Privacy watchdogs slam Google Buzz

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) - a high-profile public advocacy group - has filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission over Google Buzz, a social networking service that Google added onto Gmail recently, reports The Register.

In its complaint, Epic says the new service violates user expectations, diminishes user privacy, and contradicts Google's privacy policy. The group even questions whether Buzz violated federal wiretap law.

The US Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents operators of "electronic communication" services from disclosing certain subscriber information without consent - including "addressing" information - and the privacy watchdog believes this "may" apply to Buzz.

Imagine what would happen if a massive cyber attack hit the US, crippling mobile phones and overwhelming both telephone infrastructure and the electricity grid, suggests InformationWeek.

"Cyber Shockwave", conceived and executed by the Bipartisan Policy Centre along with experts in cyber security, simulated such an attack and discovered that the US is ill-prepared to handle a large-scale cyber attack.

In an effort to spur US officials to take cyber security more seriously, Cyber Shockwave brought together a group of former high-ranking White House, Cabinet, and national security officials to see how they would deal with such a crisis in real-time.

eBay is working on a fix for a cross-site request forgery problem that could allow an attacker to change a user's password and get access to that user's account, writes eWeek.

The vulnerability is one of several affecting eBay that were recently uncovered by Nir Goldshlager, a researcher with Avnet Information Security Consulting.

Among the vulnerabilities are cross-site scripting bugs in the eBay Live Help support page and eBay To Go, which the company fixed by validating user input. In addition, Goldshlager uncovered a blind SQL injection problem in the eBay donations Web site.

Google, the Internet's most profitable company, is giving $2 million to support Wikipedia, a volunteer-driven reference tool that has emerged as one of the Web's most-read sites, says The Wall Street Journal.

Wikimedia Foundation, owner of Wikipedia, says Google has donated $2 million to further develop the popular encyclopaedia and other projects. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, broke the news on Twitter, followed by a formal announcement from the non-profit organisation.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin calls Wikipedia "one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet... this vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online".