Justice Breyer's Records Leaked in File-Sharing Snafu

File-sharing site ordered to permanently disable software

(NEWSER) - File-sharing site LimeWire has been effectively killed off by a court order. A federal judge has issued an injunction ordering the service to permanently disable its software and to end the sharing of unauthorized music files, the Wall Street Journal reports. The popular site was found liable for copyright infringement on a "massive scale" six months ago. More»

Private data lying around in plain view on Internet

(NEWSER) - Last year the number of identity theft victims in the US jumped 12%, while the number of Internet-related fraud cases went up 23%. But the problem isn't just hackers, say experts: In many cases, we're exposing our private data to anyone and everyone who knows where to look. Atlanta officials recently found names, Social Security numbers, and home phone numbers of 1,000 of the city's firefighters online, for instance. More»

(NEWSER) - Sweden’s Pirate Party scored a major victory last night, capturing one of the country’s 18 seats in the European parliament, AFP reports. The party—which advocates for the legalization of peer-to-peer file sharing, stronger digital privacy protections, and reforms in copyright law—was formed in 2006 and saw its membership triple to 48,000 after founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site were convicted in April. More»

Hackers target popular search terms

(NEWSER) - Internet hackers are like pickpockets: They target crowds, and the best place to find them on the web is through search engines, ABC News reports, so thieves tie malware programs to popular word searches. After analyzing more than 2,600 terms, security firm McAfee found these to be the 10 most dangerous:

• Word Unscrambler
• Lyrics
• MySpace
• Free Music Downloads

27 tech giants have banded together to fight it

(NEWSER) - April Fools’ Day passed without major incident, but the Conficker computer worm is still contacting 500 websites daily from millions of infected computers, reports PC World. A conglomerate of 27 tech heavyweights—including Microsoft, Facebook, and AOL—have managed to limit the peer-to-peer worm’s communicability. But Conficker is still amenable to instructions from its authors, possibly laying low until the publicity wanes. More»