The Web

The United Kingdom recently launched a broad system of age verification that requires any platforms that host pornography or other "harmful" content to ensure their users are 18 or older.... Read more

Fresh off a trade truce with Donald Trump, the EU is back in the US leader's crosshairs after he vowed to punish countries that seek to curb big tech's powers.... Read more

Popular generative AI web browser assistants are collecting and sharing sensitive user data, such as medical records and social security numbers, without adequate safeguards, finds a new study led by researchers from UCL and Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria.... Read more

For Hong Kong law student "C," AI-made pornography was a distant danger until a university classmate created graphic images of her and multiple other women.... Read more

OpenAI released a keenly awaited new generation of its hallmark ChatGPT on Thursday, touting "significant" advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities as a global race over the technology accelerates.... Read more

Quick: Think of "folklore." Did images of witches, trolls, goblins or other fairytale creatures and stories populate your mind?... Read more

ChatGPT will tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to new research from a watchdog group.... Read more

Meta on Tuesday said it shut nearly seven million WhatsApp accounts linked to scammers in the first half of this year and is ramping up safeguards against such schemes.... Read more

Internet security is a major concern, but cryptographic protocol analysis tools often require a long time due to their computational complexity. Professor Kazuhiro Ogata and Assistant Professor Canh Minh Do of the Department of Computing Science at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have successfully parallelized two key... Read more

With quantum computing on the horizon, cryptographers are working to secure digital communications against a new generation of potential threats.... Read more

A US federal court ruled Thursday that Google must open its Android operating system to rival app stores, after the internet giant lost an appeal in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games.... Read more

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter declared a state of local emergency on July 29 following a days-long cyber attack on the city's Internet-based computer networks that led the city to call in the FBI and Gov. Tim Walz to enlist the aid of the Minnesota National Guard's cybersecurity experts.... Read more

Australia will use landmark social media laws to ban children under 16 from video-streaming site YouTube, a top minister said Wednesday stressing the need to shield them from "predatory algorithms."... Read more

If you're a Microsoft Authenticator user, like me, you've probably received at least one notice that the app's password management features are no longer usable and that your stored passwords will be inaccessible starting Aug. 1 unless you have the Edge browser.... Read more

New UK age verification measures to prevent children accessing harmful online content came into force on Friday, with campaigners hailing them a "milestone" in their years-long battle for stronger regulations.... Read more

Instagram parent company Meta has introduced new safety features aimed at protecting teens who use its platforms, including information about accounts that message them and an option to block and report accounts with one tap.... Read more

Big tech platforms often present content moderation as a seamless, tech‑driven system. But human labor, often outsourced to countries such as India and the Philippines, plays a pivotal role in making judgments that involve understanding context. Technology alone can't do this.... Read more

Major social media platforms are enabling and profiting from misinformation around extreme weather events, endangering lives and impeding emergency response efforts, a research group said Tuesday.... Read more

Nextdoor, the social media site that aims to create connections among neighbors, is trying to shake off an uneven past and a nagging sense it is being underutilized. How? It is turning to professional journalists for help.... Read more

People have nicknamed the security system that monitors and controls internet traffic entering and leaving China "The Great Firewall of China."... Read more

Five EU countries including France will test an app aimed at preventing children from accessing harmful content online by checking users' ages, the European Commission said Monday.... Read more

The contemporary internet has been with us since roughly 1995. Its current underlying economic model—surveillance capitalism—began in the early 2000s, when Google and then Facebook realized how much our personal information and online behavior revealed about us and claimed it for themselves to sell to advertisers.... Read more

Elon Musk's startup xAI apologized Saturday for offensive posts published by its artificial intelligence assistant Grok this week, blaming them on a software update meant to make it function more like a human.... Read more

The latest version of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is echoing the views of its billionaire creator, so much so that it will sometimes search online for Musk's stance on an issue before offering up an opinion.... Read more

After Outlook users ran into issues accessing their email accounts late Wednesday and into Thursday, Microsoft says that affected systems are back online.... Read more

More than 90 percent of X's Community Notes—a crowd-sourced verification system popularized by Elon Musk's platform—are never published, a study said Wednesday, highlighting major limits in its effectiveness as a debunking tool.... Read more

Ad blockers, the digital shields that nearly one billion internet users deploy to protect themselves from intrusive advertising, may be inadvertently exposing their users to more problematic content, according to a new study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering.... Read more

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it's taking down "inappropriate posts" made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler.... Read more

The Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) announces the open-source release of NebulaStream, a next-generation stream processing engine built for the unique challenges faced in IoT environments.... Read more

By the end of this year, the experience of using search engines in Australia won't be as simple as it has always been.... Read more

A US judge on Wednesday handed Meta a victory over authors who accused the tech giant of violating copyright law by training Llama artificial intelligence on their creations without permission.... Read more

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok produced inaccurate and contradictory responses when users sought to fact-check the Israel-Iran conflict, a study said Tuesday, raising fresh doubts about its reliability as a debunking tool.... Read more

Google could be forced to let British users choose whether to use rival search services, the country's antitrust watchdog said Tuesday as it proposed using new digital regulations to boost competition.... Read more

Last week, one of the dark web's most prominent drug marketplaces—Archetyp—was shut down in an international, multi-agency law enforcement operation following years of investigations. It was touted as a major policing win and was accompanied by a slick cyberpunk-themed video.... Read more

Britain's competition watchdog on Tuesday proposed measures aimed at tackling Google's dominance in online search, with the US tech giant warning that "punitive regulations" could impact UK economic growth.... Read more

Researchers at cybersecurity outlet Cybernews say that billions of login credentials have been leaked and compiled into datasets online, giving criminals "unprecedented access" to accounts consumers use each day.... Read more

'Starter packs'—curated user lists that new users can follow with a single click—played a key role in helping Bluesky grow to over 30 million users, according to a new study.... Read more

Australia's world-leading ban on under-16s joining social media sites cleared a big hurdle Friday as a trial found digital age checks can work "robustly and effectively."... Read more

The Dutch government Tuesday advised parents to forbid children under 15 from using social media apps like TikTok and Snapchat, the latest country to propose curbs over mental health concerns.... Read more

People are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT to follow day-to-day news, a respected media report published Tuesday found.... Read more

In his second lawsuit targeting social media giants, Baltimore lawyer and real estate firm co-owner Barry Glazer is suing Meta and Google over social-media-based networks that sell unauthorized access to vacant properties.... Read more

Harmful content including hate speech has surged across Meta's platforms since the company ended third-party fact-checking in the United States and eased moderation policies, a survey showed Monday.... Read more

WhatsApp announced Monday it will introduce its boldest advertising features yet, marking a significant shift for the messaging platform that has largely remained ad-free since its launch.... Read more

People turn to the internet to run billions of search queries each year. These range from keeping tabs on world events and celebrities to learning new words and getting DIY help.... Read more

Google on Friday began letting people turn online searches into conversations, with generative artificial intelligence providing spoken summaries of query results.... Read more

American tech heavyweight Google on Friday reiterated its opposition to verifying the age of a device's user through the app stores built into operating systems, calling a proposal from Facebook and Instagram parent Meta "ineffective".... Read more

Popular online services across the globe were disrupted Thursday due to ongoing issues at Google Cloud.... Read more

Debates about regulating Canadian content for streaming media platforms are ongoing, and key issues include revising the definition of Canadian content for audio and visual cultural productions and whether big streaming companies would be mandated to follow new Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) policies.... Read more

From dangerous diet tips to disinformation, cyberbullying to hate speech, the glut of online content harmful to children grows every day. But several European countries have had enough and now want to limit minors' access to social media.... Read more

Earlier this year, Facebook rolled back rules against some hate speech and abuse. Along with changes at X (formerly Twitter) that followed its purchase by Elon Musk, the shifts make it harder for social media users to avoid encountering toxic speech.... Read more