The European Union agreed on Thursday to one of the world’s most far-reaching laws to address the power of the biggest tech companies, potentially reshaping app stores, online advertising, e-commerce, messaging services and other everyday digital tools.
It’s not been a good week for auDA, the .au policy and regulatory body, and their backend registry provider Afilias. First on Tuesday there was a security incident that auDA claims saw “a small number of domains” disappear for half an hour. Then today with the launch of second level (or .au direct) registrations, there has been another stuff up that sees all new second level/direct registrations having to be manually entered after registration with no timeframe given for a resolution.
Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, alleging it failed to take action against scammers on its social media platform.
Long before waging war on Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin was working to make Russia’s internet a powerful tool of surveillance and social control akin to China’s so-called Great Firewall.
A digital Iron Curtain may be descending on Russia, as President Vladimir Putin struggles to control the narrative about his war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has already moved to block Facebook and Twitter, and its latest step in that direction came Friday as the government announced plans to block Instagram in the country, as well.
As the conflict in Ukraine escalates, expert cyber-watchers have been speculating about the kind of cyber-attacks that Russia might conduct. Will the Kremlin turn off Ukraine’s power grid, dismantle Ukraine’s transport system, cut off the water supply or target the health system? Or would cybercriminals operating from Russia, who could act as proxies for the Russian regime, conduct these activities?
Like much else about the country, Russia’s internet has long straddled East and West.
Even as President Vladimir V. Putin tightened his grip on Russian society over the past 22 years, small pockets of independent information and political expression remained online.
Advocates of an open, globally connected Internet long have worried that a major country or region would break away from the Web amid geopolitical strife, dashing hopes of a seamless network capable of uniting a fractious world.
Russia has completely blocked access to Facebook in retaliation for the platform placing restrictions on state-owned media.