A privacy advocacy group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to pull the plug on Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and the company's other Web apps until government-approved "safeguards are verifiably established."

The Electronic Privacy Information Center submitted the far-reaching request to the FTC in a letter from its director, Marc Rotenberg, on Tuesday. It argues that a formal legal injunction halting all Google cloud-computing services pending formal government approval is necessary to "adequately safeguard the confidential information" of users.

Paragraph 57 of EPIC's letter asks the FTC to "enjoin Google from offering cloud computing services until safeguards are verifiably established."

The complaints invoke the FTC's legal authority to file civil lawsuits against "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." In this case, EPIC claims that Google is violating that law because of its "inadequate security practices."

"One of the powers of the FTC is to say if you can't provide a safe product, we can take it from the marketplace," Rotenberg said. He acknowledged having the FTC attempt to pull the plug on Google Apps until privacy fixes were done was a long shot, but said the broader goal was to raise awareness of the privacy and security risks of cloud computing. (EPIC previously claimed Gmail was illegal and attempted to have it shut down.)

said by TKJunkMail :

LOL - fat chance this will ever happen. But it does show that some of these consumer advocacy groups are smoking dope.

March Madness is in the air. To be more specific, it's on airwaves that certain AT&T and Verizon Wireless phones can pick up, letting them show live NCAA basketball tournament games this season.

AT&T subscribers with certain phones will be able to view all 63 NCAA tournament games live, the phone company said Wednesday. Customers at Verizon Wireless, which had some games available last year, will be able to see 27.

Both companies charge $15 per month for mobile TV, but AT&T is offering a two-month free trial of the service.

Only a handful of phones have the special receivers needed for the broadcasts. Examples are the LG Vu and Samsung Eternity sold by AT&T and the LG Voyager sold by Verizon Wireless.

Aiming to better compete against a growing list of rivals, Microsoft on Thursday is launching Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of its Web browser.
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IE 8, as the browser is known, was first shown a year ago and has been in testing for months. The new browser adds security improvements, a private browsing option, as well as the ability to save pre-defined "slices" of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing.

But perhaps the biggest change in the browser is one made behind the scenes--the decision to make the browser better adhere to Web standards. That should make life easier for Web developers in the future, but also poses compatibility challenges for sites that are optimized specifically for older versions of IE. In part to address this, Microsoft has a "compatibility" mode that lets Web sites indicate if they would prefer to be run by an engine that is more like older versions of the browser.

As for IE 8, Microsoft will make it available for download beginning at 9 a.m. PDT on Thursday, but will wait a while before it begins to push it to Windows users who have their computers set to get the latest updates automatically.

said by gball :

I have been using IE8 for awhile now also but there are still web sites I go to that tell me I need to install a supported browser.

For example I went to abc.com to watch a episode of Castle and the java popup to play the video tells me I need to install a supported browser..Very fustrating as theres no way around it I have found