Google is looking to eradicate images of child sexual abuse from the Web and go after the abusers and pedophiles who post the offending pictures. The company is working on a huge database of pornographic photos tagged with unique fingerprints to help law enforcement, private companies and charitable organizations isolate the photos more rapidly and identify their uploaders and online distributers. This coul...

Tens of thousands of Iranians are vulnerable to phishing attacks as elections approach, according to Google. In the last three weeks, the company blocked several email-based phishing campaigns aimed at compromising the accounts of Iranian users. The attacks, which originate from within the country, represent a significant jump in the overall volume of phishing activity in the region. “The timing and targeti...

Motorola presented two new electronic authentication prototypes, a tattoo and an FDA-approved pill, that make the human body transmit passwords to smart devices in an attempt to mark the beginning of a new wearable and edible technology. At the D11 conference, Regina Dudan, advanced research head for Motorola, said people need to transcend the login technology that has been used for more than 40 years and s...

A new provision in Google’s developer content policy will prevent developers from delivering application updates directly via their web-servers. This will protect users from cleared Store apps that go rogue once installed.  According to the latest revision of the Play Developer Program Policies, developers are forbidden to rig Play apps with mechanisms that "modify, replace or update its own APK binary code...

While some bars have already expressed reluctance in accepting customers with Google Glasses, strip joints joined the bandwagon as the technology could be too disruptive and intrusive. Having the potential of being used to constantly record and broadcast videos; it raises serious privacy concerns for casinos, strip clubs, theaters and other places. Although Google Glasses have not yet been released, some ha...

Spanish curiosity is once again exploited by cyber-criminals, who are making money from two main scams. “Quien te elimino de Facebook” (“Who deleted you on Facebook”) and “Creditos de Facebook gratis” (“Free Facebook Credits”) are making rounds on the social network, spreading through fraudulent websites on Google’s blog service, Blogger. More than 42,000 Spanish users have already liked the scam that promi...

Google launched a new campaign aimed at helping webmasters to quickly recover from hacked websites. Posting tutorials, tips and tricks and other information that could speed up recovery, Google’s initiative is the latest in a line of anti-hacking campaigns. Teaching website owners how to bounce back in the event of a hack, Google’s “Webmasters help for hacked sites” website covers topics ranging from why ha...

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a whitepaper arguing that local mobile companies should start focusing on developing an independent mobile operating system to escape dependency on Google’s Android. Recognizing that a new mobile OS might not compete with Apple, Google or Microsoft in terms of technical know-how, the document strongly encourages local mobile developers and ma...

Google released new figures detailing the number of National Security Letters (NSLs) requests coming from the FBI and other agencies that request user information when conducting national security investigations. In  2009, 2011, and 2012 there were between 1,000 and 1,999 NSL’s on user accounts, while in 2011 there were between 2,000 and 2,999 requests. Although Google did not post absolute numbers as they ...

Bitdefender security researchers recommend all employees to refrain from revealing the name of the company they are working for and minimize data sharing on social networking platforms. This information will do them and their companies more harm than good. And nowhere is this recommendation more urgent than in the United States – the country with both the highest profile hacking targets and the most lax cit...