaint against Northwest
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The airline did nothing wrong when it shared passenger data related to the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency rules.
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The Transportation Security Administration is denying allegations that an airport screener seized a toddler's sippy cup and mistreated his mother, taking the unusual step of posting security camera footage on its Web site.
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The Web site of a law firm employing the husband of U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras contradicts an FTC explanation that Majoras has no conflict of interest in reviewing DoubleClick&#39;s $3.1 billion acquisition by Google, two privacy groups said Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - Washington's attorney general has settled the first case prosecuted under the state's 2005 Computer Spyware Act. The settlement announced Monday is with antispyware vendor Secure Computer. The White Plains, New York, software company wasÂ accused of marketing its product via deceptive spam and pop-up ads, which offered free spyware scans that always detected a problem with the computer that was scanned. The company and its president, Paul Burke, will pay $725,000 in legal fees and $200,000 in penalties, and will reimburse Washington state customers $75,000, said Paula Selis, senior council with the attorney general's office. "Given the scope of the defendants' practices and the amount of consumer harm out there, we feel this is a very fair settlement." More than 1,100 state residents purchased the company's Spyware Cleaner software since it went on the market in 2004, Selis said. Those customers will now be e-mailed by Secure Computer and offered a refund for the $49.95 product, under terms of the settlement. Secure Computer, which admits no wrongdoing in the matter, is also prohibited fromÂ using deceptive marketing techniquesÂ to promote its software, and the company must now review the advertising of its marketing affiliates to make sure they comply with the settlement. That seems like an unlikely possibility, however, because Spyware Cleaner was pulled from the market shortly after the lawsuits were filed in late January, and Secure ComputerÂ is now out of business,Â according to the company's Web site. Representatives from Secure Computer could not be reached for comment. Burke, who was Secure Computer's president, has formed a new company called Safe App Software, which is now selling a registry cleaner product, Selis said. That product is not being sold in the U.S. she added. Secure Computer and four of its business partners were sued by Microsoft and the Washington attorney general in January, but charges against three of the men have already been settled. A fourth man, Manoj Kumar of Maharashtra, India, could not be located, the attorney general's office said. Burke and Secure Computer settled the Microsoft lawsuit about two months ago, said Spencer Freeman, an attorney with Freeman Law Firm Inc. who represented the defendants in the case. Freeman declined to comment on Monday's settlement.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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In a Jan. 21 story about data privacy, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Microsoft Corp. does not record Internet Protocol addresses that could be used to identify which computer made a search request. Microsoft does remove the identifying IP address from its long-term records but only after 18 months.
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A coalition of privacy, labor and civil-liberties advocates filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, urging the agency to investigate railroad and other transportation employers who violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to give employees proper notice when conduct...
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has settled a complaint with an online company it says was illegally selling telephone records.
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Northwest Airlines said yesterday that it had canceled a new fee it charged travel agencies for a round-trip domestic ticket booked through global distribution systems, effective immediately.
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A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., dismissed a crucial claim yesterday in the trademark infringement suit brought against Google by Geico, the auto insurance company owned by Berkshire Hathaway.
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A federal judge on Friday dismissed an antitrust complaint against a key Internet oversight group brought by a company that controls directories for guiding Internet users worldwide.    U.S...
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Workers at the Department of Homeland Security will no longer be required to sign a controversial secrecy pledge prohibiting them from sharing sensitive but unclassified information with the public, DHS officials announced this week.
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In A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies, Privacy International spray-paints the fa&ccedil;ades of landmark companies that line today's Main Street on the Web. The painted colors are assessments of each company's performance on privacy issues. Though the rankings are colorful, what they say isn't pretty.  Nobody in the &quot;interim rankings&quot; (.pdf) gets the top (green) mark for &quot;Privacy-friendly and privacy enhancing&quot;. The bottom (black) mark, for &quot;Comprehensive consumer surveillance &amp; entrenched hostility to privacy&quot;, goes to just one company: Google.
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Maps feature isn't yet available in Canada, but if it was its high-resolution images could violate citizens' privacy rights, privacy chief says in letter to Google.
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The French Competition Council has dismissed a Virgin France complaint against Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL), saying that Apple did not violate rules regarding market dominance.
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A few days after Northwest Airlines Corp. imposed charges on travel agents and independent Web sites that sell tickets on its flights, business travelers are being left to sort out the impact.
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A federal judge on Thursday dismissed an antitrust lawsuit brought by Internet registry firm VeriSign (Nasdaq: VRSN) against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), handing VeriSign a second defeat in its dispute over the company's controversial SiteFinder service.
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The latest status report on Microsoft Corp.'s compliance with an antitrust settlement in the U.S. has cleared the company of a separate accusation of not complying with orders to disclose information to make its products more interoperable.