The Web

Adult, or pornographic, content spam is a growing problem on social media. New research in the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining discusses how such content might be quickly detected and removed in a timely manner.... Read more

The private data of more than 400,000 students could be at risk as federal and local investigators assess the damage wreaked by a massive cyberattack against the Los Angeles Unified School District, which overcame a complete digital shutdown to open schools on schedule Tuesday.... Read more

It's not all sunsets and selfie smiles—people are flocking to a new social network app that calls on users to share true glimpses of their lives rather than cherry-picked moments.... Read more

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is hoping an ad campaign can help prevent misinformation percolating about Ukrainian refugees who fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion from shaping public opinion.... Read more

Fifteen years after its launch, a Google Maps feature that lets people explore faraway places as though standing right there is providing a glimpse of the metaverse being heralded as the future of the internet.... Read more

On Aug. 11, Adam Bies logged into his account on Gab and started typing:... Read more

Whether you're sharing confidential information or swapping movie ideas with a friend, people are turning to private messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption to protect the contents of their conversations.... Read more

Twitter faced scrutiny from US market regulators over how the platform calculates the number of false or spam accounts, a topic at the heart of the firm's legal battle with Elon Musk.... Read more

Google is breaking EU law by sending users of its email service Gmail direct advertising messages, activists said in a complaint sent to French regulators on Wednesday.... Read more

Millions of children log into chat rooms every day to talk with other children. One of these "children" could well be a man pretending to be a 12-year-old girl with far more sinister intentions than having a chat about "My Little Pony" episodes.... Read more

Not many people can boast of having candid conversations about planetary conquest with Elon Musk, but for Indian software engineer Pranay Pathole, a friendly chat with the world's richest man is just a tweet away.... Read more

This summer has been a breakthrough for streaming, with the time viewers spent watching services like Netflix and Hulu outpacing broadcast and cable television networks in July for the first month ever.... Read more

New research, published in PeerJ Computer Science, which analyzes over 87 million posts and 2.205 billion comments on Reddit from more than 1.2 million unique users, examines changes in the online behavior of users who publish in multiple communities on Reddit by measuring "toxicity."... Read more

US teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday.... Read more

As concerns about social media's harmful effects on teens continue to rise, platforms from Snapchat to TikTok to Instagram are bolting on new features they say will make their services safer and more age appropriate. But the changes rarely address the elephant in the the room—the algorithms pushing endless content... Read more

Tens of thousands of users reported being unable to access various Google services on Monday night, according to outage monitor Downdetector.... Read more

Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in to a flight tracking website Tuesday anxious to find out whether US official Nancy Pelosi was in fact going to Taiwan, in defiance of China's angry protests.... Read more

Republican attorneys general from 17 states are asking Alphabet Inc.'s Google to provide assurances that the search giant isn't suppressing results for crisis pregnancy centers in favor of abortion clinics.... Read more

The U.S. has the largest number of surveillance cameras per person in the world. Cameras are omnipresent on city streets and in hotels, restaurants, malls and offices. They're also used to screen passengers for the Transportation Security Administration. And then there are smart doorbells and other home security cameras.... Read more

YouTube on Thursday said it will start removing videos containing false or unsafe claims about abortion in a crackdown on misinformation about the medical procedure.... Read more

One of the world's most popular social media platforms, TikTok, is now host to a steady stream of deepfake videos.... Read more

We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networks—global air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of... Read more

When it comes to privacy, you've probably heard some say they "don't care about privacy if there's nothing to hide." Typically, someone who says this is not taking into account that you may have strong beliefs on the very premise of whether someone should have access to your private information.... Read more

Social media giant Meta, whose platforms including Facebook and Instagram regularly face concerns over their impact on civil liberties and democracy, on Thursday released its first annual report on its efforts to protect human rights.... Read more

Twitter appears to be returning for some users after experiencing an hourlong outage that affected both its app and website on Thursday.... Read more

With the ever-increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, there are growing attempts to exploit software vulnerabilities in our PCs for personal benefit. One way to do so is by infecting the victim's PC with a malicious code injected through a website. In fact, it is common to come... Read more

A Twitter employee told the House committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol that he spent a sleepless night on Jan. 5, 2021, worrying that people might die the next day during a rally that former President Donald Trump regularly promoted with angry rhetoric on his social media accounts.... Read more

We all like to think we're immune to scams. We scoff at emails from an unknown sender offering us £2 million, in exchange for our bank details. But the game has changed and con artists have developed new, chilling tactics. They are taking the personal approach and scouring the internet... Read more

US senators on Monday demanded Meta address reports that its Facebook and Instagram social networks have been censoring information about how to legally get an abortion.... Read more

As soon as news leaked in May of the possible reversal of Roe v. Wade, a drumbeat began on social media: Delete your period trackers. With abortion rights under threat, new fears arose that the health data stored on such apps, which track fertility and menstrual cycles, could be used... Read more

Disneyland's Facebook and Instagram accounts were hacked early Thursday and smeared with offensive, racist posts, prompting the theme park to release a statement.... Read more

Social media users posted ideas about how to protect people's reproductive privacy when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, including entering "junk" data into apps designed for tracking menstrual cycles.... Read more

Twitter said it removes 1 million spam accounts each day in a call with executives Thursday during a briefing that aimed to shed more light on the company's fake and bot accounts as it tussles with Elon Musk over "spam bots."... Read more

After the overturning of Roe v Wade in the U.S., tracking reproductive information has never been riskier. In many U.S. states, millions seeking and providing abortions could soon face criminal charges. Online conversations have turned to digital self-defense, and questions about the privacy of period tracking apps and other digital... Read more

Twitter is challenging the Indian government's orders to block content on its social media site in court, local media reported Wednesday citing legal documents.... Read more

Website cookies are online surveillance tools, and the commercial and government entities that use them would prefer people not read those notifications too closely. People who do read the notifications carefully will find that they have the option to say no to some or all cookies.... Read more

Researchers Matthias Götze (TU Berlin), Srdjan Matic (IMDEA Software), Costas Iordanou (Cyprus University of Technology), Georgios Smaragdakis (TU Delft), and Nikolaos Laoutaris (IMDEA Networks) have presented a paper at the Web Science Conference: "Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites," in which they investigate governmental websites of G20 countries and evaluate... Read more

Google announced Friday it would delete users' location history when they visit abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters and other places where privacy is sought.... Read more

Big brands are rushing to the metaverse but the path to profit is still unclear and mass adoption may be years away, one of the sector's biggest players, Sebastien Borget, told AFP in an interview.... Read more

Social media represent a major channel for the spreading of fake news and disinformation. This situation has been made worse with recent advances in photo and video editing and artificial intelligence tools, which make it easy to tamper with audiovisual files, for example with so-called deepfakes, which combine and superimpose... Read more

Instagram is blocking posts that mention abortion from public view, in some cases requiring its users to confirm their age before letting them view posts that offer up information about the procedure.... Read more

Trolls, haters, flamers and other ugly characters are, unfortunately, a fact of life across much of the internet. Their ugliness ruins social media networks and sites like Reddit and Wikipedia.... Read more

The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the American Supreme court last week is a watershed moment in American politics. The ruling withdraws constitutional protections for abortion rights and sends the issue to the states, around half of which are expected to ban abortions.... Read more

Federal authorities have seized six websites that prosecutors say were illegally distributing copyrighted music to millions of users.... Read more

Instagram is testing new ways to verify the age of people using its service, including a face-scanning artificial intelligence tool, having mutual friends verify their age or uploading an ID.... Read more

Google has agreed to pay for ramped-up Wikipedia services, part of a growing trend for the US tech giant to strike commercial deals with other web companies.... Read more

As a young woman straps on her vest and headset and becomes immersed in a virtual world, Mainak Chaudhuri talks excitedly about the potential of the technology.... Read more

Content management systems or CMSs are the most popular tool for creating content on the internet. In recent years, they have evolved to become the backbone of an increasingly complex ecosystem of websites, mobile apps and platforms. In order to simplify processes, a team of researchers from the Internet Interdisciplinary... Read more

YouTube on Wednesday said that more than 1.5 billion people monthly tune into its Shorts video service, which competes with global sensation TikTok.... Read more