Google settles $8.5m Buzz lawsuit

Google has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a privacy class-action lawsuit stemming from the company's February release of the social networking service Buzz, Media Post News reveals.

The tentative settlement calls for Google to pay around $6 million to various privacy organisations, and $2 500 to each of seven individual Web users who sued.

The class-action attorneys who brought the lawsuit will split up to $2.5 million.

With a judicial assistance, Microsoft has perfected a new super-weapon to shoot down botnets and cyber gangs, reports USA Today.

A US district court granted a motion that, in effect, gives Microsoft permanent ownership of 276 Web domains once used by the Waledac cyber gang to send instructions to hundreds of thousands of spam-spreading PCs.

Cybersleuths and attorneys at Microsoft's digital crimes unit actually decapitated the Waledac botnet in February by persuading district court judge Leonie Brinkema to issue a temporary restraining order to take said domains offline.

The same GPS technology that motorists use to get directions can be used by police without a warrant to track suspects, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled, reports WTVR.

In a case that prompted warnings of Big Brother-like snooping by the government, the court unanimously ruled that Fairfax County Police did nothing wrong when they planted a GPS device on the bumper of a registered sex offender's work van without obtaining a warrant.

Police were investigating a series of sexual assaults in northern Virginia in 2008 when they focused on David Foltz Jr, a registered sex offender on probation.