DIGITALLAWUK

DigitalLaw News Summary 20 May 2013

DigitalLawUK — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:00:22 +0000

Australian cricketer in hot water for Social Media tirade

Aussie batsman Warner reported for Twitter rant – NY Daily News | Financial Times allegedly hacked by Syrians | 82% UK businesses unable to quantify their Data Protection spending- Direct Commerce magazine | Blackberry loses US Gov contracts as pentagon moves to iPhone

The Digital Law UK Examiner is out today – Take a look here!

Australia opening batsman David Warner will face a disciplinary hearing this week into an alleged code of conduct breach after a Twitter rant directed at two of the country’s leading cricket writers. Cricket Australia said Monday the hearing would take place on Wednesday via teleconference from India, where Warner is playing in the Indian Premier League. ”Warner is alleged to have breached Rule 6: Unbecoming Behaviour, regarding comments posted on his Twitter account,” CA said in a statement. CA began investigating Saturday after a fiery exchange on Warner’s Twitter account, @davidwarner31, against News Limited’s Robert Craddock, who had written an article critical of the Indian Premier League. The explosive opener plays for the Delhi Daredevils in the IPL, which was rocked last week by accusations of spot fixing against three Rajasthan Royals players, including Indian Test paceman Shanthakumaran Sreesanth. After posting a tweet with expletives aimed at Craddock, urging him to “get a real job”, the cricketer then took issue with Craddock’s colleague Malcolm Conn in abusive tweets sparking a back-and-forth exchange.

Britain’s Financial Times was hacked last week by a mysterious group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army. The newspaper’s technology blog was hacked to display a slogan saying: “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.” Several Twitter feeds run by the Financial Times were also plastered with similar slogans. The FT later said its blogs and social media accounts had been compromised by the hackers, who have claimed to be aligned with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

An independent survey commissioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found a clear lack of understanding around the proposed EU data reforms. Of the 506 businesses surveyed, 82 percent were unable to quantify their current spending on data protection. The survey also highlighted that 40 percent of respondents don’t have accurate knowledge of the 10 provisions—including explicit consent and the right to be forgotten—considered in the draft regulation.

The Pentagon has approved Apple’s iPhone for use on its secure Department of Defense website, clearing employees to switch to the device if they choose. Employees had previously been required to use BlackBerry devices which been cleared for Pentagon use several years ago.The DoD move comes six years after the iPhone first launched. Its iOS platform is considered highly secure on a consumer level, but the Pentagon uses extra scrutiny for devices used on its network, which may include the transfer of military secrets. The move is seen as a blow to BlackBerry, which had counted on government employee sales as a stronghold even as its consumer sales have dried up. Its new BlackBerry 10 phones will now have to compete with the iPhone for the Pentagon’s business.

The Digital Law UK Examiner is out today – Take a look here!

Chinese military unit resumes cyber attacks on US businesses – IT News from V3.co.uk

Blackberry loses US Gov contracts as pentagon moves to iPhone | Stabley Times

Google Glass review: Users maintain that privacy fears are overblown

Aussie batsman Warner reported for Twitter rant – NY Daily News | NewsCred SmartWire

Google Glass: Privacy, policy violation worries arise with wearable gadget

82% UK businesses unable tpo quantify their Data Protection spending- Direct Commerce magazine

Financial Times allegedly hacked by Syrians | Malaysia Sun

DigitalLawUK News Summary 17 May 2013

DigitalLawUK — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:39:44 +0000

Increased solar activity could wipe your data storage facility…

Would your Data System survive a Coronal Mass Ejection? | Sally Bercow pleads innocence over Lord McAlpine Twitter storm | Its not just the UK where jail can follow a tweet: Twitter activists jailed in Bahrain for insulting King | Do you trust the Financial Conduct Authority with your personal data? | ICO says business not ready for EU data protection reforms |

After a short break the new summary returns today with a Bang, literally the largest explosions in the solar system…..

The Sun has unleashed four colossal bursts of radiation in 48 hours. On Tuesday, it released the biggest solar flare of 2013 so far, an intense burst associated with a huge eruption of particles. When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with satellites and communications systems on the ground. Flares are associated with huge eruptions of matter from the Sun’s atmosphere – known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These CMEs can be even more disruptive because they are capable of sending billions of tonnes of charged gas and other particles into space. When powerful eruptions reach Earth, the charged matter can blow out transformers in power grids as well as tripping electronics on satellites. The so-called Carrington Event of 1-2 September 1859 shorted telegraph wires, starting fires in North America and Europe, and caused bright aurorae (northern and southern lights) to be seen in Cuba and Hawaii. What sort of damage would it cause if it happened now? We are overdue another such “event”

Sally Bercow, the speaker’s wife, has claimed she was merely asking an innocent question about Lord McAlpine on Twitter during a media frenzy over a Newsnight programme that wrongly linked him to sexual abuse in Wales. During the first stage of a libel trial over a tweet she sent last year, her barrister told the high court that it should be regarded as a random thought with no defamatory meaning. She is being sued for libel by the former Conservative party treasurer after tweeting: “Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*” on 4 November last year, two days after the Newsnight programme was broadcast.

A court in Bahrain has sentenced six activists to a year in jail for insulting King Hamad in messages posted on Twitter. They were convicted for what the Bahraini public prosecutor called the “misuse of freedom of expression”. The sentences come as the government and courts continue their crackdown on protest and dissent. Pro-democracy protests, both peaceful and violent, have rocked the Gulf island kingdom since February 2011. One of those convicted was lawyer Mahdi al-Basri, who was held responsible for “offensive” tweets attacking King Hamad and the ruling al-Khalifa family. Mr al-Basri did not send the tweets himself, but served as a lawyer for a community account that posted the material.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), partially taken over from the FSA, is to collect the personal information from mortgage applications for use by its policy risk and research division to monitor the lending of banks. This raises serious Data Protection act questions and we are also asked to trust another body Phoenixed out of the FSA who failed to monitor banking practices that lead to the near complete collapse of the UK’s banking industry. The plan under the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) will be to capture all the information supplied on a mortgage application, which if you have ever filled one out you will know contains pretty much everything about your personal, employment, income, spending, assets and credit details. Under the Data protection act if you collect personal data the duties include:

Only recording information required to complete the requested transaction
The Information must be accurate and not of opinion
The information must be kept securely and not used for another purpose unless requested to do so.

If this comes into force under new MMR rules in April 2014 customers will have no option as the Lenders will simply claim they have to pass on your data as it is a requirement to complete your requested transaction

Many businesses don’t understand what will be expected of them to comply with the EU’s reforms of data protection laws, according to a report by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). Consultancy firm London Economics, which surveyed 560 UK businesses on behalf of the ICO in January, found that 40% of companies do not understand any of the 10 main provisions being proposed. Moreover, most respondents (82%) are in the dark over how much they currently spend on data protection, and 87% could not estimate the likely costs of the EU’s draft proposals to their business. The EU is proposing to replace the current 18 year-old patchwork approach to data protection legislation with a single law on data handling, with which every member state would have to comply. This could have a significant effect on how companies of all sizes handle information on their customers. The report says that the proposals could cost small and midsized businesses an average of £76,000 annually, which translates to £47 billion per year to UK business as a whole.

BBC News – US politicians quiz Google on Glass privacy

Sally Bercow pleads innocence over Lord McAlpine Twitter storm | Politics | The Guardian

Do you trust the Financial Conduct Authority with your personal data?

EU launches data protection campaign | Click Lancashire

FCA regulator to collect and share mortgage borrowers’ personal data – Telegraph

Its not just the UK where jail can follow a tweet: Twitter activists jailed in Bahrain for insulting King

BBC News – MPs challenge Google over UK tax reporting

ICO says business not ready for EU data protection reforms | News | TechRadar

Would your Data System survive a Coronal Mass Ejection? BBC News – Four colossal Sun flares in 48 hours

The AP Twitter hack: The $42 Billion warning about the importance of password security

DigitalLawUK — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:56:18 +0000

A bogus post on the Associated Press’ (AP) Twitter account late last month shows the need for greater care to be taken over internet password security.

The $42 Billion Tweet

The AP feed was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of activists and hackers who claim to be supporters of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group posted a tweet claiming that ‘explosions’ had been set off in the White House and that Barack Obama had been injured. AP employees immediately responded by correcting the tweet and temporarily suspending the AP Twitter account.
Despite AP’s quick response, the impact of the hack was felt in the financial world as the resulting Wall Street panic from the hacks caused a brief stock market crash. The stock market dropped by around $42 billion in a matter of minutes after the hack. This represented a fall of some 15%. Stocks recovered quickly once AP had regained control of its account, but this incident shows how easily the financial market can be affected by poor password protection on social media sites.
Twitter hacks of large organisations are becoming increasingly common. Recent victims include Burger King and Jeep. Burger King’s official Twitter account was hacked in February; the hackers took control of the site, changed the Burger King avatar to the McDonald’s logo, and made an announcement that Burger King had been taken over by McDonald’s. Burger King temporarily disabled the site and rectified the changes, though this did little to lower the embarrassment for the company.
Jeep’s Twitter account was hacked just one day after the Burger King hack, with similar alterations made to the account. The hackers announced that Jeep had been bought by Cadillac and featured a model of the Cadillac ATS on the account. Ironically, Jeep had tweeted about the Burger King hack only a few minutes, emphasising the importance of online security. McDonald’s and Cadillac both deny any involvement in the hacks.
These recent hacks demonstrate the serious security risk posed by inadequate password protection. Increasing password strength using a mixture of numbers, lower and upper case letters, and non-alphabetic characters can reduce this risk, as can limiting the amount of people to whom the password is made available.

DigitalLawUK Daily News Summary 1 May 2013

DigitalLawUK — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:04:21 +0000

Lions Tours hopes to avoid Social Media faux pas

Lions players given social media warning |ICO to target private investigators in data protection probe |Bond-style Secure Messenger: app that can wipe sent messages from receiver’s phone to help UK spies | Is UK doing enough to protect itself from cyber attack?

See the Presentations and PDFs from yesterday’s 4 hour super – seminar on Data Protection, Social Media & The Law HERE

British and Irish Lions tour manager Andy Irvine has confirmed there will be a social media protocol for players to follow on this summer’s Australia tour. Players will not be prevented from using the likes of Twitter or Facebook, but Irvine is well aware of the possible hazards. ”Social media these days you can make a mistake and it can be around the world in seconds. We do have a protocol we will be following,” Irvine said. ”It’s not as if we are headmasters and telling kids what to do. There will be an opportunity for the players to look at it (protocol) and accept it and understand it. ”It takes years to build up a good reputation, but you can lose it in seconds. We are alert to that.

Data protection experts are to look into the activities of private investigators in a bid to work out whether they are breaching strict laws on the protection of confidential information. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced it is to carry out an examination of those in the industry and remove any elements that may contravene the Data Protection Act. Information commissioner Christopher Graham said: “By shining a light into the darkest corners of the private investigation industry we are aiming to root out any criminal elements that continue to cause public concern and blight [its] professional reputation.”

British spies could be offered a James Bond-style smartphone app after a UK company devised what it believes to be the world’s first totally secure messaging service.

The secret technology uses complex ciphers to send heavily encrypted messages from one iPhone to another without passing through any central servers – and is being offered straight off the shelf for £3.99.

Designers are so convinced by its levels of security that they have challenged hackers to crack its codes and have offered a £10,000 prize to anyone who can intercept a message.

It is hoped the app, designed by the British firm Redact, based in Geneva, could become the latest asset in the world of espionage.

In 2010 the British government designated the protection of computer networks as one of the country’s most important national security priorities. In its Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) it pledged, “the National Cyber Security Programme will be supported by £650m of new investment over the next four years”. What exactly has this investment bought, three years on? Speaking on and off the record to insiders – from the government, intelligence agencies and security industry – it is apparent that the achievements in defending the UK from this threat have disappointed many. Much of the available funding may actually have been directed at improving the UK’s ability to target other countries’ computer secrets. Some point out that even if everything had gone to plan, an investment averaging £162.5m per year over four years could only have a limited effect on such a huge problem. Security experts estimate that there are about 50 million cyber attacks a year in the UK, a number which they say is growing rapidly all of the time, and they put the damage to the UK economy at up to £27bn last year

The EC Data Protection Proposals Will Be Costly And Complex

Charity Finance Group publishes guide to data protection for charities

Google Pays $189,000 Fine to German DPA For Unlawfully Collecting, Storing Wi-Fi Data | Bloomberg BNA

David Cleary: Twitter, Account Hacks and All, Still the News Source of Choice for Many

Regulators to Discuss Twitter Hoax Tuesday – MoneyBeat – WSJ

BBC – Is UK doing enough to protect itself from cyber attack?

Bond-style Secure Messenger: app that can wipe sent messages from receiver’s phone to help UK spies – Independent

The Future arrives with Google Glass: First images taken on Glass appear on Twitter – The Independent

BBC News – Twitter warns news organisations over hacking amid Syrian attacks

Google is listening & watching! First, Glass. Next, Google Now, a voice-control service – Independent

Lions players given social media warning – Independent.ie

IOSCO to discuss social media influence on capital markets – Business Line

ICO to target private investigators in data protection probe |BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT

Infosecurity – Smart meters – benefit or information security threat?

DigitalLawUK News Update 23 April 2013

DigitalLawUK — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:29:36 +0000

The Dept of Education could face huge fines for not responding to FOI Requests

Gove could face legal action over his dept’s failure to answer 85% of FOI requests on time | Are new data protection proposals for a ‘right to be forgotten’ workable? |Google fined over illegal wi-fi data capture in Germany | Scottish officials spend £400k on FoI legal advice

Legal action against the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has not been ruled out by the data protection watchdog following serious failures by the Department for Education to improve its record in answering Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

The prospect of a legal battle, which would be likely to involve a number of close Gove aides, will do little for the morale of his government department, widely regarded as being under siege following a raft of controversial reforms demanded by Mr Gove.

Among the unanswered FOIs are requests that Mr Gove publish both official and private exchanges of emails, text messages and transcripts of phone calls sent between two of his close advisers and officials in 10 Downing Street.

The protected exchanges, if made public, could prove highly damaging for Mr Gove as some are believed to contain stark criticism of policies backed by the Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Have you ever fancied doing a digital disappearing act? Well look no further. European Commission proposals to update data protection lawacross Europe, include a proposal for a “right to be forgotten”. As a basic concept it is snappy and memorable. It suggests that at the press of a button we can apply a digital eraser to our past. However, will this right live up to the hype? Possibly not. In particular, there are genuine concerns that this legal right will fail to deliver on the expectations it creates and will present significant challenges for businesses that have to comply. Rather than a right to be forgotten, we may end up with nothing more than a right to be frustrated. This appears to be a view shared by the UK Ministry of Justice. In a statement the MOJ said: “The title raises unrealistic and unfair expectations of the proposals… the reasonable steps required by the draft regulation would promise much but deliver little.” In principle, the right to be forgotten would mean people could get their personal information removed from primary websites and any other sites that link to, or republish, this information. The right could apply in cases where, for example, information is being held for longer than needed by a business or where a person withdraws their consent to the continued publication of this material.

Following a $7 million settlement last month related to a long-standing Street View Wi-Fi case involving privacy concerns in the U.S., Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ) has now been fined in Germany by regulators for the same thing. The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information fined the search giant approximately $190,000 for “illegal” recording of Wi-Fi networks, according to a statement issued today. The data collection occurred between 2008 and 2010 when Google captured personal data on wireless networks within range of its Street View vehicles that took pictures of surrounding areas. Google cooperated with regulators during the investigation, according to the commissioner, and turned over its data for inspection. Regulators found a large amount of personal data, and Google was instructed to delete its illegally collected data.

PUBLIC authorities in Scotland have paid lawyers more than £400,000 to help dodge freedom of information requests. More than 60 Scottish authorities have paid legal firms thousands of pounds for advice on how to apply exemptions within the FoI Act and on reviews and appeals to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC). Private advice was also taken despite officials having access to free information from the SIC.

BBC News – Google boss defends UK tax record to BBC

BBC News – Google fined over illegal wi-fi data capture in Germany

BBC News – Russian BadNews bug found in Android app store

Scottish officials spend £400k on FoI legal advice | Deadline News

Small businesses fear red tape in EU cyber directive – The Independent

Council defends redacted payments (From The Northern Echo)

European Commission says Institute of Fundraising’s data fears are unfounded

BBC News – Does technology hinder or help toddlers’ learning?

Gove could face legal action over his dept’s failure to answer 85% of FOI requests on time – The Independent

Google chairman Eric Schmidt warns of ‘the dark side of the digital revolution’ | BGR

Google Fined in Germany Over Street View Collection of Personal Data (GOOG)

Are new data protection proposals for a ‘right to be forgotten’ workable? | Guardian Professional

DigitalLawUK News 22 April 2013

DigitalLawUK — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:16:46 +0000

Samsung did the online equivalent of pointing and laughing at its competitor and could face a $850K fine

Samsung being investigated for hiring students in Taiwan to make fun of HTC online | Paris Brown: Kent Tweet row girl will not be prosecuted |Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher – less than 1/3 of newsroom output makes it into print edition | Twitter does drive sales, says Deloitte study

The DigitalLawUK Examiner is out today – Take a look here

According to the AFP, an investigation has been launched in Taiwan against Samsung. The claim states that Samsung hired students to make fun of HTC on the internet. When Samsung Taiwan was asked to explain their actions, the company said they weren’t even aware that an investigation is taking place. Curiously, Samsung did post a status update on their Taiwanese Facebook page that says they regret “any inconvenience and confusion” concerning their latest online campaigns.

The former Kent youth police and crime commissioner will not face prosecution over comments she made on Twitter, police have said. Paris Brown, 17, who quit the £15,000-a-year post on 9 April, was interviewed under caution on 14 April over comments she posted before her appointment. Kent Police said it did not believe the comments, in context, were grossly offensive on an objective assessment. Her lawyers claimed that the investigation was “disproportionate”. Kent Police received more than 50 complaints from members of the public about the online posts, which could be considered racist and homophobic. In a statement, the force said: “We have spoken to the CPS about our findings and given them our view that this case does not pass the evidential threshold for prosecution.

Newsrooms are producing content in far greater volumes and in new formats, turning digital designers and developers into the new “superstars” of the newsroom, The Daily Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher told the Shift 2013 conference in London on Tuesday. He says: “There is a high premium paid for designers and developers who can package your content digitally.” And how has Gallagher’s role changed? He says the editor job is essentially the same, except he now has to “value multimedia as much as words”.

So in an average day The Telegraph now produces:

– 600 articles

– 40 substantial videos

– 25 picture galleries

– 25 concurrently updated blog and an average of five live news blogs across news and sport.

– Gallagher says barely a third of the output of The Telegraph newsroom goes out in print.

The big question for many brands when it comes to social media is how does it affect the bottom line? Twitter provided an answer to that question yesterday as it released a study showing how tweets drive sales. The study by Deloitte, which was launched at the Twitter4Brands event at the Tate Modern on London’s Southbank, showed that tweets not only generate valuable word-of-mouth effects that impacts consumer demand, but positive tweets about a brand directly drive sales. In some cases, the impact on sales for brands can be quite dramatic, which was borne out by EA Games, whose European community manager Alistair Reid who spoke at the event. Overall, the study found that a 30% increase in positive tweets is four times more effective in driving sales than a 30% increase in traditional above-the-line advertising, and the effect is most pronounced when it comes to sports games.

Police forces spying on our phone calls and emails 250,000 times a year – Telegraph

U.S. Launches Charm Offensive in Brussels Over EU Data-Protection Rules – Real Time Brussels – WSJ

US:EU Data – Keeping a Safe Harbor

BBC News – Paris Brown: Kent Tweet row girl will not be prosecuted

Twitter does drive sales, says Deloitte study [infographic] | The Wall Blog

US: Should security trump privacy in wake of Boston bombings? – Politics – CBC News

US: Silicon Valley companies quietly try to kill Internet privacy bill – San Jose Mercury News

Boston probe underscores differing views on privacy between U.S., Europe -delcotimes.com

AFP: Samsung being investigated for hiring students in Taiwan to make fun of HTC online

From the Archives – 1992 view of “The Executive Computer” – Accurate predictions for now – NY Times

US smartphone sales — iPhone grows, Apple flatlines – Benedict Evans

Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher – less than 1/3 of newsroom output makes it into print edition | TheMediaBriefing

SMEs at increasingly higher risk from cybercriminals

DigitalLawUK — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:35:14 +0000

Hackers are turning their attention to the less securely defended IT systems operated by SMEs

Cybercriminals don’t target only major corporations with six-figure profits, a recent report from Symantec has found. In fact, as a group SMEs are more vulnerable than large businesses to cyber-attacks.

Symantec’s report states that SMEs are frequently the victims of targeted attacks; businesses with fewer than 250 employees accounted for 31% of all targeted attacks in 2012. These attacks consist of purpose-built malicious codes which are distributed to individual businesses, and SMEs are at a particular risk because unlike large corporations, they often do not have adequate anti-virus programmes to block these attacks.The report found that attackers also ‘use SMEs as springboards…against larger organisations’ with which the SMEs have business relationships. While SMEs have lower resources than large businesses, they still have valuable assets such as intellectual property and information about customers and clients, and these are the types of assets that cybercriminals exploit in targeted attacks. Symantec’s report also notes that a significant reason for the scale of cybercrime aimed at SMEs is the lack of knowledge among SMEs about their vulnerability to attacks.

The report put forward several recommendations for both SMEs and consumers to secure their systems and protect themselves from cybercrime. One of the most important of these was informing SMEs of the risks posed by cybercrime, since ‘small size and relative anonymity are not defences against the most sophisticated attacks.’ Symantec also recommended that SMEs install ‘mutually supportive defensive systems’ to prevent cyber-attacks taking place – these include regularly updates firewalls, anti-virus systems, intrusion protection systems, data loss protection software, and web security appliances. Raising employee awareness of how cybercrime takes place, and how it can be prevented, was another of Symantec’s recommendations. The report found that attackers are focussing on employees in sales and in research and development roles, implying that ‘attackers are casting a wider net and targeting less senior positions…in order to gain access to companies.’

DigitalLawUK News 19 April 2013

DigitalLawUK — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:09:42 +0000

Ofcom fines TalkTalk AGAIN – a whopping £750k over ‘abandoned calls’ gaffe | Icelandic ‘anti-incest’ app aims to stop families getting too close | University recruitment: one fifth of students say social media doesn’t work | Why US Small Businesses Are Losing On Social Media

Ofcom has once again fined telco TalkTalk, after the company swamped potential customers with silent calls. It now has to pay £750,000 for failing to comply with UK law. The ISP was hit with a massive £3m penalty from the communications watchdog in 2011 for wrongly billing tens of thousands of customers for services they never received and then failing to fix the cockup.

In Iceland, with its measly island population of just 320,000, shared ancestry between its inhabitants is far more common, leading to far higher chance of confusing familial relations. So much so, that developers have produced an app that encourages users to “bump in the app before you bump in the bed”. Anti-virus software developer Friðrik Skúlason had earlier produced an online database to allow Icelanders to trace their heritage online, before three app developers took the information and made a specific anti-incest feature on their Book of Icelanders Android app.

Universities still have a way to go to ensure that their social mediapresence is seen as a credible source of information for prospective students. Our research, conducted with online student community The Student Room, surveyed over 300 potential and current students about what information sources or channels influenced their choice of university. We found that although 65% of students use social media channels several times a day, students rated universities’ social media presence as less influential and less trustworthy than more traditional sources such as prospectuses or open days. Prospective students are keen to engage with their university through social media channels, with one fifth of students saying that universities don’t make enough use of social media in recruitment, which meant they currently didn’t expect or look for information there. What’s more, many of the students we surveyed were clueless that their chosen university even had a Twitter or Facebook account – showing that there is a need for universities to ensure their social media presence is clearly signposted to attract the widest audience.

A new report from online business community Manta shows that, desperate to increase sales numbers in 2013, American small business owners are turning up on the social web in droves. The trouble is, no matter how much time they spend, they’re simply not seeing a return on investment. Social media use is trending upward according to the survey of more than 1,235 small business owners, no surprise given the attention paid to the various social platforms by big businesses and media outlets. Nearly 50% have increased time spent on social media this year and nearly 55% say they’re using platforms like Twitter and Facebook as a primary tool for either acquiring new customers of generating sales leads. It all sounds promising until this head-scratching result: despite their dedication and belief that social media is the Hail Mary of small business owners everywhere, more than 60% of small business owners say they haven’t seen any return on investment from their engagement online. None.

E-reader sales hold up against new tablets – BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

Ofcom fines TalkTalk AGAIN – a whopping £750k over ‘abandoned calls’ gaffe • The Register

Icelandic ‘anti-incest’ app aims to stop families getting too close – Europe – World – The Independent

Daniel Newman: Executives Using Social Media — A Waste of Time?

Why US Small Businesses Are Losing On Social Media – Forbes

US: Ohio State monitors athletes’ Twitter, Facebook – Campus – The Lantern – Ohio State University

University recruitment: one fifth of students say social media doesn’t work | Guardian

DigitalLawUK News Summary 18 April 2013

DigitalLawUK — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:58:25 +0000

SMEs most at risk from hackers

Hackers focus on SMEs | Social networking on desktops may have peaked in 2012 |Web users spent a quarter of their time online on social networks in 2012 |Google Glass: An end to Privacy as first customers get £1,000 electronic specs

SMEs are three times more likely to be targeted by cybercriminal attacks than in 2011 according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec. There was a 42 per cent surge in targeted attacks – operations focusing on a specific target or victim as opposed to a large group of people or employees – and small businesses are the focus of 31 per cent of such incidents, up from just over 10 per cent in 2011.

Perhaps there is such a thing as too much Facebook. In 2012, U.S. consumers on personal computers spent about 27 percent of their Internet time with social networking sites and forums, or 16 minutes for every hour, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.Though that’s an alarming finding for some, the figure, which doesn’t reflect mobile browsing, is actually down 3 percentage points from the previous year. In 2011, social networking in the U.S. peaked at 30 percent of all time spent online, according to Experian.A report published by Experian shows that internet users in the US, UK and Australia spend on average 16 minutes of every hour spent online on updating their status and their accounts on social networks or forums on their desktop computers. In comparison, nine minutes is spent on entertainment websites and only 10 per cent (or six minutes) on shopping. Of the three countries, UK internet users are the most engaged online shoppers according to the research, spending proportionally more time on shopping websites compared to the US or Australia. Experian says in December 2012, around 370 million hours were spent buying things online in the UK, a quarter more than the monthly average.

Now that Google Glasses have been released to a select group as part of the Beta testing, viral videos have begun popping up online that show what it is like to film a video wearing the device. The glasses were released to the first group of developers outside the company on Wednesday and the excited testers uploaded footage to YouTube that they captured wearing the devices. Clips show Google Glass wearers doing an array of activities, including sitting in front of a computer playing a video game, driving a go kart and completing a plastic ball puzzle.
Web users spent a quarter of their time online on social networks in 2012 | ITProPortal.com

Social networking on desktops may have peaked in 2012, Experian finds | CNET News

Google Glass: An end to Privacy as first customers get £1,000 electronic specs | Mail Online

Hackers focus on SMEs – Technology Industry News | The Irish Times

WhatsApp CEO Says It Is ‘Bigger Than Twitter’

John Lewis in broadband push – Telegraph

LG: UK phone market is most tricky in the world | News | TechRadar

Microsoft continues patent licensing push with Foxconn parent deal – IT News from V3.co.uk

DigitalLawUK News Summary 16 April 2013

DigitalLawUK — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:53:08 +0000

SME’s are at risk from hackers due to the lower security levels they tend to have….

Report finds small businesses battered by cybercrime | Dispute over allegedly libellous Lord McAlpine tweet by Sally Bercow at High Court | 71% of Facebook Users Engage in ‘Self-Censorship |Facebook hits back at privacy worries with new initiative

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting small businesses due to their less sophisticated defenses, according to a new report from Symantec. Companies with 250 employees or less absorbed 18 percent of targeted cyberattacks in 2011, but the figure jumped to 31 percent in 2012, Symantec said in its Internet Security Threat Report 2013, released on Tuesday. ”While it can be argued that the rewards of attacking a small business are less than what can be gained from a large enterprise, this is more than compensated by the fact that many small companies are typically less careful in their cyberdefenses,” the report said.

Organizations between 251 employees to 2,500 were targeted 19 percent of the time, with companies with more than 2,500 employees making up the remaining 50 percent, Symantec said. The company said it detected a 42 percent increase overall in cyberattacks in 2012 compared to 2011.Employees in research and development and sales functions are prime targets for hackers, and Symantec said it saw a large increase in attacks directed at those roles. “This suggests that attackers are casting a wider net and targeting less senior positions below the executive level in order to gain access to companies,” the report said.

Only a “moron” would not have linked Lord McAlpine to false claims that he was a paedophile, following a tweet by Sally Bercow, the High Court heard, as the peer claimed victory in the first stage of a libel battle.

A court hearing will decide whether Bercow’s tweet in November last year – “Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*” – was defamatory, Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled. If Lord McAlpine is successful, a further hearing will decide the level of damages.

Mrs Bercow, the Speaker’s wife, was one of several high-profile figures who mentioned Lord McAlpine’s name on Twitter, wrongly linking him to claims of child abuse at the Bryn Estyn boys’ home in North Wales.

The peer was falsely accused after a Newsnight investigation accused “a leading Conservative politician from the Thatcher years” of sexually abusing boys at the home in the Seventies and Eighties.

Lord McAlpine’s QC, Sir Edward Garnier, told the hearing that Mrs Bercow’s Twitter following of almost 60,000 was bigger than the readership of some local newspapers.

“We are not talking about some kitchen table blogger addressing perhaps herself and one other person,” he said.

Sir Edward told the court that, in the context of the Newsnight broadcast and the media coverage, only “a moron in a hurry” or an “anchorite in a sealed cave” could not have known the meaning of the tweet.

Most Americans now know the feeling of typing something into a social media input box, thinking again, and deciding against posting whatever it was. But while it certainly seemed like a widespread phenomenon, no one had actually quantified the extent of this “self-censorship.” But now, new research based on a sample of 3.9 million Facebook users reveals precisely how widespread this activity is. Carnegie Mellon PhD student Sauvik Das and Facebook’s Adam Kramer measured how many people typed more than five characters into Facebook content-input boxes, but then did not post them. They term this “last-minute self-censorship.” The research was posted to Das’ website and will presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s conference on Weblogs and Social Media in July. The numbers are impressively large. Fully one-third of all Facebook posts were self-censored, according to the method Das and Kramer devised, though they warn they probably captured a substantial number of false positives. 71 percent of all the users surveyed engaged in some self-censorship either on new posts or in comments, and the median self-censorer did so multiple times. Perhaps the most interesting part of the study was the demographic correlations with self-censorship. Men self-censored more often, particularly if they had large numbers of male friends. Interestingly, people with more diverse friend groups — measured by age, political affiliation, and gender — were less likely to self-censor.

Subject to a seemingly endless barrage of criticisms over how it collects and presents information, including concerns over its new Facebook Home for Android, it’s no wonder Facebook is considered a dubious character when it comes to privacy. But the social network has now announced that it will be working with the National Association of Attorneys General in the US in an effort to promote privacy awareness to younger users. Facebook will release videos that answer questions about privacy and demonstrate how to manage your profile so you can make it as secure as possible.

Dispute over allegedly libellous Lord McAlpine tweet by Sally Bercow at High Court – The Independent

Symantec report finds small businesses battered by cybercrime | ITworld

EU Accepts Google Antitrust Proposal – Information Week Government

BBC News – Clearer phone charges on the way, says Ofcom

71% of Facebook Users Engage in ‘Self-Censorship’ – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic

Facebook: advertisers find their products on page glorifying rape and domestic abuse | Mail Online

Facebook hits back at privacy worries with new initiative | TechRadar

Online privacy: nothing to fear | guardian.co.uk

Online privacy: Facebook, lawyers team up to educate kids, parents in US – The Times of India