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Japan orders Google to remove auto-complete function over privacy complaint Google has been ordered to disable part of its autocomplete function in Japan after complaints it violates privacy. According to a report by The Japan Times, the court was acting on a petition accusing Google's autocomplete feature of being defamatory. The petition was filed by a Japanese man (name not disclosed) who alleged that some of the autocomplete suggestions accompanying his name were not only defamatory but also breached his privacy. The unnamed petitioner, in fact, claimed that these defamatory search suggestions even cost him his job. The man came to this conclusion after discovering that when people type his name into Google's search engine, words suggesting criminal acts, which he is unfamiliar with, automatically appear. If a computer-suggested term is selected, more than 10,000 items defaming or disparaging him show up in a list, Tomita said. Google has so far not carried out the court...

Customer Credit Reports for Resale in Black market Internet security concerns grew the most, Approximately half of respondents said they were seriously concerned about viruses, spam, and the safety of online shopping. 70% of respondents said they were seriously concerned about identity theft, and 68% said they were seriously concerned about credit or debit card fraud. MSNBC today reported that, Hackers breach into credit rating agencies and stealing customer credit reports for resale on the black market. They claim that AnnualCreditReport.com, Equifax.com, or CreditReport.com are being hacked and consumer data stolen from them. " I'm selling super prime credit reports and scores which include all 3 bureaus and other information ," brags one advertisement on one site. Hackers' claim that the credit reporting firms are easy to compromise. The hacker explained that the trick is to open several credit report sites and keep trying random answers until one set works. A w...

17-year-old Hacker arrested for hacking into KPN mobile telecommunications A 17-year-old boy has been arrested for hacking into mobile telecommunications company KPN in the Netherlands. He has also been accused of other breaches in Japan, Korea, and Norway. The teenager was arrested last Tuesday in the Dutch town of Barendrecht, where police seized an encrypted computer, two laptops and other storage media including external hard drives, DVDs and USB sticks. The arrested teenager called himself "xS", "Yoshioka" and "Yui" online, is also suspected of breaching security of Tokohu University in Japan, as well as hacking computers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and at Trondheim University in Norway. Last but not least, he reportedly ran a website used for selling stolen credit card data. KPN also noted the arrest is unrelated to a January hack which resulted in the company taking 2 million e-mail accounts offline as a pre...

Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay links on Windows Live Messenger Microsoft has decided to block access to The Pirate Bay from Windows Live Messenger. When users try to send an instant message to a friend with a link from The Pirate Bay, Windows Live Messenger displays a warning, saying that the link is " blocked because it was reported as unsafe ." " We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked ," Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement. The Pirate Bay has been a lightning rod of controversy for years now, as copyright holders take aim at the organisation for giving users access to their content. Much of the focus of last year's ill-fated Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) centered on stopping The Pirate Bay and other sites that provide a similar service. Still, The Pirate ...

A Russian Zeus attacker Sentenced from Million Dollar Fraud  A Russian Hacker, who was part of an elaborate Cyber attack that used Zeus Banking Trojan  in U.S. visas to move cash stolen from U.S. businesses out of the country was sentenced on March 23 to two years in U.S. federal prison. Nikokay Garifulin received a two-year prison term for his involvement in a global bank fraud scheme that used hundreds of phony bank accounts to steal over $3 million from dozens of U.S.accounts that were compromised by malware attacks. According to court documents and statements, Garifulin was part of a cyber bank fraud scheme, backed by Eastern European hackers to steal money from the bank accounts of small and mid-sized businesses throughout the U.S. The cyber attacks included Zeus Trojan, would embed itself in victims' computers and record keystrokes as they logged into their online bank accounts. The hackers responsible for the malware then used the account information to take ...