Google Overhauls (almost) All Their Privacy Policies

Google announced today that they will consolidate the privacy policies of 60 services and products to just one, uniform policy. They also have stated that their goal is to "trim" the policy so that it's easier to read and understand.

In a related initiative, Google also plans to consolidate and simplify a smaller number of Terms of Service

The changes will go into effect March 1.

Feds Shutdown Megaupload

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/

McLEAN, Va. - Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue.

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/#ixzz1jwT4jLNm

Giveaway of the Day - Paragon Backup and Recovery 11 Compact

Paragon Backup and Recovery 11 Compact is a simple and powerful backup and recovery solution to secure stand-alone Windows desktops and laptops. It quickly backs up your files and folders, operating system or even your entire hard disk to any storage you choose.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

Giveaway of the Day - EaseUS Partition Master Professional 9.1

EaseUS Partition Master Professional Edition is an all-in-one partition solution and disk management utility. It allows you to extend partition, especially for system drive, settle low disk space problem, manage disk space easily on MBR and GUID partition table (GPT) disk

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

Mozilla readies to pull support plug on Firefox 3.6

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Mozilla Firefox 9.0 released

Mozilla Firefox 9.0 released

Changelog:
• Added Type Inference, significantly improving JavaScript performance (20~30%)
• Improved theme integration for Mac OS X Lion
• Added two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
• Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
• Added support for font-stretch
• Improved support for text-overflow
• Improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
• Fixed several stability issues

Download Firefox 9.0 for Windows:
http://goo.gl/0fnnc
Download Firefox 9.0 for Linux:
http://goo.gl/GaI8S
Download Firefox 9.0 for MacOS:
http://goo.gl/Zjqgk

Price drop for the holidays on the Sony Tablet S

<img src='http://www.bleepstatic.com/news/tablets/sont-tablet-s.png' style='float:right' vspace='8' hspace='8'>
For those looking to buy a tablet for the holidays, Sony has dropped the price of their Sony Tablet S by $50 until December 31, 2011. This brings the 16GB tablet down to $449 and the 32GB tablet to $549 and both include a free Sony Entertainment Pack. This pack is valued at $200 and includes a cradle, LCD screen protector, AC adapter, 180 days of Music Unlimited service, a store credit and five movies on Video Unlimited, a free e-book download from the Reader Store, and five free game downloads from the PlayStation Store.

More information can be found at Sony's online store.

US FTC to send rebate checks to Malware Victims

The US Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with two individuals connected to Innovative Marketing, Inc. The settlement calls for Mark and Maurice D'Souza to pay $8,272,962 to the FTC and that they may never again engage in business relating software of any kind, legitimate or not.

The FTC says it will disperse the funds to the 320,000 known victims of Innovative Marketing's scareware rogues. If distributed evenly, this works out to around $25 per victim.

It is unclear which specific rogue variants the settlement covers or if it covers them all. Innovative Marketing, Inc. is known to be behind these rogue security products:

• MS Antivirus
  
• XP Antivirus
  
• Vitae Antivirus
  
• Windows Antivirus
  
• Win Antivirus
  
• Antivirus Pro
  
• Antivirus Action
  
• Antivirus Pro 2009
  
• Antivirus 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 360
  
• AntiMalware GO
  
• Internet Antivirus Plus
  
• System Antivirus
  
• Spyware Guard 2008 and 2009
  
• Spyware Protect 2009
  
• Winweb Security 2008
  
• System Security
  
• Malware Defender 2009
  
• Ultimate Antivirus2008
  
• Vista Antivirus
  
• General Antivirus
  
• AntiSpywareMaster
  
• Antispyware 2008
  
• XP AntiSpyware 2008, 2009, and 2010
  
• Antivirus Vista 2010
  
• Real Antivirus
  
• WinPCDefender
  
• Antivirus XP Pro
  
• Anti-Virus-1
  
• Antivirus Soft
  
• Antispyware Soft
  
• Antivirus System PRO
  
• Antivirus Live
  
• Vista Anti Malware 2010
  
• Internet Security 2010
  
• XP Antivirus Pro
  
• Security Tool
  
• VSCAN7
  
• Total Security.

BleepingComputer.com downtime on 12/12/2011

Today, BleepingComputer.com suffered an extended outage that lasted from approximately 11:30 AM EST to 4:30 PM EST. This outage was caused by the network cards on one of our servers not initializing properly after it was was rebooted. This server is integral for the proper operating of the site and for the distribution of many of the programs that are hosted at BleepingComputer.com.

I know that many people rely on the programs available at BleepingComputer.com as well as the computer help we provide. With this said, a plan for incorporating new servers and infrastructure are underway so that this type of situation does not occur again.

Thank you for your patience and support during our downtime.

Chrome Is Most Secure of the Top Three Browsers, Study Finds

PCWorld.com Article by Katherine Noyes dated Dec 9, 2011 12:02 pm

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