Timeline Internet
Return to home
1895 Paul Otlet (1868-1944), Belgian librarian, met future Nobel Prize winner Henri La Fontaine, who joined him in planning to create the Mundaneum, a master bibliography of all the world’s published knowledge. Otlet and LaFontaine eventually persuaded the Belgian government to support their project, proposing to build a “city of knowledge" that would bolster the government’s bid to become host of the League of Nations.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1)
1934 Paul Otlet (1868-1944), head of the Mundaneum in Belgium, sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes," as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. In his 1934 book “Monde" he laid out his vision of a “mechanical, collective brain" that would house all the world’s information, made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1)
1948 Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek, professors at MIT, established a small acoustics consulting firm and soon added a former student of Bolt’s, Robert Newman. In 1949 BBN won its first major consulting contract, designing the acoustics for the UN General Assembly Hall.
(www.bbn.com/about/timeline/)
1962 Aug, The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, 4 starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1 p.3)(www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#Origins)
1964 Engineer Paul Baran proposed the use of distributed networks for communication. His architecture became the foundation of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.72)
1966 Robert W. Taylor (1932-2017) began working at the Pentagon for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). He quickly called for the agency’s three computers to be able to intercommunicate. His idea led to Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet.
(SSFC, 4/16/17, p.C10)
1968-1998 American Engineer Jon Postel (1943-1998) coordinated the Internet’s protocols and addressing system over this period.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.68)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel)
1969 Sep 2, The first Internet message was a packet switch delivered to UCLA from BBN Corp. (Bolt Beranek and Newman). The 1st 2 machines of ARPANET were connected at Prof. Len Kleinrock's lab at UCLA. The US Dept. of Defense’s Advanced Research and Projects Agency (ARPANET) launched a self-healing computer network with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). By the early 1980’s the military component became a separate network and the true birth of today’s Internet is marked. By 2007 some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap the Internet and start over.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_hi_te/rebuilding_the_internet_8)(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.3)(SFC, 8/30/99, p.C10)(SFC, 9/3/99, p.C1)
1969 Oct 29, Researchers sent the first inter-node message between two sites on ARPAnet. The first e-mail message crossed the Arpanet as a team under Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA communicated with a team under Douglas Englebart at Stanford. The US Dept. of Defense’s Advanced Research and Projects Agency (ARPANET) launched a self-healing computer network with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) [see Sep 2].
(http://tinyurl.com/lpq766)(WSJ, 1/14/99, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET)
1969 Frank Heart (1929-2018) oversaw the first routing computer for the Arpanet. He led a Bolt Beranek and Newman team to build the Interface Message Processor (IMP) to switch data among Arpanet computers.
(SFC, 6/27/18, p.D5)
1971 Jul 4, Michael S. Hart (1947-2011) began typing the Declaration of Independence into the memory of a mainframe computer at the Univ. of Illinois. This led him to begin Project Gutenberg, an effort to put US historical documents on line. It was later expanded to include books out of copyright.
(WSJ, 11/21/96, p.B12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart)
1971 Ray Tomlinson (d.2016), an engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), invented an e-mail program that allowed users to exchange messages across a distributed network. He devised the @ symbol to designate a digital address. In 1972 Tomlinson modified the program to run on ARPANET where it became a quick hit.
(http://tinyurl.com/6s97pv)(SFC, 10/23/96, p.B1)(TIME, 10/20/14, p.65)(Econ, 3/12/16, p.80)
1971 French politicians challenged IRIA, a state funded computer science institute, to begin research into a national computer network. Louis Pouzin was chosen to head the project, which became known as CYCLADES. The project’s first connection debuted in 1973.
(Econ, 11/30/13, TQ p.20)
1972 Jul, Robert Metcalf (b.1946) at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) combined packet switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the foundations for computer networks. This system was called Ethernet and marked the first Internet message. The IEEE committee 802.3 later defined the Ethernet standard. He later fixed May 22, 1973, as the birthdate of Ethernet, a day on which he circulated a memo about his ideas to PARC colleagues.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R26)(SFEC, 3/28/99, Z1 p.8)(Econ, 6/12/04, p.26)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.23)
1972 Vinton Cerf, hearing-impaired since birth, developed e-mail-like text messaging protocols for the Arpanet.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.D3)
1973 May 22, Robert Metcalf (b.1946), at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), circulated a memo about his Ethernet ideas to PARC colleagues. He later fixed this day as the birthdate of Ethernet. Metcalf had combined packet switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the foundations for computer networks. Bob Metcalf described ethernet for the 1st time in a patent memo.
(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.23)(SFC, 10/25/00, p.A16)
1973 Researchers Robert Kahn, of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Project Agency, and Vinton Cerf, of Stanford Univ., developed a standard for incompatible networks to send messages and files to one another. It was a new language called TCP/IP, and it included a way to route data packages among different kinds of networks. This allowed the Internet to be born.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R28)
1974 May, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf published a paper that outlined the protocols of the Internet. Cerf and Kahn used aspects of a data network created by Frenchman Louis Pouzin that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Kahn and Cerf’s Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was updated in 1978. In 2004 Cerf and Kahn received the A.M. Turing Award for their work. By December full specifications for the new proposal were published.
(SFC, 6/11/05, p.C1)(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.33)(Econ, 11/30/13, TQ p.19)
1978 Feb 16, The 1st Computer Bulletin Board System was Ward & Randy's CBBS in Chicago.
(www.historyoftheinternet.com/chap3.html)
1979 Jun, Robert Metcalf of Xerox Corp. started 3Com Corp., consulting company, and soon began producing Ethernet hardware. The company specialized in connecting computers using the Ethernet system, which he helped develop. The early Ethernet adapters sold for $5000. In 1994 they sold for $100.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R26)(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.24)
1979 Roy Trubshow and Richard Bartle, Univ. of Essex students, created the 1st text-only MUD (Multi-User Dungeon).
(NW, 11/25/02, p.48)
1980 Jun 25, The Associated Press chose 11 major newspapers to launch a cooperative experiment to deliver news electronically to computer-equipped homes.
(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F2)
1982 Sep 19, Prof. Scott E. Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon Univ. posted an emoticon, the first online smiley face, in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m., during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.
(AP, 9/18/07)
1982 Sep, 3Com under Robert Metcalf started shipping EtherLink adaptor cards for IBM’s new personal computer.
(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.24)
1982 William Gibson authored “Neuromancer," a science fiction short story in which he coined the term cyberspace.
(Econ, 7/12/14, SR p.3)
1982 Symantec, a provider of security technology, was founded. It went public in 1989 and was acquired by Norton in 1990.
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.I1)
1982 Rich Skrenta (b.1967), a freshman in Pennsylvania, developed Elk Cloner as a practical joke. It was the 1st virus to hit computers worldwide and later became known as a "boot sector" virus. When it boots, or starts up, an infected disk places a copy of the virus in the computer's memory. Whenever someone inserts a clean disk into the machine and types the command "catalog" for a list of files, a copy gets written onto that disk as well. The newly infected disk is passed on to other people, other machines and other locations.
(AP, 9/1/07)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
1982 France launched Minitel, a national videotex communications network. It became outdated with the rise of the Internet and was scheduled to close in 2011. During the first half of 1982, the Division of l'lnformatique Parlementaire studied the feasibility of an internal videotex system for the Chamber of Deputies in France and in September 1982, M. Louis Mexandeau, Minister of the PTT gave his support to the project. On 30 October 1982, the Bureau of the Assemblée Nationale approved implementation in two phases; first of 100 terminals; and secondly equipment to support all deputies with constituencies in metropolitan France.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel)
1983 Jan 1, TCP/IP became the standard for Internet protocol.
(SFC, 8/30/99, p.C10)
1983 Paul Mochapetris, an Internet address system researcher, grouped computers into groups. "Thus .edu signified a university, .gov indicated a government agency. Corporations got .com."
(WSJ, 10/11/99, p.B1)
1984 Apr 1, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant launched the Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) in Sausalito. In La Jolla, Ca., Larry Brilliant, physician and head of Network Technologies Int’l. in Michigan, pitched the idea for a public computer conferencing system to Stewart Brand, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Their meeting led to the 1985 founding of “The Well" online service that operated as a collection of conferences. It used the PicoSpan conferencing software. In 2001 Katie Hafner authored “The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community."
(Wired, 5/97, p.100)(SSFC, 5/27/01, DB p.69)
1984 Mike Lazaridis founded Research In Motion (RIM) while a student at the Univ. of Waterloo in Ontario. RIM went on to produce the hand-held Blackberry e-mail device.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.68)
1984 Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, envisioned a computer system for researchers to share documents and databases. This grew to become the World Wide Web. In 2004 Lee won the 1st Millennium Technology Prize.
(WSJ, 10/1/99, p.W6)(SFC, 4/16/04, p.C1)
1984 Ray Ozzie left Lotus Development and founded Iris Associates, which created Lotus Notes, a collaborative software program. Iris was acquired by Lotus in 1994 and Lotus was acquired by IBM in 1995. In 2006 Bill Gates named Ozzie to succeed him as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ozzie)
1985 Mar 23, Joshua Silver, Oxford physicist, began contemplating the development of self adjusting eyeglasses. By 2009 some 30,000 of Silver's specs had been distributed to the poor in 15 countries; his eventual target is 100 million pairs.
(SSFC, 1/11/09, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/96buv9)
1985 Mar, The Well online conferencing service went live from Sausalito, Ca., with a VAX computer, 6 modems and 6 phone lines.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.B5)(Wired, 5/97, p.106)
1985 Radia Perlman, software designer and network engineer, earned the name “Mother of the Internet" for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol, a fundamental function to the operation of network bridges.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A6)
1986 Jan 16, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) held its first meeting in San Diego. It was formed to develop technical standards for the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force)(Econ, 3/5/15, p.56)
1986 Jan, The first PC virus, called Brain, was discovered in the wild. Though it achieved fame because it was the first of its type, the virus was not widespread as it could only travel by hitching a ride on floppy disks swapped between users. The first virus to hit computers running a Microsoft Corp.'s operating system (DOS) came when two brothers in Pakistan wrote a boot sector program now dubbed "Brain," purportedly to punish people who spread pirated software.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4630910.stm)(AP, 9/1/07)
1986 Aug, Dr. Clifford Stoll, the computer systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley, discovered computer break-ins. He monitored them for approximately 12 months and realized that the had confused Lawrence Berkeley with Lawrence Livermore.'' A West German citizen used global communications networks to secretly gain access to more than 30 computers belonging to the US military and military contractors.
(http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/6.68.html)(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1986 Oct 14, California Lottery’s first online computer game, Lotto 6/49, began to run.
(SSFC, 10/9/11, DB p.42)
1986 The US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was created. Under the act the release of a computer virus was illegal, but the construction of such viruses was not.
(WSJ, 3/31/05, p.B1)
1986 German hackers in Hanover, working for the KGB, sneaked into American military networks. The “Cuckoo’s Nest" cyber attack was caught when an official noted a 75-cent billing error revealing unauthorized use of a computer network.
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
1987 Sep 14, The first e-mail from China was sent to an int’l. network and proclaimed: “Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world."
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.3)
1988 Nov 2, A computer worm, named Morris, unleashed by a Cornell University graduate student began replicating, clogging thousands of computers around the country, but causing no real damage. The virus infected an estimated 6,000 university and military computers over the Internet.
(AP, 11/2/98)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
1989 Mar, The first versions of HTML that launched the Web appeared. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. His document describing the initial project was titled: “Information Management: A Proposal."
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W26)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.4)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.32)
1989 The Univ. of Phoenix began teaching online.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.101)
1989 America Online (AOL) made its debut. In 1998 Kara Swisher wrote "aol.com: How Steve Case beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web. [see Control Video in 1982]
(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.1,8)
1989 Brewster Kahle founded WAIS, a company named after the Wide Area Information Server protocol, to make software for online publishing. The protocol was an early form of internet search engine, which had been developed by Thinking Machines with Apple, Dow Jones and KPMG. In 1995 AOL bought the firm.
(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.34)
1989 John McAfee, an engineer for Lockheed, posted his VirusScan software on an Internet bulletin board as freeware. He earned $5 million in the first year and founded McAfee Associates. The company merged with Network General in 1997.
(SFC, 11/13/12, p.A8)
1990 Astrophysicist Clifford Stoll authored “The Cuckoo's Egg," a true account of the tracking of a hacker who probed the US's most sensitive secrets, using keywords, such as "thermonuclear war." Stoll's pursuit of a hacker trying to access American computer networks led to the discovery of a West German spy ring.
(www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Clifford-Stoll/dp/0671726889)
1990 The World Wide Web server prototype was built. The Archie file transfer protocol was developed. A semi-crawler search engine was built.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1990 Thomas Campana Jr., Chicago-area engineer, created a system to send e-mails between computers and wireless devices. He founded a company called NTP that filed suit in 2001 against Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry wireless device.
(SFC, 12/1/05, p.C8)
1991 Aug, James Gossling developed his new computer language called Oak. It was to be the progenitor of the new Java software for the Internet by Sun Microsystems.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.238)
1991 David Gelernter (b.1955), professor of computer science at Yale, authored “Mirror Worlds," in which he accurately described websites, blogging, virtual reality, streaming video, tablet computers, e-books, search engines and internet telephony.
(Econ, 12/3/11, TQ p.27)
1991 Al Gore as US Senator held hearings that led to the passage of the National High-Performance Computer Technology Act. It boosted federal support of the Internet by about $1 billion a year.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.154)
1991 Cambridge Univ. scientists set up a video to monitor their coffee pot in the Trojan Room and spawned the Web cam revolution. In 2001 Spiegel Online paid $4,750 for the $70 coffee pot.
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.B3)
1991 Quantum Computer Services changed its name to America Online.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.B1)
1991 Aug, The World Wide Web was launched by Tim Berners Lee of CERN.
(Economist, 9/1/12, TQ p.11)
1992 Mar 6, Personal computer users braced for a virus known as “Michelangelo," set to trigger on March 6, but only scattered cases of lost files were reported. The Michelangelo computer virus threatened computer systems around the world. It was designed to lodge itself into a corner of the system and infect any floppies put into the system, and to eventually mangle the hard drive.
(Sp., 5/96, p.68)(AP, 3/6/02)
1992 Internet domain registrations began (DNS). Network Solutions Inc. of Science Applications Int’l. was given the naming oversight in a contract with the National Science Foundation. America’s Dept. of Commerce created ICAAN, a non-profit corporation to run the DNS. Jon Postel (1943-1998), an American engineer, was assigned to head ICAAN, but he soon died.
(WSJ, 6/5/97, p.B5)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.73)
1992 Network Solutions won a government contract to be the exclusive registrar of Internet addresses.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.B5)
1992 Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, creators of the TCP/IP Internet protocol, founded the Internet Society.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.33)
1992 America Online, a popular Internet company, went public.
(WSJ, 5/24/99, p.R8)
1993 Jun, Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the Univ. of Illinois released their first version of the Mosaic Browser, a software tool that simplified searching for material on the World Wide Web. Andreeson went on to found Netscape Corp. In 1998 Joshua Quittner and Michella Slatalla published “Speeding the Net," a history of Netscape Communications.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.242)(WSJ, 6/25/98, p.A20)
1993 Aug 13, US Court of Appeals ruled that congress must save all e-mails.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1993 Ward Cunningham (b.1949) founded the 1st Wiki site, The Portland Repository." The site was developed so that multiple users could revise and update information. He joined Microsoft in 2003.
(WSJ, 7/29/04, p.B1)(www.en.wikipedia.org)
1993 Arthur Hair received a patent titled "Method for Transmitting a Desired Digital Video or Audio Signal." He and Scott Sander then launched Sightsound.com to build a market for transmitting music and video over the internet.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.B1)
1994 Apr 4, Jim Clark and Marc Andreeson founded Mosaic Communications Corp., the predecessor of Netscape Communications. The company soon introduced the Netscape Navigator browser.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1994 Apr, Charles H. Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies. It developed Front Page, the first software program to allow people to develop a Web site without mastering a programming language. He sold the company to Microsoft after 20 months for $133 million.
(WSJ, 12/15/99, p.A20)
1994 Spring, David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduates students of Stanford Univ., started a guide to their favorite sites on the Internet: Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web." They later named the site Yahoo: "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)
1994 Nov 28, Mosaic changed its name to Netscape Communications.
(WSJ, 4/21/99, A1)
1994 The SF Chronicle newspaper began its SFGate site on the Internet.
(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)
1994 Jeff Bezos quit his job on Wall Street, flew to Fort Worth, Texas, and then drove with his wife to the Pacific Northwest. He sketched out a plan to set up a catalogue retailing business and after a year his company, Amazon, sold its first book.
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.23)
1994 John McAfee, founder of the anti-viral firm McAfee Associates, sold his stake for over $100 million. Network Associates after 7 years renamed itself to McAfee Inc.
(WSJ, 4/21/07, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee)
1994 Tribal Voice was founded by the software millionaire John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates. On its website, the company described itself initially as a 'Native American' company run by Native Americans. As the company grew, the Native American references gradually disappeared. In 1999 McAfee sold his stake for $17 million.
(WSJ, 4/21/07, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee)
1994 Lou Montulli, computer programmer at Netscape, invented "cookies" to help enable purchasing products from a Web site.
(WSJ, 2/28/00, p.B1)
1994 Scientists at Carnegie Mellon Univ. created a search engine. Rights were bought by CMGI Inc., an Internet venture fund, and Lycos was formed in 1995.
(SFC, 3/29/00, p.D3)
1994 The first Internet stock trade was completed by K. Aufhauser & Co., later part of Ameritrade Holding Corp.
(WSJ, 6/2/99, p.C1)
1994 theGlobe.com, an internet startup, was founded by Cornell students Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
1994 Sky Dayton founded EarthLink, an Internet access provider.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.13)
1994 Jeff Taylor founded Monster.com, an online job-search site.
(Econ, 3/27/04, p.66)
1994 Britannica posted a web site for its reference work.
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A1)
1994 Brian Pinkerton of the Univ. of Washington released WebCrawler. It was able to index entire pages. It was later bought out by AOL. Lycos and InfoSeek soon followed.
(Econ, 9/18/04, TQ p.33)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1995 Jan, Commercial internet service became available in China.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.6)
1995 Mar, David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduates students of Stanford Univ., turned their hobby into a business. In 1994 they had started a guide to their favorite sites on the Internet: Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web." The site was soon renamed Yahoo: "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/20/07, p.B5)
1995 Apr 1, theGlobe.com went live and attracted over 44,000 visits within the first month.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
1995 May, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates wrote a memo titled "The Internet Tidal Wave," which rallied the company to compete with Netscapeby integrating web browsing into other products.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1995 Jul 16, Amazon.com went live on the Internet. The 1st book sold on the site was “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought."
(SFC, 7/5/05, p.E2)
1995 Aug 9, Netscape Communications went public and was valued at $2.2 billion. In 1999 Jim Clark and Owen Edwards authored "Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft."
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)(SFEC, 6/27/99, BR p.6)
1995 Aug 30, Cable News Network joined the internet ("This is CNN").
(MC, 8/30/01)
1995 Aug, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1995 Sep 13, The FBI made at least a dozen arrests, capping a nationwide two-year investigation of pedophiles and pornographers using the America Online computer network.
(AP, 9/13/00)
1995 Sep 23, Guillermo Gaede, an Intel engineer, was arrested in Phoenix. He had used his computer to tap into plans for the Pentium & 486 chip manufacturing process and video taped the information in May 1993. He sent the info to his former employer Advanced Micro Devices who notified federal authorities. He claimed to have been double-crossed by the FBI and also to have passed info from AMD to Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran.
(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A23)
1995 Sep, The US government came up with a new proposal security in computer communications, dubbed by critics as Clipper II.
(Wired, 9/96, p.224)
1995 Nov 20, Salon produced its 1st online issue. Salon.com was founded in SF as an online publisher by former staffers of the SF Examiner. The company purchased the Sausalito online community Well in 1999 from Bruce Katz, the founder of Rockport Shoes. In June 1999 it became a public corporation with an IPO at $10/share.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.B1)(SFEC, 6/27/99, p.B1)(SFC, 7/28/00, p.A19)
1995 Nov, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0 and gave it away for free in a challenge to Netscape’s Navigator browser.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1995 Dec 7, Bill Gates announced Microsoft’s Internet counterattack on Netscape and the browser market.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)
1995 Dec 15, Louis Monier of Digital Equipment Corp. unveiled the Alta Vista search engine. It used several hundred “spiders" in parallel to index the web. The engine was co-invented by Paul Andrew Flaherty (1964-2006) of DEC. Alta Vista faded with the rise of Google and was acquired by Yahoo in 2003 as part of a $1.7 billion purchase of Overture Services. In 2013 Yahoo announced the closure of Alta Vista.
(Econ, 9/18/04, TQ p.33)(SFC, 3/24/06, p.B5)(SFC, 7/9/13, p.D2)
1995 World Chats, one of the earliest 3-D online chat rooms, introduced the use of onscreen “avatars" for Internet communication.
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1995 A group of 7 Swiss artists registered the domain name of Etoy.com with Network Solutions. In 1999 the toy company EToys.com sued the artists and forced them to shut their web site down. In 2003 Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler authored: “Leaving Reality Behind: “Etoy vs. eToys.com & Other Battles to Control Cyberspace."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.AM3)
1995 Pierre Omidyar founded eBay as a site for auctioning items. Originally called Auction Web it also helped his fiancée trade her Pez dispensers. In 2002 Adam Cohen authored "The Perfect Store," a chronicle of the rise of eBay.
(WSJ, 6/25/02, p.D9)(Econ, 6/11/05, p.66)
1995 Craig Newmark founded Craigslist in San Francisco. It was an Internet forum for finding jobs, housing, and goods for sale. In 2004 Ebay acquired a 25% stake from a former employee’s equity sale.
(SFC, 8/14/04, p.C1)
1995 The first Internet gambling casino opened, but games could only be played for fun. The first real money Internet casino opened in 1996.
(SFC, 7/2/07, p.C1)
1995 Metacrawler search engine technology was developed.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1995 VocalTec, an Israeli company, was the first company to release commercial PC-to-PC calling software, which it called Internet Phone. However, many competitors soon followed. In 2010 VocalTec merged with YMax Corp, maker of magicJack, an Internet phone gadget.
(AP, 8/14/10)
1996 Feb 8, John Peter Barlow, Internet activist, issued the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from Davos, Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.14)(http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)
1996 Feb 8, In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep." Section 230 of the act protected online intermediaries that host or republish speech against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8m8yhc6)(https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)
1996 Feb 15, A US federal judge temporarily blocked the Communications Decency Act (CDA), saying the government had to explain what material it considered indecent before it could enforce the law, designed to protect children from sexually explicit material on computer networks.
(AP, 2/15/01)
1996 Feb, Kevin Mitnick, 33-year-old computer wizard, was arrested in Raleigh, N.C. with the help of computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura. Mitnick was accused of breaking into the systems of software companies and attacking the computers of Internet service providers (ISPs). In 1999 he admitted breaking in to computer systems at Sun Microsystems and Motorola where he stole software and installed programs that caused millions of dollars in damage. He was ordered to pay token restitution of $4,125 and was prohibited from any access to computers and the Internet for 3 years following his release.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A3)(SFC, 8/10/99, p.A3)
1996 Spring, Yahoo went public at $13 per share and quickly rose to $33 in its 1st day of trading.
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)
1996 Apr, The web site DJ.com launched RealAudio’s technology to broadcast 24 channels of music over the web. The site was later renamed Spinner.com.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)
1996 Apr, Takafumi Horie (23), a student at the Univ. of Tokyo, set up Livin’ on the Edge Inc., a Web-site design company. In 2000 the company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and in 2004 the name was changed to Livedoor, after an Internet service provider that it took over in 2002.
(WSJ, 2/3/06, p.A1)
1996 May 12, Brewster Kahle founded the non-profit Internet Archive. With a former colleague he also co-founded a firm called Alexa, to track and analyze the paths people follow as they move around the Web. In 1999 Amazon bought Alexa for an estimated $250 million.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive)(Econ, 3/7/09, p.34)
1996 May, The US government released a draft proposal on computer security that was dubbed Clipper III.
(Wired, 9/96, p.226)
1996 Jul 4, Hot Mail, a free internet E-mail service began.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail)
1996 Aug 13, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0.
(http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release33.html)
1996 Aug 18, "Where Wizards stay Up Late, The Origins of the Internet" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon was reviewed.
(SFEC, 8/18/96, BR p.3)
1996 Sergey Brin and Larry Page, post-graduate students at Stanford, came up with Google's original search algorithm.
(Econ., 8/1/20, p.15)
1996 The $1.6 billion FLAG project (Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe) was completed for transmission of data from Europe to the Far East. Neil Tagare pushed the project with financial assistance from Nynex.
(SFC, 3/15/99, p.B7)
1996 UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier founded Inktomi Corp. to provide software for Internet Service Providers. Their software was incorporated in the widely-used HotBot search engine, which displaced AltaVista as the leading web-crawler-based search engine.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inktomi)
1996 David Warthen and venture capitalist Garrett Gruener (42) co-founded Ask Jeeves Inc., a company devoted to scouring the Net for data based on simple questions. www.ask.com. In 2004 the company moved operations from Emeryville, Ca., to Oakland.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.B9)(SFC, 9/12/03, p.A10)(SFC, 7/19/04, p.F5)
1996 Michael Lynch, British software entrepreneur, founded Autonomy as a kind of Google for corporate data.
(Econ, 2/28/09, p.70)
1996 Following the success of Doom, id Software released Quake, a first-person shooter that also allowed users to create their own levels, which were called modifications or mods.
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1996 Instant messaging was created by the Israeli company Mirabilis.
(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.E3)
1996 Microsoft launched Expedia Travel Services, an online travel assistance site. In 2001 it was sold to Barry Diller, who spun it off from his InterActive Corp. (IAC) in 2005 as a separate company. By 2014 it was the world’s biggest travel agent.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.66)(Econ, 6/21/14, p.65)
1996 Eliezer Yudkowsky (16) set up the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). He and a group of followers, dubbed transhumanists, believed that a kind of artificial intelligence, a super intelligence, will emerge over the next 25 years. "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter than human intelligence."
(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.A1)
1996 Yahoo and SoftBank created Yahoo Japan.
(SSFC, 5/15/16, p.D3)
1997 Feb 7, In Japan Hiroshi Mikitani launched Rakuten, an e-commerce company. By 2012 it was Japan’s biggest cybermail service.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten)(SFC, 5/19/12, p.D3)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.60)
1997 Mar 6, The first ever Webby Awards ceremony was held in SF at Bimbo’s 365 Club in North Beach.
(SFC, 3/7/96, p.A1)
1997 Mar 6, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launched the first official royal Web site.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1997 Mar 19, The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Internet indecency.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1997 Apr 8, Microsoft Corp released Internet Explorer 4.0.
(http://tinyurl.com/dax6p)
1997 May 1, An Int’l. committee agreed to create 7 new (WWW) World Wide Web domains. The new suffixes would be: .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info and .nom for individuals.
(SFC, 5/2/97, p.A1)
1997 May 27, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, was first presented by the author at the Linux Kongress and was published as part of a book of the same name in 1999. It was based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)
1997 Jun 26, The Supreme Court struck down a congressional attempt to keep pornography off the Internet, saying it violated the First Amendment; the court also let stand the president's line-item veto authority without addressing its constitutionality.
(AP, 6/26/98)
1997 Jun, Ding Lei founded NetEase, a Chinese Internet technology company providing online services centered on content, community, communications and commerce.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetEase)
1997 Sep 8, It was announced the America Online Inc. (AOL) would take over Compuserve in a 3-way deal that involved WorldCom.
(SFC, 9/8/97, p.A3)(AP, 9/8/98)
1997 Dec, Michael Robertson launched a web site called MP3.com as a repository for music in the MP3 format.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)
1997 Don Tapscott authored “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation."
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.98)
1997 The US Senate opened hearings on the Internet browser battle.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)
1997 Amazon.com, an online book seller founded by Jeff Bezos, went public.
(WSJ, 5/24/99, p.R23)(Econ, 6/21/14, p.26)
1997 AOL launched Instant Messenger (AIM), an instant messaging and presence computer program. It used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.
(SFC, 2/11/10, p.D3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Instant_Messenger)
1997 Scott Kurnit founded About.com, a web site for information originally known as the Mining Company. The New York Times Company bought About.com in 2005.
(WSJ, 7/7/99, p.A23)(Econ, 8/18/12, p.59)
1997 Electronic Arts launched Richard Garriott’s Ultima Online, the 1st truly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1997 Phil Goldman (d.2003 at 39), Steve Perlman and Bruce Leak, the founders of WebTV, sold their firm to Microsoft for $425 million.
(SFC, 12/30/03, p.A19)
1997 The website Sixdegrees was launched as a means for social networking.
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A4)
1997 ING Direct, an online banking service under Dutch parent ING Groep NV, was launched in Canada. In 2000 it began operations in the US from Wilmington, Del. By the end of 2007 it had over 7 million customers and $62 billion in deposits. In 2008 Arkadi Kuhlman, ING’s US chief, and Bruce Philp, chairman of ING Direct’s marketing partner, authored “The Orange Code: How ING direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause."
(WSJ, 12/10/08, p.A17)
1997 Alexander Pircher, a student in Darmstadt, Germany, created a web site called Anonymouse.org, which allowed users to type in a Web address in a box and with a click the Anonymouse server fetches and displays the page. This allowed anonymous Web searches.
(Econ, 12/2/06, TQ p.3)
1997 The online company Priceline was founded with the idea to let consumers bid for hotel rooms and flights. In 2005 it acquired Booking.com, a Dutch website that aggregates hotel inventory. In 2012 it acquired Kayak, an aggregator of travel listings. In 2017 the market value of Priceline passed $100 billion.
(Econ 7/29/17, p.53)
1997 IslamOnline began as a student project at the Univ. of Qatar with cash from Sheika Mozah, a wife of Qatar’s emir, and with an endorsement from Egyptian-born scholar, Yussuf al-Qaradawi.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.51)
1997 Yandex, a Russian search engine, was founded. In 2011 it listed on NASDAQ. By 2017 its products and services included taxis, shopping, payments, music and education.
(Econ, 9/30/17, p.59)
1998 Jan 17, Matt Drudge reported over the Internet that Monica Lewinsky had paid numerous service calls to the White House.
(WSJ, 10/24/00, p.A22)
1998 Jan 22, Microsoft under court pressure signed an agreement giving PC makers the freedom to install Windows 95 without an Internet Explorer icon.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A30)
1998 Mar 3, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that his company wasn't a monopoly out to crush rivals in the Internet software market.
(AP, 3/3/99)
1998 Mar 19-1998 Mar 25, CeBIT, the world’s largest exhibition for information and communications, was held in Hanover, Germany. 600,000 visitors were expected.
(FT, 3/4/98, p.IT4)
1998 Mar 20, An Indiana man, Chris Dean (35), was arrested for sending the pipe bomb that killed Christopher Marquis of Vermont. Marquis had defrauded Dean in a $400 trade of Citizens Band radio equipment arranged on the Internet.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A3)
1998 May 18, The US Justice Dept. filed an antitrust action against Microsoft Corp. for embedding its own browser in its operating system, thus limiting competition from others such as Netscape. The Justice Department and Microsoft reached a settlement in 2001.
(SFC, 5/19/98, p.A1)(AP, 5/18/08)
1998 Jun 16, A woman (40) in Florida gave birth to a baby boy, named Sean, live on the Internet.
(SFC, 6/17/98, p.A3)
1998 Jun, An appeals court panel ruled in favor of Microsoft and considered Internet Explorer and Windows and integrated product.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1998 Jul 26, AT&T and British Telecommunications PLC announced they were forming a joint venture to combine international operations and develop a new Internet system. The joint venture, known as Concert, proved a money-loser and was shut down.
(AP, 7/26/03)
1998 Aug, F. Thomson Leighton and Daniel Lewin founded Akamai based on technology they had developed at MIT in 1995. Their main product, FreeFlow - a system that routed Internet traffic - began selling in April 1999. Lewin (31) was aboard AA Flight 11 on Sep 11, 2001, and died when hijackers crashed the plane into the WTC.
(WSJ, 12/8/99, p.C28)(SFC, 9/14/01, p.A29)
1998 Sep 16, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, responding to a report in an Internet publication, Salon Magazine, admitted to "indiscretions" with a woman in the 1960s at a time when both were married.
(AP, 9/16/99)
1998 Sep 18, A federal judge in San Jose awarded the Church of Scientology a $3 million settlement against Grady Ward for publishing secret scriptures on the Internet. Grady would not have to pay the full fine if he refrains from publishing church secrets and pays the church $200 per month for the rest of his life.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A23)
1998 Sep, In Dubai, UAR, the construction of a new multi-million prison was set to begin. Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum conceived of the facility as a prison for 2,000 "guests" of white-collar crimes. The prison will have a gym, theater, conference center, and be equipped with internet access.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.D8)
1998 Oct 17, Jon Postel (55), an influential Internet pioneer, died. Since 1968 he had directed the network’s Internet assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) that allowed computers to be matched with web addresses. Two weeks before he died he submitted the framework for a new organization to succeed the IANA, a non-profit entity (ICANN) with an internationally diverse board of directors.
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.A22)(Econ, 11/19/05, p.68)
1998 Oct, The US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in an effort to protect writers and artists from piracy in the free-for-all world of Net music.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)(SFC, 8/13/01, p.D1)
1998 Nov 13, The globe.com, founded by Tod Krizelman and Stephen Paternot, went public and leaped from $9 to $97 a share. In 2001 Paternot authored “A Very Public Offering."
(WSJ, 5/2/01, p.A17)(WSJ, 8/27/01, p.A13)
1998 Nov 23, It was reported that American Online planned to purchase Netscape Communication for about $4 billion in stock.
(SFC, 11/23/98, p.A1)
1998 Nov 24, America Online confirmed it was buying Netscape Communications in a deal ultimately worth $10 billion.
(AP, 11/24/99)
1998 Oct, The board of directors for ICANN was seated. The Clinton administration created ICANN, the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers. It had been run by Jon Postel (d.1998), director of the Computer Networks Division at Information Sciences Institute at the Univ. of Southern Calif. ICANN was expected to become independent in 2006.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.B5)(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.B6)(Econ, 11/20/04, p.66)
1998 Dec 3, Digital MP3 file-squishing technology was reported as a threat to recording industry. MPEG Layer 3 was a compression technology that allowed CD quality music to be sent over the internet. The Rio portable player by Diamond Multimedia was released to stores in the midst of piracy concerns.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.B1)
1998 Dec 4, From China it was reported that Lin Hai (30), a software entrepreneur, had been arrested for inciting subversion by providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to "hostile foreign organizations. [see Apr 1998]
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.A10)(Wired, 2/99, p.127)
1998 Pres. Clinton signed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. It mandated a moratorium on any state or local taxes on Internet access.
(WSJ, 12/8/03, p.B1)
1998 Algis Ratnikas launched Timelines of History on a web site provided by theGlobe.com. Accumulation of data had begun in 1996.
(AR, 11/29/98)
1998 Amazon.com bought Junglee, a comparison-shopping website, for $230 million. Junglee was co-founded by Ashish Gupta. In 2006 Gupta helped found Helion Venture Partners, an Indian venture capital firm.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.102)
1998 Sergey Brin, a Russian immigrant, and Larry Page of Stanford Univ. raised $1 million and launched the Google search engine in Menlo Park, Ca. By 2003 over 200 million searches were logged daily. In 2004 Google filed for IPO. Google's core search technology patent, owned by Stanford, was set to expire in 2011.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.I1)(WSJ, 4/30/04, p.A1)
1998 InnoCentive was conceived by 3 scientists working for Eli Lilly as a way to solve problems by using the Internet. In 2001 it was spun off as an independent start-up.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.75)
1998 Netscape released its browser code to allow the general community to produce Mozilla, an open-source browser, later named Firefox.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)
1998 The BBC under John Birt launched Internet online operations.
(Econ, 6/18/05, Survey p.52)
1998 Bill Gross pioneered the pay-per-click Internet advertising model. In 2003 Yahoo acquired his Overture Services.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.62)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.66)
1998 Samih Toukan founded Maktoob in Amman, Jordan, a software firm dedicated to replacing English with Arabic in e-mail systems. Maktoob.com was the world’s 1st Arab language Web site. In 2000 the firm received a $2.5 million cash injection from an Egyptian investment bank and launched the first Arabic e-mail.
(SFC, 9/9/00, p.A14)(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.C1)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.40)
1998 Microsoft invented the key technology for web-based software: Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX), but failed to exploit it.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.69)
1998 PayPal was founded as a way of moving money between Palm Pilots.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.87)
1998 Disney purchased Infoseek and turned it into Go.com.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1998 China’s Ministry of Public Security created its “Golden Shield" for domestic internet surveillance and filtering.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.5)
1998 Yossi Vardi (b.1942), Israeli entrepreneur, sold Mirabilis Ltd., the creator of the ICQ instant messaging service, to American Online for over $400 million.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.56)(www.enewsbuilder.net/viab/e_article000077316.cfm)
1998 Tuvalu leased the .tv suffix of its internet address to a Toronto firm, Information CA, and prime Minister Bikenibeu expected royalties of at least $60 million a year.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Yahoo! with 637 employees matched the market capitalization of Boeing with 230,000 employees.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.9)
1998-1999 America traced a series of computer break-ins at the Pentagon, NASA and elsewhere to a computer in Russia, which denied involvement.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1999 Jan, Shawn Fanning (18), a computer science student at Boston's Northeastern Univ., wrote Napster, a software program to share music files over the Internet. He and Sean Parker founded the Napster file-sharing service.
(SFC, 3/3/00, p.A7)(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
1999 Feb 25, The FCC ruled that connecting to the internet constitutes a long-distance call.
(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.B3)
1999 Mar 18, The 3rd annual Webbies was held at the Herbst Theater under the direction of Tiffany Schlain (28).
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A17)
1999 Mar 29, The Melissa computer virus, first reported Mar 26, was spreading and infecting E-mail in tens of thousands of computers. In Dec. David L. Smith, a New Jersey programmer, pleaded guilty to creating the virus and spreading it through a sex Web site. It was reported to have caused $80 million in damage.
(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A3)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.B1)
1999 Mar, Jack Ma (b.1964), a former English teacher, launched Alibaba.com to support small business people in China. In 2005 Yahoo agreed to pay $1 billion in cash and turn over its Chinese operations to Alibaba in return for a 40% stake in the Chinese e-commerce company. On Nov 6, 2007, Alibaba became listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In 2009 Liu Shiying and Martha Avery authored “Alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the world’s Biggest Online marketplace."
(WSJ, 8/12/05, p.A1,B1)(SFC, 11/5/07, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/4/09, p.A13)
1999 May 6, A US appeals court ruled that government restrictions on the export of encryption software violated free speech.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May, Chinese hackers broke in and vandalized American government websites in retaliation for the May 7 American aircraft bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The White House website closed for three days.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1999 Jun 6, The Worm.Explore.Zip virus was first detected in Israel. The virus was disguised as an e-mail attachment and destroyed files when opened.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.A6)
1999 Jun 11, The FBI was seeking the creator of Worm.Explore.Zip, a file-destroying computer virus which had hit some of the nation’s biggest corporations.
(AP, 6/11/00)
1999 Jun 23, House Republicans unveiled their "e-Contract," a pitch to the high-tech community that included a promise to keep the Internet free.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun, Naver was incorporated as NHN Corp. by ex-Samsung employees, and launched on September 12 as the first Web portal in South Korea that used its own proprietary search engine. In 2017 Naver was the fifth most used search engine in the world, following Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Bing.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naver)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.71)
1999 Aug 2, Argentina-based MercadoLibre, a pan-Latin American e-commerce and fintech firm, was founded. Founder and CEO Marcos Galperin established the company while attending Stanford University. Projected revenues in 2020 were $3.2 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MercadoLibre)
1999 Aug 18, Ramos Horta of Indonesia, 1996 Nobel Prize winner, warned the government that computer hackers would wreak electronic mayhem on the country if voting in the East Timor referendum is hampered.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.D10)
1999 Aug 31, In Argentina the online-auction site DeRemate was launched. In 2002 daily visits averaged 160,000 as Internet users climbed to 2.7 million.
(WSJ, 9/4/02, p.B5A)
1999 Sep 16, The White House said it would allow US firms to export computer encryption technology.
(SFC, 9/17/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep, Yodlee.com, trusted leader in providing compelling financial solutions, put the Internet to work for individuals by bringing together all personal information, from hundreds of sources, in one convenient, secure site.
(http://tinyurl.com/ru3g5)(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.B1)
1999 Nov 11, The computer virus dubbed Bubbleboy was reported to spread through electronic mail without attachments.
(WSJ, 11/11/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, Organizers called for a "Jam Echelon Day," an effort to overload US National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers with e-mail containing words such as "bomb." Echelon was a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.A7)
1999 Nov 30, It was reported that the EU passed the Electronic Signature Directive, a law that gave legal status to digital signatures.
(WSJ, 12/1/99, p.A24B15)
1999 Dec 6, AT&T agreed in principle to give competing Internet providers access to its high-speed cable lines.
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.A3)
1999 Dec 7, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Napster for being a haven for music piracy.
(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
1999 Dec 13, Mayfield Fund and @Ventures, the affiliated venture capital arm of CMGI, announced that they have completed the initial $7.50 million round of venture capital funding for a photography Internet startup. Snapfish.com, formerly code-named 'Project SkyTalk,' will offer a revolutionary new business model in the photography market. In 2005 the company was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.
(www.snapfish.com/release12132000)(SFC, 4/10/10, p.D1)
1999 Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, authored "Weaving the Web."
(WSJ, 10/1/99, p. W6)
1999 Barry M. Leiner (d.2003 at 57) authored a technical history of the Internet. In the 1980s he worked as a manager at DARPA and helped establish the Internet Activities Board (IAB), which set technical standards for the Internet.
(SFC, 4/19/03, p.A17)
1999 Anthony B. and Michael C. Perkins authored "The Internet Bubble." The founding editors of Red Herring and Red Herring Online believed that Internet stocks were overvalued.
(WSJ, 11/1/99, p.A52)
1999 Netflix was founded in Los Gatos, Ca., as an Internet based company for DVD rentals sent via mail.
(WSJ, 10/17/05, p.A1)
1999 Pyra software company released Blogger for free. It allowed users to set up a Weblog, a simple personal web site program. By 2002 some 500,000 weblogs were on the Internet.
(NW, 8/26/02, p.42)
1999 Over 1000 World Wide Web search engines were in operation.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1999 In China Ji Qi founded Ctrip, a new Internet firm, catering to the Chinese traveler. He later followed up with Home Inns, a chain of basic hotels.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.64)
1999 In China Fang Binxing began working on the “Great Wall," a system to guard the handful of gateways through which all foreign content and communications enter China, while at the National Computer Network and Information System Security Administration Center.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.9)
1999 NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s top mobile phone operator, pioneered internet access through its i-mode service. In 2001 it pioneered 3G technology and in 2005 embedded a credit card into a wireless chip enabling consumer financial payments.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.71)
1999 Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, agreed for Softbank to buy a 30% stake in the Hangzhou-based Alibaba website founded by Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, for $20 million. In 2017 Alibaba was valued at $270 billion and Softbank still owned 28%.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.58)
1999 Malaysiakini, an independent online newspaper in Malaysia, was founded as a free site. In 2002 it was forced to start charging for use.
(Econ, 3/15/08, p.52)
1999 In Russia legislation was passed that created SORM-2, a Russian acronym for the system of Operative and Investigative procedures. It required every Internet service provider to install monitoring equipment that allowed access by Russian security agencies.
(SFC, 3/11/00, p.A1)
1999 Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa sold Thawte, a company that made digital certificates and security software to support internet commerce, to VeriSign for over $500 million.
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.33)
1999 South Korea initiated OPEN (Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications), an Internet-based anti-graft program.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.D6)
2000 Jan 1, In California the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act became law. It validated all transactions formed, transmitted and recorded electronically, with certain exemptions.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.B1)
2000 Jan 7, Pres. Clinton announced a $91 million program to protect computer security as part of the 2001 fiscal budget.
(SFC, 1/800, p.A1)
2000 Jan 19, Transmeta Corp. leaders unveiled a pair of new microprocessors named Crusoe designed for hand-held Internet-access devices.
(SFC, 1/20/00, p.B2)
2000 Jan 20, It was reported that the number of Internet users in China had more than doubled over the last 6 months from 4 to 8.9 million, most of them young single men.
(SFC, 1/20/00, p.C16)
2000 Jan 24, A torrent of data to the US National Security Agency brought the system to a crashing halt that lasted 3½ days.
(Econ, 2/27/10, p.18)(http://intellit.muskingum.edu/nsa_folder/nsa00.html)
2000 Jan 26, In China the State Bureau of Secrecy issued a 20-article circular that banned discussion of state secrets on the Internet, in e-mail, and in chat rooms or bulletin boards. Content and service providers were also required to undergo a "security certification" prior to operation.
(SFC, 1/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 3, The Ford Motor Co. said it would provide new PCs and a printer with Internet access to its 300,000 employees at $5 per month over 3 years.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 4, Delta Air Lines said it would provide new PCs and Internet access to its 72,000 employees at $12 per month over 3 years.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 7, An apparent team of computer hackers shut the Yahoo web site down with a "denial-of-service" attack that mimicked millions of phantom users.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 8, Net hackers shut down at least 4 popular Web sites including Amazon.com, eBay, CNN.com and buy.com with "denial of service attacks."
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/01)
2000 Mar 3, It was reported that student use of Napster software to download music files from the Internet was clogging up university networks and causing officials to block or limit access to the site.
(SFC, 3/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 3, It was reported that 6 prestigious int’l. universities and cultural institutions planned to sell knowledge and education over the Internet via the Fathom Web site.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.A5)
2000 Apr 5, The Netscape 6 browser was introduced.
(WSJ, 4/5/00, p.B1)
2000 Apr 13, The heavy metal rock group Metallica filed suit against Napster for copyright infringement and racketeering.
(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
2000 May 4, The e-mail virus “I Love You" bug hit millions of computers around the world. It was considered the most virulent, most damaging ($2.6 bil), most costly and most rapidly spread virus to date.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A1)(SFC, 5/6/00, p.A1)
2000 May 18, Another computer virus, described as a complex polymorph, began to spread around the world.
(SFC, 5/19/00, p.A1)
2000 May 26, The “Killer Resume" computer virus began to circulate.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A1)
2000 May 28, Donald W. Davies, who helped pioneer packet switching, died in London at age 75.
(WSJ, 6/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Jun 9, The FBI began discussions on the “Serbian Badman Trojan: computer virus disguised as a movie clip and embedded in some 2000 commercial and home computers.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A7)
2000 Jun 16, The US Senate passed a bill to allow e-signatures for online contracts. Pres. Clinton said he would sign the bill.
(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A3)
2000 Jun 30, Pres. Clinton signed legislation for “digital signatures."
(WSJ, 7/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 26, Napster Inc. was hit with a preliminary injunction to halt all illegal song swapping over the Internet.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 8, Richard Clarke, top cyberspace official of the US National Security Council, warned that several nations had already created information-warfare units for disrupting computer networks.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Luis von Ahn, computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, together with Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper and John Langford coined the term CAPTCHA (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) in a joint paper. This led to the use of mangled text to verify human users of computer software over the Internet. The Recaptcha system was launched in 2007 and used words that machines could not read.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.16)
2000 Elong Musk was ousted as boss of PayPal.
(Econ, 10/22/16, p.56)
2000 Orbitz, an online travel assistance site, was put together by a group of airlines for direct sales to consumers. In 2004 it was sold to Cendant for $1.25 billion.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.66)
2000 Gurbaksh Chahal (18), India-born entrepreneur in San Jose, Ca.,, sold his company Click Agent for $40 million to competitor Value Click in an all stock merger. In 2007 he sold his 2nd company, Blue Lithium, to Yahoo for $300 million.
(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.F1)
2000 The Alta Vista search engine began allowing multi media searching.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Google and Yahoo partnered to provide search on yahoo.com. Google indexed over 1 billion pages, making it the largest index on the Web.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Switch began building a series of colocation centers in Las Vegas. Its business got a boost in December 2002, when it acquired a former Enron broadband services facility out of bankruptcy. In 2010 the SWITCH SuperNAP, a huge data center, opened near the Las Vegas airport.
(Econ, 1/7/12, p.28)(http://tinyurl.com/7r3deaq)
2000 Data centers consumed .6% of the world’s electricity. By 2005 this reached 1%.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.19)
2000 Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine, was founded. It went public in 2005.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Japan recorded the 1st known case of two or more people using the Internet to form a suicide pact. Hundreds of suicides, if not more, from various countries copied that pattern in the following years.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.66)
2000-2001 Israeli and Arab hackers vandalized and crashed each others’ websites over a 4-month period. Attacks also occurred against telecom films supplying internet connections.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
2001 Jan 15, Jimmy Wales (35), a retired futures and options trader, founded Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia. It started as an offshoot of Nupedia, a free, online encyclopedia written by experts. Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales came up with the idea of allowing anybody to edit entries. In 2009 Andrew Lih authored “The Wikipedia Revolution: How as Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia."
(SFC, 12/6/05, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/18/09, p.A13)(SFC, 1/15/11, p.D1)(Econ, 1/15/11, p.14)
2001 Mar 6, US District Judge Marilyn Patel ordered Napster to block access to its files of Millions of downloadable songs protected by copyrights.
(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D3)
2001 Jul 19, The Code Red computer worm began hitting Internet-connected computers, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft software. This was among the first network worms to spread rapidly because it required only a network connection, not a human opening an attachment.
(SFC, 7/30/01, p.D1)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
2001 Jul 23, The US Pentagon shut down public access to its web sites due to a computer worm called the Code Red worm. It defaced web sites with the words “Hacked by Chinese."
(SFC, 7/24/01, p.A2)
2001 Aug 2, Houston launched SimHouston, a program to provide each of its 1.8 million residents with free e-mail accounts and access to word processing software.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C1)
2001 Aug 8, US Federal authorities announced the arrests of 100 people nationwide in an Internet child pornography operation, Landslide Productions Inc., based in Fort Worth, Tx.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A3)
2001 Aug 27, Michael Dertouzos, MIT computer scientist, died at age 64. His books included “"The Unfinished Revolution: Human Centered Computers and What They Can Do For Us." He also helped drive the creation of the WWW Consortium to ensure uniformity on the Web.
(SFC, 8/31/01, p.A24)
2001 Aug, theGlobe.com shutdown its flagship site and laid off 50% of its employees. The company continued hosting some of its partner sites and publishing Computer Games, but the domain of www.theglobe.com displayed nothing more than an informational message about the site's termination until 2003.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
2001 Sep 18, The new computer worm, W32.Nimda, struck the Internet.
(SFC, 9/19/01, p.D1)
2001 Sep 30, ExciteAtHome, a firm that connected cable companies to the Internet, declared bankruptcy. A month later some 764,000 AT&T customers found their Internet access shut down.
(SSFC, 12/2/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 8, Mena and Ben Trott released Movable Type, a weblogging tool. Operations quickly expanded and in 2002 they named their company Six Apart.
(www.sixapart.com/about/history)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.68)
2001 Oct 9, Pres. Bush appointed Richard Clarke as special adviser for cyberspace security.
(SFC, 10/10/01, p.A4)
2001 Dec 11, US Federal agents carried out dozens of raids and seized computers in some 27 cities and 21 states suspected of pirating software over the Internet. The “Warez" network of software pirates was targeted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Lawrence Lessig (46), Stanford professor and cyberlaw expert, founded Creative Commons, which offered an alternative to standard copyrights through various gradations of permission for use. Creative Commons (CC) licensing was founded by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with support of the Center for the Public Domain. It was devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.31)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons)
2001 In Canada the website AshleyMadison.com was launched with the slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair."
(SSFC, 11/10/13, p.A6)
2001 KaZaA, an internet file-sharing program, was founded in Amsterdam by Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.54)
2001 Keyhole released the first commercial geobrowser. Google bought Keyhole in 2004 and launched Google Earth in 2005.
(Econ, 9/8/07, TQ p.18)
2001 Infospace bought Webcrawler.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2001 Ben and Mena Trott of SF created “Movable Type," a software blogging tool to operate web logs, i.e. blogs on the Internet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.3)
2001 Gyorgy Gattyan, a Hungarian entrepreneur, launched LiveJasmin, an Internet cam company featuring live sex chats. The garage project later became Docler Holding. In 2013 the company became headquartered in Luxembourg. By 2015 he was Hungary’s richest man and his porn site LiveJasmin received 40m visitors a day.
(www.itone.lu/article/gyorgy-gattyan-simple-recipe)(Econ, 10/1/11, p.64)(Econ, 9/26/15, p.62)
2001 In India Ramesh Ramanathan and Swati Ramanathan, founded the Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy. It started as a movement to enable citizen participation in public governance and evolved into a robust institution for Citizenship and Democracy. In 2010 the center introduced the website http://ipaidabribe.com.
(www.ipaidabribe.com/node/77)
2002 Jan 19, It was reported that China had imposed new Internet controls and required service providers to screen all e-mail messages for political content.
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 21, Hackers launched coordinated attacks on the 13 organizations principally responsible for managing the Internet’s domain naming system.
(SSFC, 1/22/12, p.H1)
2002 Nov 1, A US judge upheld the 2001 proposed settlement between Microsoft and the Dept. of Justice. US federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved a settlement between the Dept. of Justice and Microsoft that added some restrictions on the company, but fell short of a breakup and other tough measurements sought by the government.
(SFC, 11/2/02, p.A1)(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
2002 Nov 9, Allan Chu (17) of Saratoga, Ca., won top honors in a Siemens Westinghouse competition for his work on a new algorithm to compress Internet data.
(SFC, 11/12/02, p.A17)
2002 Dec 14, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, a Silicon Valley startup, to manage his own network of business contacts. The co-founders included Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish and Yan Pujante. In 2016 Microsoft agreed to acquire the company for $26.2 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.76)(SFC, 6/14/16, p.A1)
2002 Richard Hunter authored “World without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing."
(http://tinyurl.com/4c9c2lo)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.77)
2002 David Sheff authored “China Dawn," a close-up look at the young men building Internet infrastructure in China.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A24)
2002 Bram Cohen created BitTorrent, an online file sharing program. It increased the download time for large files by breaking them into pieces and reassembling them on arrival.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.F3)
2002 eBay bought PayPal, founded by Elon Musk, for $1.5 billion in shares.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.71)(Econ, 3/24/07, p.78)
2002 Yahoo acquired Inktomi.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2002 The website www.meetup.com became a forum for clubs of all kinds.
(Econ, 7/16/05, Survey p.16)
2002 Friendster pioneered social networking via Web sites. It was funded by entrepreneur Jonathan Abrams. In 2006 Friendster was granted a patent covering “a method and apparatus for calculating, displaying and acting upon relationships in a social network."
(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.B1)
2002 Google’s index surpassed 3 billion Web pages.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2002 Gary McKinnon was caught in London and after breaking into 97 US military and NASA computers, while allegedly searching for UFO’s. His hacking from 2001-2002 caused an estimated $700,000 of damage. In 2008 McKinnon (42) was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. He also lost an appeal against being extradited to the US to face charges. In 2009 he offered to plead guilty to a criminal charge in Britain to avoid extradition to the United States.
(SFC, 7/31/08, p.A14)(AP, 1/12/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.51)
2002 The Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) was founded as concerns of data leakage, intellectual property protection, and export control compliance began to rise. It was a cooperative effort by the leading defense and aerospace firms, supported by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop a framework of policies and mechanisms to enable secure collaboration across multiple jurisdictions.
(http://tinyurl.com/3sfx69x)
2003 Jan 10, Iraq blocked all e-mail services following a batch of messages from disguised US agencies urging dissent and military defections. Some service was restored the next day.
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan 15, Lufthansa introduced Internet access to passengers on a flight from Germany to Washington DC.
(SFC, 1/15/03, p.B1)
2003 Jan 25, A computer worm slowed Internet traffic. The “slammer" virus sought vulnerable Microsoft “SQL Server 2000" software.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 29, The governor of Virginia signed a tough antispam law that called for prison and asset seizures.
(WSJ, 4/30/03, A1)
2003 Apr, Google acquired Applied Semantics. The AdSense name was originally used by Applied Semantics, a competitive offering to AdSense. The name was adopted by Google after Google acquired Applied Semantics.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense)
2003 May 9, The Fizzer computer virus began circulating aided by its ability to propagate through the Kazaa file sharing network.
(WSJ, 5/13/03, p.D3)
2003 May 19, It was reported that a loose affiliation of people worked to coordinate Internet attacks on span generators. E-mail marketer Optinrealbig.com was one of those targeted.
(WSJ, 5/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul, Yahoo paid $1.6 billion for Overture Services, a pioneer in the paid-search advertising business. Overture was called GoTo.com and came out of a factory of companies called Idealab, developed by Bill Gross in 1996. Yahoo started its own search engine this year and stopped using Google.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-com p.17)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.62)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2003 Aug 12, An Internet worm targeting Microsoft Corp Windows users was spreading rapidly around the world, triggering computer crashes and slowing Web connections. Dubbed Blaster but also known as LoveSan or MSBlaster, carried a message for the Microsoft chairman: "Billy Gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 29, Jeffrey Lee Parson (18), suspected of writing a variant of the "Blaster," a virus-like computer worm, was arrested in his hometown, the Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins. He was charged with one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer and faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. Parson pleaded guilty in August 2004 and was subsequently sentenced on January 28, 2005 to 18 months in prison followed by a three-year supervised release program, and was required to do 225 hours of community service. He was ordered to pay restitution of $497,546.55 to Microsoft Corporation and $1,056 to specific individuals to have their computer hard drives cleaned.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A2)(www.rbs2.com/parson2.html)
2003 Aug, Skype, founded in Amsterdam as Kazaa in 2001, released the 1st version of its software which allowed people to make free voice and video calls over the internet.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.79)
2003 Sep 18, Anti-virus companies warned of a new computer worm circulating through e-mail that purports to be security software from Microsoft Corp.
(Reuters, 9/18/03)
2003 Oct 31, A new e-mail virus, "Mimail.C.," started spreading to corporate computers and is headed for home computers, but computer security experts said they expect the outbreak to wind down over the weekend.
(AP, 11/1/03)
2003 Oct, Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California by Andy Rubin (b.1962), Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. In July 2005 Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million. Its key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin)
2003 Nov, In China Jiang Lijun (39) was sentenced to four years in prison for posting Internet articles calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party. In 2006 it was reported that Yahoo's Hong Kong unit gave authorities a draft e-mail that had been saved on Jiang's account. Yahoo also provided information in the cases of Li Zhi and Shi Tao.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2003 Dec 5, Yahoo Inc. said it is working on technology to combat e-mail spam by changing the way the Internet works to require authentication of a message's sender.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 16, Pres. Bush signed legislation to curb unsolicited commercial e-mails.
(WSJ, 12/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 31, The JenniCam website, begun by Jennifer Ringley in 1996, shut down. 7 years earlier she installed a Web camera in her Pennsylvania college dorm room and kept it on for 24 hours a day recording every detail of her life.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.B4)
2003 Apple released its Internet browser, Safari.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)
2003 Google bought Blogger, a web service created by Evan Williams, that allowed anybody to create a blog with a few clicks. Williams went on to create Twitter, a service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: What are you doing."
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.110)
2003 Microsoft introduced its own web spider to index web pages.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-com p.16)
2003 AOL spun off Mozilla.org with a $2 million cash cushion. Ms. Mitchell Baker, former Netscape attorney, turned Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, into a non-profit foundation.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)(SFC, 1/28/08, p.E2)
2003 MySpace.com, an Internet social networking website, was founded. By 2006 it was the 4th biggest site on the Web. In 2009 Julia Angwin authored “Stealing Myspace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America."
(SFC, 3/10/06, p.A16)(SSFC, 3/29/09, Books p.J1)
2003 Oh Yeon Ho turned his South Korean Ohmy News website into a for profit firm. In 2006 his website averaged 700,000 visitors and 2 million page view per day.
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.9)
2003 Matt Mullenweg founded WordPress, an internet blogging tool, as a college student in Houston. It grew to become a backbone for many of the Web’s most popular sites.
(SFC, 7/26/13, p.C1)
2003 Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab (f.1999) created SecondLife, a metaphysical universe, on the Internet. The company sold virtual property and made money when residents leased property by charging an average of $20 per virtual “acre" per month. In 2008 Wagner James Au authored "The making of Second Life."
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.16)(http://lindenlab.com/)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.78)(WSJ, 3/12/08, p.D8)
2003 Xing, a professional social network website, was founded by Lars Hinrichs of Hamburg, Germany. It went public in 2006.
(Econ, 9/27/08, p.76)
2004 Jan 1, The 1st US anti-span law, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, went into effect. It made it illegal for advertisers to falsify their identity and required an effective way for recipients to get themselves removed from advertiser lists.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 9, A new Swen-style Trojan horse, dubbed Trojan.Xombe and posing as a critical update from Microsoft, was detected on the Internet.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 27, A new Windows computer virus, a self-propagating worm known as Mydoom or Novarg, continued to spread over the Internet.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 28, A new strain of the Mydoom virus emerged. Mydoom.B was programmed to launch an attack against Microsoft's web site the following week.
(SFC, 1/29/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 13, The FCC began writing rules to enable users to access the Internet through electric power lines.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that 70% South Koreans had high-speed Internet connections.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Feb, The Palo Alto-based Facebook.com, an Internet social networking website, was founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. He put Harvard’s yearbook on the internet and the creation spread to Yale and beyond. He soon faced a lawsuit from 3 other Harvard students, who alleged he stole their idea. In 2009 Ben Mezrich authored “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal."
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A1)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.69)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.66)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.72)
2004 Mar 10, Four major US Internet service providers filed a series of lawsuits meant to shutdown a number of leading spammers.
(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 12, An FBI proposal was made public to require all broadband Internet providers to support easy wiretapping.
(SFC, 3/13/04, p.C2)
2004 Mar 15, A new computer worm, named "Phatbot," began appearing in the Asia-Pacific region. Most call it a variation of the longstanding Gaobot or Agobot family, and sometimes as Polybot. When the worm is run, it sets the system to autostart the worm at boot time; attempts to terminate security software running on the computer; and probes network shares in an attempt to spread itself.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 20, A quickly spreading Internet worm destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of personal computers worldwide morning by exploiting a security flaw in a firewall program designed to protect PCs from online threats. The "Witty" worm wrote random data onto the hard drives of computers equipped with the Black Ice and Real Secure Internet firewall products. It spread automatically to vulnerable computers without any action on the part of the user.
(WaP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 30, AT&T officially began to offer phone calls via the Internet (VOIP) in 2 state, New Jersey and Texas.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.B1)
2004 Apr 1, Google introduce Gmail, a Web based e-mail service with one gigabyte of free storage per user. In 2007 the storage was expanded to “free unlimited." Google’s index passed 8 billion pages this year.
(WSJ, 6/13/07, p.B1)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2004 Apr 15, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, became the 1st recipient of Finland’s Millennium Technology Prize.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.84)(www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/16/HNbernerslee_1.html)
2004 Apr 29, Google unveiled an IPO that could raise as much as $2.7 billion.
(SFC, 4/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr, The Anti-Phishing Working Group counted some 1,125 phishing attacks this month. The scam of duping computer users into revealing private data developed into a serious threat in the 2nd half of 2003 when banks in Australia and New Zealand came under attack. Each attack sends an estimated 50k to 10 million phishing e-mails.
(WSJ, 5/27/04, p.B1)
2004 Apr, Some 64% of all Internet e-mail was identified as spam. Up from 60% in Jan.
(WSJ, 5/28/04, p.B1)
2004 May 3, The fast-spreading "Sasser" computer worm has infected hundreds of thousands of PCs globally and the number could soon rise sharply. When a machine is infected, error messages may appear and the computer may reboot repeatedly.
(Reuters, 5/3/04)
2004 May 7, German authorities arrested Sven Jaschen, an 18-year-old high school student, for creating the "Sasser" network computer worm. Jaschan also confessed to writing the Netsky virus and was suspected to be responsible for 70% of the 2004 virus infections. In 2005 Jaschan was found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data. He was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months.
(AP, 5/8/04)(USAT, 5/11/04, p.4B)(SFC, 7/29/04, p.C3)(AP, 7/8/05)
2004 May, Factiva, a web-based news and information service, launched a new reputation-management service. Factiva, a joint venture between Dow Jones and Reuters, was run by Clare Hart.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-con p.18)
2004 Jun 16, A new computer worm targeting mobile phones was reported. It was dubbed “Cabir" and reportedly written by a virus-writing group in Spain known as 29A.
(WSJ, 6/16/04, p.B9)
2004 Jul 26, A new variation of the Mydoom computer virus spread across the Internet.
(SFC, 7/27/04, p.D1)
2004 Aug 7, AP reported that a beheading was broadcast on 2 Arab TV stations. The video of the beheading was fake and had been initially made and posted on the Internet in May by 3 people from the SF Bay Area. Benjamin Vanderford of SF said he made the video to show how easy it is to spread lies over the Internet.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.A12)
2004 Aug 18, Google said it now expects its stock to trade between $85 and $95 per share, down from its old forecast of between $108 and $135. It also said the total number of shares to be sold will be cut to 19.6 million, down from 25.7 million.
(AP, 8/18/04)
2004 Aug 19, Google, the Internet search engine, began trading shares at $85 per share. 14.1 million shares were recently sold in a Dutch Auction at $85 per share. Google shares closed up 18% at $100.33.
(SFC, 8/19/04, p.A1)(SFC, 8/20/04, p.A1)
2004 Sep 14, Firefox, developed by Mozilla, released a new Web browser.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.76)
2004 Sep 15, Amazon unveiled a new search engine called A9.com.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.76)
2004 Sep, SF Mayor Newsom announced the launch of free wireless Internet service at Union Square. He soon planned to extend free service to Civic Center Plaza, Portsmounth Square and Ferry Plaza.
(SFC, 10/29/04, p.F1)
2004 Oct 5, The first Web 2.0 Conference opened for a 3-day session at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.
(Econ, 3/21/09, p.71)(http://conferences.oreillynet.com/web2con/)
2004 Oct 10, It was officially “Craigslist day" in SF. Craig Newmark started the classified ad Internet service in 1995 and in 2004 it was in 57 cities and 5 countries.
(Econ, 10/16/04, p.59)
2004 Oct 14, Google Inc. introduced a program that quickly scours hard drives for documents, e-mails, instant messages and past Web searches.
(AP, 10/14/04)
2004 Oct 28, AMD released its new $185 personal Internet Communicator for consumers in developing countries.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.C3)
2004 Oct, Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons and Geoff Donaker co-founded Yelp in San Francisco to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics. In 1012 the company was valued at $1.3 billion.
(SSFC, 7/15/12, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp,_Inc.)
2004 Nov 3, Jeremy Jaynes of North Carolina became the first person in the US to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk email. He was charged in Virginia because his emails went through an AOL server there. In 2008 the Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s antispam law unconstitutional and reversed Jaynes’ conviction.
(WSJ, 9/13/08, p.A2)(www.phonebusters.com/english/legal_2004_nov3.html)
2004 Nov 10, Microsoft unveiled a preview of its new Internet search engine.
(SFC, 11/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Nov 23, The UN Working Group on Internet Governance (40 delegates) met in Geneva.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.65)
2004 Dec 13, Google announced plans to digitally scan the book collections of 5 major libraries, including the Univ. Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, NY Public Library and Oxford, which agreed to books published before 1900.
(SFC, 12/14/04, p.A1)
2004 Nov, Digg, an Internet-based provider of content submitted by users, went live. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson founded Digg.com, a web-based news site using collaborative editing to focus on news in technology.
(SFC, 6/23/06, p.D5)(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P4)
2004 Eric Jackson authored “The PayPal Wars." It describes how PayPal launched its online payment service and set out to revolutionize the world's currency markets. It describes how Max Levchin and David Gausebeck developed the Gausebeck-Levchin test to tell if a machine or a person was signing up accounts over the Internet.
(www.worldaheadpublishing.com/titles/ppw.php)(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.D3)
2004 FiXs was founded and based in Fairfax, Virginia, to pilot a federated identity transaction model and was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation. A long-standing affiliation with the DoD credentialing program has enabled participating government organizations and industry members to establish secure and interoperable identity verification and authentication for secure facility and system access.
{USA, Virginia, Internet}
(http://www.fixs.org/)
2004 Joe Kraus co-founded JotSpot as the first company to provide an application wiki. JotSpot has since launched several other products.
(http://www.jot.com/)(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.14)
2004 PatientsLikeMe, a social networking health site, was founded by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers: brothers Benjamin Heywood and Jamie Heywood and longtime family friend Jeff Cole.
(Econ, 3/3/12, TQ p.22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PatientsLikeMe)
2004 Ruby on Rails, created by David Heinemeier Hansson, made its debut and rapidly become one of the most powerful and popular frameworks for building dynamic web applications.
(http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book)
2004 WiMax technology, a long-range wireless standard, provided high-speed Internet access from a maximum range of 30 miles.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.64)
2004 GetJar, an independent app sales portal, was founded in 2004 by Lithuanian-born serial entrepreneur Ilja Laurs. By 2010 with roughly 57,000 applications contributed by about 350,000 registered developers, the GetJar catalog yielded about 60 million downloads per month, up from 15 million monthly a year ago and second in volume only to the App Store.
(www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/february/204586.html)
2004 Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa began funding the Ubuntu project, which made a user-friendly version of Linux, an open source operating system.
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.33)
2004 Google’s index surpassed 8 billion web pages.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2004 In China Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, set up an online payments system called Alipay.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.55)
2005 Mar 3, AOL launched a new beta version of its web browser Netscape 8.0.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.B1)
2005 Mar 10, It was reported that a Texas ranch has implemented a computer-assisted remote hunting website allowing paying hunters to bag big game from their home computers.
(SFC, 3/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 12, It was reported that Bernardo Huberman, researcher at Hewlett-Packard, had described software called Tycoon for directing computons on computing grids. He used the term “computon" to describe a packet of electromagnetic energy.
(Econ, 3/12/05, TQ p.6)
2005 Mar 21, Barry Diller's electronic commerce company IAC/InterActiveCorp announced that it is buying online search engine Ask Jeeves Inc. for $1.9 billion and taking aim at the Internet's advertising market leaders.
(http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/3/3/64797233.html)
2005 Mar 22, IBM unveiled new anti-span technology called FairUCE. It used a giant database to identify computers sending spam and returned e-mails from those listed back to the sending machine.
(WSJ, 3/22/05, p.B1)
2005 Mar 31, A US Commerce Dept. study on Internet traffic, ordered in 1998, was published under the title “Signposts in Cyberspace."
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.C3)
2005 Apr 11, Officials said UC Berkeley will lead a 5-year, $19 million project, funded by the NSF, to prevent a hacker threat from decimating US computer networks.
(SFC, 4/12/05, p.B1)(WSJ, 4/12/05, p.B3)
2005 Apr 23, The first YouTube video was uploaded. The 18 second clip showed founder Jawed Karim visiting a zoo. In December Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim officially launched YouTube, an Internet based site for sharing video clips. The three founders knew each other from working together at another Internet start up, PayPal. The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine's Day in 2005.
(http://tinyurl.com/7tk55mq)(Econ, 4/29/06, p.68)(WSJ, 10/13/06, p.A12)(Econ, 5/3/14, p.58)
2005 Apr, ICANN authorized the .jobs and .travel domain names.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.57)
2005 Apr, Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally providing state secrets to foreigners. He had detailed how his newspaper colleagues were instructed not to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 1989 pro-Democracy action. He was identified by his e-mail address provided by Yahoo. Shi Tao was released on Aug 23, 2013.
(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A16)(SFC, 9/9/13, p.A4)
2005 Jun 1, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the web suffix .xxx for porn oriented web sites.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.59)
2005 Jun 27, The US Supreme Court also ruled that cable-TV companies are not required to share their high-speed Internet connections with rivals.
(WSJ, 6/28/05, p.B1)
2005 Jun 28, Google unveiled a free 3-D satellite mapping technology.
(SFC, 6/29/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 30, A 2-year, 11-nation investigation, called Operation Site Down, culminated with arrests and the shut down of 8 major pirated film and software distribution servers. Over 120 cyberpirates were identified.
(SFC, 7/1/05, p.B1)
2005 Jul, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, a student from El Salvador, was indicted for selling spyware. He had created and sold an $89 program called Loverspy for users to help catch cheating lovers. In 2013 Perez-Melara (33) was added to the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminals list.
(SFC, 11/8/13, p.A16)
2005 Aug 5, Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine, went public on NASDAQ and closed up 354% at $122.54.
(SFC, 8/6/05, p.C1)
2005 Aug 14, The FBI and antivirus software companies began to notice that a computer virus called Zotob had started to spread [see Aug 16].
(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.A13)
2005 Aug 16, Several new computer worms hit systems running MS Windows 2000. On Aug 25 authorities in Morocco arrested Farid Essebar (18) for writing the Zotob worm. Atilla Ekici (21) was arrested in Turkey for paying Essebar to write the worm. In 2006 Morocco sentenced Farid Essebar (19) to 2 years in prison and Achraf Bahlouo (21) to one year for their role in unleashing the Zotob worm. Ekici’s trial continued in Turkey.
(SFC, 8/27/05, p.A2)(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.B3)(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.A1)
2005 Aug 29, A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges relating to the theft of the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software, considered among the company's crown jewels. William Genovese, Jr. (28) admitted selling the source code for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0. On January 27, 2006, he was sentenced to 2 years in jail.
(AP, 8/29/05)(www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/genovesePlea.htm)
2005 Sep 6, The Wikipedia, which surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, was fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events. The online encyclopedia, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., was written entirely by volunteers.
(Reuters, 9/6/05)(SFC, 12/6/05, p.A1)
2005 Sep, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp acquired MySpace.com, an Internet social networking website, for $580 million. In 2011 Murdoch sold MySpace for $35 million.
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A1)(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2005 Sep, Telebid, a German online auction, was launched. It used purchased-credits, instead of symbolic offers, for bidding. Over the next few years it expanded into Austria, Canada, Spain, Britain and America. In 2008 it changed its name to Swoopo.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.58)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo)
2005 Oct 19, Police in Bosnia arrested a cyber-jihadist who called himself Maximus. Mirsad Bektasevic, a Swedish teenager of Bosnian extraction, was sentenced to jail along with 3 others for plotting attacks to take place in Bosnia or other European countries. On his computer police found contacts with other jihadists in Europe including Younis Tsouli (Irhabi007), whom British police arrested 2 days later.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.28)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irhabi_007)
2005 Nov 16, A UN technology summit opened in Tunisia after an 11th-hour agreement that leaves the United States with ultimate oversight of the main computers that direct the Internet's flow of information, commerce and dissent.
(AP, 11/16/05)
2005 Nov 29, The Firefox web browser was upgraded to version 1.5.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)
1998 Nov, Tencent, a Chinese internet company, was founded in Shenzhen.
(Econ, 7/10/10, p.61)(www.tencent.com/en-us/at/abouttencent.shtml)
2005 Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother from Minnesota, was accused of sharing 24 songs using KaZaA, an Internet file sharing program. In 2007 a jury ruled against her and awarded record companies almost $10,000 per song in statutory damages. She was found guilty again in a 2nd trial in 2009 in which the jury awarded damages of $80,000 per song.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)
2005 Disney launched a free online game called Virtual Magic Kingdom in conjunction with its 50th anniversary. It became very popular and in 2008 fans protested plans to shut the site down.
(WSJ, 5/20/08, p.B1)
2005 Etsy, a website dedicated to makers of handmade goods, began operations. The company became profitable in 2009 and by 2013 sales were expected to surpass $1 billion.
(SFC, 11/11/13, p.D3)
2005 Global Voices Online was launched by former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief, Rebecca MacKinnon and technologist and Africa expert, Ethan Zuckerman while they were both fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University to create links between bloggers in different countries.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.62)(http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/)
2005 Krishnan Ganesh founded TutorVista, an Internet service using Indian tutors for Western students.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.76)
2005 The Internet news hub Huffington Post was founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. In 2011 the site, which attracted some 25 million monthly visitors, was sold to AOL.
(AP, 2/7/11)(Econ, 2/12/11, p.71)
2005 Yahoo bought Flickr, the first popular photo sharing website, for a reported $35 million.
(Econ, 5/14/16, p.53)
2005 Microsoft released MSN Search, powered by its own internally developed search engine. MSN had previously relied on Yahoo for its search function.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2005 Trump University began operations online and promised students the secrets of real estate success. It started holding in-person seminars in 2007 and was shut down by New York, its headquarters state, in 2010.
(SFC, 2/7/18, p.D2)
2005 Estonia became the first country to implement Internet voting in a nationwide election.
(http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-estonia.html)(AP, 11/9/12)
2005 Viadeo, a social network for professionals, was founded in France and by 2014 was the 2nd largest in the field behind LinkedIn. In 2008 Viadeo bought Tianji, a Chinese business networking site.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.52)
2005 Russian internet investors Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger pooled their interests in mail.ru, a Russian web portal, and created Digital Sky Technologies (DST).
(Econ, 7/10/10, p.61)
2006 Jan 19, Global News Blog, a weblog of Global Geopolitics Net, began breaking news and analysis on global security and intelligence issues. The site is sponsored by the Eurasia Research Center. Alan Fogelquist, the site editor, is a historian and geopolitical analyst.
(http://globalnewsblog.com/blog/?m=200601)
2006 Jan, The US National Science Foundation launched 2 initiatives improve the Internet. The Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) planned an advance test bed network for piloting new protocols and applications. The Future Internet Design (FIND) planned to examine how best to equip the internet for the needs of the future.
(Econ, 3/11/06, Survey p.32)
2006 Feb 23, A New Zealand teenager hacked into the University of Pennsylvania computer system. Owen Thor Walker (18), known by his online name "AKILL," also was linked to a network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. In 2008 Walker was ordered to pay more than $11,000 in fines but avoided a conviction so that he can help police solve computer crimes.
(AP, 7/15/08)
2006 Mar 1, China moved ahead with 3 new internet address suffixes in the Chinese language, as national variants to .cn, .com and .net.
(Econ, 3/4/06, p.61)
2006 Mar 9, Google announced that it has bought Upstartle LLC, whose Writely.com service allows users to create, edit and share documents online.
(WSJ, 3/10/06, p.A16)
2006 Mar 21, Twitter, an Internet service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: “What are you doing," was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. “Just setting up my twttr" wrote Jack Dorsey. The company had begun as a side project at Odeo, an ailing podcasting business bankrolled by Evan Williams. By 2011 tweets per day exceeded 230 million.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)(Econ, 10/1/11, p.68)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.16)
2006 Apr, As of this month Google held 43% of the US search engine market share. This reached 50% counting AOL, which used Google’s search engine technology; Yahoo had 28%, MSN had 13% and Ask, owned by IAC/Interactive Corp, had 6%.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.65)
2006 Jun 26, Foundem, a small British shopping comparison site, discovered that all of its obvious comparison shopping keywords no longer applied for the company due to changes made by Google.
(www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/19/google_hand_of_god/)
2006 Jul 19, Alain Rappaport premiered the web site www.medstory.com, a consumer search product for information on health and medicine.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 27, Pres. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act of 2006. It required convicted child molesters to be listed on a national Internet database and face a felony charge for failing to update their whereabouts.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)(www.fd.org/odstb_AdamWalsh.htm)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.9)
2006 Aug 2, AOL shifted to an advertising strategy as customers cancelled their dial-up service and jumped to high-speed Internet connections.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 1, Brazil pressured Google to turn over data from Web sites that the government said were used by criminals. Authorities gave Google 15 days to comply or face a daily fine of $23,000.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 18, A court in Belgium ordered Google to remove all links to French and German language newspaper reports published in Belgium due to copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D7)
2006 Sep, The ChaCha phone service (800-224-2242) began providing answers using a combination of automation and people-powered search.
(www.chacha.com/)(WSJ, 4/24/08, p.D1)
2006 Oct 9, Google Inc. agreed to acquire YouTube Inc., a leading video-sharing Web site, for $1.65 billion in stock.
(SFC, 10/10/06, p.E1)(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.B14)
2006 Oct 17, Megan Meier (b.1992) of Missouri committed suicide following a series of cruel messages on the MySpace online social network. In 2008 Lori drew (49) of Missouri was indicted for perpetrating an online hoax, which led to Meier’s suicide. Drew was convicted on Nov 26 of only three minor offenses for her role in the Internet hoax. The federal jury could not reach a verdict on the main charge against 49-year-old Lori Drew, conspiracy, and rejected three other felony counts of accessing computers without authorization to inflict emotional harm. A final decision on the verdicts was still pending in 2009.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier_suicide_controversy)(SFC, 5/16/08, p.A4)(AP, 11/27/08)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.232)
2006 Dec 8, McAfee, an Internet security firm, reported that organized gangs have adopted "KGB-style" tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime.
(AP, 12/8/06)
2006 Lawrence Lessig authored “Code: Version 2.0," in which he noted that online communities were transcending the limits of conventional states. He predicted that members of these communities would find it “difficult to stand neutral in this int’l. space."
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.59)
2006 Amazon.com under Jeff Bezos launched Amazon Web Services and invented cloud-computing as a pay-as-you-go service.
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.23)(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2006 Tim Berners Lee, creator of the world wide web, helped establish the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), a collaboration between MIT and the Univ. of Southampton on web science, a field that blends sociology with computer science.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.32)
2006 Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa) began developing Joost, a system for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer TV technology (www.joost.com/).
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost)
2006 Microsoft retired MSN Search in favor of the Live Search brand.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2006 In Russia Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai founded VKontakte and it grew to become the biggest social network in the country. In 2013 Durov left Russia and gave up his role and ownership stake after Pres. Putin’s allies took control of the company.
(SFC, 3/8/18, p.C6)
2007 Jan, Avaaz, a web-based political movement, was launched with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens everywhere to help close the gap between the world we have and the world most people want.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.62)(www.avaaz.org/en/about.php)
2007 Feb 22, Abdel Kareem Nabil (22), an Egyptian blogger arrested in 2006, was convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger. Nabil was convicted for calling Islam a brutal religion in a piece he wrote in 2005 after Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria. In 2009 an Appeals court upheld his 4-year sentence. Nabil, aka Kareem Amer, was released on Nov 5, 2010, and then re-arrested, held for 11 days and beaten.
(AP, 2/22/07)(AP, 12/22/09)(AP, 11/17/10)(Reuters, 11/24/10)
2007 Mar, The Website DoMyStuff.com, founded by Darren Berkovitz, went live as a hiring hall for personal assistants.
(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.D1)
2007 Apr 13, Google said that it will purchase DoubleClick, an Internet services company, for $3.1 billion. This transformed Google into an powerhouse across the entire digital advertising industry.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.A3)(SFC, 10/5/20, p.C1)
2007 Apr, The web site mediapredict.com began operations. The NYC-based start-up used editorial feedback from a large number of volunteers in a game format to help executives decide which manuscripts should become books.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.73)(http://mediapredict.com/)
2007 May 8, Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems. The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2007 May 9, In the early hours Internet traffic in Estonia spiked to thousands of times the normal flow. May 10 was heavier still, forcing Estonia’s biggest bank to shut down its online service for more than an hour. Hansabank continued under assault and worked to block access to 300 suspect Internet addresses. On March 12, 2009, Konstantin Goloskokov, an activist with Russia's Nashi youth group and aide to a pro-Kremlin member of parliament, said he had organized a network of sympathizers who bombarded Estonian Internet sites with electronic requests, causing them to crash.
(www.lunchoverip.com/2007/05/estonia_under_c.html)(Reuters, 3/12/09)
2007 May, Mahalo.com, a web directory (or human search engine), was launched in alpha test by Jason Calacanis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalo.com)
2007 May, Twitter, an Internet service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: “What are you doing," was incorporated. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide.
(http://twitter.com/)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.D3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)
2007 Jun 4, China promised to better control emissions of greenhouse gases, unveiling a national program to combat global warming, but rejected mandatory caps on emissions as unfair to countries still trying to catch up with the developed West. The government also said it will license no new Internet cafes this year while regulators carry out an industry-wide inspection, amid official concern that online material is harming young people.
(AP, 6/4/07)
2007 Jun, Wenda, a question-and-answer “knowledge community" product, developed by Google in China, was launched in Russia.
(Econ, 10/13/07, SR p.7)
2007 Jun, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi founded Dropbox, a San Francisco-based Internet file-storage company.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%28service%29)(SSFC, 7/14/13, p.D1)
2007 Jul 5, British media reported that a Scottish house had been used as a makeshift bomb factory to carry out the terror attacks in London and Scotland. Three "cyber-jihadis" who used the Internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers were jailed for between six-and-a-half and 10 years in the first case of its kind in Britain. Morocco-born Younis Tsouli (23), an al-Qaida-inspired computer expert who dubbed himself "the jihadist James Bond," was sentenced to 10 years in prison for running a network of extremist Web sites. Accomplices Tariq al-Daour and Waseem Mughal also got prison terms.
(AP, 7/5/07)(AFP, 7/5/07)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.29)
2007 Jul 18, Thailand’s Computer Crime Act, intended to prevent cybercrimes, came into force. Most prosecutions that followed under the act were for online content that supposedly endangered national security.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.54)(www.prachatai.com/english/node/117)
2007 Jul 23, Hewlett-Packard acquired Opsware, a software company founded by Marc Andreessen, for $1.6 billion. He formed Opsware, a Web service company, in 1999 under the name Loudcloud Inc., which was renamed to Opsware in 2002.
(SFC, 7/24/07, p.B1)
2007 Jul 24, Intel Corp. said it has fabricated the first modulator made from silicon that can encode data onto a beam of light at a rate of 40 billion bits per second (gigabits). Such speeds represented a rate 40 times faster than most corporate data networks.
(WSJ, 1/25/07, p.B4)
2007 Aug 28, EarthLink, the Atlanta-based Internet provider, announced that it no longer believed the providing citywide Wi-Fi for San Francisco was viable for the company.
(SFC, 8/30/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 28, Chicago abandoned plans for a city-wide Wi-Fi network to access the Internet as EarthLink underwent restructuring.
(www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/08/30/too-windy-for-wi-fi.aspx)
2007 Sep 21, Google filed with the EU competition regulator for permission to buy rival DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
(Reuters, 9/21/07)
2007 Oct 5, Europe's .eu Internet domain registrar EURid said the Internet address www.sex.asia is likely to be the domain name most in demand next week when dot Asia Web sites are launched.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 10, Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation (2003), said he plans to move the small operation from St. Petersburg, Florida, to SF.
(SFC, 10/11/07, p.C1)
2007 Oct 12, Two men were sentenced to prison in the first successful criminal prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act. James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, and Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California, were convicted in June of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and obscenity. Last week, the judge in the case sentenced Schaffer to 63 months and Kilbride to 72 months in federal prison.
(www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1000096UTGDC)
2007 Oct 15, Internet addresses began in 11 languages that do not use the Roman alphabet.
(WSJ, 10/11/07, p.B1)
2007 Oct 24, Microsoft secured a deal to buy 1.6% of Facebook, a social networking site, for $240 million.
(SFC, 10/25/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 29, African leaders and technology experts met in Rwanda to discuss plans to boost the continent's development by securing universal Internet access by 2012.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Nov 1, An alliance including Google announced a plan to make social networks as open as Netscape’s browser made the web.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.78)
2007 Nov 5, Google introduced Android, a new operating system for cell phones. It was expected to appear in phones in the second half of 2008.
(SFC, 11/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 6, Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba.com soared in its debut on the Hong Kong stock market. It opened at $3.86 and closed at $5.09.
(AP, 11/6/07)(SFC, 11/7/07, p.C1)
2007 Nov 24, Beginning today and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. The culprits' use of botnets to push a dark form of SEO (search-engine optimization), called a "Google bomb," to boost their sites' Google rankings.
(www.pcworld.com/article/id,141796/article.html)(PCWorld, 1/28/08)
2007 Nov 27, Google said it will spend millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of a plan to clean the environment and reduce the company’s own power bill.
(SFC, 11/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 30, New Zealand officials said police have questioned the suspected teenage kingpin of an international cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. Earlier this month, Ryan Goldstein, 21, of Ambler, Pa., was indicted in the case. Authorities allege that the New Zealand suspect and Goldstein were involved in crashing a University of Pennsylvania engineering school server Feb. 23, 2006. On Feb 29 Owen Thor Walker (18) was charged with two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with a computer system and possessing software for committing crime, and two counts of accessing a computer system without authorization. In 2008 Walker pleaded guilty to 6 charges of computer hacking.
(AP, 11/30/07)(AP, 2/29/08)(SFC, 4/2/08, p.C2)
2007 Dec 15, It was reported that Google is testing a new service called Knol, that enlists selected users to write about the breadth of human knowledge in competition with Wikipedia.
(SFC, 12/15/07, p.C1)
2007 Dec 17, US trade officials said the US has reached a deal with the EU, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica.
(AP, 12/17/07)
2007 Julian Assange, a former Australian hacker, founded Wikileaks, an international publishing service for whistle-blowers.
(Econ, 6/12/10, p.67)
2007 Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012), outspoken conservative writer and activist founded the online-based Breitbart News.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News)(Econ, 12/10/16, p.66)
2007 Change.org, an online petitions site, was launched.
(Econ, 6/1/13, p.62)
2007 Dell Computer created IdeaStorm, “a way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another."
(www.dellideastorm.com/about)
2007 Google garnered 56% of the US Internet search market. Yahoo’s share sank to 20% and Microsoft’s grew to 14%.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2007 Tom Costello and his wife Anna Patterson of Menlo Park, Ca., founded Cuil, an Internet search engine. By mid 2008 they claimed to have an index of 120 billion Web pages. They launched www.cuil.com on July 28, 2008.
(SFC, 7/28/08, p.D1)(WSJ, 7/28/08, p.B5)
2007 Lumos Labs launched Lumosity, a website of online games designed to improve users’ cognitive performance.
(Econ, 8/10/13, p.56)
2007 Tumblr, an American online content sharing site, was founded by David Karp.
(SSFC, 5/19/13, p.A10)
2007 Mark Pincus founded Zynga Game Network. The company had a smash hit with the social online game FarmVille in 2009. By the end of 2010 the San Francisco-based company was valued at $5.4 billion.
(SFC, 11/19/10, p.D8)
2007 In India Sachin Bansai and Binny Bansal setup shop in a flat in Bangalore and began an e-commerce business that delivered books to people’s homes. By 2011 their firm, Flipcart, was one of India hottest Internet businesses.
(Econ, 10/22/11, SR p.18)
2008 Jan 16, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed that criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities outside the US. He offered few specifics on what actually went wrong.
(www.pcworld.com/article/id,141564-c,hackers/article.html)
2008 Jan 31, The Mideast and India suffered a 2nd day of telecom woes after two undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean sustained damage.
(WSJ, 2/1/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 15, It was reported that a new computer virus called Mocmex, identified as a Trojan Horse from China, had been discovered in digital photo frames. It recognized and blocked antivirus software from over 100 security vendors and collected passwords for online games.
(SFC, 2/15/08, p.C1)
2008 Feb 21, Google Inc. said will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.
(AP, 2/21/08)
2008 Mar 11, EU regulators cleared Google's $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick, saying the acquisition won't curb competition for online ads.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Mar 12, Hulu.com, a free video Web site, was launched as a online joint video venture between NBC and News Corp. In 2010 it announced that it would begin selling subscriptions.
(Econ, 7/3/10, p.63)(www.hulu.com/about/company_timeline)
2008 Mar 13, AOL said it will acquire Bebo, a social Web site, for $850 million.
(SFC, 3/14/08, p.C1)
2008 Mar 14, It was reported that China had likely surpassed the US last month in its number of Internet users.
(WSJ, 3/14/08, p.B3)
2008 Mar 17, Hannaford Bros., a grocery store chain in the Northeast US and Florida owned by Belgium’s Delhaize Group SA, disclosed that as many as 4.2 million customer account numbers had been stolen between Dec 7 and Mar 10. The intrusion was not discovered until Feb 27 and occurred over a network system that experts had believed to be secure.
(WSJ, 3/31/08, p.B4)
2008 Mar 23, Network Solutions, an American network provider, said it had suspended a website that Dutch MP Geert Wilders had reserved to post his anti-Islamic film, which has sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash.
(AP, 3/23/08)
2008 Mar 25, Officials said Indonesia plans to restrict access to pornographic and violent sites on the Internet after the country's parliament passed a new information bill.
(Reuters, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 25, It was reported that Syria is cracking down more on Internet use, imposing tighter monitoring of citizens who link to the Web, as well as jailing bloggers who criticize the government and blocking YouTube and other Web sites deemed harmful to state security.
(AP, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 26, TimeRime BV was founded by Marijn Bom, Jaap Joziasse, Gerard Pastwa and Pico Wilbrenninck, as a spin-off of the Dutch webdevelopment company Hoppinger.com.
(www.timerime.com/)
2008 Mar 27, Adobe systems, the maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop, launched a basic version available for free online.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Apr 8, Indonesian Internet companies blocked access to YouTube and MySpace, heeding a government order aimed at stopping people from watching an anti-Islam film by a Dutch lawmaker.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 8, The UN refugee agency unveiled a new partnership with Internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 16, Computer consultant John Schiefer (26) pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to raiding hundreds of thousands of computers with spyware to steal users' identities and commit fraud.
(AFP, 4/17/08)
2008 Apr 23, German publisher Bertelsmann said it planned to publish the world's first reference book based on entries from Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. The single volume, 992-page tome would contain about 50,000 condensed entries and sell for about $31.80.
(AP, 4/23/08)(SFC, 4/24/08, p.C1)
2008 May 12, The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said that an Egyptian government-owned Internet service provider on May 4 blocked the Egyptian Movement for Change - Kefaya website, in the latest crackdown on the country's cyber dissidents.
(AFP, 5/12/08)
2008 May 12, Powerset, a SF-based Internet company founded in 2005, announced a limited release of its search engine. Executives said it fielded queries in natural language with attempts to deduce intent.
(SFC, 5/12/08, p.D1)(www.powerset.com/)
2008 May 13, EarthLink said it is pulling out of its high-speed Internet network in Philadelphia, and that it would shut down the operation on June 12.
(SFC, 5/14/08, p.C3)
2008 May 13, Microsoft Corp. introduced its WorldWide Telescope, bringing the free Web-based program for zooming around the universe to a broad audience.
(AP, 5/13/08)(SFC, 5/13/08, p.A1)
2008 May 14, Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service, reported it had signed an agreement to be acquired by Comcast. It was founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring and was based in Mountain View, Ca.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaxo)
2008 May 15, CBS Corp. announced it was buying SF-based Cnet Networks, an Internet technology news provider, for $1.8 billion in cash.
(SFC, 5/16/08, p.C1)
2008 May 17, Spanish police announced the arrest of five people this week suspected of hacking into or outright disabling thousands of Internet pages, some of them run by government agencies in the US, Latin America and Asia. Two of the suspects were 16 years old. The others were 19 or 20.
(AP, 5/17/08)
2008 May 19, Google made available a free service allowing customers to manage their medical records online at www.google.com/health.
(SFC, 5/20/08, p.D1)
2008 Jun 18, Sweden's Parliament narrowly approved a contentious law that gives authorities sweeping powers to eavesdrop on all e-mail and telephone traffic that crosses the Nordic nation's borders. Outrage over the statute soon led to 2 million protests, filed by e-mail. In September the government approved 15 changes following the widespread protests.
(AP, 6/18/08)(AP, 7/2/08)(SFC, 9/26/08, p.A4)
2008 Jun 25, Dozens of Belarusian news Web sites filled their pages with grim black banners to protest a new media law that will severely restrict the last source of independent information in the repressive ex-Soviet state.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 Jun, Evri, a Semantic Web company, was launched in beta test. Evri’s first CEO, Neil Roseman, conducted a demo of Evri.com at the All Things Digital conference in May 2008. On March 11, 2010, Evri announced it's acquisition of Radar Networks and its key property Twine.com.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evri)
2008 Jul 13, Terry Childs (43), a San Francisco computer engineer, was arrested on felony charges for allegedly plotting to hijack the city’s computer system. Childs, who continue to draw his $127,735 annual salary, refused to provide passwords to the network system and was held in lieu of a $5 million bail. Mayor Newsom met with Childs on July 21, who provided system code. Cisco engineers had the system back under control by July 22. On April 27, 2010, Childs was convicted of felony computer tampering. On April 27, 2010, a Superior Court jury concluded that his crime cost the city over $200,000, making him eligible for a maximum state sentence of 5 years.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.B1)(SFC, 7/23/08, p.B1)(SFC, 4/28/10, p.C1)
2008 Jul 23, Google unveiled a new service dubbed “Knol," an Internet encyclopedia, in which contributing authors would share in ad revenue.
(SFC, 7/24/08, p.C4)
2008 Jul 31, Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm on cybersecurity, split from Booz & Co., in order to focus on the public sector. Booz & Co. continued focused on the private sector. Their non-compete agreement expired in August, 2011.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.69)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton)
2008 Jul, Alexandra Carmichael and Daniel Reda launched CureTogether to help the people they knew and the millions they didn’t who live in daily chronic pain.
(Econ, 3/3/12, TQ p.22)(http://curetogether.com/blog/about/)
2008 Aug 7, Heavy shelling overnight in the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia wounded at least 21 people. Cyber attacks from Russia began to target Georgian government Web sites. An organization known as the Russian Business Network was the leading suspect in the attacks. Georgia’s Pres. Saakashvili ordered the shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.
(AP, 8/7/08)(WSJ, 8/12/08, p.A9)(Econ, 8/30/08, p.49)
2008 Sep 2, Google’s new Web browser, named Chrome, became available for download.
(WSJ, 9/2/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 4, German ministers agreed to update data protection laws for the digital age in the wake of scandals showing how easily personal details can be bought on the Internet.
(AFP, 9/4/08)
2008 Sep 6, Yahoo! Japan announced support for victimized users whose Yahoo IDs were used illegally. The company admitted that its online auction site suffered a huge security breach and agreed to reimburse users who had been charged fees relating to fraudulent transactions.
(http://blog.trendmicro.com/caution-needed-jp-yahoo-auctions-site-phished/)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.76)
2008 Sep 9, O3B Networks Ltd., founded by Greg Wyler (38), announced plans to launch as many as 16 satellites that could provide Internet service to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Latin America by 2010 at a cost of some $650 million.
(WSJ, 9/9/08, p.B1)(www.o3bnetworks.com/)
2008 Sep 23, Google and T-Mobile unveiled the T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use the Google’s Android operating system.
(SFC, 9/24/08, p.C1)
2008 Sep 24, Google introduced a $10 million project to reward 5 winners in an Internet competition for an idea making the world a better place.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.C1)
2008 Sep 24, Oracle unveiled a joint project with Hewlett Packard for a storage server for data warehousing: the HP Oracle Database Machine.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.C1)
2008 Oct 1, Spanish police said they have staged their biggest ever operation against Internet child pornography, arresting 121 people suspected of involvement in a network that reached 75 countries. Some 800 police took part in Operation Carousel, an investigation that began last year in cooperation with Brazilian police.
(AFP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 18, Thingiverse, a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files, was launched Zach Smith as a companion site to MakerBot Industries, a DIY 3D printer kit making company.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingiverse)
2008 Oct 28, Google along with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild announced a settlement regarding the use of copyrighted book material. Google agreed to pay $125 million to start the Books Rights Registry, resolve legal fees and deal with other issues relating to authors and online book use.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.C1)
2008 Oct 29, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a coalition of human-rights groups founded the Global Network Initiative to create guidelines for technology companies in internet-restricting countries. GNI was founded upon its "Principles of Freedom of Expression and Privacy."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Network_Initiative)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.57)(Economist, 10/6/12, p.70)
2008 Oct 31, Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous cryptography buff, unveiled a project he dubbed bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.
(Econ, 5/9/15, SR p.16)
2008 Nov 4, The Federal Communications Commission ruled that a valuable chunk of wireless spectrum will be open to whatever mobile devices Americans want to use, amounting to a political setback for traditional telephone companies and a partial win for Google.
(http://tinyurl.com/5uyqzj)(SFC, 11/7/08, p.C1)
2008 Nov 6, A Romanian computer programmer who hacked into computers used by the U.S. Navy, the Department of Energy and NASA was convicted on Romanian charges and ordered to pay thousands in damages. Victor Faur (28) was also given a 16-month suspended prison sentence. In 2006 Faur was indicted in the United States on nine federal counts of computer intrusion and one of conspiracy.
(AP, 11/10/08)
2008 Nov 12, The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board announced the release of a joint final rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The act made it illegal for financial institutions to transfer funds between punters and online gambling sites. Compliance was required by Dec 1, 2009.
(www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20081112b.htm)(WSJ, 11/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 17, Yahoo said co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang will resign his post as CEO, but continue his previous role as “Chief Yahoo" and remain on the company’s board.
(SFC, 11/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 19, In Miami, Florida, police arrived to find Abraham Biggs (19) dead in his father's bed 12 hours after the Broward College student first declared on a Web site that he hated himself and planned to die. It was only then that the Web feed stopped. Some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.
(AP, 11/22/08)
2008 Nov 26, Qatar based Al Jazeera launched Sharek, a website where photos and videos can be submitted for use, once verified, in Al Jazeera’s television and online reports.
(Econ, 7/9/11, SR p.10)(http://tinyurl.com/5hsj2k)
2008 Dec 12, A court in Australia approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 17, Microsoft said will release an emergency patch today to fix a perilous software flaw allowing hackers to hijack Internet Explorer browsers and take over computers.
(AFP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 19, Egypt's communications ministry says Internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea have been cut, causing massive Internet outages.
(AP, 12/19/08)
2008 Dec 20, The NY Times said China has blocked access to its Web site, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard professor, authored “The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It," in which he explains how the promise of the Internet might not be realized, and points the way toward reducing the current risks.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.76)
2008 NATO set up a research center in cyberdefence in Tallinn, Estonia. It was scheduled to be formally inaugurated in 2009.
(Econ, 12/6/08, TQ p.21)
2008 Randall Stross authored “Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know."
(WSJ, 9/17/08, p.A25)
2008 Foreign intelligence inserted a flash drive into a US military laptop on a post in the Middle East. In 2010 it was disclosed that the malicious code placed on the drive uploaded itself onto a network run by the US military’s Central Command and resulted in the most significant breach of US military computers.
(SFC, 8/26/10, p.A7)
2008 Leah Busque founded TaskRabbit, an online and mobile marketplace that allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to others in their neighborhood. Users name the task they need done, name the price they are willing to pay, and a network of pre-approved TaskRabbits bid to complete the job. By 2013 TaskRabbit employed some 15,000 workers.
(Econ, 6/1/13, p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaskRabbit)(SFC, 8/16/13, p.D2)
2008 Nathan Eagle founded a service called txteagle, a Boston-based service, to distribute small jobs via text messaging in return for small payments.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.73)(http://smlxtralarge.com/2010/01/19/the-future-of-worktxteagle/)
2008 The Chronicle of Life Foundation was established by Kai Pommerenke, a UC Santa Cruz economist, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its mission was to save personal memories and any photos or other files, thus creating a chronicle of one’s life. The service was launched for public use on Dec 20, 2010.
(SFC, 1/10/11, p.D4)(www.chronicleoflife.com/index)
2008 Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss settled a lawsuit with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The brothers requested payment of their $45 million settlement to be made in shares of Facebook. By the time Facebook went public in 2012 their stock was worth some $300 million.
(SSFC, 12/24/17, p.D5)
2008 The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) began in Canada as an online computing course. By 2012 MOOCS were offering college students lectures for a fraction of the cost of attending a university.
(Econ, 6/28/14, p.21)
2008 Spotify, a Swedish Internet music streaming service, was founded.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.64)
2008 Syrian authorities blocked 225 internet sites this year, up from 159 in 2007.
(Econ, 7/25/09, SR p.13)
2009 Jan 3, Bitcoin, the “world’s first decentralized digital currency" was introduced. It was devised in 2008 by programmer Satoshi Nakomoto (thought not to be the person’s real name). It was run by a peer-to-per network and limited to 21 million coins. By 2013 the leading exchange was Mt.Gox, a Tokyo-based firm.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin)(Econ, 6/18/11, p.83)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.69)
2009 Jan 5, China launched a major crackdown on Internet pornography targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google.
(AP, 1/5/09)
2009 Jan 12, State media said China has shut down 91 websites for pornographic and other "vulgar" content, as well as a political blog portal, since announcing its latest bid to ensure Internet morality.
(Reuters, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 12, Kazakh PM Karim Masimov told his ministers to start personal blogs to get them closer to the people of the former Soviet state.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 15, Police in New Zealand said they had nabbed a man who was trying to crack a bar's safe after posting security camera footage of the act on the Internet networking site Facebook.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 18, Kyrgyzstan began to come under a massive cyber attack attributed to Russian “cyber-militia." Less than 20% of the country’s 5.3 million population had online access. Proposed reasons for the attacks included the US use of an air base for operations in Afghanistan or a hit on the fledgling Kyrgyz opposition, which has used the Internet to express its discontent.
(WSJ, 1/28/08, p.A10)
2009 Jan 27, The social-networking site Facebook removed a group whose title advocated raising money so a gunman could be hired to "liquidate" Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales. The Spanish-language group, created in August, had 8,069 members and had drawn the attention of at least one outraged blogger, when The Associated Press alerted Facebook. Creator Hony Pierola (20) denied any malice.
(AP, 1/27/09)
2009 Jan 29, Swiss police said they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation last year while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. They arrested 16 people and seized 1.1 tons (1.2 US tons) of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($780,000).
(AP, 1/29/09)
2009 Feb 10, The European Union announced that it has signed a pact with 17 social networking providers including Facebook, MySpace and Google to improve safeguards against the bullying of teenagers online.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 26, British prosecutors said they would not bring charges against Gary McKinnon, a computer expert accused by a US attorney of the "biggest military hack of all time," dealing a blow to his bid to avoid extradition.
(AP, 2/26/09)
2009 Mar 4, The Finnish Parliament approved controversial legislation that allows employers to track workers' e-mails.
(AP, 3/4/09)
2009 Mar 6, In Thailand Chiranuch Premchaiporn was arrested for violating the country’s Computer Crime Act. She faced 10 charges for not preventing comments on bulletin boards that might have offended the royal family.
(http://tinyurl.com/4j6w77d)(Econ, 2/5/11, p.54)
2009 Mar 16, The Vatican said it will launch a Chinese version of its website on March 19 in an effort to bring more of Pope Benedict's message to China, whose communist government does not allow Catholics to recognize his authority.
(Reuters, 3/16/09)
2009 Mar 17, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, owned by the Hearst Corp., printed its last newspaper edition. It will become exclusively Web-based as Seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to move to online only.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.A8)
2009 Mar 23, Advance Publications Inc., owner of the Ann Arbor News and 7 other Michigan newspaper, announced that the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News will publish its last print edition in July and then become a community oriented Web site.
(WSJ, 3/24/09, p.B5)
2009 Mar 29, Canadian researchers said a shadowy cyber-espionage network based mostly in China has infiltrated secret government and private computers around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama. They said the network, known as GhostNet, had infected 1,295 computers in 103 countries and penetrated systems containing sensitive information in top political, economic and media offices.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 30, An “Open Cloud" manifesto was published. IBM and other tech companies issued a statement of principles that called for keeping cloud computing services as open as possible.
(www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090329_463505.htm)
2009 Apr 1, In Sweden a new law cracking down on online copyright violation went into force leading to a sharp drop in internet traffic.
(AP, 4/3/09)(http://tinyurl.com/c96saw)
2009 Apr 7, US military leaders said the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the past 6 months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.C3)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 8, The Wall Street Journal reported that cyberspies have penetrated the US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 9, Vandals in the San Jose, and San Carlos, Ca., chopped fiber optic cables disrupting service for hundreds of thousands of people in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
(SFC, 4/10/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 9, French lawmakers rejected a tough new Internet piracy bill that would cut off illegal downloaders, in a surprise setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy's government.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 14, The EU started legal action against Britain for not applying EU data privacy rules that would restrict an Internet advertising tracker called Phorm from watching how users surf the Web.
(AP, 4/14/09)
2009 Apr 17, Five of Germany's leading Internet providers agreed to block access to sites identified by national criminal investigators as hosting child pornography, as authorities reported the breakup of an international ring.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 17, A Swedish court found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top illegal file-sharing websites, sentencing them to a year in prison in a landmark ruling.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 22, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet approved a new law to require the vast majority of the country's Internet service providers to block child pornography sites.
(AP, 4/22/09)
2009 May 4, South Korean news reported that North Korea runs a cyber warfare unit that tries to hack into US and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.
(AP, 5/5/09)
2009 May 5, The British International news portal One News Page was launched. One News Page (http://www.onenewspage.us/) was founded by Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer (38) a successful internet entrepreneur who has been working in the commercial online arena since 1999.
(www.onenewspage.co.uk/press.php)
2009 May 15, The Wolfram Alpha Internet search engine was officially launched. Stephen Wolfram, British physicist, described it as a “computational knowledge engine." It was created to compute answers from its own source of materials.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Alpha)(Econ, 6/4/11, TQ p.30)
2009 May 20, SF-based Craigslist sued South Carolina’s Attorney Gen’l. Henry McMaster to block him from filing criminal charges against the online classified site for abetting prostitution.
(SFC, 5/21/09, p.C1)
2009 May 20, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heinemen signed a bill to prevent registered sex offenders from using social networking sites such as Facebook.
(SFC, 5/21/09, p.A4)
2009 May 24, Iran blocked access to Facebook, prompting government critics to condemn the move as an attempt to muzzle the opposition ahead of next month's presidential election.
(AP, 5/24/09)
2009 May 26, Iran restored access to Facebook, after a block on the social networking Web site last week generated accusations that the government was trying to muzzle one of the main presidential campaign tools of the reformist opposition.
(AP, 5/26/09)
2009 May 28, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, said it will spin out the company and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)
2009 May 29, President Barack Obama said the nation for too long has failed to adequately protect the security of its computer networks. He will name a new cyber czar to take on the job.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 May 29, Cuba criticized Microsoft for blocking its Messenger instant messaging service on the island and in other countries under US sanctions, calling it yet another example of Washington's "harsh" treatment of Havana.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 Jun 8, The Wall Street Journal reported that China will require all personal computers sold in the country from July 1 to come with software that blocks access to certain websites. The program aimed to prevent the spread of pornography and other "unhealthy" content. On June 16 the government backed away from the order required use of installation of the Green Dam Youth Escort software, but the software would come pre-installed or included with all PCs sold on the mainland as of July 1.
(AFP, 6/8/09)(AP, 6/9/09)(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C3)
2009 Jun 15, Virgin Media, the cable TV operator owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, launched a new kind of music download subscription service with Universal, the world's largest music company.
(AP, 6/15/09)
2009 Jun 15, Georgia’s Supreme Court ordered Expedia Inc. and its Hotwire.com subsidiary to collect and pay hotel occupancy taxes to the west Georgia city of Columbus in a possible precedent for cities across the country.
(SFC, 6/18/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 16, The British government declared a goal for Britain become the world's "digital capital" by building cutting-edge broadband, telecoms and media infrastructure to cement its role as a "global economic powerhouse."
(AFP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 16, The Norwegian firm Opera Software unveiled new technology that allows it Opera 10 Web browser to also function as a file server. A feature called Opera Unite enables users to push content and establish communications without the need for a 3rd party.
(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 17, It was reported that security researchers at Finjan, a venture–funded security company in San Jose, have identified a sophisticated online network, called GoldenCashworld, that was used for buying and selling access to infected PCs. The network included tools for creating malicious code and stolen credentials for about 100,000 Web sites.
(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 18, China's Internet watchdog condemned the Chinese-language version of Google for "disseminating pornographic and vulgar information."
(AP, 6/18/09)
2009 Jun 19, Google Inc. said that it was working to block pornography reaching users of its Chinese service after a mainland watchdog found the search engine turned up large numbers of links to obscene and vulgar sites.
(AP, 6/19/09)
2009 Jun 18, In a replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial a federal jury ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset (32) of Minnesota willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. The new trial was ordered after the judge in the case decided he had erred in giving jury instructions. Thomas-Rasset's second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.
(AP, 6/19/09)
2009 Jun 20, Italian police in Sicily said they have arrested 14 people and placed more than 250 under investigation in the country's biggest sweep against Internet child pornography.
(AP, 6/20/09)
2009 Jun 26, In Texas security guard Jesse William McGraw (25), head of the Elecktronik Tribulation Army, was arrested for hacking into computers at a Dallas medical clinic in hopes of launching a massive computer attack around July 4.
(SFC, 7/1/09, p.A4)
2009 Jun 28, Swiss police said they have uncovered a child pornography ring involving more than 2,000 people in 78 countries.
(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jun 29, The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China urged Beijing to reconsider implementing a controversial Internet filter, saying it raised serious concerns about security, privacy and user choice.
(AP, 6/29/09)
2009 Jun 30, China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Web surfers hours before it was due to take effect.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 4, Attacks began on more than two dozen Internet sites in the United States and South Korea and some were disabled by hackers. South Korea's spy agency later said the attacks were possibly linked to North Korea. Some of the affected US government Web sites, such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service, were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, Google announced its new operating system, Google Chrome OS, which would initially target low cost netbooks.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 9, South Korean Web sites were attacked again after a wave of Web site outages in the US and South Korea that several officials suspect North Korea was behind.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that a research institute affiliated with the North's Ministry of People's Armed Forces received an order on June 7 to "destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant." The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the North has between 500-1,000 hacking specialists.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 13, China's Health Ministry ordered a hospital to stop using electric shock therapy to cure youths of Internet addiction, saying there was no scientific evidence it worked.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, South Korean police said hackers extracted files from computers they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, a sign that they tried to steal information from the victims.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 21, Several Chinese Internet sites and parts of popular Web portals went offline amid tightening controls that have already left mainland Web users without access to Facebook, Twitter and other well-known social networking sites.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 29, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. agreed to a 10-year Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc. The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 31, A jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum (b.1983), a student at Boston Univ., to pay damages of $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over the Internet. He was later ordered to destroy his illegal music files — but a judge declined to force him to stop promoting the activity.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Tenenbaum)(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Jul, Chinese authorities, following riots in Xinjiang province, put the province under electronic lockdown for the next 10 months. Clashes between Uighurs and Hans left some 200 people dead in Urumqi.
(AP, 9/3/09)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.15)(Econ, 8/9/14, p.38)
2009 Aug 13, Australian police said a 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Chinese officials retreated from a plan to install anti-pornography software on every computer sold, but said Internet cafes, schools and other public places must use the program.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 14, A Taiwanese telephone company said Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 17, Albert Gonzalez (28) of Miami, a former informant for the US Secret Service who helped the agency hunt hackers, was indicted in New Jersey and charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information. He allegedly stole information from 130 million credit and debit card accounts in what federal prosecutors called the largest case of identity theft yet. He was already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case. On Aug 28 Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 24, The Stockholm District Court threatened to fine Internet provider Black Internet 500,000 Swedish kronor (about $70,000) unless it stopped serving Pirate Bay. Court documents showed the company has to comply with the order until the ongoing case between Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry is over.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug, In China a new micro-blogging service (Sina Weibo), similar to Twitter, began operating. Property mogul Pan Shiyi, co-founder of SOHO China, was signed on for one of the first 20 accounts.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.42)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.7)
2009 Sep 2, Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (30), who writes under the pen name Me Nam, at her home in Nha Trang. Quynh's arrest was the latest in a series of police moves against writers who criticized government policies toward China. The government tightened its rules for bloggers earlier this year, saying they must restrict their writings to personal matters. Quynh was released on Sep 12.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 8, The EU said that a member states could be allowed to ban gambling websites if its intention was to stop crime.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 14, Google rolled out Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of online newspapers in much the same way as they leaf through pages in print.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/internet/15google.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 15, The Obama administration embraced cloud computing to help reduce government waste and ease environmental impact.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 25, An Australian court sentenced Belal Khazaal (39), a former Qantas Airways baggage handler, to 12 years in prison for publishing a do-it-yourself jihad book on the Internet. The book was titled "Provisions of the Rules of Jihad: Short Judicial Rulings and Organizational Instructions for Fighters and Mujahideen Against Infidels." Khazaal had also been convicted in absentia by Lebanese military courts in 2003 and 2005 on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 30, The US government and ICANN, the body in charge of assigning Internet addresses, signed an agreement that allows for greater global participation in the Internet domain name process. The agreement, which allows ICANN to become a "private sector led organization," subjects ICANN to periodic reviews by a panel that includes a US representative and independent experts, essentially allowing the organization to no longer report solely to the United States.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Google rolled out Google Wave for a test involving some 100,000 people. The product was billed as a revolutionary way to collaborate online.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep, Turkey banned MySpace, an Internet-based social networking site.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.67)
2009 Oct 15, Google Inc. said it is launching a new online service for booksellers next year called Google Editions, which will let readers buy books and read them on gadgets ranging from cell phones to possibly e-book devices.
(AP, 10/15/09)
2009 Oct 15, It was reported that the Taj network, funded by the National Science Foundation, now connects India, Singapore, Vietnam and Egypt to the larger Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD) global infrastructure, and "dramatically improves existing US network links with China and the Nordic region," according to an NSF statement.
(www.livescience.com/technology/091015-global-gloraid-taj-cyber-net.html)
2009 Oct 18, Amazon Chief Almir Surui (35), unveiled a project in partnership with Google, to make public the encroachment of illegal mining and logging on his people’s 600,000 acre reserve in Brazil. Almir was evacuated for his safety to the US in 2006. Eleven chief of the Surui and neighboring tribes have been shot and killed this decade.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.A1)
2009 Oct 29, A US District judge in San Jose awarded Facebook $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case filed against online marketer Sanford Wallace, known as the “Spam King." Wallace filed for bankruptcy in June.
(SFC, 10/31/09, p.D1)
2009 Nov 10, An Australian student sparked fears of a new era of computer viruses after creating a worm which infects Apple's iconic iPhone with pictures of 1980s pop star Rick Astley.
(AFP, 11/10/09)
2009 Nov 14, In Iran local newspapers reported that the government has formed a special unit to monitor Web sites and fight Internet crimes, in a clear attack on an opposition that relies almost exclusively on online means to broadcast its message.
(AP, 11/14/09)
2009 Nov 15, Egypt’s information technology minister said Egypt will apply for the first Internet domain written in Arabic. The announcement was made at a conference grouping Yahoo's co-founder and others to discuss boosting online access in emerging nations.
(AP, 11/15/09)
2009 Nov 16, In Shanghai President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism.
(AP, 11/16/09)
2009 Nov 19, Google unveiled its new Chrome operating system for an always-connected netbook.
(SFC, 11/20/09, p.D1)
2009 Dec 1, In India newspaper executives and editors gathered from around the world heard calls to seek more payment for their content on the Internet as they decried their industry's sharply falling advertising revenues.
(AP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 4, In China the file-sharing site BTCHINA, a major source of overseas movies, television shows and games in the country, was closed. Another site, VeryCD.com, was down on Dec 9 and a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily said other file sharing sites would be closed in the coming days. The closures were said to be a fight against copyright infringement, but could be seen as another measure aimed at controlling what content the country's Web users can find online.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 5, The Defense Advance Research projects Agency (DARPA) conducted an experiment challenging teams around the country to locate the submit the correct geographic coordinates of 10 weather balloons in return for a $40,000 cash prize. Over 4,000 teams participated and the winning answer came after 8 hours and 56 minutes. Social networking sites played a major role in the game theory simulation. Riley Crane, a post doc research fellow at MIT’s media lab, led the winning team using an elaborate information gathering pyramid.
(SFC, 12/7/09, p.A9)
2009 Dec 6, Iranian authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before expected student protests on Dec 7, to deny the opposition a vital means of communication. Authorities also ordered journalists working for foreign media organizations not to leave their offices to cover the demonstrations.
(AP, 12/6/09)
2009 Dec 9, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, span off AOL and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.73)
2009 Dec 10, A consortium including Google and KDDI Corp signed a deal to build and operate an international undersea cable system, estimated to cost $400 million. Globe Telecom, part owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, and units of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications were also part of the consortium.
(Reuters, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 15, Australia said it would push ahead with a mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet, despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said new laws would be introduced to ban access to "refused classification" (RC) sites featuring criminal content such as child sex abuse, bestiality, rape and detailed drug use.
(AFP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 16, In Belarus the Nasha Niva independent newspaper said President Alexander Lukashenko has issued a decree to tighten state control over the Internet.
(AFP, 12/16/09)
2009 Dec 17, The Obama administration handed out the first $182 million of a $7.2 billion pot of stimulus money that will go toward building high-speed Internet networks and encouraging more Americans to use them.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 18, A Paris court ruled that Google Inc. is breaking French law with its policy of digitizing books, handing the US Internet giant a euro10,000 ($14,300)-a-day fine until it rids its database of the literary extracts.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Dec 18, South Korea's military said it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the US and may have been carried out by North Korea.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Dec 22, The Obama administration announced that Howard Schmidt is the president's choice to be his cyber security coordinator.
(http://tinyurl.com/yfhswrz)
2009 Dec 27, Syrian security agents detained Tal al-Mallohi (19), a high school student blogger, after summoning her for questioning. Authorities have not allowed al-Mallohi's family to communicate with her since she was picked up. On Sep 20, 2010, The New York-based Human Rights Watch called for her immediate release. On Feb 14, 2011, she was sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges of spying for a foreign country.
(AP, 9/20/10)(SFC, 2/15/11, p.A2)
2009 Ken Auletta authored “Googled: the End of the World As We Know It."
(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.E1)
2009 John Freeman authored “The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox."
(SSFC, 11/22/09, Books p.F7)
2009 Code for America, a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)3 organization, was founded to bring web-industry professionals to work with city governments in the United States in order to promote openness, participation, and efficiency in municipal governments.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_for_America)
2009 Dataminr, a New York startup, was launched to scour the Twittershphere for important events and news not yet reported by mainstream media.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.71)
2009 Fiverr was founded by Shai Wininger and Micha Kaufman as a global online marketplace offering tasks and services beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed. The Fiverr website was launched in February, 2010.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiverr)
2009 Joel Simkhai created Grindr, a dating app for the iPhone that allowed gay men to find one another. The application used GPS technology to allow gay men to find one another within walking distance.
(SFC, 3/19/10, p.F1)
2009 Yahoo bought Maktoob, a Jordanian Internet portal, for $175 million.
(Econ, 7/13/13, p.56)
2010 Jan 6, It was reported that Santa Barbara-based Cybersitter has filed a $2.2 billion lawsuit against China, accusing Beijing of stealing its technology to bar Internet access to political and religious sites in China. The suit alleges that the Chinese makers of Green Dam illegally copied more than 3,000 lines of code from its filtering software, and conspired with China's rulers and computer manufacturers to distribute more than 56 million copies of the pirated software throughout China.
(AFP, 1/6/10)
2010 Jan 12, Google's announced that it was considering a withdrawal from China, after what it said were attacks from China on human rights activists using its Gmail service and on dozens of companies.
(Reuters, 1/13/10)
2010 Jan 13, Britain’s Huddersfield University launched an investigation after its students allegedly started an Internet craze for a Hitler drinking game. The original page on the social networking site had nearly 12,000 members but has now been shut down, although another similar page has since been set up.
(AFP, 1/13/10)
2010 Jan 14, Los Angeles-based Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, the law firm representing a Santa Barbara company that sued China for allegedly pirating its Internet content filtering software, said its attorneys on Jan 11 started received emails containing Trojans, which can allow outside access to the target's computer.
(AP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 14, Hundreds of Bulgarians protested against planned legal amendments allowing mass monitoring of emails, electronic messages and phone calls to fight crime and corruption.
(AP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 15, The US State Department said it will soon give China a formal diplomatic message expressing its concern about cyber attacks that prompted Google Inc to threaten to pull out of China.
(Reuters, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 15, Iran's police chief warned opposition supporters not to use cell phones and e-mail messages to organize protest rallies against the government, saying those who do so will be prosecuted and punished.
(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 15, Malaysian student Mohamad Tasyrif Tajudin (25) was charged after allegedly posting comments on Facebook about throwing a gasoline bomb amid a recent spate of attacks on churches, most of which were hit by Molotov Cocktails. He was charged under Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act for improper use of the Internet, which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a fine if found guilty.
(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 18, It was reported that Alaska corporations and a multinational firm are planning to build the first fiber optic cable between Asia and Europe through the Arctic. The project estimated at $1 billion, involved laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cable from Tokyo, along the Alaska coast, through the Northwest Passage, past Greenland to London.
(SFC, 1/18/10, p.D3)
2010 Jan 18, The OSCE, Europe's main security and human rights watchdog, said that Turkey was blocking some 3,700 Internet sites for "arbitrary and political reasons" and urged reforms to show its commitment to freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 19, China’s Foreign Ministry said Google Inc will not be treated as an exception to China's demand foreign companies obey its laws, a week after the world's largest search engine warned it could pull out of China. Google said it had postponed the launch of two mobile handsets in China, in the latest fallout from its threat last week to withdraw from the Asian giant over cyberattacks and censorship.
(Reuters, 1/19/10)(AFP, 1/19/10)
2010 Jan 22, Beijing issued a stinging response to US criticism that it is jamming the free flow of words and ideas on the Internet, accusing the United States of damaging relations between the two countries by hoisting its "information imperialism" on China. An attorney for a US free speech group said US trade officials have asked for more information as they consider whether to pursue a possible World Trade Organization case against Chinese Internet barriers.
(AP, 1/22/10)(Reuters, 1/22/10)
2010 Jan 25, China sharply rebuked the United States, denying involvement in any Internet attacks and defending its online restrictions as lawful after Washington urged Beijing to investigate an attack against Google.
(AP, 1/25/10)
2010 Jan 26, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the US of trying to use the Internet as a tool to confront the Islamic Republic, declaring that such a policy only showed Washington's frustration. The US Senate voted in July to adopt the Victims of Iranian Censorship Act which authorizes up to $50 million for expanding Farsi language broadcasts, supporting Iranian Internet and countering government efforts to block it.
(Reuters, 1/26/10)
2010 Feb 1, President Barack Obama unveiled a multitrillion-dollar spending plan, pledging an intensified effort to combat high unemployment and asking Congress to quickly approve new job-creation efforts that would boost the deficit to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion. Obama also made his first YouTube interview and spent about 40 minutes answering about a dozen of over 11,000 questions submitted by YouTube users following his State of the Union address.
(AP, 2/1/10)(SFC, 2/2/10, p.A9)
2010 Feb 6, China’s state media said a man who operated a porn website has been sentenced to 13 years in jail and fined 100,000 yuan (15,000 dollars), amid an ongoing campaign to crack down on online sexual content.
(AFP, 2/7/10)
2010 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued new guidelines to local authorities and lifted a ban imposed in December on individuals acquiring .cn domain names. Individuals wanting to set up a website will have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meet regulators, before their domain name can be registered.
(AFP, 2/23/10)
2010 Feb 11, In Australia a shadowy group of cyber-activists succeeded in jamming key Australian government websites for a second consecutive day and warned they could shut down the sites for months in protest over controversial plans to filter the Internet. Codenamed "Operation: Titstorm", the hacking campaign involved hundreds of people from around the world and used a technique called Distributed Denial of Service to jam web traffic.
(AFP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 18, It was reported that a new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world. The virus, known as "Kneber botnet," gathers login credentials to online financial systems, social networking sites and email systems from infested computers and reports the information back to hackers.
(Reuters, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 18, Microsoft won unconditional European Union approval for its planned search deal with Yahoo Inc to challenge market leader Google.
(Reuters, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 24, An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations because they did not act quickly enough to remove an online video that showed sadistic teen bullies pummeling and mocking an autistic boy. Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted. In the US, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally gives Internet service providers immunity in cases like this, but no such protections exist in Europe.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Mar 2, It was reported that Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. The Mariposa botnet infected almost 13 million computers across 190 countries. More arrests were expected soon in other countries.
(AP, 3/2/10)(SSFC, 3/14/10, p.D1)
2010 Mar 9, In Switzerland a senior Google executive welcomed a US decision to relax restrictions on exporting Internet communications services to Iran, Sudan and Cuba.
(AP, 3/9/10)
2010 Mar 13, Iran’s Fars the news agency said Iran has busted what it says was a US-funded cyber network group linked to an exiled opposition movement that collected data on its nuclear scientists. 30 members of the network with links to the outlawed People's Mujahedeen and monarchists were said to have been arrested.
(AFP, 3/14/10)
2010 Mar 13, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called for regulation of the Internet while demanding authorities crack down on a critical news Web site that he accused of spreading false information. A Venezuelan police official said security forces have seized two tons of cocaine hidden in two bulldozers at a port in the central state of Carabobo. The cocaine was intended to be smuggled to the Netherlands.
(AP, 3/14/10)
2010 Mar 17, McAfee Inc. reported that hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook's estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.
(Reuters, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 21, China’s state media reported that authorities in Xinjiang have restored access to email services and 32 Internet sites that were blocked after ethnic unrest broke out in the region in July.
(AFP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 21, Conservationists at the CITES meeting in Qatar said the Internet has emerged as one of the greatest threats to rare species, fueling the illegal wildlife trade and making it easier to buy everything from live baby lions to wine made from tiger bones.
(AP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 22, Google announced that its China search engine, google.cn, would automatically redirect queries to its service in China's semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong, where Google is not legally required to censor searches.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 22, In Nigeria the Magajin Gari Sharia court in the northern city of Kaduna ordered the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), one of the country's leading rights groups, to suspend its Twitter and Facebook online debates on Malam Buba Bello Jangebe’s wrist amputation for theft, which was carried out in 2000.
(AFP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 23, Internet giant Google led high-profile criticism of Australia's controversial plan to filter the Internet, saying it went too far and could set a dangerous precedent.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 23, Luxury goods manufacturers said a ruling from the EU's highest court will stop Google Inc. selling their brand names as advertising keywords to unauthorized sellers or counterfeiters.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 26, Hacker Albert Gonzalez (28), who participated in a cybercrime ring that stole tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers, was sentenced in US District Court to 20 years in prison. Gonzalez was living in Miami at the time of the crimes in the three cases, which occurred over almost two years before he was arrested in May of 2008 and subsequently indicted in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/hackergonzalezsentencedto20yearsforexploits)
2010 Mar 30, Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, while searches on its Chinese-language site became erratic, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2010 Mar 31, Google Inc. says malicious software has been used to spy on Vietnamese computer users opposed to a controversial bauxite mine in the Southeast Asian country. Computer security firm McAfee said the perpetrators may be linked to the communist government.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Apr 6, The US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, ruled that the FDIC has no authority to regulate how Internet service providers manage traffic to their customers.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.35)
2010 Apr 6, A group of Canadian researchers released a report saying a cyber-espionage group based in southwest China stole documents from the Indian Defense Ministry and emails from the Dalai Lama's office.
(Reuters, 4/6/10)
2010 Apr 30, In Argentina over 2,000 adolescents in schools across the province of Mendoza skipped classes and met in a plaza in a mass truancy organized on Facebook. A judge in Mendoza soon ordered Facebook to shut groups created by minors to organize the truancy.
(SFC, 5/13/10, p.A2)
2010 May 6, The US FCC announced a plan to classify the last mile of internet access as a telecommunications service.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.86)
2010 May 14, In Australia the body of Nona Belomesoff (18) was found in an isolated bushland area. Christopher James Dannevig (20) was charged with her murder. He had allegedly set up a fake identity on Facebook and enticed Belomesoff to a nature reserve in Sydney's southwest on May 12.
(AFP, 5/16/10)
2010 May 14, In China Internet service was restored to Xinjiang province, 10 months after it was blocked following deadly rioting in Urumqi, the regional capital.
(SFC, 5/15/10, p.A2)
2010 May 17, A group of French technology firms know as the association for digital Economy in France called on local governments to partner with private companies to build a network of data centers and shared cloud platforms catering to French needs.
(SFC, 5/31/10, p.D5)
2010 May 19, Pakistan's government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 5/19/10)
2010 May 20, The Pakistani government blocked access to YouTube because of "sacrilegious" content on the video-sharing website, signaling a growing Internet crackdown against sites deemed offensive to the country's majority Muslim population.
(AP, 5/20/10)
2010 May 21, Norwegian browser developer Opera Software said it is moving its data processing capacity to a newly-built center in Iceland, one of the first foreign investment deals for the crisis-hit island as it tries to rebuild its economy.
(AP, 5/21/10)
2010 May 21, Pakistani protesters shouted "Death to Facebook", "Death to America" and burnt US flags, venting growing anger over "sacrilegious" caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet.
(AP, 5/21/10)
2010 May 24, Brian Thomas Mettenbrink of Nebraska was sentenced to one year in federal prison for his role in a cyber attack on the Church of Scientology.
(SFC, 5/25/10, p.A4)
2010 May 27, Pakistan restored access to popular video website YouTube, but Facebook and 1,200 web pages remained blocked as a row about "blasphemous" content on the Internet rumbled into a second week.
(AFP, 5/27/10)
2010 May 28, A South Korean couple were convicted of abandoning their newborn daughter, who starved to death while they addictively played an online game raising a virtual child.
(AP, 5/28/10)
2010 May 30, Bangladesh said it has blocked the popular social networking website Facebook over a page that urges people to draw images of Islam's prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 5/30/10)
2010 May 31, Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents.
(AP, 5/31/10)
2010 Jun 3, A federal jury in Minneapolis found vendors Russell and Abby Cole guilty of using an online auction to defraud Best Buy of $41.6 million between 2003-2007. The vendors had the help of Robert Bossany, a Best Buy employee.
(SFC, 6/14/10, p.E3)
2010 Jun 6, Australia’s attorney general said police have been asked to investigate internet giant Google over possible breaches of telecommunications privacy laws. The investigation followed complaints from members of the public about activities of Google employees while taking photographs for Google Maps, the search engine's maps page. Google said it would cooperate with the investigation.
(Reuters, 6/6/10)
2010 Jun 8, France officially opened up its online gaming market, granting 17 licenses to 11 operators three days before the start of the soccer World Cup in South Africa.
(AFP, 6/8/10)
2010 Jun 22, Austin Heap (26) launched Proxyheap, the precursor to anti-censorship software called Haystack. He soon received a license from the US treasury, State Dept. and commerce Dept. to export it to Iran. The software was withdrawn on Sep 10 due to security issues.
(Econ, 9/18/10, p.75)
2010 Jun 25, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, agreed in a meeting to start using Chinese characters for suffixes handed out by Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan-based Internet registries. It started allowing Arabic earlier this year.
(AP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun 29, Google Inc said it will stop automatically rerouting users in China to an uncensored search page, a move that aims to preserve its operating license and signals a fight to save the firm's Chinese business.
(Reuters, 6/29/10)
2010 Jun, Stuxnet, computer malware, was first detected by VirusBlokAda, a security firm in Belarus. It was tailored for Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities. It was able to recognize a specific facility's control network and then destroy it. The code had a technology fingerprint of the control system it was seeking and would go into action automatically when it found its target. In September German computer security researcher Ralph Langner said he suspected that Stuxnet's mark was the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran. Unspecified problems have been blamed for a delay in getting the facility fully operational.
(AP, 9/24/10)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.63)
2010 Jul 9, Google said China has renewed its license to operate a website, preserving the search giant's toehold in the most populous Internet market after it gave up an attempt to skirt Beijing's Web censorship.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 23, Thailand’s Culture Ministry said Facebook and Twitter are causing deteriorating language skills among Thai students and authorities want them to return to the bygone tradition of letter-writing.
(AP, 7/23/10)
2010 Jul 18, In Slovenia a cyber mastermind, suspected of creating a malicious software code that infected 12 million computers worldwide and orchestrating other huge cyber scams, was arrested and questioned. His arrest came about five months after Spanish police broke up the massive cyber scam, arresting three of the alleged ringleaders who operated the Mariposa botnet, which stole credit cards and online banking credentials. On July 28 the FBI later said that a 23-year old Slovene known as Iserdo was picked up in Maribor, after lengthy investigation by Slovenian police, FBI and Spanish authorities. The FBI also identified, for the first time, the three individuals arrested in connection with the case in Spain: Florencio Carro Ruiz, known as "Netkairo;" Jonathan Pazos Rivera, known as "Jonyloleante;" and Juan Jose Bellido Rios, known as "Ostiator.
(AP, 7/28/10)
2010 Jul 26, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised that the release of some 91,000 secret US military documents on the Afghanistan war is just the beginning, adding that he still has thousands more Afghan files to post online. The files were mostly field reports and intelligence assessments from 2004-2009. Pakistan's most powerful spy agency on lashed out against a trove of leaked US intelligence reports that alleged close connections between it and Taliban militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan, calling the accusations malicious and unsubstantiated.
(AP, 7/26/10)(Econ, 7/31/10, p.28)
2010 Jul 30, The Australian government committed to expanding its fiber broadband Internet network to a further 300,000 homes across the vast island continent if re-elected at next month's polls.
(AFP, 7/30/10)
2010 Aug 9, Skype SA, the Internet calling service that was controlled until last year by eBay Inc., filed for a US initial public offering.
(AP, 8/9/10)
2010 Aug 10, Saudi Arabia's telecommunications regulator said it would allow BlackBerry messaging services to continue in the kingdom, citing "positive developments" with the device's Canadian manufacturer.
(AP, 8/10/10)
2010 Aug 19, South Korea said it has blocked North Korea's new Twitter account from being accessed in the South, saying the tweets contain "illegal information" under the country's security laws.
(AP, 8/19/10)
2010 Aug 24, Attorneys general in 17 US states demanded in a joint letter that SF-based Craigslist remove its adult services section because the website cannot adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking.
(SFC, 8/25/10, p.D1)
2010 Aug 26, Canada-based Research in Motion said it was willing to work with India to support the country's needs to lawfully access encrypted services on the company's Blackberry smartphone.
(Reuters, 8/26/10)
2010 Aug 27, Australian police warned social networking sites to be alert to illegal child sex activity, after cracking an alleged pedophile porn ring operating on Facebook. Australian police said six arrests had been made in Britain, including the alleged head of the network, three in Australia and two in Canada.
(AFP, 8/27/10)
2010 Sep 1, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced Ping as the social network of music.
(SFC, 11/12/10, p.D1)(http://venturebeat.com/tag/ping/)
2010 Sep 3, SF-based Craigslist yielded to pressure and removed its controversial adult services section. On Sep 15 Craigslist said the shutdown was permanent.
(SSFC, 9/5/10, p.A1)(AFP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 8, Belgian police say 10 people have been arrested in raids across Europe against hackers who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet. Police said 5 arrests were in Belgium and the other arrests were made in Poland, Norway and Sweden, where the alleged leaders of four computer piracy networks were being held.
(AP, 9/8/10)
2010 Sep 15, Microsoft Corp. unveiled the "beta" test version of Internet Explorer 9, the first of a new generation of Web browser programs that tap into the powerful processors on board newer computers to make websites load and run faster.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 16, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the Jerusalem city government to provide more than $120,000 in funding for a prominent gay community center. It was reported that Israeli government offices, that provide a wide array of public services, are pulling the plug on online payments on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays, creating a potential new source of friction between the religious and secular in the Jewish state.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 18, In Hungary Hacktivity 2010, the largest computer hackers' conference in eastern Europe, kicked off, with some 1,000 participants expected to attend the two-day event.
(AP, 9/18/10)
2010 Sep 22, Rutgers Univ. freshman Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. On Sep 19 his roommate and another student had used a webcam to broadcast live images on the Internet of Clementi having sex with another man. Roommate Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei were soon charged with invasion of privacy.
(www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/nyregion/30suicide.html?_r=1)
2010 Sep 24, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to Newark, N.J., public schools in a move that could enhance his reputation just before the opening on an unflattering movie about him, "The Social Network."
{Donation, Education, New Jersey, USA, Internet}
(AP, 9/24/10)
2010 Sep 25, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency says Iranian nuclear experts met this week to discuss how to remove the malicious computer code, dubbed Stuxnet, which can take over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants.
(AP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 26, Iranian officials said the malicious Stuxnet computer worm has hit 30,000 industrial computers, but denied the Islamic republic's first nuclear plant at Bushehr was among those infected. The malware has infected as many as 45,000 computer systems around the world. 60% of the infected computers were in Iran, 18% in Indonesia, and less than 2% in the US. Two computer servers in Malaysia and Denmark, which controlled the malware, have been shut down.
(AFP, 9/26/10)(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_computer_attacks)(SFC, 9/27/10, p.A4)
2010 Sep 27, Sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security, Cyber Storm III kicked off for a 3-day series of simulated events designed to exploit holes in the nation's cybersecurity system. It was Washington's first chance to test the new National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which was set up last fall to act as a hub for coordinating cybersecurity.
(http://tinyurl.com/24jewsu)
2010 Sep 27, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that the Stuxnet worm is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment in Iran where about 30,000 IP addresses have already been infected.
(AFP, 9/27/10)
2010 Sep 28, AOL acquired SF-based TechCrunch, the operator of an influential network of technology news blogs, for an estimated $25 million.
(SFC, 9/29/10, p.D1)
2010 Sep 30, The South China Morning Post quoted Derek Reveron, a cyber expert at the US Naval War School, as saying: "The Stuxnet worm is a wake-up call to governments around the world." China’s state media had reported this week that the Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc, infecting millions of computers around the country.
(AFP, 9/30/10)
2010 Sep, The FBI and its counterparts in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Britain took down a cyber-theft ring they first got wind of in May 2009 when a financial services firm tipped the bureau's Omaha, Neb., office to suspicious transactions. Since then, the FBI's Operation Trident Breach has uncovered losses of $14 million and counting.
(AP, 11/22/10)
2010 Oct 4, An official said Syria has accused a 19-year-old blogger who is in prison of being a spy in the first comment from authorities on a case that sparked calls by a leading rights group for the young woman's release. Tal al-Mallohi was taken into custody in December. Her blog, known for poetry and social commentary, focused mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 6, Facebook launched a new way for members to organize their friends, archive personal information and a new dashboard to control personal information sought by 3rd party applications and Web sites.
(SFC, 10/7/10, p.D1)
2010 Oct 6, Logitech introduced Revue, a $299.99 set-top box for Google’s new TV service. The device allows users to access websites, Internet video, digital pictures and music from their televisions. Apple’s set-top box was introduced on Sep 1 for $99.
(SSFC, 10/10/10, p.D5)(http://tinyurl.com/2vzxpar)
2010 Oct 8, The Swiss Im Grueene Foundation awarded Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales $104,000 for “democratizing the access to knowledge."
(SFC, 10/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 12, Australian PM Julia Gillard renewed her backing for a controversial Internet filter, saying it was driven by a "moral question."
(AFP, 10/12/10)
2010 Oct 15, A security researcher said criminals are using a Zeus botnet to pillage Charles Schwab investment accounts. Although police in the US, the UK and Ukraine collared more than 100 members of a Zeus crimeware gang three weeks ago, experts warned that the arrests wouldn't stop the botnet. Other gangs can simply step into the void.
(http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=B7C76BC0-1A64-67EA-E459F0D62DD95E83)
2010 Oct 16, In China Li Qiming (22) reportedly hit two students with his car at a university campus in the northern province of Hebei. The drunk man shouted "sue me if you dare" when a crowd stopped him from fleeing. On Oct 26 state media reported that Qiming, the son of a senior police officer, was arrested after the incident sparked outrage on the Internet.
(AFP, 10/26/10)
2010 Oct 21, A partnership backed by Amazon.com, Comcast, Facebook and other technology firms established the “S Fund," a $250 million fund led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to capitalize on the growing reach of social networking.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.C1)
2010 Oct 22, The WikiLeaks website released 391,831 purported Iraq war logs in the biggest leak of secret information in US history. The documents date from the start of 2004 to Jan 1, 2010. They suggested that far more Iraqis died than previously acknowledged during the years of sectarian bloodletting and criminal violence unleashed by the American-led invasion in 2003. Accounts of civilian deaths included deaths unknown or unreported before now, as many as 15,000 by the count of one independent research group.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, The whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks said it will soon publish 15,000 more secret Afghan war documents.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, In Vietnam Le Nguyen Huong Tra, who blogged under the pen name of Do Long Girl, was taken into police custody from a home in Ho Chi Minh City for allegedly slandering a senior government official. Police in Ho Chi Minh City also arrested blogger Phan Thanh Hai, known as Anhbasg, over the weekend and continued to detain Nguyen Van Hai, a blogger known as Dieu Cay, even though he had served out his 30-month sentence on "trumped-up" tax evasion charges.
(AP, 10/26/10)
2010 Oct 24, Lady Gaga became the first singer to reach 1 billion hits on YouTube.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, Par p.9)
2010 Oct 25, In Egypt a planned website, Harrasmap, will allow women to quickly report instances of harassment via text message or Twitter, to be loaded onto a digital map of Cairo to show hotspots and areas that might be dangerous for women to walk alone. The data will be shared with activists, media, and police. Cairo's online map will run off a platform called Ushahidi, an open-source software first developed to report violence in Kenya after 2008 elections there. Since then test models of it have run in South Africa, Gaza and India.
(AP, 10/25/10)
2010 Oct 26, Armenian police arrested Georg Avanesov (27). He allegedly operated the “Bredolab" botnet of nearly 30 million PCs. Investigators alleged that Avanesov made up to US$139,000 each month renting the botnet to criminals who used it for sending spam and for installing password-stealing malicious software.
(www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792148/Spam_report_October_2010)
2010 Oct 28, US microchip giant Intel said it plans to team up with Taiwan to set up a multi-million dollar Internet computing research laboratory.
(AFP, 10/28/10)
2010 Oct 30, Turkey said it was lifting a ban on YouTube more than two years after it blocked the site because of videos deemed insulting to the country’s founder.
(SSFC, 10/31/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 31, Walid Husayin (26), a Palestinian blogger, was arrested in the West Bank. He had set off an uproar in the Arab world by sarcastically claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad. He was caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.
(AP, 11/12/10)
2010 Nov 2, State Vietnam News said blogger Le Nguyen Huong Tra (35), who blogged as Co Gai Do Long, has been detained for "infringing on the interests of the state" after she criticized a security official and his family.
(AFP, 11/2/10)
2010 Nov 4, European computer guards battled against a simulated attempt by hackers to bring down critical Internet services in the first pan-continental test of cyber defenses. All 27 of the EU member nations as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland took part in the simulation. The USA held its own major exercise against a large-scale cyber attack on critical infrastructure in late September with 12 international partners and 60 private companies. Cyber security will be one of the top issues that NATO leaders will tackle at a summit of the 28-nation military alliance in Lisbon on November 20-29.
(AFP, 11/4/10)
2010 Nov 14, In China a court convicted Cheng Jianping (46) of "disturbing social order" after she added a few words to a message written by her fiance, Hua Chunhui, whose Twitter post mocked anti-Japanese protesters. On Nov 16 Amnesty Int’l. urged the government to release Cheng, saying she could be the first Chinese citizen to become "a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet."
(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 15, In South Korea a 15-year-old boy committed suicide after killing his mother in a fight over Internet games.
(AP, 11/16/10)
2010 Nov 28, More than 250,000 classified US State Department documents were released by online whistleblower WikiLeaks. Among the leaked memos was information that Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during its 2006 war with Israel. Memos said the "IRC shipments of medical supplies served also to facilitate weapons shipments." Documents also detailed concerns by US officials in Baghdad about Iran’s influence on Iraq. Memos also said King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. One cable revealed that the US kept nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey.
(AP, 11/28/10)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.35)
2010 Dec 3, Wikileaks struggled to stay online as corporations and governments moved to cut its access to the Internet, a potentially crippling blow for an organization dedicated to releasing secret information via the web.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 3, Online payment service provider PayPal said in a company blog it has cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations.
(AP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 6, Internet giant Google fielded a new champion on the mobile phone market battlefield, a "Nexus S" smartphone made by South Korea's Samsung. It included built-in support for Near Field Communication, a wireless standard that enables customers to make payments over an electronic reader.
(AP, 12/6/10)(SFC, 12/7/10, p.D1)
2010 Dec 7, WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was remanded in custody until December 14 by a London court after he said he would fight extradition to Sweden where he faces rape allegations.
(AFP, 12/7/10)
2010 Dec 8, Cyber attacks apparently organized by Internet activists sympathetic to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange shut down the website of credit card company Mastercard and two Swedish sites. WikiLeaks published a new set of cables, and in a defiant message posted online the secret-spilling website promised that the leaks would keep on flowing despite the arrest and jailing of its founder on sex allegations.
(Reuters, 12/8/10)(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 9, Netherlands arrested a young hacker who confessed to participating in attacks by WikiLeaks sympathizers on websites, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 15, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (26) was named Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010, joining the ranks of winners that include heads of state and rock stars as the person the magazine believes most influenced events of the past year.
(AP, 12/15/10)
2010 Dec 20, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg toured the offices of Baidu, China's top search engine, during a visit that has sparked speculation the social networking magnate is looking for business opportunities in the world's largest Internet market.
(AP, 12/20/10)
2010 Dec 20, Venezuela’s government formally rejected Larry Palmer, Washington's nominee for ambassador. The US State Department said the decision will have consequences on their relations. Venezuela’s parliament passed a law banning for the first time Internet content that promotes social unrest, challenges authority or condones crime, fueling outrage by the opposition.
(AP, 12/20/10)(AFP, 12/21/10)
2010 Dec 25, China’s state media said police are offering cash and other rewards to encourage the country's millions of Internet users to help solve criminal investigations. China announced a 25-basis point increase in benchmark one-year interest rates, providing much-needed reassurance that it was determined to rein in price pressures.
{China, Internet, Banking}
(AFP, 12/25/10)(Reuters, 12/27/10)
2010 Dec 30, Cyber activists said they have brought down Zimbabwean government websites after the president's wife sued a newspaper for publishing a WikiLeaks cable linking her with illicit diamond trading.
(Reuters, 12/30/10)
2010 Nicholas Carr, American commentator, authored “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," in which he claimed that the Internet is on its way to smothering creativity and profound thinking.
(SSFC, 6/6/10, p.F1)(Econ, 11/6/10, SR p.18)
2010 David Kirkpatrick authored “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World."
(Econ, 6/5/10, p.92)
2010 Jaron Lanier (49), virtual reality pioneer, authored “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto."
(SSFC, 2/7/10, p.A19)
2010 Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman authored “The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development."
(Econ, 1/15/11, p.93)
2010 Clay Shirky authored “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age."
(Econ, 1/15/11, p.76)
2010 Tim Wu authored “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Systems." He proposed that America adopt a “Separations Principle" that would enforce a split between creators of content, those that distribute it and makers of devices on which it is consumed.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.77)
2010 Nextdoor, a private online community for neighborhoods, was founded. By 2018 the SF-based company had more than 160,000 neighborhoods in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
(SFC, 1/13/18, p.D4)
2010 Pinterest, an online scrapbooking website, was founded.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D1)
2010 Kevin Systrom developed a filter for a photo-sharing app called "Codename" and posted a snap of a dog by a taco stand. This became the first image posted to what became Instagram. Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram and in 2012 sold it to Facebook for $1 billion.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.71)
2011 Jan 10, Canada-based Research In Motion said it will filter pornographic internet content for its Blackberry smartphone users in Indonesia, following government pressure to stop access to porn sites or face its browsing service being shut down.
(Reuters, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 13, Canada’s BlackBerry maker Research In Motion said it has given India the means to access its Messenger service and reiterated that no changes could be made to allow monitoring of secure corporate emails.
(Reuters, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 17, Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, promised Indonesia it will meet the country's request to filter out pornographic content on its smartphones in the next four days.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed to publish secret details of offshore accounts after Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss banking whistleblower, handed over data on 2,000 purportedly tax-dodging individuals and firms.
(AFP, 1/17/11)(SSFC, 1/23/11, p.A5)
2011 Jan 19, The European Commission, which regulates the trading of carbon emissions certificates, shut the trading system down following the theft of certificates worth up to $38 million in a spate of computer attacks. The shutdown was expected to last a week.
(SFC, 1/20/11, p.D3)
2011 Jan 23, Iran's state TV said the country has launched its first cyber police unit in the latest attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.
(AP, 1/23/11)
2011 Jan 28, In Switzerland Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of the group that created WikiLeaks, said a new platform called OpenLeaks will allow sources to choose specifically who they want to submit documents to anonymously, such as to a particular news outlet. He hoped it would be fully operational later this year.
(AP, 1/28/11)
2011 Jan 30, The Myanmar opposition group led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi launched its first official website: http://www.nldburma.org/.
(AP, 1/30/11)
2011 Jan 31, India rejected Canada-based Research In Motion's (RIM) offer to allow it only partial access to its BlackBerry data services, while neighboring Pakistan reversed its earlier decision to restrict the popular smartphone's services.
(Reuters, 1/31/11)
2011 Jan 31, In Sri Lanka a group of men broke into the offices of a website critical of the government and set fire to it. A journalist from the publication said that he suspected a government role in the attack.
(AP, 1/31/11)
2011 Jan, WeChat, a Chinese cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Tencent, was first released. By 2016 it was one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat)(Econ, 8/6/16, p.7)
2011 Feb 3, Int’l. groups that coordinate Internet addresses officially allocated the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to regional registries. A new 128-bit address system, IPv6, will begin testing on June 8.
(SFC, 2/4/11, p.D6)
2011 Feb 7, Internet company AOL Inc. said it is buying news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news. Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. The site attracts 25 million monthly visitors.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 7, In Egypt Wael Ghonim (30), a Google Inc. marketing manager, was released from 12 days of detention and gave an emotionally charged television interview, sobbing at times over those who have been killed. He dubbed the protests "the revolution of the youth of the Internet." He was a key organizer of the online campaign that sparked the first protest on Jan 25.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 7, RIA News reported that a Russian man, Yevgeny Anikin (27), has pleaded guilty in court to stealing $10 million from former Royal Bank of Scotland division World Pay in 2008 by hacking into accounts. "I want to say that I repent and fully admit my guilt," Anikin said in his final comments to the court in Novosibirsk in Siberia, where he was charged with theft.
(Reuters, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 8, Cuban officials celebrated the arrival of a 1,600km fiber optic cable from Venezuela, whose government put up the $70 million cost. It was expected to become operational this summer.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)(Econ, 3/5/11, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/4zgampd)
2011 Feb 10, The US computer security firm McAfee Inc said in a report that hackers working in China over the last 2-4 years broke into the computer systems of five multinational oil and gas companies to steal bidding plans and other critical proprietary information.
(Reuters, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 11, Pandora Media Inc., an Internet radio company, announced plans to go public and raise as much as $100 million from sale of stock.
(SFC, 2/12/11, p.D1)
2011 Feb 16, Google CEO Eric Schmidt unveiled the one-stop payment service, called One Pass, at Berlin's Humboldt University. The announcement came a day after Apple rolled out a long-awaited subscription service for applications designed for its iPhone and iPad. Apple is demanding a 30 percent cut of all subscriptions sold on those mobile apps while Google is charging 10 percent. Schmidt also announced that Google was funding a Berlin-based institute in conjunction with Humboldt University. It would examine the evolution of the Internet and its impact on society.
(AP, 2/16/11)
2011 Feb 17, Cyber crime costs the British economy some 27 billion pounds ($43.5 billion) a year and appears to be "endemic," according to the 1st official government estimate of the issue.
(Reuters, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 17, A top Canadian cabinet minister said a cyber attack on key economic ministries last month was serious but will not affect the timing of next month's federal budget. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp said hackers using China-based servers had broken into computer systems at the Finance Department and Treasury Board.
(Reuters, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 17, China warned the United States not to use calls for uncensored access to the Internet as a pretext to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries.
(AP, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 22, A French creator of specialized search engines filed a new complaint with the European Union about alleged anticompetitive behavior by Google Inc.
(AP, 2/22/11)
2011 Feb 23, Chinese activists said officials have rounded up Internet users who had reposted a call for protests and charged them with subversion as the authoritarian government continued its campaign to crush any Middle East-style democracy movement. Unidentified organizers had issued a renewed appeal to gather peacefully in parks or near monuments at 2 p.m. on Sundays. China's Vice President Xi Jinping urged greater outreach by the ruling Communist Party to handle issues related to education, employment, health care and housing.
(AP, 2/23/11)(AP, 2/24/11)
2011 Feb 24, A British judge ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (39), who rocked the US government by publishing thousands of secret diplomatic memos, must be extradited to Sweden to face sex crimes allegations.
(Reuters, 2/24/11)
2011 Feb 25, China widened its Internet policing after online calls for protests like those that swept the Middle East, with social networking site LinkedIn and searches for the US ambassador's name both blocked. Access to LinkedIn resumed on Feb 26.
(AP, 2/25/11)(AP, 2/26/11)
2011 Mar 2, The US Army filed 22 new charges, including aiding the enemy, against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, suspected of leaking sensitive and classified documents to WikiLeaks.
(SFC, 3/3/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 5, In South Korea unidentified attackers targeted more than two dozen government and private websites. Officials reported no serious damage a day after a pair of similar assaults.
(AP, 3/5/11)
2011 Mar 11, Amazon.com notified its Illinois partners that it will stop doing business with them on April 15 because of a new state law requiring the online store to collect sales taxes.
(SFC, 3/12/11, p.D2)
2011 Mar 14, An Iranian state-owned newspaper reported that Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard's paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the "enemies," in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it's involved in cyber warfare.
(AP, 3/14/11)
2011 Mar 15, A Thailand court sentenced Thanthawut Taweewarodomkul (38), the administrator of an anti-government website, to 13 years in prison on charges of defaming the monarchy and violating the computer crime act.
(SFC, 3/16/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 18, The Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers approved the .xxx domain for adult-content websites.
(SFC, 3/19/11, p.D2)
2011 Apr 4, The names and e-mails of customers of Citigroup Inc and other large US companies, as well as College Board students, were exposed in a massive and growing data breach after a computer hacker penetrated online marketer Epsilon.
(Reuters, 4/4/11)
2011 Apr 4, Israel asked Facebook to pull down a page with 350,000 “fans" calling for “the third Palestinian uprising." Facebook at first refused, but took the page down a day later.
(SSFC, 4/10/11, p.F9)
2011 Apr 8, In Russia a cyber attack paralyzed the website of a popular independent newspaper, days after similar attacks knocked off Russia's most popular blogging site.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 11, Tajikistan state religious affairs committee head Abdurakhim Kholikov said that sending text messages with the "triple talaq," a Muslim ritual whereby a husband can end a marriage by reciting the term for divorce three times, breaches Islamic law.
(AP, 4/11/11)
2011 Apr 13, The US Justice Dept. and FBI said they have seized computers and filed a civil complaint in a bid to disable a malicious botnet system called Coreflood, which has operated for nearly a decade stealing personal passwords and private financial information. The civil complaint was against 13 John Doe defendants related to the Coreflood botnet.
(SFC, 4/14/11, p.D6)
2011 Apr 15, Indictments were unsealed in Manhattan against 11 people including the founders of the three largest online poker sites open to US players. They were charged with bank fraud, money laundering and violating gambling laws.
(SFC, 4/16/11, p.A6)
2011 Apr 16, A senior Iranian military official said experts have determined the United States and Israel were behind a mysterious computer worm known as Stuxnet that has harmed Iran's nuclear program.
(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 Apr 17, Iran’s Kayhan daily reported that an Iranian military commander has accused German engineering company Siemens of helping the United States and Israel launch the Stuxnet virus, a cyber attack on its nuclear facilities.
(Reuters, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 19, Sony Corp. in the US noticed unauthorized activity on its network, and discovered that data had been transferred off the network the next day. The company's general counsel gave the FBI information about the breach on April 22.
(AP, 5/4/11)
2011 Apr 19, Investors announced that West Africa Cable System (WACS), a new $650 million undersea telecommunications cable, has landed in South Africa, saying the link would double the broadband capacity of the continent's largest economy.
(AFP, 4/19/11)
2011 Apr 21, Zoom Video Communications, a video-conferencing service, was founded in San Jose, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications)
2011 Apr 21, A group of Japanese internet service providers started blocking access to child porn websites as part of efforts to crack down on the spread of sexually explicit images of children.
(AFP, 4/21/11)
2011 Apr 25, A senior Iranian military official said Iran has been hit by a second computer virus, the Stars virus, suggesting it was part of a concerted campaign to undermine the country's disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 4/25/11)
2011 May 10, Malaysian local papers highlighted how underworld groups were using Facebook and other social media to recruit members, the majority of whom are still at secondary school. The next day the government announced a major crackdown on criminal gangs using social networking sites to enlist teenage recruits as "street fighters."
(AFP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 11, In Australia WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's top honor for "exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights", joining the likes of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
{Australia, Internet}
(AFP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 11, Three top French publishers said they were suing US Internet giant Google for scanning thousands of their books for its online library without permission.
(AP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 12, Journalists learned that PR agency Burston-Marsteller had tried to persuade newspaper writers to say nasty things about Google, while concealing that Facebook was paying for the lobbying.
(Econ, 5/21/11, p.72)
2011 May 19, The LinkedIn IPO was priced at $45 per share and closed at $94.25 after reaching a high of $122.70. It was the first major US social networking company to sell stock on a public market.
(SFC, 5/20/11, p.A1)
2011 May 21, Hackers launched a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 23, Square, a startup co-founded by Jack Dorsey (one of the creators of Twitter), unveiled a new payment system that undercut credit card processing fees charged to small businesses and making it easy for them to accept digital payments.
(Econ, 5/28/11, p.79)
2011 May 24, In France the world's most powerful Internet and media barons gathered in Paris in a show of strength to leaders at the G8 summit, amid rows over online copyright, regulation and human rights.
(AFP, 5/24/11)
2011 May 24, Japan’s Sony Corp. said it discovered a security breach affecting 8,500 user accounts in a music entertainment website in Greece that comes on the heels of a hacker attack which forced its flagship gaming site offline.
(AP, 5/24/11)
2011 May 28, Lockheed Martin confirmed that hackers had launched a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on May 21. Lockheed, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information, said its secrets remained safe.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 28, An Egyptian administrative court fined ousted President Hosni Mubarak and two former officials 540 million Egyptian pounds ($91 million) for cutting off mobile and internet services during protests in January. Egypt charged former Information Minister Anas el-Fekky with "deliberately causing financial harm" to the state-run Radio and Television Union.
(Reuters, 5/28/11)
2011 May 31, Turkey's government defended a new regulation that will filter the Internet and restrict access to websites that show pornography, bomb-making and violent content. The new regulation was set to come into effect in August.
(AP, 5/31/11)
2011 Jun 5, InfraGard, an Atlanta FBI partner organization, confirmed that almost 180 passwords of its members had been stolen and leaked to the Internet. Lulz Security (LulzSec), an online hacking collective, said it was acting in a response to a recent report that the Pentagon was considering whether to classify some cyber attacks as acts of war.
(SFC, 6/6/11, p.A6)
2011 Jun 5, In France, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSL) announced that radio and TV stations would no longer be allowed to promote or recommend their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds on air, unless such sites are part of a news story. The decision, which was first issued quietly on May 27, has now attracted international media outrage thanks to the French bloggers who began writing about it yesterday.
(AP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who had been on medical leave while battling pancreatic cancer, attended a conference of software developers to unveil a new service called iCloud. The iCloud stores music, photos, documents and electronic books “in the cloud," and is able to transfer them between Apple devices, without the need for hooking up a cable.
(AFP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 9, In New York officials of Citibank acknowledged that hackers had breached their system in May and gained access to the names, account numbers and e-mail addresses of about 200,000 customers.
(AP, 6/9/11)
2011 Jun 10, The Spanish government announced it had arrested three men who were suspected of being part of the hacker group known as Anonymous; the men, called “hacktivists," were charged with organizing and carrying out the hacking of the websites of Sony Corporation, as well as several banks.
(Reuters, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 11, The International Monetary Fund acknowledged that it had been the victim of a cyber-attack on its computers. The attack was said to be very sophisticated, and its intent was to install spyware. The intruders were able to access and read numerous e-mails and documents; several published reports said the attack was “connected to a foreign government," but did not reveal which one.
(Reuters, 6/11/11)
2011 Jun 13, Police in Turkey rounded up 32 alleged members of Anonymous, hacker group, which had recently attacked a couple of official websites.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.67)
2011 Jun 15, In another hacker attack, a group known as Lulz Security (LulzSec) was able to take down the public website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The group announced the attack at 6pm by sending out a message on Twitter. Service was restored on the CIA site later in the evening, and sources at the agency said no sensitive files were breached.
(Reuters, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 15, Citigroup admitted that its original estimate of the number of people affected by a cyber-attack was low. Rather than about 200,000, hackers gained access to the account information of over 360,000 customers.
(Reuters, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 15, In Arizona a grand jury indicted Donald Lapre, a Phoenix-based TV pitchman, accused of running a nationwide scheme to sell essentially worthless Internet-based businesses to more than 200,000 people. Victims were defrauded of nearly $52 million.
(AP, 6/16/11)
2011 Jun 19, Chinese public relations consultant Chen Hong closed down his website which let people post anonymous tips on official bribery after censors stepped in blocking access to the site for people inside China. His website, http://www.ibribery.com, had drawn 200,000 unique visitors in two weeks.
(AP, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 19, Japanese game maker Sega said hackers have stolen the personal data of some 1.29 million customers of the, in a theft via a website of its European unit.
(AP, 6/19/11)
2011 Jun 20, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced that websites will be able to have any suffix for almost any word in any language for an application fee of $185,000.
(SFC, 6/21/11, p.D6)
2011 Jun 20, British police arrested a man (19) suspected of hacking attacks on int’l. businesses and intelligence agencies. The arrest took place following a joint operation by its Internet crimes unit and the FBI. Police would not say whether the man is believed to be linked to either the Anonymous or Lulz Security (LulzSec) hacking collectives, which have called for "war" on governments that control the Internet and claimed responsibility for a string of high-profile attacks on targets such as Sony, the CIA web page and the US Senate computer system.
(AP, 6/21/11)(SFC, 6/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 21, Indian police said they had ordered Google to stop taking photos of the city of Bangalore for its Street View product because of fears the images could be used by militants.
(AFP, 6/21/11)
2011 Jun 22, The online pranksters at Lulz Security (LulzSec) say they've taken down two government Web sites in Brazil as they continue with their global "Anti-Security" campaign. The cyber attack blocked traffic to the website of the Brazilian presidency and two other government sites.
(AP, 6/22/11)(http://tinyurl.com/3ddjml6)
2011 Jun 20, Wyoming became the first state to begin using a suite of cloud computing tools from Google for its entire executive branch of government, allowing data and applications to be stored on remote servers and accessed over the Internet. The system was formally unveiled on June 22 as Gov. Matt Mead cut a red data cable with scissors.
(AP, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 24, Google said the FTC has opened a broad investigation into its online search and online advertising businesses to see if it has abused its dominant position.
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.56)
2011 Jun 25, The Lulz Security (LulzSec) group of rogue hackers announced it was disbanding with one last data dump, which included internal AOL Inc and AT&T documents.
(Reuters, 6/26/11)
2011 Jun 28, The Vatican inaugurated its new information portal: www.news.va.
(www.news.va/en/news/presentation-of-new-vatican-multimedia-portal)
2011 Jun 29, It was reported that News Corp. has sold Myspace to Specific Media Inc. for $35 million, a fraction of the $580 million it paid in 2005 for the once-hot social media site even as a new generation of Web-based start-ups is enjoying sky-high valuations. News Corp. will also get a 5% stake in Specific Media.
(Reuters, 6/29/11)(SFC, 6/30/11, p.D3)
2011 Jun, The FBI and Interpol conducted "Operation Hive," which resulted in the arrests of two Metulji operators in Bosnia and Slovenia. The world's biggest criminal botnet, that has enslaved tens of millions of computers across 172 countries, was named “Metulji," Slovenian for "butterfly."
(http://tinyurl.com/4346r4y)
2011 Jul 3, Belarus blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and a major Russian social networking site in an attempt to prevent opposition protests on a national holiday. Thousands of police and special forces were deployed in the center of Minsk, the capital.
(AP, 7/3/11)
2011 Jul 8, A 225-page international review showing wide variances of Internet freedom gave Finland the best marks for making citizens' access to a broadband connection a legal right. The report was presented at OSCE headquarters in Vienna.
(AP, 7/8/11)
2011 Jul 14, The US Pentagon said a cyber attack in March by a foreign government stole some 24,000 files from a defense industry computer network.
(SFC, 7/15/11, p.A8)
2011 Jul 18, Lulz Security (LulzSec) hacker group attacked the website of the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun newspaper, replacing the online version with a fake story pronouncing the mogul's death.
(AFP, 7/18/11)
2011 Jul 19, US authorities announced 14 arrests of hackers and said they cooperated with British and Dutch authorities. They were arrested for allegedly mounting a cyberattack on PayPal’s website ion retaliation for the firm’s suspending the accounts of WikiLeaks.
(AP, 7/20/11)(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A7)
2011 Jul 19, Harvard Univ. fellow Aaron Schwartz (d.2013), a student of ethics, was charged with hacking into the MIT computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles from JSTOR, a paywalled repository. Schwartz believed that academic papers should be freely available. The MIT Disobedience Award was later founded partly to commemorate Mr. Schwartz.
(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A7)(Econ 7/1/17, p.72)
2011 Jul 20, Dutch prosecutors released some details about four Dutch citizens arrested on suspicion of involvement in cyber attacks as part of the loosely-knit hackers group known as "Anonymous." They said the suspects are thought to have belonged to a splinter group called AntiSec NL, which hacked the sites of dating service Pepper.nl and communications software maker Nimbuzz, among others.
(AP, 7/20/11)
2011 Jul 25, Saudi authorities blocked the website of Amnesty International inside the kingdom following criticism of a controversial new anti-terrorism draft law.
(AP, 7/25/11)
2011 Jul 27, In Australia a 25-year-old unemployed truck driver (online nickname "Evil"), who had been unable to find a job in information technology, faced 49 charges after a six-month investigation into his online activities.
(AP, 7/27/11)
2011 Jul 27, Scottish teenager Jake Davis (18) was arrested with 16 computers in the Shetland Islands. This was the alleged nerve center of Lulz Security (LulzSec), a group of internet hackers whose targets included computer-security and online gaming firms. The group had broken from Anonymous, another hacker group, three months earlier. Ryan Cleary (19) was arrested in June at his home in Wickford, Essex, charged with attacking websites as part of LulzSec.
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.49)(http://shetlopedia.com/Jake_Davis)(AFP, 8/30/11)
2011 Jul 29, Yahoo Inc., Japan's Softbank Corp. and the China’s Alibaba Group said they have agreed on a compensation plan involving the Web payment service Alipay.
(AP, 7/29/11)
2011 Aug 3, Computer hackers attacked the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange website, prompting the authorities at the bourse to shut it down. ZSE does not conduct trading on the Internet.
(AFP, 8/5/11)
2011 Aug 4, Computer security firms McAfee and Dell SecureWorks said Chinese hackers had attacked over 72 networks beginning in 2006. McAfee dubbed the attacks “Operation Shady RAT."
(SFC, 8/5/11, p.D6)
2011 Aug 6, The group known as Anonymous said it has hacked into some 70 law enforcement websites across the southern and central United States in retaliation for arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain.
(AP, 8/6/11)
2011 Aug 9, South Korean officials said its ministry which handles relations with North Korea has been targeted by hackers in the latest of a series of online attacks on government and corporate websites.
(AFP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 11, Online media said authorities in Uzbekistan have blocked dozens of Internet sites in an apparent attempt to further stem the flow of information into the authoritarian Central Asian nation.
(AP, 8/11/11)
2011 Aug 14, The hacker group known as Anonymous struck a Bay Area Rapid Transit website and released customer information in retaliation for BART’s decision to cut cellular phone service to prevent an antipolice protest in San Francisco. Hackers carried out a 2nd attack on Aug 17 breaching the website of the agency’s rank-and-file police.
(SFC, 8/15/11, p.A1)(SFC, 8/18/11, p.A1)
2011 Aug 15, Google moved to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
(SFC, 8/16/11, p.C1)
2011 Aug 21, In Libya large anti-regime protests erupted in several Tripoli neighborhoods where thousands braved the bullets of snipers perched atop high buildings. At the same time, hundreds of rebel forces advanced to within 15 miles west of the capital and were rushing forward in pickup trucks and on foot. Rebels swarmed into Tripoli late in the day and restored the country’s internet connection.
(AP, 8/21/11)(AP, 8/22/11)(Econ, 8/27/11, p.11)
2011 Aug 22, Liu Qi, China’s party secretary for Beijing, told Internet companies to tighten control over material online as Beijing cracks down on dissent and tries to block the rise of Middle East-style protests. He issued the warning following a visit to Sina Corp., which operates a popular microblogging site.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 24, Mexican officials said that civil, tax and administrative cases will be processed through a state website. Officials expected everything from filings to rulings to be done electronically.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 31, The New Zealand Press Association, the country's national news agency, closed its doors after 131 years, the latest victim of media consolidation in the digital age.
(AFP, 8/30/11)
2011 Aug, in Japan Mitsubishi Heavy was attacked with viruses apparently programmed to breach its computers and servers to gain unauthorized access to protected data. The attack was not made public until September when it was reported that no sensitive information was known to have been lost.
(AP, 9/20/11)
2011 Sep 1, The World Economic Forum pronounced Reputation.com, founded in 2006 as ReputationDefender, as one of 31 “technology pioneer" companies. In October the Redwood City, Ca., company posted an advertisement on KCSM TV, a public TV channel in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a focus on gathering users interested in the validity of their identities.
(PBS, 10/10/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation.com)
2011 Sep 2, Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks published its full archive of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables unredacted and easily accessible online, drawing a furious response from its media partners.
(AFP, 9/2/11)
2011 Sep 7, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology named Google's China website operator, Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd., as one of 137 firms whose licenses were renewed following adjustments in their operations.
(AFP, 9/7/11)
2011 Sep 16, Myanmar's new government was reported to have stopped blocking some foreign websites this week, such as the BBC and YouTube, in a gesture toward openness tempered by remaining harsh laws that still keep readers of such sites at risk of arrest.
(AP, 9/16/11)
2011 Sep 18, The journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology reported that online gamers have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade. The gamers produced an accurate model of a monomeric protease enzyme in just three weeks.
(AFP, 9/18/11)
2011 Sep 20, US prosecutors made new allegations in a probe of the Full Tilt Poker website, accusing self-styled "Poker Professor" Howard Lederer and professional poker champion Christopher Ferguson and others of paying themselves more than $440 million while defrauding other players.
(Reuters, 9/20/11)
2011 Sep 22, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg introduced the Facebook "timeline" in San Francisco at the company's f8 conference for some 2,000 entrepreneurs, developers and journalists.
(AP, 9/22/11)
2011 Sep 23, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed compromise legislation under which Amazon.com drops its attempt to overturn by referendum an online sales tax in return for the state agreeing to postpone collections until next September. Amazon said it will create 10,000 full-time jobs in the state and invest $500 million in a variety of facilities.
(SFC, 9/27/11, p.D1)
2011 Sep 23, Chinese blogger Daniel Wu, praised for posting pictures of Chinese officials and their luxury watches online, said he has been forced out of action due to outside "pressure." His commitment to exposing the officials had been praised earlier this month by the state-run Xinhua news agency, which said the fight against corruption should follow his method.
(AFP, 9/23/11)
2011 Sep 26, Israel's national museum and the international web giant Google led a project, that put five Dead Sea scrolls online today. The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah.
(AP, 9/26/11)
2011 Sep 27, The 6th annual Internet Governance Forum opened in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme this year was “Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation."
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.63)(www.intgovforum.org/cms/)
2011 Sep 29, British police and medical regulators said Russian gangs and their Chinese associates are making billions of dollars from selling fake and unlicensed medicines over the Internet, putting thousands of people at risk. More than 2.5 million doses of counterfeit, controlled and withdrawn drugs were seized across 79 countries in seven days of raids coordinated by international police organization Interpol under an operation codenamed Pangea that ended on Sep 27.
(Reuters, 9/29/11)
2011 Sep, In CongoDRC an initiative by Invisible Children launched the LRA Crisis Tracker web site along with Resolve to map out LRA incidents, mostly in northern Congo. New high frequency radios were being distributed to help track the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal militia that 100 US special forces troops were currently helping hunt.
(AP, 11/8/11)
2011 Oct 3, Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, and ABC News announced they will join forces to launch a strategic online news alliance that will deliver content to more than 100 million U.S. users each month.
(http://tinyurl.com/3lrfbm4)
2011 Oct 10, An undersea telecommunications table landed in Sierra Leone, part of a 17,000-km fiber optic line that aims to connect countries along the west African coast to Europe.
(AFP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 15, China's top Communist Party leaders opened a four-day meeting which will be devoted to the country's "cultural development." Analysts said the meeting is largely to strengthen the party's tight control over the media and the Internet.
(AFP, 10/15/11)
2011 Oct 21, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed legislation that repealed a law, enacted earlier this year, that had limited online discussions between teachers and students 18 or younger.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 22, Egypt’s MENA state news agency said a Cairo court has sentenced Ayman Mansour to three years in prison for postings on Facebook deemed to be inciting sectarianism and in contempt of Islam.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 25, Japanese officials said computers in the parliament have been found to be infected with a virus.
(SFC, 10/26/11, p.A4)
2011 Oct 26, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview to BBC Farsi said that in the next two months, the United States would open a "virtual embassy": an online site that would respond to questions about US visa and study options, and that would address the Iranian population directly.
(AFP, 10/27/11)
2011 Oct 28, In Nigeria hackers calling themselves NaijaCyberHacktivists hit the website of the top anti-corruption agency over a government official suggesting tighter Internet control.
(AP, 10/28/11)
2011 Nov 1, It was reported that bloggers and tweeters claiming to belong to the hacker movement "Anonymous" say they plan to expose collaborators of Mexico's bloody Zetas drug cartel, even if some of them seem to have backed away from the plan out of fear.
(AP, 11/1/11)
2011 Nov 4, Groupon (GRPN), an online daily deal company, went public in an IPO at $20 per share and closed $26.11.
(SFC, 11/5/11, p.D1)
2011 Nov 5, Sri Lanka warned websites to register with the authorities after the United States expressed deep concern over Colombo's blocking of a popular Internet-based dissident publication.
(AFP, 11/5/11)
2011 Nov 6, The websites of Israel's army and intelligence services were down today, two days after a hacker group appeared to threaten the Jewish state over its interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla.
(AFP, 11/6/11)
2011 Nov 7, Sri Lanka officials said five news websites have been blocked because they committed character assassination and insulted people including key political leaders.
(AP, 11/7/11)
2011 Nov 9, US federal officials said an Eastern European pack of cyber thieves, known as the Rove group, hijacked at least four million computers in over 100 countries, including at least half a million computers in the US, to make off with $14 million in "illegitimate income" before they were caught. The accused hackers, six Estonian nationals and a Russian national, rerouted the internet traffic illegally on the infected computers for the last four years in order to reap profits from internet advertisement deals.
(ABCNews, 11/9/11)
2011 Nov 10, US Senators Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Robert Casey, D-Pa., sent a letter to the State and Commerce departments requesting an investigation into companies whose technology has been used to monitor activities of Syrian citizens. US companies included NetApp Inc. and Blue coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Ca. The Syrian Internet surveillance project, headed by the Italian company Area, was designed to intercept and catalog virtually every e-mail flowing through Syria.
(SFC, 11/11/11, p.A5)
2011 Nov 16, Google launched its new online music service.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.68)
2011 Nov 17, Norwegian security officials say the Nordic country has been hit by one of the most extensive data espionage attacks in the country's history. The Norwegian National Security Authority said industrial secrets from the oil, energy and defense industries have been stolen and disseminated.
(AP, 11/17/11)
2011 Nov 18, The US FCC released details of an order directing $4.5 billion a year from universal service and inter-carrier-compensation systems into a new connect America Fund (CAF) to give rural Americans access to high speed internet connections over the next 6 years.
(Econ, 12/3/11, p.42)
2011 Nov 22, Indian IT entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia launched a free text messaging service, JaxtrSMS, promising that it would be as revolutionary as his previous venture, Hotmail.
(AFP, 11/22/11)
2011 Nov 23, A Thai criminal court sentenced Amphon Tangnoppaku (61) to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed offensive to the country's queen.
(AP, 11/23/11)
2011 Nov 24, Bosnian police said they have discovered around 1.5 million pornographic images of children on the computer of a man they suspect of blackmailing United States citizens with money transfers amounting to some $3000.
(AP, 11/24/11)
2011 Nov 28, San Francisco City College officials detected an infestation of computer viruses with origins in criminal networks in Russia, China and other countries. By mid January officials traced at least 723 Internet protocol addresses to the Russian Business Network, a gang in the business of stealing and selling personal information. The network disbanded around 2008, but criminals were reportedly still collecting data.
(SFC, 1/13/12, p.A1)
2011 Nov 29, US Federal authorities said they have shut down 150 websites accused of selling knock-off or pirated merchandise to unsuspecting online bargain hunters.
(AP, 11/28/11)
2011 Dec 6, Facebook started making its Timeline feature available to the approximately two million Facebook users living in New Zealand. The new application takes everything you’ve ever done on Facebook and creates a digital scrapbook that is simultaneously eye-pleasing and addicting.
(http://tinyurl.com/42y7nsq)
2011 Dec 7, Iran blocked an Internet website, http://iran.usembassy.gov/, the United States was touting as a "virtual embassy," and which senior MPs slammed as an attempt to deceive the Iranian people and divide them from the government.
(AFP, 12/7/11)
2011 Dec 16, Zynga, a SF-based internet game company, went public for $10 a share, valuing the company at $1 billion. Shares closed down 5% at $9.50.
(SFC, 12/16/11, p.A1)(SFC, 12/17/11, p.A1)
2011 Dec 16, Beijing city authorities issued new rules requiring microbloggers to register their real names before posting online, as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the Internet.
(AFP, 12/16/11)
2011 Dec 19, Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company announced a combined investment of $300 million in the social networking site Twitter.
(AFP, 12/19/11)
2011 Dec 19, Sudan’s parliament raised taxes on the Internet, mobile phone calls and other telecommunications in a bid to help cover lost oil income from South Sudan.
(AP, 12/20/11)
2011 Dec, In Kenya founder Anthony Ragui (37) launched www.ipaidabribe.or.ke, a website where people can share their stories on corruption a bribery. He used software from an Indian site, also called ipaidabribe, that has collected information on more than 15,000 bribes since it was put up in 2010.
(AP, 1/6/12)
2011 Dec, In Slovakia the "Gorilla" files were mysteriously posted online by an anonymous source. They purportedly documented shady dealings between 2005 and 2006, and suggest that investment group Penta bribed government and opposition politicians to win lucrative privatization deals. They were said to be based on wiretaps and rocked the already-raucous world of Slovak politics. The spy agency, SIS, has refused to confirm the file's authenticity. SIS heads are suspected of sweeping the wiretap findings under the carpet. Police began investigating following the anonymous leak.
(AP, 3/8/12)
2011 Mark Bowden authored “Worm: The First Digital War."
(SSFC, 10/23/11, p.F1)
2011 Steven Levy authored “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives."
(SSFC, 4/17/11, p.G1)
2011 Evgeny Morozov authored “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom."
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.82)
2011 Eli Pariser authored “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You."
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.70)
2011 Kevin Poulsen authored “Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground." It documented the story of hacker Max Butler, aka Iceman, currently serving a 13-year sentence for the theft of credit card data.
(SSFC, 3/6/11, p.G1)
2011 Siva Vaidhyanathan authored “The Googlization of Everything: And why We Should Worry."
(SSFC, 4/17/11, p.G1)
2011 Darren Westlake and Luke Lang launched Crowdcube, a website that helps entrepreneurs raise equity from the public.
(Econ, 11/2/13, p.79)
2011 Snapchat, an image messaging and multimedia mobile application, was launched. It was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown when they were students at Stanford University. The company headquarters are located in Venice, California. By 2016 it was said to be worth $16 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat)(Econ, 4/9/15, p.23)
2011 Twitch.tv, a website that streams live video directly to users’ computers, was founded. On Aug 25, 2014 Amazon.com announced that it would buy Twitch for $970 million.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2011 In China the Zhihu website, meaning “do you know", began operating as a copy of Quora, an American site. By 2016 it was the country’s most popular question-and-answer portal with 100 million active monthly users.
(Econ, 9/3/16, p.40)
2012 Jan 3, Israeli credit card companies said hackers claiming to be Saudis disclosed credit card information of thousands of Israelis on the Internet.
(AP, 1/3/12)
2012 Jan 6, An alleged Saudi hacker (19), oxOmar, posted thousands of Israeli credit card numbers and other personal data online, his second politically motivated attack this week.
(AP, 1/6/12)
2012 Jan 12, Hackers claiming to be from the Gaza Strip defaced the website of the Israel Fire and Rescue services, posting a message saying "Death to Israel."
(AFP, 1/12/12)
2012 Jan 13, A British court ruled that Richard O'Dwyer (23), a student at Sheffield Hallam University, can be extradited to the US to answer copyright infringement allegations. He had created a website allowing people to watch films and TV shows for free. After O'Dwyer was arrested in London in November 2010, he admitted to police that he owned TVShack.net and TVShack.cc and earned about £15,000 (18,000 euros, $23,000) a month from online advertising.
(AFP, 1/14/12)
2012 Jan 16, A hacker network that claims to be based in Saudi Arabia paralyzed the websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline. El Al Israel Airlines took down its website after hacker OxOmar, who has been linked to the Saudi group, warned that both sites would be targeted by allied pro-Palestinian hackers.
(AP, 1/16/12)
2012 Jan 18, A number of Internet sites went dark for 24 hours to raise awareness of twin antipiracy bills pending in Congress. Protests quickly cut into support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) as Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he would no longer back the legislation he co-sponsored.
(SFC, 1/18/12, p.D1)(http://tinyurl.com/7e2o5ma)(Econ, 1/21/12, p.33)
2012 Jan 20, The FBI announced that it had closed down one of the world's largest file sharing sites Megauploader.com. The site, which had over 180 million registered users, was accused of copyright violation and its founder Kim Dotcom (37), aka Kim Schmitz, was arrested in New Zealand. Shortly after, Anonymous launched an attack on several US based sites, including the FBI and Universal Music.
(Reuters, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan 20, Indonesian police said a civil servant, who declared himself an atheist on Facebook, has been arrested and is now facing jail for blasphemy after being attacked by an angry mob. Alexander Aan (30), who wrote "God doesn't exist" on his Facebook page, was beaten by a mob of dozens on Jan 18 in his hometown in Pulau Punjung, West Sumatra province. An was also an administrator of a Facebook group promoting atheism with 1,243 followers. His postings no longer appeared online following his arrest.
(AFP, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan 20, New Zealand police seized a treasure trove of luxury goods from the founder of file-sharing site Megaupload.com as four suspected Internet pirates wanted in the United States appeared in court.
(AFP, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan, Stanford computer science Prof. Sebastian Thrun announced the launch of Udacity for online education, a growing trend in massive open online courses (MOOCS). Udacity courses began in February and in October it raised $15 million from investors.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.101)
2012 Feb 1, A group of Internet hackers said they took down the website of Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s largest state-run bank.
(SFC, 2/2/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 6, Brazil requested an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make it the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments' requests.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 12, Malaysia deported Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi journalist wanted in his home country over a Twitter post about the Prophet Mohammed, defying pleas from human rights group who said he faced execution. His tweet: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you. "I will not pray for you."
(AFP, 2/12/12)
2012 Feb 13, Many Iranian web users said their access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail appears to have been restored after a four day outage.
(AP, 2/13/12)
2012 Feb 14, Hackers claimed to have broken into Combined Systems Inc.'s website and stolen personal information belonging to clients and employees of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based firm, whose tear gas has been used against Egyptian demonstrators. They accused the company of being run by war profiteers who sell "mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around the world."
(AP, 2/14/12)
2012 Feb 17, British student Glenn Mangham (26) was jailed for 8 months after admitting to hacking into Facebook between April and May last year. Mangham claimed he had been trying to expose weaknesses in Facebook's security and was not driven by financial motives.
(AFP, 2/18/12)
2012 Feb 22, Tunisia's court of cassation threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites.
(AFP, 2/22/12)
2012 Feb 27, WikiLeaks said it was publishing a massive trove of leaked emails from the U.S. intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, shedding light on the inner workings of the Texas-based think tank.
(AP, 2/27/12)
2012 Feb 28, Paris-based Interpol said 25 suspected members of the loose-knit Anonymous hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep across Europe and South America.
(SFC, 2/29/12, p.A4)
2012 Mar 1, Chinese state press said Chen Quanguo, China’s top leader in Tibet, has ordered increased controls over the Internet and mobile phones, ahead of upcoming sensitive anniversaries in the restive region.
(AFP, 3/1/12)
2012 Mar 5, A marketing campaign was launched by the Ugandan advocacy group Invisible Children (www.kony2012.com) to vastly increase awareness about Joseph Kony, a jungle militia leader wanted for atrocities by the International Criminal Court and hunted by 100 US Special Forces advisers and local troops. His Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was operating in Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
(AP, 3/8/12)
2012 Mar 6, Five members of Anonymous and Lulz Security were charged in an indictment unsealed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They included 2 men from Britain, 2 from Ireland and an American.
(AFP, 3/6/12)
2012 Mar 7, Iran's state media said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the creation of an Internet oversight agency that includes top military and political figures in the country's boldest attempt to control the web.
(AP, 3/7/12)
2012 Mar 11, Hackers claiming to belong to the Anonymous Internet freedom group posted video messages on Facebook pages of Tunisian Islamists, threatening reprisals over their efforts to introduce Salafist laws.
(AFP, 3/11/12)
2012 Mar 14, Britain launched a website and Facebook page for Iranians, harnessing the power of social media to try to evade Iranian censorship and take its message directly to the people.
(Reuters, 3/15/12)
2012 Mar 17, In Taiwan Lin Mei-heng (31) posted messages on Facebook saying she wanted to take her life after growing suspicious that her boyfriend was having an affair. 9 of her friends attempted to dissuade her from taking her life, but none alerted the police. She was found dead the following day by her boyfriend at her flat in a suburb of Taipei.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 21, A Bangladesh court ordered authorities to shut down five Facebook pages and a website for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, the Koran and other religious subjects.
(AFP, 3/21/12)
2012 Mar 22, The hacker group Anonymous in Mexico crashed at least two of the websites for Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit, claiming the papal visit is a political move to support the conservative National Action party.
(AP, 3/22/12)
2012 Mar 29, Cafe Press Inc. of San Mateo, Ca., a popular online retailer of personalized products, went public with its initial public offering priced at $19 a share.
(http://tinyurl.com/7dhse9z)
2012 Mar 30, Four giant card-payment processors and large US banks that issue debit and credit cards were reported hit by a data-security breach after third-party services provider Global Payments Inc discovered its systems were compromised by unauthorized access.
(Reuters, 3/31/12)
2012 Mar 31, China’s official Xinhua news agency said authorities have closed 16 websites for spreading rumors of "military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on there. China made a string of arrests and punished two popular microblogs after rumors of a coup linked to a major scandal that brought down a top politician.
(AFP, 3/31/12)
2012 Mar, Chinese computer scientist Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance, an internet technology company. ByteDance later acquired social media start-up Musical.ly and combined it with Douyin into a single application under the TikTok name. TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. It became available in the United States after merging with musical.ly on August 2, 2018.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance)
2012 Apr 3, US Internet giant Google started building one of its three planned data centers in Asia to meet fast growing online demand from the region. A ceremony was held to begin work on the $300 million, 15 hectare (37 acre) site in Changhua county, western Taiwan.
(AFP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 3, An Australian court found Google Inc. guilty of breaching trade law by posting misleading or deceptive advertisements in a ruling that holds search engines responsible for their advertisers' content.
(AP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 4, A Russian antivirus company claimed that some 600,000 Macs, most in the US and Canada, have been infected with a trojan horse virus called "Flashback." Flashback was originally discovered in Sep 2011, and was designed to disguise itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, using Flash player logos. After installing Flashback, the malware seeks out user names and passwords that are stored on your Mac.
(http://mashable.com/2012/04/05/mac-flashback-trojan/)
2012 Apr 6, Two Chinese political websites, Mao Flag and Utopia, said they had been ordered by authorities to shut for a month for criticizing state leaders, the latest move in a broad government crackdown on the Internet.
(AFP, 4/6/12)
2012 Apr 7, Britain's Home Office interior ministry said it was investigating reports that hacking group Anonymous had attacked its website over the government's plans to boost Internet surveillance.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 9, AOL announced that it would sell license patents to Microsoft in an agreement valued at $1.06 billion.
(SFC, 4/10/12, p.D2)
2012 Apr 10, China's 3 top Internet portals pledged to work with the government to banish online rumors, as jittery authorities cracked down on the web following widespread rumors of a coup.
(AFP, 4/10/12)
2012 Apr 13, A British judge sentenced computer hacker James Jeffery (27) to two years and eight months in jail for breaking into the website of Britain's biggest abortion provider and stealing the personal details of thousands of women.
(AP, 4/13/12)
2012 Apr 20, North Carolina-based Boxun.com was forced to move to a new web hosting service after its previous host said the attacks were threatening its entire business. The website has reported extensively on China's biggest political turmoil in years, underscoring the pivotal role the Internet has played in the unfolding scandal.
(AP, 4/20/12)
2012 Apr 20, Hackers claiming to come from China defaced the website of the Philippines' top university to assert their country's claim over the hotly disputed South China Sea.
(AFP, 4/20/12)
2012 Apr 22, Google launched Street View in Israel, the US Internet giant said, putting on show streets and sites of interest from the Holy Land's three major cities with its 360-degree street-level images.
(AFP, 4/22/12)
2012 Apr 22, Iran's principal oil terminal on Kharg island in the Gulf was disconnected from the Internet. A voracious virus attack hit computers running key parts of Iran's oil sector, forcing authorities to unplug the oil export terminal from the Internet and to set up a cyber crisis team.
(AFP, 4/23/12)
2012 Apr 25, The US Marine Corps said a sergeant will be discharged for criticizing President Barack Obama on Facebook in a case that called into question the Pentagon's policies about social media and its limits on the speech of active duty military personnel. Sgt. Gary Stein will get an other-than-honorable discharge and loose most of his benefits for violating the policies.
(AP, 4/25/12)
2012 May 2, In Algeria Tarek Mameri (23) was detained for posting videos on his blog calling for a boycott of last month's parliamentary election. On June 27 a court slapped an eight-month suspended prison sentence and a 1,000-euro ($1,250) fine on a blogger.
(AFP, 6/27/12)
2012 May 2, Britain’s national police agency closed the website of the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) following an attack by hackers. It was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where a website's host computers are bombarded with requests for information, making them crash.
(AFP, 5/3/12)
2012 May 3, The Italian government said citizens could now click on a government website and indicate where state funds are being wasted.
(SFC, 5/4/12, p.A2)
2012 May 8, A federal judge said Oracle cannot seek $1 billion in damages from Google for infringing on copyrights when it developed Android software, because a jury could not agree on whether it was fair use.
(SFC, 5/9/12, p.D2)
2012 May 9, British police in Newcastle arrested a suspected spokesman (17) for Team Poison, a hacking group that has claimed responsibility for a series of high-profile cyber-attacks.
(AFP, 5/10/12)
2012 May 14, In Kuwait an appeals court upheld a 10-year sentence for tweeter Lawrence al-Rasheedi, who was found guilty of insulting Emir Al Sabah and calling for his overthrow.
(SSFC, 5/20/12, p.A4)
2012 May 18, Facebook's stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents in its debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market. It had been priced at $38 per share the previous evening.
(AP, 5/18/12)
2012 May 20, Yahoo reached a deal to sell half of its 40% stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce provider, for about $7.1 billion.
(SFC, 5/21/12, p.A5)
2012 May 20, Pakistan blocked Twitter, saying the website had refused to remove posts promoting a Facebook competition involving caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
(AFP, 5/20/12)
2012 May 21, A "threats report" was released by McAfee showed that the number of new pieces of malicious code, or "malware," targeting Windows machines in the first three months of this year was the highest in four years. There was also a rise in malware aimed at mobile gadgets running on Google-backed Android software and at Macintosh computers based on Apple operating systems.
(AFP, 5/22/12)
2012 May 28, Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based internet security firm, said a powerful computer virus, dubbed “Flame," with unprecedented data-snatching capabilities has attacked machines in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
(AP, 5/29/12)
2012 May 30, A senior Iranian military official said Iran's key oil industry was briefly affected by the powerful computer virus known as "Flame" that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users.
(AP, 5/30/12)
2012 May 30, Thai online editor Chiranuch Premchaiporn was handed a suspended jail term for failing to remove a comment critical of the revered monarchy on her website, prompting Google to issue a stark warning over Internet freedom.
(AFP, 5/30/12)
2012 Jun 5, It was reported that Israel has begun to force incoming travelers deemed suspicious to open personal email accounts for inspection.
(AP, 6/5/12)
2012 Jun 8, In Britain 6 men were handed jail sentences for running a website, Confidential Access, that earned millions of pounds by selling fake documents and coaching fraudsters in how to conduct successful scams. Two masterminds ran the site from villas in Alicante in Spain while associates in Britain created fake documents including bank statements, pay slips, driving licenses and bills.
(AFP, 6/9/12)
2012 Jun 9, Indian demonstrators supporting the global hacking movement Anonymous took to the streets to protest against what they consider growing government censorship of the Internet. Concerns about Internet freedom stemmed from an update to India’s Information Technology Act that was given by the IT and communications ministry in April last year.
(AFP, 6/9/12)
2012 Jun 10, Iran's media reported that the nation’s cyber police are poised to launch a new crackdown on software that lets many Iranians circumvent the regime's Internet censorship.
(AFP, 6/10/12)
2012 Jun 13, ICANN revealed the Internet names of 1,400 new generic top-level domain names.
(Econ, 6/16/12, p.76)
2012 Jun 14, In Indonesia Alexander Aan (30) was sentenced to 30 months of prison and a $10,600 fine for posting pro-atheist and anti-Islam comments on Facebook. He was also fined the equivalent of $10,600. Aan was arrested in January after an angry mob reacting to the Facebook posts stormed his office, where he worked as a civil servant.
(http://tinyurl.com/7nvh7m3)
2012 Jun 15, A Scottish authority in Argyll lifted its ban stopping a nine-year-old Scottish girl from photographing her school lunches and posting them on her blog, after the move sparked outrage online. Six weeks ago, Martha Payne began taking photos of the uninspiring lunches provided by her school canteen and posting them on her blog, "NeverSeconds."
(AFP, 6/15/12)
2012 Jun 25, In Scotland the TED Global conference, known for taking an innovative look at cutting-edge issues, opened in Edinburgh. with the theme “radical openness." The 5-day event was set to explore the implications of crowd sourcing, blogs, smartphones and other culture-changing features of the Internet Age.
(AFP, 6/25/12)
2012 Jun 26, Botswana and Namibia inaugurated their links to a 14,000 km (8,700 mile) underground cable system that provides both with faster and cheaper Internet connectivity.
(AFP, 6/26/12)
2012 Jul 2, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it appears Ethiopia is extending and refining its censorship of Internet news with a sophistication that could encourage other authoritarian regimes in Africa. The rollout of a pervasive and sophisticated blocking system started in April to include smaller blogs by exiles and news services, and even individual Facebook pages.
(AP, 7/2/12)
2012 Jul 4, Austrian police said they have identified 272 suspects in the country as part of a months long investigation of internet-based child pornography involving 141 nations.
(AP, 7/4/12)
2012 Jul 4, The European Parliament in Brussels overwhelmingly defeated the international ACTA anti-piracy trade agreement after concern that it would limit Internet freedom mobilized broad opposition across Europe.
(AP, 7/4/12)
2012 Jul 11, Russia’s parliament passed legislation imposing limits on the Internet, presented as a way to protect children.
(SFC, 7/12/12, p.A5)
2012 Aug 9, Google agreed to pay a record $22.5 million to settle allegations by the US Federal Trade Commission that it breached Apple’s Safari Internet browser, allowing it to secretly track Web surfers using Safari.
(SFC, 8/10/12, p.D1)
2012 Aug 10, In Vietnam a Hanoi court convicted blogger Le Thanh Tung (44) of "propaganda against the state" by over Internet articles for the banned Vietnam Freedom and Democracy Movement.
(AFP, 8/11/12)
2012 Aug 14, Malaysia's PM Najib Razak said he would review a legal amendment that critics claim threatens free expression online after they staged a one-day "Internet blackout." NGOs, bloggers and opposition politicians staged the protest earlier in the day by replacing their homepages with black screens featuring messages attacking the new section of the Evidence Act, which went into effect in April despite widespread opposition.
(AFP, 8/14/12)
2012 Aug 17, India demanded social networking websites take down provocative messages and blocked some online content after anonymous threats sparked an exodus of migrants from southern cities. Local media reports estimated that over 35,000 people had fled cities including Bangalore and Mumbai, packing special trains arranged to carry panicked students and workers back to the northeast. The government later said much of the inflammatory Internet activity originated from Muslim-majority Pakistan.
(AFP, 8/21/12)
2012 Aug 21, Sierra Leone said it has signed a $15 million (12 million euro) loan agreement with China for the installation of a fiber optic cable which will boost Internet capabilities.
(AFP, 8/21/12)
2012 Aug 30, Cambodia police arrested Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a co-founder of The Pirate Bay file-sharing website following a request by Sweden. He faced a one-year prison term in Sweden for violating copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/4/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 30, It was reported that a leak of personal data of more than 60 past and current employees of Nigeria's State Security Service remained easily accessible on the Internet for days and had details about the agency's director-general, including his mobile phone number, bank account particulars and contact information for his son.
(AP, 8/30/12)
2012 Sep 6, Google Inc. said it has chosen a site just outside the capital of Chile for its first data center in Latin America. The $150 million data center will employ just 20 people.
(AP, 9/6/12)
2012 Sep 12, In the Philippines Pres. Aquino III signed the new Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
(SFC, 10/4/12, p.A2)
2012 Sep 13, In Egypt Alber Saber was arrested after neighbors complained he had shared on Facebook the amateur film made in the US that sparked protests across the Muslim world. His arrest came during a wave of public outrage over the film, produced by an Egyptian-American Copt. On Dec 12 a Cairo court convicted and sentenced Saber to three years in prison for blasphemy and contempt of religion.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Sep 13, In Vietnam a record numbers of people visited the dissident blog sites and the bloggers pledged to keep up their struggle for freedom of expression. Vietnam's government has vowed to crack down on three dissident blogs.
(AP, 9/14/12)
2012 Sep 18, YouTube said that it was stopping users in Saudi Arabia from viewing “Innocence of Muslims," an anti-Islam video that has sparked protests across the Muslim world, after the kingdom's press agency reported that the ruler had banned all access to the film and the site appeared to be blocked there.
(AP, 9/18/12)
2012 Sep 24, A Vietnamese court issued jail sentences from 4 to 12 years to three bloggers who wrote about human rights abuses, corruption and foreign policy.
(SFC, 9/25/12, p.A2)
2012 Sep 25, Iran's telecommunication minister said the government has blocked Google's Gmail service following a court order to bar access to the popular email service.
(AP, 9/25/12)
2012 Oct 1, In Iran Mohammad Reza Aghamiri, a member of governmental Internet watchdog committee, told the semiofficial Mehr news agency that authorities have lifted the Gmail ban after resolving technical problems to separate YouTube and Gmail. YouTube remained blocked in response to video clips of an anti-Islam film.
(AP, 10/1/12)
2012 Oct 3, In the Philippines the new Cybercrime Prevention Act went into effect, setting penalties for a range of computer-related crimes with provisions related to libel. Critics said it could lead to imprisonment for simple activities like sharing Facebook and Twitter posts. On Oct 9 the Supreme Court suspended the new law.
(SFC, 10/4/12, p.A2)(SFC, 10/10/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 11, A former US government official said US authorities believe that Iranian-based hackers were responsible for cyberattacks that devastated Persian Gulf oil and gas companies. Just hours later, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the cyberthreat from Iran has grown, and he declared that the Pentagon is prepared to take action if American is threatened by a computer-based assault.
(AP, 10/12/12)
2012 Oct 17, Bahrain detained four people for defaming the island's king with Twitter posts in a case that is likely to test the limits of expression in the violence-wracked Gulf nation. The four will be held for seven days pending trial.
(AP, 10/18/12)
2012 Nov 3, Cuba denounced the American diplomatic mission on the island for what it called subversive activities designed to undermine the government of Raul Castro. US officials acknowledged that the US Interests Section in Havana does regularly offer free courses in using the Internet to Cubans who want to sign up.
(AP, 11/2/12)
2012 Nov 7, Egypt's top prosecutor ordered government ministries to enforce a ban on pornographic websites, three years after a court denounced the sites as "venomous and vile." The order followed a protest by ultraconservative Salafis.
(AP, 11/7/12)
2012 Nov 9, The Australian government said it has abandoned its 5-year-old pledge to mandate a filter blocking child pornography and other objectionable Internet content. Instead service providers have agreed to block a list of 1,400 websites.
(SFC, 11/9/12, p.A2)
2012 Nov 13, The United Arab Emirates (UAR) set stricter Internet monitoring and enforcement codes giving authorities wider leeway to crack down on Web activists for offenses such as mocking the country’s rules or calling for demonstrations.
(SFC, 11/14/12, p.A3)
2012 Nov 29, Syrian activists said authorities have blocked Internet and cell phone signals in parts of the nation's capital. Two US-based Internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off Internet nationwide. Syrian rebels in Daraa bombed the house of Hussein Rifai, a top member of the country's ruling Baath party, killing him and his three body guards.
(AP, 11/29/12)
2012 Nov, Google began connecting Google Fiber, an ultra-fast broadband network, in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas.
(Econ, 4/13/13, p.64)
2012 Dec 9, Iran said it has launched a video-sharing website in the latest move to create government-sanctioned alternatives to Internet powerhouses such as YouTube. The new site — Mehr, or affection in Farsi — seeks to promote Iranian and Islamic culture and artists.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 14, Envoys from nearly 90 nations signed the first new UN telecommunications treaty since the Internet age, but the US and other Western nations refused to join after claiming it endorses greater government control over cyberspace. The Int’l. Telecommunications Union (ITU) has no technical powers to change how the Internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords.
(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 28, China passed a new law requiring real-name registration of internet subscribers.
(Econ, 1/5/13, p.33)
2012 Andrew Blum authored “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet."
(Econ, 6/16/12, p.86)
2012 Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, launched Medium, a destination for essays, letters, and “big think" pieces.
(Econ, 9/17/16, p.59)
2012 The Internet site DIY.org was founded in San Francisco as “a place for kids to share what they do and meet others who love the same skills."
(SFC, 7/13/13, p.D1)
2012 Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, a photo-sharing app. The company had tens of millions of users but only 13 employees.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)(Econ, 6/25/16, SR p.10)
2012 PubPeer was launched as a website that allowed people to comment anonymously on research papers.
(Econ, 11/5/16, p.71)
2012 Sebastian Thrun left Google to found Udacity, a startup dedicated to reinventing education of the 21st century.
(Econ, 9/5/15, TQ p.18)
2012 Twitter acquired Vine, which let people post six-second videos.
(Econ, 8/29/15, p.52)
2013 Jan 3, In France Internet Service Provider Free, run by Xavier Niel, upgraded software on its customer modems with online ads blocked by default. The move was aimed chiefly at Google.
(Econ, 1/12/12, p.57)
2013 Jan 8, Students at North Korea's premier university showed Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt how they look for information online: they Google it. Kim Su Hyang, a librarian, said students at Kim Il Sung University have had Internet access since the laboratory opened in April 2010.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 9, Google said it is putting $200 Million into a Texas Panhandle wind farm.
(SFC, 1/10/13, p.C6)
2013 Jan 10, The US Department of Homeland Security urged computer users to disable Oracle Corp's Java software, amplifying security experts' prior warnings to hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses that use it to surf the Web.
(AP, 1/11/13)
2013 Jan 11, A US federal judge barred California from enforcing a voter-approved law that requires 73,000 registered sex offenders to disclose their internet identities to police.
(SFC, 1/12/13, p.C1)
2013 Jan 11, Aaron Schwartz (26), computer programmer, was found dead in his NY apartment. At age 14 he helped create RSS (RDF Site Summary), a web feed format used to publish frequently updated works. He also co-founded Reddit, a social news website which was sold in 2006 to Conde Nast.
(SSFC, 1/13/13, p.A6)(SFC, 1/14/13, p.A5)(Econ, 1/19/13, p.94)
2013 Jan 14, Cuba reportedly began using the ALBA-1 cable to Venezuela, but only for incoming traffic. Outgoing data still travelled via satellite, according to an Internet analysis firm.
(SFC, 1/22/13, p.A2)
2013 Jan 20, In New Zealand indicted Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom launched “Mega," a new file-sharing website that promised users greater privacy and defied the US prosecutors who accuse him of facilitating massive online piracy.
(AP, 1/20/13)
2013 Jan 25, Twitter suspended the account used by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked militant group two days after al-Shabab used the platform to announce a death threat against Kenyan hostages unless Kenya's government meets its demands.
(AP, 1/25/13)
2013 Jan 31, The NY Times said Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated its computer systems over the past four months, stealing reporters' passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of a top Chinese leader.
(AP, 1/31/13)
2013 Jan, Nordea Bank AB, the largest bank in Sweden, said its 250 customers were robbed of eight million Swedish krona (about 1.66 billion won). It was online theft; they stole and withdrew money from the victims’ accounts. The Swedish police only found out what had been happening 15 months after the scheme was started, and the theft was still at large. The theft traced to a Russian hacker who goes by the sobriquet “the Corpse."
(www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/technology/25hack.html?_r=0)
2013 Feb 9, A Cairo court ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world. The ruling can be appealed and based on precedent may not be enforced.
(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 13, Spanish authorities announced the breakup of a cybercrime gang that used a “ransomware" virus to lock computers throughout Europe. The gang had made at least $1.35 annually.
(SFC, 2/14/13, p.A2)
2013 Feb 17, The NY Times reported that a 60-page analysis by Mandiant, a US computer security firm, has traced one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking groups to Shanghai and the gates of Unit 61398 of the Chinese military.
(SFC, 2/20/13, p.D1)(Econ, 2/23/13, p.12)
2013 Feb 28, US Army Pvt. Bradley Manning (25), accused of providing secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt "should become public," but denied the top charge of aiding the enemy.
(Reuters, 2/28/13)
2013 Mar 6, Iranian authorities blocked many foreign-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, severely restricting access to many websites.
(AP, 3/12/13)
2013 Mar 7, Kuwait government-affiliated newspapers reported that activists Sager al-Hashash and Naser al-Daihani were sentenced to two years and one year for Twitter posts offensive to the country's ruler.
(AP, 3/7/13)
2013 Mar 11, In Bahrain Yousef al-Muhafedha, acting president of the Bahrain Human Rights Center, was found not guilty of posting inaccurate news on Twitter about some anti-government protests.
(AP, 3/11/13)
2013 Mar 12, NYC police officer Gilberto Valle (28) was convicted of conspiracy that opened a window on the Internet world of cannibalism fetishists.
(SFC, 3/13/13, p.A6)
2013 Mar 13, Bahrain’s public prosecutor's office said six people have been detained over the last couple of days for allegedly defaming the country's ruler on Twitter.
(AP, 3/13/13)
2013 Mar 15, North Korea blamed South Korea and the United States for cyber-attacks that temporarily shut down websites this week at a time of elevated tensions over the North's nuclear ambitions.
(AP, 3/15/13)
2013 Mar 18, In New Jersey computer hacker Andrew Auernheimer (27) was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.
(Reuters, 3/18/13)
2013 Mar 20, In South Korea a cyberattack caused computer networks at major banks and top TV broadcasters to crash simultaneously. North Korea was suspected. Initial findings said a Chinese Internet address was the source of the attacks.
(SFC, 3/21/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 21, In France the Union of Jewish French Students sued Twitter for some $50 million for failing to honor a court ruling to identify users who post Holocaust jokes and calls to kill Jews.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 25, Yahoo acquired Summly, a British startup, for some $30 million. Summly founder Nick d’Aloisio (17) had created an iPhone app to summarize articles in 300-400 characters.
(SFC, 4/18/13, p.66)
2013 Mar 27, Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Telecom executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Apr 1, Facebook lost a bid to end a trademark-infringement lawsuit over its use of “timeline" and related terms. Timelines Inc. started a website in 2009 that lets users create chronologies tracing historical events. It sued Facebook in September 2011, a week af FB announced it was adding a “timeline" feature to its user pages.
(SFC, 4/2/13, p.D3)
2013 Apr 9, Google said it has chosen Austin, Texas, as the 2nd location for Google Fiber, an ultra-fast broadband network. It began connecting Kansas City last November.
(Econ, 4/13/13, p.64)
2013 Apr 23, A fake tweet asserted that explosions at the White House had injured Pres. Obama. For 43 minutes prices stock exchanges tumbled in what came to be called the first Twitter crash. A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army took credit.
(Econ, 4/27/13, p.68)
2013 Apr 23, Australian police arrested a man they say is affiliated with international hacking collective Lulz Security on a charge of attacking and defacing a government website.
(AP, 4/23/13)
2013 Apr 24, Wikileaks said it has secured a victory in Iceland’s Supreme Court against the financial blockade imposed by Visa and Master Card on donations for the secret-spilling site.
(SFC, 4/25/13, p.A2)
2013 Apr 24, Israel's attorney general upheld a practice to allow security personnel to read people's email accounts when they arrive at the airport, arguing it prevents militants from entering the country.
(AP, 4/24/13)
2013 Apr 25, Spanish agents arrested a Dutch citizen, identified as S.K. (35), for using a vehicle to hack into networks. He was accused of attacking the Swiss-British antispam watchdog group Spamhaus.
(SFC, 4/29/13, p.A3)
2013 Apr 29, A Kuwait appeals court said online activist Sager al-Hashash must serve a jail sentence for Twitter posts deemed offensive to the Gulf nation's ruler, but the prison term was reduced from two years to one.
(AP, 4/29/13)
2013 Apr, AnonGhost, a Mauritania based hacker group, launched a cyber attack dubbed OpIsrael that disrupted access to several Israeli government websites, attracting the attention of security experts worldwide.
(Reuters, 6/28/13)
2013 May 9, Washington state officials said the state Administrative Office of the Courts was hacked between last fall and February, and that as many as 160,000 Social Security numbers and one million driver’s licenses may have been accessed during a data breach of its public website.
(SFC, 5/10/13, p.A8)
2013 May 10, The official China Internet Network Information Center explained in state media reports that a microblog belonging to He Bing, liberal professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, had been suspended because he was "intentionally spreading rumors."
(AP, 5/14/13)
2013 May 11, Marcin Skowronek, an investigator at Europol's European Cybercrime Center in The Hague, said "We are seeing an unprecedented number of cyberscams that include phishing for financial data, viruses, credit card fraud and others." Police Maj. Gen. Pisit Paoin, chief of Thailand's Technology Crime Suppression Division, said in a telephone interview that Thai police have arrested more than 20 suspects involved in the recent $45 million cyber heist including those from Bulgaria, Bangladesh and eastern Europe.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 12, Kyle Dube (20) of Orono, Maine, used a phony Facebook account created in the name of a student from another school to lure Nichole Cable (15) outside her Glenburn home. He abducted and killed her. Her body was found more than a week later in a wooded area of Old Town, north of Bangor.
(AP, 5/30/13)
2013 May 15, Google announced that you can now email money, just like you would email a photo or Word document. Both parties, payer and recipient, would need Google Wallet accounts.
(Yahoo News, 5/16/13)
2013 May 16, Four British LulzSec hackers, who pleaded guilty to a series of high-profile cyberattacks on computers in the US and Britain, were sentenced to up to 32 months in prison.
(SFC, 5/17/13, p.A2)
2013 May 20, It was reported that Yahoo has agreed to buy Tumblr, a popular blogging service, for $1.1 billion.
(SFC, 5/20/13, p.A1)
2013 May 20, A Norwegian security firm reported that cyber spies had attacked Telenor, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, and that the attack was probably directed from India.
(Econ, 5/25/13, p.61)
2013 May 21, Microsoft Corp. said it is expanding its services for hosting and processing online data in Australia with the establishment of two new "cloud" computing data centers in the country.
(Reuters, 5/21/13)
2013 May 24, Arthur Budovsky, the founder of Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica-based digital currency system long favored by cybercrime scammers, was arrested in Spain. A defendant identified as Budovsky's partner, Vladimir Kats, was in custody in New York. Budovsky was soon indicted in the United States along with six other people in a $6 billion money-laundering scheme described as "staggering" in its scope.
(AP, 5/29/13)(SFC, 5/29/13, p.D1)
2013 May 27, A US report said Chinese hackers have gained access to designs of more than two dozen major US weapons systems.
(Reuters, 5/28/13)(Econ, 6/8/13, p.50)
2013 May 27, Australian Broadcasting Corp. television reported that the plans for the 630 million Australian dollar ($608 million) Australian Security Intelligence Organization building had been stolen through a cyberattack by Chinese hackers on a building contractor.
(AP, 5/28/13)
2013 Jun 3, Jordan said it has blocked 304 unlicensed national news websites in a step toward regulating online media widely criticized by the government and readers for sensational reporting.
(AP, 6/4/13)
2013 Jun 4, Cuba began offering Internet access at more than 100 public access points. An hour of computer time cost about one-fifth the average monthly wage.
(SFC, 6/5/13, p.A2)
2013 Jun 9, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said that Edward Snowden (29), a contractor who says he worked at the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, is the source of leaks about a phone records monitoring program and an Internet scouring program. Snowden was working in an NSA office in Hawaii until he left for Hong Kong on May 20.
(AP, 6/10/13)
2013 Jun 12, In an interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper, Edward Snowden claimed the US has long been attacking a Hong Kong university that routes all Internet traffic in and out of the semiautonomous Chinese region.
(AP, 6/13/13)
2013 Jun 13, An influential committee of British lawmakers accused search company Google of dodging its taxes in a scathing report that said the US Internet company took on highly contrived arrangements serving no purpose other than to avoid paying its fair share.
(AP, 6/14/13)
2013 Jun 13, Vietnam police arrested Pham Viet Dao (61), one of the country's best known bloggers, for posting criticism of the communist government.
(AP, 6/14/13)
2013 Jun 14, In New Zealand Google announced the launch of Project Loon, a collection of helium balloons with antennas controlled to provide Internet access.
(SFC, 6/15/13, p.A4)
2013 Jun 15, Vietnam police arrested Dinh Nhat Uy (30), a blogger accused of posting "erroneous and slanderous" information about the communist government. He is the brother of Dinh Nguyen Kha, a student who was sentenced last month to eight years in jail for spreading propaganda against the state. So far this year, 46 bloggers or democracy activists have been convicted and imprisoned, more than the number of people locked up for violating national security laws in the whole of 2012.
(AP, 6/16/13)
2013 Jun 21, Britain's data regulator ordered Google to delete personal data scooped up in its Street View project — or face contempt of court.
(AP, 6/21/13)
2013 Jun 25, In South Korea major government and news media websites were shut down after anonymous hackers attacked them on the 63rd anniversary of the start of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
(SFC, 6/26/13, p.A3)
2013 Jun 28, Legislators in Grenada approved a bill that makes it a crime to offend people through websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
(AP, 6/29/13)
2013 Jul 4, Ohio educated Andrew Anglin, location unknown, launched “The Daily Stormer," a neo-Nazi website, on Cloudflare, an Internet service provider based in San Francisco. Cloudflare was launched in 2009 with a core belief in the free and open nature of the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer)(SFC, 5/5/17, p.A1)
2013 Jul 8, Iran’s communications minister said all citizens will be assigned an individual email address which the would aid interaction between state authorities and the people.
(Reuters, 7/8/13)
2013 Jul 17, The Online user database of two big companies were reportedly hacked by political hacktivists working in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The private data of the users of TrueCaller and TangoMe were compromised which included private details of their social networks.
(AP, 7/21/13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Syria)
2014 Jul 22, In China the Paper, a new digital news platform, was launched as an offshoot of the Oriental Morning Post in Shanghai.
(Econ, 12/13/14, p.46)
2013 Jul 24, Google announced a plan to bring wireless internet access to at least 31 parks in San Francisco.
(SFC, 7/24/13, p.A1)
2013 Jul 27, In London, England, Ilya Segalovich (48) died of brain cancer. He was the co-founder of Russia's largest search engine, Yandex.
(AP, 7/28/13)
2013 Jul 29, In Saudi Arabia Raif Badawi, editor of the "Free Saudi Liberals" website, was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought. Badawi has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father.
(Reuters, 7/30/13)
2013 Jul 30, In Maryland US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy, but was convicted on 20 of 22 other charges including espionage and theft. He faced up to 136 years in prison for spilling government information to WikiLeaks in 2010.
(SFC, 7/31/13, p.A6)
2013 Jul 30, In New Zealand Hackers disabled several websites of the ruling party, protesting a planned law to widen the surveillance powers of the country's spy agency but the action was criticized by Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom as counter-productive.
(Reuters, 7/30/13)
2013 Aug 3, Twitter said it is handing down new rules to control abusive language, a move which follows a barrage of nasty, harassing, and threatening messages directed at high-profile female users of the microblogging site.
(AP, 8/3/13)
2013 Aug 6, Latvia's government approved the extradition of Deniss Calovskis (b.1985), a man accused by the United States of helping create a virus that affected over a million computers worldwide, including many at NASA, and that allowed hackers to steal millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. US authorities earlier this year accused Calovskis, along with Romanian citizen Mihai Ionut Paunescu and Russian national Nikita Kuzmin, of participating in a conspiracy that started in 2005 to create and disseminate the so-called Gozi virus. On August 8 the extradition was put on hold after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said it would take on the case.
(AP, 8/6/13)(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 9, Two of Germany's biggest Internet service providers said they will start encrypting customers' emails by default in response to user concerns about online snooping after reports that the US National Security Agency monitors international electronic communications.
(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Aug 25, China was hit by the "largest ever" attack on its Internet structure, crashing the country's .cn servers.
(AFP, 8/26/13)
2013 Sep 9, In Florida Rebecca Ann Sedwick (12) jumped to her death at a former cement business in Lakeland. Investigators said she was despondent after others posted hate messages to her online. On Oct 15 police said two girls of Crystal Lake Middle School, ages 12 and 14, have been arrested for bullying Sedwick. On Nov 20 prosecutors dropped charges of aggravated stalking against the two girls.
(SFC, 9/13/13, p.A8)(SFC, 10/16/13, p.A12)(SFC, 11/22/13, p.A8)
2013 Sep 9, China unveiled tough measures to stop the spread of what the government calls irresponsible rumors, threatening three years in jail if untrue posts online are widely reposted, drawing an angry response from Chinese internet users.
(Reuters, 9/9/13)
2013 Sep 12, China's government said it will protect from retribution and attacks people who use the internet to report corruption, but only those who use an officially sanctioned website to do so.
(Reuters, 9/12/13)
2013 Oct 1, Pres. Obama’s health insurance exchanges were launched. The launch was plagued with glitches.
(Econ, 10/12/13, p.38)
2013 Oct 31, A Moscow court revoked the registration of web-based news agency Rosbalt for posting videos it said contained profane language, including a clip by punk band Pussy Riot.
(Reuters, 10/31/13)
2013 Nov 3, Hackers claiming links to international activist group Anonymous (Anonymous Indonesia and Anonymous Philippines) defaced dozens of websites belonging to Australian businesses and Philippine government agencies.
(Reuters, 11/3/13)
2013 Nov 4, New Zealand police said they were investigating a gang of young males who boasted online about stupefying underage girls with alcohol then having group sex with them. The case has raised concerns about how to police online bullying.
(AFP, 11/4/13)
2013 Nov 7, Hackers claiming links to international hacking group Anonymous defaced Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong's official website, one day after he said authorities would spare no effort to track them down.
(Reuters, 11/7/13)
2013 Nov 12, Singapore charged a 35-year-old man suspected of hacking a website linked to the prime minister.
(Reuters, 11/12/13)
2013 Nov 15, In NYC hacker Jeremy Hammond (28) was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally accessing computer systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors. Hammond said his goal was to expose injustices by the private intelligence industry.
(SFC, 11/16/13, p.A6)
2013 Nov 18, In NYC five people were arrested following a global "cyber heist" in which hackers stole $45 million by overriding the cash withdrawal limits of prepaid debit cards. Officials said the cyber-ring managed to steal $45 million in late 2012 and early 2013 by manipulating the limits of prepaid debit cards from Abu Dhabi-based National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah and Bank Muscat of Oman.
(AFP, 11/19/13)
2013 Nov 18, Twitter users in Kuwait and the UAE received prison terms, in the latest sign of widening crackdowns in the region on social media for posts considered offensive or against state security.
(AP, 11/18/13)
2013 Nov, Bitly, popular site for shortening Web addresses, got caught in the crossfire of Venezuela's polarized politics shortly after President Nicolas Maduro decided to block access to sites such as www.dolartoday.com that publish the black market rate for the bolivar, which is now 10 times the official rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar.
(AP, 12/5/13)
2013 Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt authored “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business."
(SSFC, 4/28/13, p.F1)
2013 Jason Healy edited “A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986-2012."
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
2013 Steven Johnson authored “Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age."
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.72)
2013 Thomas Rid authored “Cyberwar Will Not Take Place."
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
2013 The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, was launched on Cloudflare, an Internet service provider based in San Francisco. Cloudflare was launched in 2009 with a core belief in the free and open nature of the Internet.
(SFC, 5/5/17, p.A1)
2013 The Kurds were granted the ".krd" domain name by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a US-based non-profit organization that manages internet addresses.
{Kurds, Internet}
(Reuters, 4/14/16)
2014 Jan 1, The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 10, It was reported that al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked group, has ordered telecom companies to shut down mobile internet services over fears the US can use the data to target militants.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 14, The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed the FCC’s online access rules arguing that Internet providers built their networks and therefore have the right to manage their costs and services.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p. A1)
2014 Jan 14, The NY Times reported that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, but not in the United States, that allows the US to conduct surveillance on those machines.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 16, British police working alongside counterparts in the Philippines and Australia said they had dismantled a paedophile ring that streamed live sexual abuse of Filipino children as young as six over the Internet, with victims' parents involved in some cases.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Turkey riot police in Istanbul used water canons against hundreds of people protesting a government plan to expand controls over the public’s use of the Internet.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 22, The Chinese government condemned a report on the wealth of the country's elite being hidden in overseas tax havens as illogical and having ulterior motives, as the government blocked websites and censored mention of the story online.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 23, Hamas accused Twitter of censorship as an account of its armed wing has been suspended by Twitter administrators.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 27, An Israeli data protection expert said hackers earlier this month attacked 15 Israeli computers including one used by the defense ministry department dealing with civilians in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Feb 2, In France a video, posted on Facebook, was filmed in the southeastern town of Fontaine showing two boys pushing an 18-year-old mentally-disabled man in a park, making him fall and shouting at him before shoving him into a stream, from which the bewildered-looking victim emerges and walks away. Over the next two days four boys were detained over the assault and one (12) was released.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 11, The websites of casinos owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. were hacked. These included sites for a Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as casinos in Nevada and Macao.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 14, About $2.5 million of Bitcoin was apparently stolen from Silk Road 2.0, a website used to trade mainly illegal drugs. A flaw in Bitcoin’s code was discovered earlier this month.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.65)
2014 Feb 19, Facebook said it will pay $19 billion in cash and stock to buy WhatsApp, a mobile messaging company founded in 2009. This was the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.C6)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)
2014 Feb 25, The website of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was returning a blank page today. The disappearance of the site follows the Feb 23 resignation of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a group seeking legitimacy for the currency, and a withdrawal ban imposed at the exchange earlier this month.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 26, A US appeals court ordered YouTube to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors. The 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The company argued that the filmmakers and not the actors of "Innocence of Muslims" owned the copyright and only they could remove it from YouTube.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Yahoo Inc. strongly condemned a reported multiyear effort by American (NSA) and British (GCHQ) spy agencies to snatch webcam images from the Internet’s giant’s user accounts in a program code-named Optical nerve starting in 2008.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 4, In Vietnam dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat (50) was sentenced to two years in prison for posting online criticism of Vietnam's authoritarian government.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 14, Hackers knocked out the Russian presidency's website several times and brought down the central bank website.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 20, Turkey’s PM Tayyip Erdogan's defiantly vowed, on the campaign trail ahead of March 30 local polls, to "wipe out" Twitter, whatever the international community had to say about it.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Turkey blocked access to Twitter after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rip out the roots" of the social network where links have proliferated to recordings that appear to incriminate him and other top officials in corruption.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 22, Turkish authorities sought to tighten a clampdown on Twitter after social media users easily evaded the government's attempt to block access to the service.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to restore access to Twitter, issuing an injunction five days after the government blocked access to the social network.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Apr 3, It was reported that the US government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" — a communications network designed to undermine the Cuba’s communist government, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks. The project, dubbed "ZunZuneo," slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet, was publicly launched soon after Cuba’s 2009 arrest of US contractor Alan Gross.
(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 3, The European Parliament voted to stop Internet providers from charging for preferential access to their networks, a step cheered by consumer groups but bemoaned by the telecommunications industry.
(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 3, Turkey's telecoms authority lifted a two-week-old ban on Twitter, after the constitutional court ruled the block breached freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 4, A Turkish court ruled that a blanket ban of social-media website YouTube violated human rights and ordered most of the restrictions be lifted, citing a top court ruling this week that scrapped a similar ban on microblogging site Twitter. But the court soon reversed the YouTube decision, saying the block would remain in place until the audio recordings allegedly showing top-level security talks on Syria are removed.
(Reuters, 4/4/14)(AFP, 4/5/14)
2014 Apr 12, Turkey's PM Erdogan said he will "go after" Twitter, accusing the site of tax-evasion, after it was used to spread damaging leaks implicating his inner circle in corruption scandals.
(AFP, 4/12/14)
2014 Apr 14, Google bought Titan Aerospace, a maker of solar powered drones, for an undisclosed sum. It planned to use the drones to help deliver wireless internet access to remote parts of the world.
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.58)
2014 Apr 22, The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving Aereo, a US internet streaming service that picks up signals of free-to-air TV channels for its subscribers.
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.65)
2014 Apr 22, Brazil's Congress passed a bill guaranteeing Internet privacy and enshrining access to the Web on the eve of a major conference in Sao Paulo on the future of Internet governance that's expected to draw representatives from some 80 countries.
(AP, 4/23/14)
2014 Apr 25, China’s Sina.com temporarily closed its literature site after being accused of hosting pornography, and authorities confirmed they were revoking two crucial licenses, ensnaring one of China's top web portals in an intensifying online crackdown.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Apr 29, Ethiopian police said they have arrested several people for "serious criminal activities." Rights groups said they were journalists and “Zone 9" bloggers detained in a sweeping crackdown against free speech. On Oct 16, 2015, Four of the bloggers and journalists were acquitted of terrorism after 18 months in jail. Journalist Befekadu Hailu, while being acquitted of terrorism charges, remained in custody on charges of inciting violence. Soleyana Gebremichael, in exile in the US, was acquitted of all charges in absentia.
(AFP, 4/29/14)(AFP, 10/16/15)
2014 Apr 30, Saudi Arabia launched an experimental Internet site for Saudi citizens to petition King Abdullah (90) directly and lodge complaints at the initiative of the monarch himself.
(AFP, 5/2/14)
2014 May 2, Philippine officials said police have arrested 58 suspected members of an online extortion syndicate this week in Manila and three other regions. They had reportedly duped hundreds of victims worldwide into exposing themselves in front of webcams or engaging in lewd chats. Some 100 more Filipino suspects were later linked to online blackmail syndicates.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A2)(AP, 5/13/14)
2014 May 12, Indonesia said it has banned the popular video sharing site Vimeo, because it contains nudity, which officials in the world's most populous Muslim country consider to be pornographic material.
(AP, 5/13/14)
2014 May 13, Europe's highest court said people should have some say over the results that pop up when they conduct a Google search of their own name online. The European Court of Justice (ECI) embraced the idea of a digital “right to be forgotten."
(AP, 5/13/14)(Econ, 11/5/16, p.51)
2014 May 20, Police in Iran confirmed the arrest of six young people for posting a video online of them dancing to Pharrell Williams' hit song "Happy," showing them on state television as a public warning to youth in the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 5/21/14)
2014 May 5, Russia’s Pres. Putin signed a new law requiring popular bloggers and commentators with more than 3,000 followers to register as media outlets.
(Econ, 5/10/14, p.49)
2014 May 30, An Iranian an opposition website, Kaleme, said an Iranian court last week sentenced eight people to jail terms ranging from seven to 20 years for crimes including anti-regime propaganda posted on Facebook.
(AFP, 5/30/14)
2014 Jun 6, Thai police warned online critics of the military junta that they will "come get you" for posting political views that could incite divisiveness.
(AP, 6/6/14)
2014 Jun 30, Iraq lifted a 17-day social media ban imposed to disrupt the communications of armed militants who have seized much of its west and north, although about 20 news websites remain blocked.
(Reuters, 7/1/14)
2014 Jul, Amazon Web Services launched Zocalo, a service for storing an d sharing documents. It allowed people to access thjeri material anytime and from anywhere.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2014 Aug 7, South Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said China has confirmed it had blocked "some foreign messaging applications through which terrorism-related information" was circulating. These included KakaoTalk and Line. It named other blocked apps as Didi, Talk Box and Vower. The service disruptions in China began a month ago.
(Reuters, 8/7/14)
2014 Sep 5, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group sought to raise up to $24.3 billion in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, which would value the company at $163 billion. Those are both IPO records.
(AP, 9/5/14)
2014 Sep 10, Turkey’s parliament approved legislation to tighten the government’s control over the Internet.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.61)
2014 Sep 17, Philippine authorities arrested 43 suspected members of a syndicate that runs a lucrative online cybersex operation catering to clients worldwide.
(AP, 9/18/14)
2014 Sep 26, China's top anti-graft body said Gao Jianyun, a senior internet regulator, has been expelled from the ruling Communist Party on graft charges.
(Reuters, 9/26/14)
2014 Sep 28, Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc., was reported blocked in China amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 9/28/14)
2014 Sep 29, Canada's broadcast regulator (CRTC) gave American companies Google and Netflix a three-day deadline to turn over subscriber data or have their testimony expunged from a major public hearing. The Internet giants refused to share the data earlier this month.
(AFP, 9/30/14)
2014 Sep 29, The Professional Web Journalists Association, a media rights group, said Sri Lanka's government sabotaged a weekend training program for online journalists for the fourth time in three months, and accused the authorities of continued intimidation and suppression of the media.
(AP, 9/29/14)
2014 Sep, Estonia carried out a dry run of its digital continuity project in conjunction with Microsoft. It aimed to ensure that even if the government is sabotaged it would continue to operate over the internet.
(Econ., 3/7/15, TQ p.3)
2014 Oct 2, Rocket Internet went public in Germany in an IPO valued at $8.2 billion. The company specialized in launching clones of proven internet-business models. The stock opened at €42.50 and immediately fell to €38.00
(Econ, 10/4/14, p.72)
2014 Oct 3, The EU's antitrust authority says it has approved Facebook's proposed $19 billion takeover of the messaging service WhatsApp.
(AP, 10/3/14)
2014 Oct 9, A Japanese judge ordered Google to remove search results of a man's unflattering past in an order the plaintiff's lawyer compared to Europe's "right to be forgotten" ruling.
(AP, 10/10/14)
2014 Oct 13, South Korean messaging app Kakao Talk said it will stop fully cooperating with authorities seeking to access private messages as part of a government crackdown on online criticism.
(AP, 10/13/14)
2014 Oct 28, In Hungary tens of thousands of protesters marched in Budapest against a plan by the government to tax Internet use from 2015. This was the 2nd big rally in three days.
(SFC, 10/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 31, Hungary's PM Viktor Orban said that the government would suspend a planned tax on Internet use and reconsider the matter next year.
(AP, 10/31/14)
2014 Nov 3, In Thailand Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij (36), one of the founders of popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, was arrested under an Interpol warrant as crossed into Thailand from Laos. Neij, along with other Pirate Bay co-founders, was convicted of aiding copyright infringement by a court in Sweden in 2009. He fled the country after being released on bail.
(AP, 11/4/14)
2014 Nov 4, A Thai court sentenced a university student to 2 1/2 years in prison for posting a message on Facebook that the court said insulted the country's king.
(AP, 11/4/14)
2014 Nov 28, In China the standing committee of Xinjiang's parliament, banned the practice of religion in government buildings and stipulated penalties of between 5,000 and 30,000 yuan ($4,884) for individuals who use the Internet, mobile phones or digital publishing to undermine national unity, social stability or incite ethnic hatred.
(Reuters, 11/30/14)
2014 Dec 9, Swedish police raided a server room in Stockholm in an action targeting the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 11, Google announced it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 15, A Dutch privacy watchdog ordered Google to make changes to the way it handles users' personal data or face fines of up to 15 million euros ($18.7 million).
(AP, 12/15/14)
2014 Dec 19, Google sued to block what it calls overly broad demands by Mississippi in its investigation of online contraband sales, after accusing the state’s attorney general of doing Hollywood’s bidding.
(SFC, 12/20/14, p.D1)
2014 Dec 21, In Belarus three of BelaPAN's websites were blocked, along with the Internet newspaper Solidarnost and the website of the human rights organization Khartiya-97.
(AP, 12/21/14)
2014 Dec 22, North Korea, at the center of a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of Sony Pictures, experienced a complete Internet outage for hours before links were restored on Dec 23.
(Reuters, 12/23/14)
2014 Dec 22, Activists said Russia's Internet watchdog is working to block social networking sites rallying support for a mass protest next month backing Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
(Reuters, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 26, Sony's PlayStation network remained offline on the second day of an outage that began roiling the online world just as eager video game players were unwrapping new consoles on Christmas morning.
(AP, 12/26/14)
2014 Dec 26, Data from Google's Transparency Report showed online traffic from China to Gmail fell precipitously and dropped to nearly zero on Dec 27. There was a tiny pickup on Dec 29. Tests later showed that China's government had blocked Google IP addresses in Hong Kong used by people on the mainland to access Gmail services.
(AP, 12/29/14)
2014 Dec 26, Iran said it is to expand what it calls "smart filtering" of the Internet, a policy of censoring undesirable content on websites without banning them completely, as it used to.
(Reuters, 12/26/14)
2014 Dec 27, North Korea's Internet and 3G mobile networks were paralyzed again this evening. North Korea called US President Barack Obama a "monkey" and blamed Washington for Internet outages that it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures.
(Reuters, 12/27/14)
2014 Cory Doctorow authored “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age."
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.Q1)
2014 Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg authored “How Google Works."
(Econ, 9/27/14, p.85)
2014 E-sports earned some $194 million in revenues worldwide this year.
(Econ, 2/13/15, p.66)
2014 Gitlab, a software company was officially launched by Sytse Sijbrandij and Dmitriy Zaporozhets. It was initially developed as a source code management solution to collaborate within a team on software development. It later evolved to an integrated solution covering the software development life cycle, and then to the whole DevOps life cycle. By 2020 the company with no offices had 1,300 team members living in 65 different countries.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitLab)(Econ., 9/12/20, p.21)
2015 Jan 7, Iran's official IRNA news agency said the judiciary has ordered that LINE, WhatsApp and Tango, three popular apps providing free phone and messaging services, be shut down. Social websites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have already been blocked by censors.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 14, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to ban access to websites showing Charlie Hebdo's front cover with the image of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 1/14/15)
2015 Jan 23, It was reported that China is blocking VPN services that let users skirt online censorship of popular websites such as Google and Facebook amid a wider crackdown on online information.
(AP, 1/23/15)
2015 Jan 26, Hackers defaced the website of Malaysia Airlines and threatened to dump stolen information online after posting a glimpse of customer data obtained in the attack.
(AP, 1/26/15)
2015 Jan, Twitter acquired Periscope, a live video streaming app for iOS and Android developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_%28app%29)
2015 Feb 3, Thai police said they have arrested six people accused of being part of a conspiracy to slander the country's monarchy on the Internet.
(AP, 2/3/15)
2015 Feb 4, In NYC Ross William Ulbricht (30) of San Francisco was convicted of creating and operating the underground Silk Road website that enabled drug dealers around the world to reach customers.
(SFC, 2/5/15, p.C1)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.33)
2015 Feb 4, China announced that users of blogs and chat rooms will be required to register their names with operators and promise in writing to avoid challenging the Communist political system, further tightening control over Internet use.
(AP, 2/4/15)
2015 Feb 12, England and Wales passed a new law banning "revenge porn" -- sexually explicit images shared online by a former partner without their ex's consent. The devolved governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have responsibility for justice matters, are also looking at introducing similar laws.
(AFP, 2/12/15)
2015 Feb 13, In Virginia Andrus Nomm of Estonia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement in federal court in Alexandria. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Nomm, one of seven men indicted in a massive copyright-piracy scheme run through the now-defunct website Megaupload three years ago, was the first to be brought to the US to face charges.
(AP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 13, The Netherlands extradited Vladimir Drinkman to the US. The Russian was suspected of involvement in a huge data breach that racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over seven years for US companies. Drinkman was arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012.
(AP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 19, The website Intercept posted documents saying the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GCHQ had hacked into the networks of Gemalto, a SIM card maker, to steal codes allowing them to seamlesslessly eavesdrop on mobile phones worldwide.
(SFC, 2/21/15, p.A3)
2015 Feb 26, The US Federal Communications Commission voted to enforce "net neutrality" rules for the broadband industry.
(AP, 2/27/15)
2015 Mar 8, Islamic State supporters, facing regular bans and blockages on Facebook and other social networks launched 5elafabook.com, their own CaliphateBook, to spread their militant message over the Internet.
(AP, 3/10/15)
2015 Mar 12, It was reported that Cuba is allowing free, public Internet service for the first time at a Havana cultural center. It quietly began offering open Wi-Fi in recent weeks.
(AP, 3/12/15)
2015 Mar 18, Evolution Marketplace, a website for illegal drugs, was taken down in an apparent “exit scam" by its anonymous administrators who made off with up to $15 million in Bitcoin payments they were holding in escrow.
(Econ., 4/11/15, p.59)
2015 Mar 24, Google announced that it would be bringing Google Fiber to Salt Lake City, which actually will make it the second city in Utah to have access to the service. Google first announced it was bringing Fiber to Provo, Utah back in 2013.
(BGR News, 3/25/15)
2015 Mar 25, Facebook announced that it has started to turn its Messenger service into a platform on top of which other firms can develop content and apps.
(Econ., 3/28/15, p.68)
2015 Apr 3, In southern California Kevin Christopher Bollaert (28) of San Diego was sentenced to 18 years in prison for operating a revenge porn website. In February he was found guilty on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft.
(SFC, 4/4/15, p.A6)
2015 Apr 8, In France hackers purporting to be supporters of Islamic State knocked out channels belonging to public television station TV5Monde and posted material on its social media feeds to protest French military action in Iraq. The network signal was restored the next day but only for recorded programs.
(Reuters, 4/9/15)(SFC, 4/10/15, p.A2)
2015 Apr 10, Canadian researchers said China has expanded its Internet censorship efforts beyond its borders with a new strategy that attacks websites across the globe. The new strategy, dubbed "Great Cannon," seeks to shut down websites and services aimed at helping Chinese citizens circumvent the "Great Firewall".
(AFP, 4/10/15)
2015 Apr 15, The European Union charged Google with abusing its overwhelming dominance in Internet searches and opened a probe into its Android mobile system, massively raising the stakes in the five-year antitrust battle.
(AP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 28, Google says it will give European publishers 150 million euros ($162.33 million) to help them adapt to the challenge of selling news online.
(AP, 4/28/15)
2015 May 7, German media reported that Germany has halted its Internet surveillance for the US National Security Agency (NSA) in response to a row over the BND intelligence agency's cooperation with Washington.
(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2014 May 13, Europe's highest court said people should have some say over the results that pop up when they conduct a Google search of their own name online. The European Court of Justice (ECI) embraced the idea of a digital “right to be forgotten." It found in favor of a Spanish man who wanted Google to remove old references to his history of indebtedness.
(AP, 5/13/14)(Econ, 11/5/16, p.51)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.19)
2015 May 29, In NYC Ross Ulbricht (31), the American convicted of masterminding the criminal website Silk Road, was sentenced in court to life in prison over the online enterprise that sold $200 million in drugs to customers worldwide.
(AFP, 5/30/15)
2015 Jun 4, American officials said China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the US government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers.
(SFC, 6/5/15, p.A10)
2015 Jun 12, France's data privacy agency ordered Google to remove search results worldwide upon request, giving the company two weeks to apply the "right to be forgotten" globally.
(AP, 6/12/15)
2015 Jun 18, Cuba said it's expanding Internet access by adding Wi-Fi capacity to dozens of state-run Internet centers and more than halving the cost that users pay for an hour online.
(AP, 6/18/15)
2015 Jun 19, WikiLeaks published more than 60,000 diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia and said on its website it would release half a million more in the coming weeks.
(Reuters, 6/19/15)
2015 Jul 3, Russian lawmakers voted for a bill forcing online search engines to remove search results about a specific person at that person's request.
(AP, 7/3/15)
2015 Jul 14, The US Justice Department investigators shut down what they called the world's largest-known English-language malware forum, an online marketplace called Darkode where cybercriminals bought and sold hacked databases, malicious software and other products that could cripple or steal information from computer systems. More than 70 cybercriminals in the US and 19 other countries were targets of the investigation.
(AP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 15, Bulgaria’s interior ministry said a man (21), suspected of belonging to a network of Islamist hackers responsible for attacks on more than 3,500 websites worldwide, has been arrested. The man was said to be part of a group using the acronym MECA (Middle East Cyber Army).
(AFP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 20, Activists said the Islamic State group is banning private internet access in its Syrian bastion Raqa, forcing residents and even its own fighters to use internet cafes where they can be monitored.
(AFP, 7/20/15)
2015 Jul 31, India ordered Internet service providers to block access to 857 adult websites in what the government has described as a way to protect social decency.
(AP, 8/3/15)
2015 Aug 7, Two Thailand military courts handed down the country’s harshest sentences in recent decades for insulting the monarchy. A man in Bangkok was sentenced to prison for 30 years for six Facebook postings, and a mother of two young girls in the province of Chiang Mai was sentenced to 28 years for seven postings.
(AP, 8/7/15)
2015 Sep 30, In Thailand protesters began blocking access to several government websites over a plan to route all Internet traffic though a single gateway.
{Thailand, Internet}
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 5, Belarusian independent media outlets accused the government of blocking their websites less than a week before presidential elections.
(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 6, Europe's top court ruled that data stored on US servers is potentially unsafe because of government spying, a blow to companies such as Facebook that might need to change the way they handle private data from the region. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down the “safe’harbor" privacy pact between the European Union and America. It was originally signed in 2000 to bridge cultural and political differences regarding online privacy.
(AP, 10/6/15) (Econ, 10/10/15, p.61)
2015 Oct 11, Mobile Internet sites faced a new threat as millions download ad-blockers to their phones and tablets, removing pesky adverts but potentially wiping out billions of dollars in advertising revenue.
(AFP, 10/11/15)
2014 Oct 16, Alipay was rebranded as Ant Financial, a Chinese financial services company that enabled payments by customers who use Alibaba’s e-commerce sites.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Financial)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.57)
2015 Oct 17, Spanish police said they have arrested 81 persons on suspicion of sexually abusing minors and sharing child pornography on the Internet.
(AP, 10/17/15)
2015 Oct 21, YouTube announced a monthly subscription service, starting at $10, for YouTube Red, allowing users to play videos without ads, offline and in the background while using other apps.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C1)
2015 Nov 11, Chinese Internet users spent billions of dollars in the planet's biggest online shopping splurge, as "Singles’ Day" hit new heights, despite slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy.
(AFP, 11/11/15)(Econ, 11/12/16, p.61)
2015 Nov 15, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that authorities have arrested administrators of more than 20 groups on the messaging app Telegram for spreading "immoral content", the latest detentions in a clampdown on freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 11/15/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey's state-run news agency said the country's communications authority has imposed a 150,000 Turkish Lira (US$51,000) fine on Twitter for failing to remove content it said praised terror and incited violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 16, Indonesia deported 49 Taiwanese and one Chinese citizen who were members of a cross-border telephone and Internet fraud ring.
(AP, 12/16/15)
2015 Dec 17, The popular WhatsApp smartphone messaging application came back to life in Brazil as a court threw out a two-day suspension that had infuriated millions of users. A judge had suspended it because the Facebook-owned service failed to disclose information requested by prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation.
(AFP, 12/17/15)
2015 Dec 30, In Egypt a program that had been giving free basic Internet services to over three million Egyptians was shut down. Facebook said it hoped to "resolve this situation soon" so the program, which it had launched with Etisalat Egypt some two months ago, could be restored.
(AP, 12/30/15)
2015 Dec 30, A Russian court sentenced blogger Vadim Tyumenstev (35), from the Siberian region of Tomsk, to five years in jail for what it said was his extremist activity on the Internet after he urged people to attend a protest against high transport fares and criticized Russian intervention in Ukraine.
(Reuters, 12/30/15)
2015 Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov authored “The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries.
(Econ, 9/12/15, p.78)
2015 Nicholas Carlson authored “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!"
(Econ, 1/10/15, p.79)
2015 Andrew Keen authored “"The Internet is Not the Answer."
(SSFC, 1/25/15, p.N3)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.81)
2015 Everipedia was started as a more modern and inclusive alternative to Wikipedia by Theodor Forselius and Sam Kazemian, Everipedia. By 2018 it was building the world's first encyclopedia on the blockchain, incentivizing content creators by allowing them to become stakeholders in the encyclopedia network themselves. With over 3 million unique monthly users and over 6 million wiki articles, everipedia.org surpassed English Wikipedia by content, currently making it the world's largest English Encyclopedia.
(http://news.sys-con.com/node/4207113)
2015 Expedia, an online travel website, bought HomeAway, an Airbnb rival, for $3.9 billion.
(Econ 5/27/17, p.58)
2015 Six Rooms (6.cn), a Chinese live-streaming internet service co-founded by Liu Yan, was sold for close to $400 million to a Chinese entertainment conglomerate. Live-streaming emerged in China following the financial crisis of 2007-08.
(Econ, 2/11/17, SR p.10)
2015 The Chinese firm Pinduoduo, an agriculture-focused technology platform, was founded. It connects farmers and distributors with consumers directly through its interactive shopping experience. In 2017 the company ended its online direct sales model of acquiring fresh produce and other perishables from suppliers to sell to consumers, and transitioned to purely providing online marketplace services to third-party merchants across more categories.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo)(Econ., 1/2/21, p.4)
2016 Jan 13, Italian police arrested 11 people for allegedly running an illegal online gaming business which garnered millions of euros in bets every day.
(Reuters, 1/13/16)
2016 Jan 22, Technology giant Google said it will pay £130 million ($185.4 million, 172 million euros) in back taxes to Britain following a government inquiry into its tax arrangements.
(AFP, 1/23/16)
2016 Jan 31, Cuba announced that it is launching broadband Internet service in two Havana neighborhoods as a pilot project aimed at bringing home access to one of the world's least connected nations.
(AP, 1/31/16)
2016 Feb 11, The Indonesian government told instant messaging apps to remove stickers featuring same-sex couples in the latest high-profile attempt to discourage visible homosexuality in the socially conservative country.
(AP, 2/12/16)
2016 Mar 2, Jason Lawrance (50), a British man, was found guilty of raping five women he met through the US Internet dating service match.com, which he was allowed to use despite complaints to the website from his victims.
(AFP, 3/2/16)
2016 Mar 5, Ray Tomlinson, former engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), died. He had invented an e-mail program that allowed users to exchange messages across a distributed network and devised the @ symbol to designate a digital address. In 1972 he modified the program to run on ARPANET where it became a quick hit.
(http://tinyurl.com/6s97pv)(SFC, 10/23/96, p.B1)(TIME, 10/20/14, p.65)(Econ, 3/12/16, p.80)
2016 Mar 5, In Morocco some 1,300 ICAAN participants gathered in Marrakech for 346 sessions. The meeting of the global organization, charged with the smooth running of the Internet, continued to March 10.
(Econ, 3/5/16, p.55)
2016 Mar 19, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a rare meeting with China's propaganda chief, at a time when Chinese authorities are tightening control over their cyberspace. Zuckerberg was in Beijing to attend an economic forum.
(AP, 3/20/16)
2016 Apr 1, It was reported that North Korea officially announced this week that it is blocking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and South Korean websites in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information. Very few North Koreans have Internet access.
(AP, 4/1/16)
2016 May 13, Belgium-based SWIFT, the global financial system used to move hundreds of billions of dollars a day, said highly sophisticated hackers had gained access to a bank aiming to hijack fund transfers made via the network. SWIFT insisted its own system had not been compromised, but warned that this latest attack was clearly part of a wide-ranging campaign.
(AFP, 5/13/16)
2016 May 13, It was reported that the purported personal details of numerous Chinese business moguls and politically-connected elite were posted this week to an anonymous Twitter account, an embarrassing leak for authorities that has raised concerns about the security of official records.
(Reuters, 5/13/16)
2016 May 14, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Internet was promoting un-Islamic thoughts that should be promptly dealt with.
(Reuters, 5/16/16)
2016 May 31, The European Union reached an agreement with some of the world's biggest social media firms, including Facebook and Twitter, on ways to combat the spread of hate speech online.
(AP, 5/31/16)
2016 Jun 1, Russian social media users voiced their outrage at Twitter's decision a day earlier to suspend popular accounts parodying Pres. Vladimir Putin and other officials.
(AP, 6/1/16)
2016 Jun 8, The Singapore government's Infocomm Development Authority said it has begun disconnecting internet access from the work stations of some government employees, and will expand the removal to all public workers by next June in an effort to make official information systems more secure.
(AP, 6/8/16)
2016 Jun 13, Microsoft Corp. agreed to pay $26.2 billion in cash for LinkedIn, a professional social network company founded in 2002.
(SFC, 6/14/16, p.A1)
2016 Jun 14, CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed that Twitter is investing $70 million into SoundCloud, a streaming music service.
(www.cnet.com/news/twitter-invests-in-soundcloud/)
2016 Jun 22, US, European and Chinese regulators in Beijing said they will jointly enforce product safety in online commerce.
(AP, 6/22/16)
2016 Jun 28, A Singapore court sentenced the founder of a website that published anti-foreign content to eight months in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition. The court said Yang Kaiheng (27) had set up "The Real Singapore" website together with his Australian wife, Ai Takagi, and helped distribute accounts from visitors, some of which contained inaccuracies.
(AP, 6/28/16)
2016 Jun 29, Xinhua News Agency reported that China has replaced its internet regulator Lu Wei, the hard-liner responsible for leading the government's efforts to tighten control over domestic cyberspace and export the ruling Communist Party's philosophy of web control. His successor will be his deputy, former propaganda official Xu Lin.
(AP, 6/29/16)
2016 Jul 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a package of controversial anti-terror amendments dubbed "Big Brother" measures by critics that may cost internet companies billions.
(AFP, 7/7/16)
2016 Jul 12, The EU launched a controversial deal with the United States aimed at curbing government spying on the personal internet infomation of European citizens.
(AFP, 7/12/16)
2016 Jul 15, Japanese messaging app Line rocketed in its Tokyo trading debut after an eye-popping jump in NY a day earlier, as investors cheered the year's biggest technology share sale.
(AP, 7/15/16)
2016 Jul 19, WikiLeaks released nearly 300,000 emails from Turkey’s AK Party dating from 2010 to July 6 this year. Obtained before the attempted coup, the date of their publication was brought forward "in response to the government's post-coup purges". In response Turkey blocked access to the WikiLeaks website.
(Reuters, 7/20/16)
2016 Jul 24, In China the Beijing municipal branch of the national Cyberspace Administration ordered some of China‘s biggest internet companies to stop publishing independent reports on politically sensitive topics.
(Econ, 7/30/16, p.34)
2016 Jul 25, Verizon and Yahoo announced a $4.83 billion deal to buy Yahoo’s core Internet business. This did not include the firms properties in Asia or its portfolio of patents.
(SFC, 7/26/16, p.D1)(Econ, 7/30/16, p.49)
2016 Aug 30, Cambodian police arrested 64 people from mainland China and Taiwan, accusing them of taking part in an internet scam. They were accused of defrauding victims in China using phone calls made over the internet.
(AP, 8/30/16)
2016 Sep 23, Six Chinese agencies announced a coordinated effort to tackle internet and telecoms fraud, the government's latest bid to get to grips with an explosion of such crimes it says have led to huge financial losses.
(Reuters, 9/23/16)
2016 Oct 1, China shut down a website called Consensus Net, a publisher of articles on economic, social and political reform since3 its founding in 2009.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9o9vr4n)(Econ, 2/18/17, p.37)
2016 Oct 19, The European Court of Justice ruled that internet-protocol addresses are subject to Europe’s data protection laws.
(Econ, 11/5/16, p.59)
2016 Nov 18, Facebook announced that it was buying back up to $6 billion of its shares in apparent reaction to a 10% drop in its share price following a warning of slowing growth. Facebook numbered about 1.8 billion monthly users.
(Econ, 11/26/16, p.61)
2016 Nov, Google unveiled a new version of Translate. The old version was called “phrase-based" machine translation. The new version used as artificial neural network lin king digital “neurons" in several layers.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.70)
2016 Dec 1, In Qatar Doha News, an independent English-language news site, accused the Gulf state of censorship, saying two Internet service providers had simultaneously blocked access to it.
(Reuters, 12/1/16)
2016 Dec 12, It was reported that Google is installing multiple servers in Cuba that will host much of the company's most popular content.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 15, Congo DRC internet providers said authorities have ordered that social networks including Facebook and WhatsApp be blocked as of 11:59 PM Dec 18, before President Joseph Kabila's mandate expires on Dec 20.
(AFP, 12/15/16)
2016 Dec 19, Thailand’s Defense Ministry website went temporarily offline as hackers protested the Dec 16 passage of a bill restricting internet freedom. They have been attacking Thai government computer servers, temporarily disabling public access and reportedly copying restricted documents.
(AP, 12/19/16)
2016 Dec 25, Israeli ministers approved a bill that would allow a court to order sites such as Facebook and YouTube to remove material found to be "incitement," which they say contributes to Palestinian violence.
(AFP, 12/26/16)
2016 Dec, Video streaming firm BAMTech, a technology subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company located in Manhattan, NY, agreed to pay $300 million for the rights to stream tournaments for a game called “League of Legends" until 2023. The game was owned by Tencent, a Chinese Internet giant.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMTech)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.56)
2016 Scott Malcomson authored “Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce are Fragmenting the world Wide Web."
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.93)
2016 Data centers consumed 2% of all the electricity produced in the world.
(Econ, 3/12/16, TQ p.9)
2016 An indictment was filed in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern district of New York that charged Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania with stealing more than $100 million from Facebook and Google. He was extradited to the US in 2017. In 2019 Rimasauskas (50) pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his role in the scheme. The stolen money was wired to various locations around the world. The companies said most of the money has been recouped.
(SFC, 3/26/19, p.D1)
2017 Jan 24, French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said that his government has requested blocks for 834 websites and that 1,929 more be pulled from search engines' results as part of the fight against "child pornographic and terrorist content". He also said French authorities ordered the blockage or removal of more than 2,700 websites in 2016.
(AP, 1/24/17)
2017 Jan 26, It was reported that employees from more than a dozen US government agencies have established a network of unofficial "rogue" Twitter feeds in defiance of what they see as attempts by President Donald Trump to muzzle federal climate change research and other science.
(Reuters, 1/26/17)
2017 Feb 5, The website of Austria's parliament was brought down for 20 minutes. A Turkish hackers' group, Aslan Neferler Tim (ANT), or Lion Soldiers Team, whose website says it defends the homeland, Islam, the nation and flag, without any party political links, claimed the attack.
(Reuters, 2/7/17)
2017 Mar 2, Snap, the parent company of social media Snapchat, closed at $24.48, a 44% jump over its IPO price of $17. The company had started in 2011 as Picaboo. The securities sold had no voting power so all the power stayed with co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy.
(SFC, 3/3/17, p.C1)(Econ, 2/4/17, p.53)(Econ, 2/11/17, p.56)
2017 Mar 4, Senior Chinese government adviser Luo Fuhe warned that the country's internet censorship is hampering scientific research and economic development, in a rare public criticism of a sensitive policy that the government has vigorously defended.
(AP, 3/4/17)
2017 Mar 14, Hundreds of Twitter accounts were hijacked amid the ongoing diplomatic feud between Turkey and two European nations, Germany and the Netherlands. Most if not all high-profile accounts soon returned to normal.
(AP, 3/15/17)
2017 Mar 31, Russian prosecutors moved to block calls on social networks for more street protests in Moscow and other Russian cities following a wave of rallies that have cast a new challenge to the Kremlin.
(AP, 3/31/17)
2017 Mar 31, Swedish prosecutors investigating a suspected gang rape and its broadcast via Facebook Live said they had received a copy of the footage from the US social media company.
(Reuters, 3/31/17)
2017 Mar, Ransomware software dubbed Wanna Cry was leaked on to the Internet. The method it used had been discovered years ago by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Only after the theft did the NSA inform Microsoft of the flaw, leading the firm to rush out a fix.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.13)
2017 Apr 1, Russian investigators opened a criminal case against unidentified internet users calling for what authorities say is an illegal anti-government protest in central Moscow on April 2.
(Reuters, 4/1/17)
2017 Apr 4, A Dutchman convicted of cyberbullying lost his appeal against being extradited to Canada to face charges linked to the 2012 suicide of Amanda Todd (15), who suffered online harassment. Aydin C. was sentenced last month to almost 11 years in jail, after being found guilty of 72 charges including computer sex crimes.
(AFP, 4/4/17)
2017 Apr 8, Indian police arrested Sagar Thakkar (24), aka Shaggy, the suspected mastermind behind a call center scam run out of a Mumbai suburb that targeted thousands of Americans and netted more than $300 million.
(Reuters, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 12, Russia banned the use on its territory of US-based Zello, a smartphone app widely used like a walkie-talkie to organize demonstrations and other gatherings. A Russian law demands that Internet services store copies in Russia of all messages sent via them for six months and make them available to authorities on demand.
(AP, 4/13/17)
2017 Apr 13, Facebook said it has targeted 30,000 fake accounts linked to France ahead of the country's two-round April 23-May 7 presidential election, as part of a worldwide effort against misinformation.
(AP, 4/14/17)
2017 Apr 17, Russian officials announced an agreement with Google to settle a two-year-old case against Google for requiring the pre-installation of some of its apps on mobile devices using the Android system. Google is to pay 439 million roubles ($7.8 million) in fines and will not limit the pre-installation of third-party apps.
(AP, 4/17/17)
2017 Apr 18, Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, published a Form 10-K on the American government on the new website USAfacts.org. 2.6 million page views were received on the first day.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.55)
2017 Apr 27, Google activated a line of caching servers in Cuba, becoming the first foreign company with the ability to provide online content in the country.
(CSM, 4/28/17)
2017 Apr 29, Turkey Blocks, an internet censorship monitor, said users in Turkey have been unable to access all language editions of Wikipedia since 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) today. Access to Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for content presenting the country as supporting terror.
(AP, 4/29/17)
2017 May 2, China announced it is tightening rules for online news as censors try to control a flood of information spread through instant-messaging apps, blogs and other media sources that are proliferating across the country. The rules take effect June 1.
(AP, 5/3/17)
2017 May 5, In Austria a Viennese appeals court ruled that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient.
(Reuters, 5/8/17)
2017 May 12, In Azerbaijan the local court in the Baku upheld action by the country's communications ministry to block the access to the Azeri-language website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as well as several key independent news websites. The websites have been unavailable since late March when the ministry shut down the access following a prosecutor's petition decrying "threats to legitimate interests of the government and society."
(AP, 5/12/17)
2017 May 12, Security companies noticed that a piece of malicious software known as WannaCry was spreading across the Internet, first in Britain and Spain and then around the world. In 48 hours it reached 230,000 computers.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.69)
2017 May 12, Britain's National Health Service said hospitals across England have been hit by an apparent "ransomware" attack, but there was no immediate evidence that patient data had been accessed. The cyberattack crippled computer systems at hospitals across England, with appointments canceled, phone lines down and patients turned away.
(AP, 5/12/17)
2017 May 12, A global cyber-attack infected computers at businesses, healthcare facilities and other organizations in dozens of countries, disrupting operations at some facilities. Spain said several Spanish companies had been targeted in ransomware cyberattack that affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said it had recorded at least 45,000 attacks in as many as 74 countries. Code for exploiting the Microsoft bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue," was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools.
(AP, 5/12/17)(Reuters, 5/13/17)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A2)(Reuters, 5/14/17)
2017 May 16, Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber-attacks, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.
(Reuters, 5/16/17)
2017 May 18, The EU fined Facebook 110 million euros ($122 million) for providing misleading information over its 2014 buyout of mobile messaging service WhatsApp.
(AP, 5/18/17)
2017 Jun 9, The Philippine military asked Facebook to close dozens of accounts linked to Islamist militants who attacked a southern city, saying they were being used for propaganda.
(AFP, 6/9/17)
2017 Jun 11, Thai police arrested three Chinese men for operating a "click farm," using hundreds of cellphones and several hundred thousand SIM cards to run up "likes" and views on WeChat, a Chinese social media mobile application.
(AP, 6/13/17)
2017 Jun 23, US social media giant Facebook launched a campaign in Britain to counter the spread of online extremism following warnings from PM Theresa May after four terror attacks in three months. The Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) will act as a forum for charities and other nonprofit organizations to share their experiences of extremism. There are already OCCI schemes in France and Germany.
(AFP, 6/23/17)
2017 Jun 27, The EU slapped Google with a record penalty of $2.7 billion for taking advantage of its dominance in online searches to direct customers to its own businesses.
(SFC, 6/28/17, p.C1)
2017 Jul 7, In Vietnam the mother of Tran Hoang Phuc (23) said she was informed last week that her son was arrested in Hanoi for storing material and using the internet to spread propaganda videos against the government.
(Reuters, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 15, Indonesia’s The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said that it was preparing for the total closure of the Telegram app in Indonesia, where it has several million users, if it didn't develop procedures to block unlawful content.
(AP, 7/16/17)
2017 Jul 16, The encrypted messaging app Telegram said it is forming a team of moderators who are familiar with Indonesian culture and language so it can remove "terrorist-related content" faster, after Indonesia limited access to the app and threatened a total ban. Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai founded VKontakte in 2006. Durov gave up his role and ownership stake in 2013 after Pres. Putin’s allies took control of the company.
(AP, 7/16/17)(SFC, 3/8/18, p.C6)
2017 Jul 18, Users of WhatsApp in China and security researchers reported widespread service disruptions amid fears that the popular messaging service may be at least partially blocked by authorities in the world's most populous country.
(AP, 7/18/17)
2017 Jul 20, European and US authorities said they had shut down AlphaBay and Hansa Market and arrested their operators. AlphaBay, the largest so-called darknet market, was taken down in early July at the same time that authorities arrested Alexandre Cazes (25), a Canadian man living in Bangkok. Dutch police said they had taken control of Hansa market in June. Two men accused of operating Hansa were arrested in Germany.
(SFC, 7/21/17, p.C1)
2017 Jul 24, Thai police said they have seized nearly $21 million worth of assets, from cars to cryptocurrency, belonging to Alexandre Cazes (5), the late founder of dark web marketplace AlphaBay, who died in a Bangkok jail on July 12.
(Reuters, 7/24/17)
2017 Aug 1, Indonesia and encrypted messaging service Telegram said they have agreed to establish better procedures to stamp out distribution of terrorist propaganda on the platform. Indonesian authorities blocked access to some Telegram channels last month, saying it had several forums that were "full of radical and terrorist propaganda".
(Reuters, 8/1/17)
2017 Aug 2, Cambodian officials arrested 175 Chinese citizens after a tipoff from Chinese police about their suspected involvement in an internet phone scam.
(AP, 8/4/17)
2017 Aug 11, China’s Cyberspace Administration said it has launched probes into three of its largest social networking platforms over the suspected dissemination of violence and obscenity.
(AP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 11, Lithuania's top appeals court upheld a decision to extradite Evaldas Rimasauskas to the United States. He was accused of defrauding Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million from 2013-2015.
(AP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 15, Thai student activist Jatupat Boonpattaraksa, also known as Pai, was jailed for two and a half years for posting on Facebook a BBC article deemed offensive to Thailand's king.
(Reuters, 8/15/17)
2017 Aug 18, China launched its first "cyber court" to settle online disputes, as the legal system attempts to keep up with the explosion of mobile payment and e-commerce.
(AFP, 8/18/17)
2017 Aug 19, Los Angeles prosecutors said six people have been charged with selling millions of dollars worth of drugs over the last four years on the dark Web from a home in Altadena.
(SSFC, 8/20/17, p.A9)
2017 Aug 25, Network Solutions blocked the Stormfront.org website, the oldest white supremacist site founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black. The domain name was revoked following complaints that it promotes hatred and is linked to dozens of murders.
(SFC, 8/29/17, p.A5)
2017 Sep 12, Saudi Arabia urged its people to report subversive comments spotted on social media via a phone app. The move was soon denounced by a human rights watchdog as "Orwellian".
(Reuters, 9/13/17)
2017 Sep 20, A court in Slovenia convicted and sentenced two men to prison terms for fatally beating their friend live on Facebook. In February Ales Olovec (20) and Martin Kovac (29) beat up Andrej Cekuta (26) after an argument and streamed it live on social media for 23 minutes before the video was removed.
(AP, 9/20/17)
2017 Sep 21, Facebook said it will provide the contents of some 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators. FB also said it will make political advertising on its platform more transparent.
(SFC, 9/22/17 p.C1)
2017 Sep 25, Amazon Web Services announced a deal with the government of Bahrain to open its first Middle East data centers in the Gulf, expected to be ready by 2019. Amazon had acquired Souq.com, the region's biggest online retailer, for $650 million.
(AFP, 10/2/17)
2017 Sep 25, China's cyber watchdog handed down maximum penalties to several of the country's top tech firms, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Baidu Inc and Weibo Corp, for failing to properly censor online content. Under the rules cited in the notice individuals in charge of the platforms and others directly involved face a maximum penalty of 100,000 yuan ($15,110) each.
(Reuters, 9/25/17)
2017 Sep 26, Russia's communications agency threatened to block access to Facebook if the company refuses to store its data locally. A 2015 Russian law on personal data obliges foreign companies to store it in Russia.
(AP, 9/26/17)
2017 Oct 1, North Korea opened a second internet connection with the outside world, this time via Russia, a move which cyber security experts said could give Pyongyang greater capability to conduct cyber attacks. Dyn Research, which monitors international internet traffic flows, said it had seen Russian telecommunications company TransTeleCom routing North Korean traffic since about 0908 GMT today.
(Reuters, 10/2/17)
2017 Oct 6, Pope Francis denounced the proliferation of adult and child pornography on the internet and demanded better protections for children online — even as the Vatican confronts its own cross-border child porn investigation involving a top papal envoy.
(AP, 10/6/17)
2017 Oct 9, It was reported that Google has discovered Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads on its YouTube, Gmail and Google Search products in an effort to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/9/17)
2017 Oct 12, Facebook Inc Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company was fully committed to helping US congressional investigators publicly release Russia-backed political ads that ran during the 2016 US election.
(Reuters, 10/12/17)
2017 Oct 14, It was reported that Twitter has handed over to Senate investigators the profile names of “handles," of 201 accounts linked to Russian attempts at influencing the 2016 US presidential election.
(SFC, 10/14/17, p.A6)
2017 Oct 20, Meeting in Italy G7 countries and tech giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter agreed to work together to block the dissemination of Islamist extremism over the internet.
(AFP, 10/20/17)
2017 Oct 26, Twitter Inc accused Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network, after criticism in the United States that the social network had not done enough to deter international meddling.
(Reuters, 10/27/17)
2017 Nov 11, Chinese online shoppers spent a record $25 billion on this year's "Singles Day" promotion run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, up nearly 40 percent from last year.
(AFP, 11/12/17)
2017 Nov 13, Spain's defense and foreign ministers said they had evidence that state and private-sector Russian groups, as well as groups in Venezuela, used Twitter, Facebook and other Internet sites to massively publicize the separatist cause and swing public opinion behind it in the run-up to the Oct. 1 referendum.
(Reuters, 11/13/17)
2017 Nov 19, China's military launched a website inviting the public to report leaks and fake news, as well as illegal online activities by military personnel, the latest step in a push to ensure Communist Party control over the internet.
(Reuters, 11/19/17)
2017 Dec 8, Swedish music streaming service Spotify and Chinese internet company Tencent said they will acquire new shares representing minority equity stakes in each other for cash.
(AP, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 8, The UN migration agency called on social media giants to make it harder for people smugglers to use their platforms to lure West African migrants to Libya where they can face detention, torture, slavery or death.
(Reuters, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 14, The Republican-controlled US Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era rules requiring all web traffic to be treated equally.
(AP, 12/15/17)
2017 Dec 30, Congolese authorities ordered all internet and SMS services cut until further notice as police banned demonstrations saying that all gatherings of more than five people would be dispersed to ensure public order. Catholic activists called for protests against President Joseph Kabila's refusal to step down from office.
(Reuters, 12/31/17)
2017 Dec 31, Iran blocked access to Instagram and the popular Telegram messaging app used by activists to organize and publicize the protests now roiling the Islamic Republic. The free Telegram app, created by Russian national Pavel Durov, was used by an estimated 40 million Iranians.
(AP, 12/31/17)
2017 PUBG Corp., a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole developed and published PlayerUnknowns' Battlegrounds (PUBG), an online multi-player video game. PUBG soon sold publishing rights in China to Tencent. In 2019 the governments of Iraq and Jordan banned the game, but their decisions proved ineffective.
(Econ, 4/18/20, p.35)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayerUnknown%27s_Battlegrounds)
2018 Jan 11, Facebook said that it would prioritize what friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.
(SFC, 1/12/18, p.C1)
2018 Jan 25, It was reported that Belarusian authorities have blocked access to charter97.org, a popular opposition website, over alleged legal violations.
(AP, 1/25/18)
2018 Jan 26, China's securities watchdog said it had punished a blogger on WeChat with a 200,000 yuan ($31,000) fine for posting market-moving "misinformation" about meetings between corporations and regulators.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Jan 27, Chinese authorities ordered Sina Weibo, a major social media platform, to curb "harmful content" more effectively as they intensify oversight of online expression -- even taking aim at rap music, crude cartoons, dirty jokes and celebrity gossip.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Jan 31, Cuba protested the creation of a US task force on increasing internet access on the island — a measure that's part of President Donald Trump's hardening of US policy on Cuba.
(AP, 2/1/18)
2018 Feb 2, Chinese regulators ordered microblog operators to set up a mechanism to remove false information after the most popular service was criticized for allowing prohibited material to spread.
(AP, 2/2/18)
2018 Feb 5, The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on "the creeping criminalization of the internet," in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year. Agora warned that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 9, It was reported that former Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy has filed a legal case in the United States to get Facebook to release information on PM Hun Sen's use of the social media platform.
(Reuters, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 9, It was reported that Turkey has launched a domestic messaging app to rival Facebook's popular WhatsApp Messenger service, raising concerns among government critics that Ankara could use the new platform to tighten surveillance and bolster an 18-month-old crackdown.
(Reuters, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 12, Germany’s dpa news agency reported that a local court has ruled that Facebook's insistence that users provide their real names violates the country's data protection laws.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 22, The US Federal Communications Commission published its final order reversing net neutrality regulations. The repeal was set to go into effect April 23. Political debate in Congress, courts and statehouses was expected to continue.
(SFC, 2/23/18, p.A1)
2018 Mar 14, Facebook said it had taken down Britain First's Facebook page and those of its leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, for repeatedly violating rules designed to stop the incitement of hatred against minority groups.
(Reuters, 3/14/18)
2018 Mar 15, Sri Lanka's government ended a weeklong ban on social media that was imposed because of concerns that it was being used to fan anti-Muslim violence in the country's central region.
(AP, 3/15/18)
2018 Mar 19, Facebook Inc. came under intense scrutiny after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.
(AP, 3/20/18)
2018 Mar 20, Russia's Supreme Court threw out an appeal by messaging app Telegram ruling that it can be forced to provide user data to Russian security services.
(SFC, 3/21/18, p.C4)
2018 Mar 21, Turkish lawmakers passed a new law giving the communications watchdog the power to block internet broadcasts, raising fears of a new curb on freedom of expression.
(AFP, 3/22/18)
2018 Mar 26, The Federal Trade Commission confirmed that it is investigating Facebook's privacy practices following a week of privacy scandals including whether the company engaged in "unfair acts" that cause "substantial injury" to consumers.
(AP, 3/26/18)
2018 Mar 28, Facebook unveiled new privacy settings aiming to give its users more control over how their data is shared, following an outcry over hijacking of personal information at the giant social network.
(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 31, An Iranian news site reported that the country will block the Telegram messenger service for reasons of national security. Officials said the app would be replaced by a similar local system.
(AP, 3/31/18)
2018 Apr 6, The European Union said that Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
(AP, 4/6/18)
2018 Apr 9, China's state media reported that four popular Chinese news apps have been temporarily removed from the Android store in China following an order from regulators to tighten control over the spread of information.
(AP, 4/9/18)
2018 Apr 11, Cambodia deported nearly 100 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China in an internet scam. They were arrested last month after a police investigation.
(AP, 4/11/18)
2018 Apr 12, In California Carl Ferrer, the CEO of Backpage.com pleaded guilty to state and federal chargesincluding conspiracy and money laundering and agreed to testify in ongoing prosecutions against others at the website that authorities have dubbed a lucrative nationwide "online brothel".
(SFC, 4/14/18, p.D2)
2018 Apr 13, China's Sina Weibo said in a statement it had begun a "clean-up campaign" to remove "illegal" content, including "manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality".
(AFP, 4/14/18)
2018 Apr 13, A Russian court ordered that a popular messaging app, Telegram, be blocked after the company rejected to share encryption data with authorities.
(AP, 4/13/18)
2018 Apr 14, In China a storm of online protests under the hashtag "I am gay" followed a Sina Weibo statement a day earlier that it would remove "homosexual" content from the popular microblogging platform.
(AFP, 4/14/18)
2018 Apr 16, Weibo.com, one of China's top social networking sites, announced that it will no longer be censoring content related to gay issues after the plan triggered a loud public outcry.
(AP, 4/16/18)
2018 Apr 16, Russia's communications watchdog said it has begun enforcing a nationwide ban for the popular messaging app Telegram. Entrepreneur and app developer Pavel Durov said last week the latest version would have "built-in" features that would be able to circumvent the ban.
(AP, 4/16/18)
2018 Apr 16, Tanzania briefly detained two musicians, including one of the country's most popular singers, after they posted video clips deemed obscene by the authorities, in the latest crackdown on social media users.
(Reuters, 4/17/18)
2018 Apr 18, Iran's state media said the presidency has banned all government bodies from using foreign-based messaging apps to communicate with citizens, after economic protests organized through such apps shook the country earlier this year.
(AP, 4/18/18)
2018 Apr 19, The Belarus parliament passed a measure prohibiting internet users from commenting on forums without authorization and requiring online publications to register with the government as mass media.
(AP, 4/19/18)
2018 Apr 21, China's state news agency Xinhua cited comments from President Xi Jinping underlining a hardening attitude towards online content in comments made at a cyber security conference in Beijing.
(Reuters, 4/21/18)
2018 Apr 22, Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said that it is adding some Google IP addresses to the state registrar of banned sites, as a dispute intensified over Telegram, a banned messaging app.
(SFC, 4/23/18, p.A2)
2018 Apr 30, A leading German nationalist politician won a court injunction forcing Facebook to ensure a user's slur against her can't be seen in Germany.
(AP, 4/30/18)
2018 Apr 30, Iranian TV reported that the state judiciary has banned the popular Telegram instant messaging app to protect national security.
(Reuters, 4/30/18)
2018 Apr 30, In Russia thousands rallied in Moscow in support of internet freedom after authorities tried to block access to the popular messaging app Telegram in the latest onslaught against dissent under Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 4/30/18)
2018 May 2, In China PeppaPig, a cherubic British cartoon character, became an unlikely target of Internet censors as fans used her porcine likeness in rap videos and "gangster" tattoos.
(AP, 5/2/18)
2018 May 5, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the government "does not approve" of the judiciary's recent blockage of the Telegram messaging app.
(AFP, 5/5/18)
2018 May 8, Facebook announced that it is banning foreign advertisements related to Ireland's abortion referendum amid concerns that North American groups are trying to influence the campaign.
(AP, 5/8/18)
2018 May 9, Google announced that it is suspending all advertising connected to Ireland's abortion referendum as part of moves to protect "election integrity".
(AP, 5/9/18)
2018 May 9, A court in Vietnam convicted and sentenced Facebook user Bui Hieu Vo (56) to 4 ½ years in jail for posts that the court said distorted the political situation in the country and opposed the ruling Communist Party and the state.
(AP, 5/10/18)
2018 May 15, Facebook said it pulled or slapped warnings on nearly 30 million posts containing sexual or violent images, terrorist propaganda or hate speech in the first three months of 2018.
(AFP, 5/15/18)
2018 May 24, Algerian blogger Merzoug Touati, arrested last year over social media posts, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage and other charges.
(Reuters, 5/25/18)
2018 Jun 19, Algeria's education minister said the Algerian government is taking the "extreme measure" of temporarily suspending the entire country's internet connection during for the first hour of each baccalaureate exam during the June 20-25 national high school exams period to stop cheating and the leaking of answers.
(AP, 6/19/18)
2018 Jun 23, Chinese authorities blocked HBO's website in China, just days after comedian John Oliver mocked censors working overtime to delete comparisons of President Xi Jinping with the Winnie the Pooh cartoon bear.
(AFP, 6/23/18)
2018 Jun 24, Frank Heart (b.1929), the engineer who oversaw the first routing computer for the Arpanet, died in Lexington, Mass. In 1969 he led a team to build the Interface Message Processor (IMP), to switch data among Arpanet computers.
(SFC, 6/27/18, p.D5)
2018 Jun 26, Facebook said it is ending a program launched in 2014 to build a fleet of drones that could deliver internet to underserved areas of the world. Facebook will close its facility in Bridgwater, southwest England, which has been working on the solar-powered Aquila drone
(AFP, 6/27/18)
2018 Jun 29, Authorities in northeastern India cut internet access after crazed mobs, sparked by rumors spread on smartphones, beat three people to death in Tripura. More than 25 similar killings in recent months across India have been ignited by false information spread on messaging service WhatsApp.
(AFP, 6/29/18)
2018 Jul 1, In Uganda a new tax on social media took effect, angering many who see the revenue measure as an attack on free speech.
(AP, 7/2/18)
2018 Jul 4, India's government said it has asked WhatsApp to take "immediate action" to prevent the social media platform from being misused to spread rumors and irresponsible statements like those blamed for recent deadly mob attacks in the country.
(AP, 7/4/18)
2018 Jul 5, New Zealand's Court of Appeal upheld earlier court rulings that found internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues were eligible to be handed over to US authorities.
(AP, 7/5/18)
2018 Jul 9, Iranians on social media mocked clerical rulers after the hardline judiciary arrested a teenage girl for posting on Instagram videos of herself dancing in her room.
(Reuters, 7/9/18)
2018 Jul 11, Uganda's PM Ruhakana Rugunda said the government will review a tax on the use of social media, after a protest against the controversial measure was broken up by police firing live rounds and teargas into the air.
(AFP, 7/11/18)
2018 Jul 15, Iraqis demanding better public services and jobs took to the streets for the sixth day in the southern oil-rich province of Basra, as authorities put security forces on high alert and blocked the internet in the country's Shiite heartland. Dozens of demonstrators were wounded. The internet was off service across the country for a second consecutive day and foreign airlines announced the suspension of flights.
(AP, 7/15/18)(AFP, 7/15/18)
2018 Jul 16, Egypt's parliament passed a bill targeting popular social media accounts that authorities accuse of publishing "fake news," the latest move in a five-year-old drive to suppress dissent and silence independent sources of news. The law reinforced the state's control over the internet, including social media accounts of organizations and individuals with more than 5,000 followers.
(AP, 7/18/18)(AFP, 8/10/18)
2018 Jul 19, Facebook said it would begin removing misinformation that could lead people to being physically harmed, largely in response to episodes Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India, in which rumors spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities.
(SFC, 7/20/18, p.C1)
2018 Jul 20, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has suspended Crimson Hexagon, a Boston analytics firm, from its site and says it is investigating whether the company's contracts with the US government and a Russian non-profit violated policies.
(AFP, 7/21/18)
2018 Jul 31, A US federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order to stop the release of blueprints to make 3D-printed plastic guns. US-based Defense Distributed, founded by Cody Wilson (b.1988), planned to release blueprints on August 1, which anyone with a specialized 3-D printer could download online. In 2015 and 2017 Wired named Wilson one of the five most dangerous people on the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cody_Wilson)(SFC, 8/1/18, p.D6)(SFC, 8/2/18, p.A5)
2018 Aug 10, Reporters Without Borders said it had restored its website in Egypt, exactly one year after it was blocked by the authorities. RWB said it was unblocking its site through a website "mirroring" technique, which involves copying content and switching servers.
(AP, 8/10/18)
2018 Aug 11, Spanish police warned of a massive blackmail campaign to expose web users' supposed visits to porn sites unless they pay up, a technique police called 'sextorsion'.
(AFP, 8/11/18)
2018 Aug 17, A Google employee confirmed that more than a thousand Google employees have signed a letter protesting the company's secretive plan to build a search engine, nicknamed Dragonfly, that would comply with Chinese censorship.
(AP, 8/17/18)
2018 Aug 27, Facebook banned Myanmar's powerful military chief and 19 other individuals and organizations from its site to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation.
(AFP, 8/27/18)
2018 Aug 28, More than a dozen human rights groups sent a letter to Google urging the company not to offer censored internet search in China, amid reports it is planning to again provide the service in the giant market.
(AP, 8/29/18)
2018 Sep 1, Egypt's official gazette said President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ratified a law granting authorities the right to monitor social media users in the country as part of tightening internet controls.
(AFP, 9/1/18)
2018 Sep 6, It was reported that police in Thailand have arrested 12 people who shared a Facebook post about a British tourist's allegation that police had refused to accept her rape complaint on the island of Koh Tao in June.
(AP, 9/6/18)
2018 Sep 10, China rolled out new rules on religious activity on the internet amid an ongoing crackdown on churches, mosques and other institutions by the officially atheist Communist Party.
(AP, 9/11/18)
2018 Sep 18, The internet watchdog Citizen Lab said it has used an internet survey technique to identify suspected spyware infections linked to the Israeli company NSO Group in 45 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, India and Turkey.
(AP, 9/18/18)
2019 Sep 26, Gatsby, a platform that uses modern web technologies like React and GraphQL to help developers build better sites faster, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A round led by CRV. Gatsby, launched in 2015, monetizes its tools by offering a hosted service that helps teams of developers stand up a new site quickly, with prices starting at $50/month for one site.
(https://tinyurl.com/yx9zf3ox)
2018 Sep 28, A US diplomat said the United States, Japan and Australia are cooperating on a domestic internet cable proposal for Papua New Guinea as an alternative to an offer by Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that the United States regards as a cybersecurity threat.
(AP, 9/28/18)
2018 Sep 30, California's Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to restore Obama-era regulations barring the telecommunications industry from favoring certain websites. The US Dept. of Justice sued California minutes after net neutrality rules became law, saying states do not regulate interstate commerce.
(SFC, 10/1/18, p.A1)(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 1, Hungary's Index.hu, the largest source of independent news in the country, briefly took down the front page of its online portal to sound the alarm over what it sees as its declining editorial freedom and to secure funding from readers to help protect its independence.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 14, Nepalese officials said local internet providers have begun blocking thousands of pornographic websites as part of a government directive aimed at stopping sexual violence.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 18, Brazilian presidential hopeful Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party accused his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro of creating a criminal group along with businessmen to spread false election-related messages on WhatsApp.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Nov 11, Online shoppers in China shattered last year's record of $24 billion in sales on the country's annual Singles Day buying frenzy, as the tradition marked its 10th year.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 26, Police in Cambodia arrested more than 200 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China over the internet.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 29, Indian police said they have arrested nearly two dozen people on suspicion of defrauding people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning them that their computers were infected with a virus and offering to fix the problem at a price. Those arrested over the last two days posed as representatives of Microsoft and other companies and used their logos.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Dec 3, A new leak website, Distributed Denial of Secrets, made its debut wrestling with what to make available to the public, an illustration of the difficulty of balancing full transparency with respect for privacy in an age of mass disclosures. The site's founders eventually decided to pull from its public collection the haul from the Ashley Madison site along with more than a dozen other leaks.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 6, Cuba began offering its citizens full internet access for mobile phones over its 3G network.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 10, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator shut down dozens of online news portals for several hours, citing security reasons. An official said 58 sites were found to be not registered with the information ministry and therefore their content was being examined ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 13, Timothy May (b.1951), an early advocate for guarding the privacy of internet users, died at his home in Santa Cruz County, Ca. In 1988 May authored the one-page Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and in 1992 co-founded the Cypherpunks with John Gilmore and Eric Hughes.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.C9)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders called for urgent action to combat fake news on the Internet at a summit, saying more needed to be done to safeguard next year's EU election against disinformation.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Amsterdam Appeals Court confirmed the maximum 10 years and eight months sentence imposed in March last year on the man identified by Dutch authorities as Aydin C., who was convicted of fraud and blackmail via the internet for the online abuse.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 20, A Facebook official said the company is shutting down a series of fake news sites spreading false information about the Bangladesh opposition days before national elections.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said authorities closed its website last week when they shut 54 news portals and websites for what they claimed were security reasons, just days before the December 30 polls.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 28, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator ordered mobile operators to shut down high-speed mobile internet services until midnight Dec 29, the day of a national election, to prevent rumors and propaganda surrounding the vote.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2019 Jan 1, Democratic Republic of Congo's government cut internet connections and SMS services across the country for a second straight day as the country nervously awaited results from the weekend's chaotic presidential election.
(Reuters, 1/1/19)
2019 Jan 4, Twitter suspended an account that posted links to sensitive personal data and documents stolen by hackers from hundreds of German public figures and politicians — from every political party but the far-right Alternative for Germany. The breach, discovered by journalists a day earlier, affected politicians at all levels.
(AP, 1/4/19)
2019 Jan 18, Zimbabwe blocked most social media as international criticism mounted of a ruthless security crackdown after anti-government protests.
(AFP, 1/18/19)
2019 Jan 20, Tonga lost internet contact after something went wrong with a fiber optic cable that connects it to the rest of the world. A small internet company that uses satellites soon stepped in to help restore int'l. calls and some other services.
(SFC, 1/24/19, p.A2)
2019 Jan 21, France's data privacy watchdog fined Google 50 million euros ($57 million) for "lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent" regarding ad personalization for users. This was the first penalty for a US tech giant under new European data privacy rules that took effect last year.
(AP, 1/21/19)
2019 Jan 21, A Zimbabwe court ruled that the government exceeded its mandate in ordering an internet blackout during civilian protests last week, as authorities pressed on with rounding up opposition figures blamed for the unrest.
(Reuters, 1/21/19)
2019 Jan 24, It was reported that Chinese internet users have lost access to Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine, setting off grumbling about the ruling Communist Party's increasingly tight online censorship. The Bing search engine resumed service to Chinese users, after a disruption raised fears among social media users that it was the latest foreign website to be blocked by censors.
(AP, 1/24/19)(AFP, 1/24/19)
2019 Jan 28, Facebook said it is tightening requirements for political ads in the European Union ahead of bloc-wide elections scheduled for the spring, its latest effort to fight misinformation and increase transparency on its platforms.
(AP, 1/28/19)
2019 Feb 7, German authorities ruled that Facebook should not be allowed to use customer data from other apps and websites to help target advertisements shown on their Facebook pages without their explicit consent, saying it was exploiting its dominant position in social media. Facebook said it rejected the decision, and would appeal within the one-month frame before it becomes final.
(AP, 2/7/19)
2019 Feb 14, Facebook Inc said it has removed a number of pages and accounts engaged in "inauthentic behavior" targeting people in Moldova, where elections will be held later this month.
(Reuters, 2/14/19)
2019 Feb 14, Chinese tech company SenseNets closed an open database that stored the records of individuals "fully accessible to anyone," after Dutch security researcher Victor Gevers reported leaks of personal information on 2.6 million people in Xinjiang to SenseNets. The database had been exposed since last July.
(AFP, 2/19/19)
2019 Feb 18, China's government accused the United States of trying to block its industrial development by alleging that Chinese mobile network gear poses a cybersecurity threat to countries rolling out new internet systems.
(AP, 2/18/19)
2019 Feb 18, Venezuela's opposition said that the state internet provider CANTV has blocked a webpage where volunteers sign up to answer National Assembly president Juan Guaido's call to help bring in desperately needed humanitarian aid.
(AFP, 2/18/19)
2019 Mar 8, Facebook Inc, which along with other social media companies has faced growing pressure over spurious content spread on its platform, announced it would remove user groups and pages that contained misinformation about vaccinations.
(Reuters, 3/8/19)
2019 Mar 10, In Russia thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow and two other cities to rally against tighter internet restrictions, in some of the biggest protests in the capital in years.
(Reuters, 3/10/19)
2019 Mar 16, Facebook Inc said it removed 1.5 million videos globally of the New Zealand mosque attack in the first 24 hours after the attack.
(Reuters, 3/17/19)
2019 Mar 18, A group of big internet companies added more than 800 different versions of the New Zealand mosque shooting video to a shared database used to block violent terrorist images and videos.
(AP, 3/19/19)
2019 Mar 18, In Egypt new regulations were published in the official gazette late today, allowing the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for "fake news," and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.
(AP, 3/19/19)
2019 Mar 20, European Union regulators fined Google 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) for abusing its dominant role in online advertising, the third big antitrust penalty they've given the internet giant since 2017.
(AP, 3/20/19)
2019 Mar 20, South Korean police said they have arrested two men for using illegal spy cameras at motels to film and livestream videos of about 1,600 guests, raking in about 7 million won ($6,200) over the past three months.
(Reuters, 3/21/19)
2019 Mar 21, Wikipedia's German-language page was blacked out in protest of a proposal to change European Union copyright rules.
(AP, 3/21/19)
2019 Mar 26, Facebook said it has shut down more than 2,600 fake accounts linked to Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo and aiming to influence political sentiment in various parts of the world.
(AFP, 3/26/19)
2019 Mar 28, Cuba and Google signed a deal moving the island one step closer to having a state-of-the-art connection to the internet. They agreed to create a seamless, cost-free connection between their two networks once Cuba is able to physically connect to a new undersea fiber-optic cable that would be laid sometime in the future.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Apr 1, Facebook said it has deleted 712 accounts and 390 pages in India and Pakistan for "inauthentic behavior," many of them linked to India's opposition Congress party days before a general election, and others related to Pakistan's military.
(Reuters, 4/1/19)
2019 Apr 1, Two Israeli researchers said they had discovered a network of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts that promoted PM Benjamin Netanyahu and attacked his political rivals, a week before a national election.
(Reuters, 4/1/19)
2019 Apr 4, Australia's Parliament passed legislation that could imprison social media executives if their platforms stream real violence such as the New Zealand mosque shootings.
(AP, 4/4/19)
2019 Apr 11, Facebook blocked the page of former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in what the firebrand leader is lambasting as part of a "brutal persecution." Correa had been posting information online about an offshore bank account allegedly used by the brother of Ecuador's current president, Lenin Moreno, to stash millions. Facebook prohibits users from sharing private personal information like financial records that may "compromise the identity of people using our platform".
(AP, 4/12/19)
2019 Apr 11, Ecuador arrested Ola Bini (36), an ace Swedish programmer who was an early, ardent supporter of WikiLeaks, as he prepared to board a flight to Japan. Prosecutors alleged a plot to blackmail the country's president over his abandonment of Julian Assange.
(AP, 4/13/19)
2019 Apr 13, It was reported that a Ukraine-based hacker group has posted online the personal information of hundreds of US federal agents and police officers apparently stolen from websites affiliated with alumni of the FBI's National Academy.
(AP, 4/13/19)
2019 Apr 18, Social media giant Facebook banned various far-right British groups including the English Defence League from its network for promoting hate and violence.
(AP, 4/18/19)
2019 Apr 18, Google said it will start giving EU smartphone users a choice of browsers and search apps on its Android operating system, in changes designed to comply with an EU antitrust ruling.
(AP, 4/18/19)
2019 Apr 24, An Indian state court moved to lift a ban on popular video app TikTok in the country, in a boost for its developer Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., reversing its April 3 decision pushing for the ban. The southern state of Tamil Nadu had ordered the federal government to prohibit TikTok downloads, saying the app was encouraging pornography and could expose children to sexual predators.
(Reuters, 4/24/19)
2019 May 1, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure expanding government control over the internet. The law requires internet providers to install equipment to route Russian internet traffic through servers in the country.
(SFC, 5/2/19, p.A2)
2019 May 3, German prosecutors said police have shut down one of the world's largest illegal online markets in the so-called darkweb and arrested the three men allegedly running it. German police had on April 23 and 24 arrested the three German suspects aged 22 to 31 in the states of Hesse, Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The illicit "Wall Street Market" site enabled trade in cocaine, heroin, cannabis and amphetamines as well as stolen data, fake documents and malicious software.
(AFP, 5/3/19)
2019 May 7, Israeli police said two Israelis have been arrested on suspicion of setting up a "dark" Internet site that was used to buy weapons, drugs and stolen credit cards.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 15, Facebook announced it would tighten access to its livestreaming feature as New Zealand's premier Jacinda Ardern and French leader Emmanuel Macron prepared to launch the global "Christchurch Call" initiative to tackle the spread of extremism online.
(AFP, 5/15/19)
2019 May 15, In France world leaders and tech bosses met in Paris to find ways to stop terrorist use of social media to spread deadly ideas.
(AP, 5/15/19)
2019 May 16, Facebook said it banned the Archimedes Group, an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries. FB purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accountsengaged in spreading disinformation.
(SFC, 5/17/19, p.A2)
2019 May 23, In a case with significant First Amendment implications, the US filed 17 new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accusing him of violating the Espionage Act by publishing secret documents containing the names of confidential military and diplomatic sources.
(AP, 5/24/19)(SFC, 5/24/19, p.A10)
2019 May 24, Facebook said it increased the amount of content it restricted access to in Vietnam by over 500% in the last half of 2018, as the Southeast Asian country ramped up its crackdown on online dissent.
(Reuters , 5/24/19)
2019 Jun 3, Russia's communications regulator said that Tinder was included on a list of online services operating in Russia that are required to provide user data on demand to Russian authorities, including the FSB security agency.
(AP, 6/3/19)
2019 Jun 5, YouTube announced plans to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its service.
(SFC,6/6/19, p.D1)
2019 Jun 23, A Sudanese court ordered telecoms operator Zain Sudan to restore internet services, after they were severed nearly three weeks ago when security forces dispersed protesters camping in central Khartoum.
(Reuters, 6/23/19)
2019 Jun 25, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications (MOIC) chaired a meeting with top advertisers, requesting them to stop paying to post ads on YouTube channels featuring "bad or toxic" content.
(AFP, 6/25/19)
2019 Jun 27, Mauritania's government spokesman stepped down after defending a three-day communications blackout imposed during three days of post-election unrest. Fixed internet in the country was restored the next day. The mobile phone network that was disconnected June 23 remained down.
(AFP, 6/28/19)
2019 Jun 27, Authorities in Vanuatu arrested six Chinese nationals following Chinese complaints they were operating an internet scam from the Pacific island.
(AP, 6/29/19)
2019 Jun 28, Authorities in Germany said they have shut down Chemical Revolution, the country's largest online wholesaler of illegal drugs, and arrested 11 people as part of an international investigation into a drugs ring they said spanned five European countries and sold narcotics worldwide.
(Reuters, 6/28/19)
2019 Jul 10, Sudanese activists said the ruling generals restored internet service in the country, following a weekslong blackout imposed during a deadly crackdown early last month.
(AP, 7/10/19)
2019 Jul 19, Twitter suspended the accounts of several Iranian state media outlets. The next day Twitter said this was due to harassment of people linked to the Baha'i faith.
(AFP, 7/20/19)
2019 Aug 19, Walt Disney Co said it will launch its Disney+ video streaming service in Canada and the Netherlands on Nov. 12, the same date as its previously announced US launch. Disney+ will also launch in Australia and New Zealand a week later with the service priced between $6 to $8 per month in these countries.
(Reuters, 8/19/19)
2019 Aug 20, Austria's plan to provide 60 million euros ($66.5 million) for the rollout of ultra-fast broadband internet services in remote rural areas of the Carinthia region won approval from the European Union.
(Reuters, 8/20/19)
2019 Aug 23, France delayed the planned signing of a pledge by Internet platforms to fight hate speech online amid pressure from the United States. A French minister said that he was still hopeful the US will join the initiative.
(Reuters, 8/24/19)
2019 Aug 25, Australian officials said the government will block access to internet domains hosting terrorist material during crisis events and will consider legislation to force digital platforms to improve the safety of their services.
(Reuters, 8/25/19)
2019 Aug 30, Ethiopia's state-run Ethio Telecom said it plans to install a 4G network in the capital and other regions and to upgrade other network services, as the government prepares to open up the sector to private foreign investment.
(Reuters, 8/30/19)
2019 Sep 3, It was reported that US online streaming service Netflix has applied for a license to continue operating in Turkey under new online broadcasting rules that have raised fears over possible censorship in the future.
(Reuters, 9/3/19)
2019 Sep 3, A California appeals court ruled that restaurants, hotels and other businesses that serve the public in California must make their websites accessible to the blind. The court cited a 1990 federal law prohibiting discrimination against the disabled in any place of public accommodation.
(SFC, 9/4/19, p.C4)
2019 Sep 5, Facebook Inc said it is launching its dating services in the United States, sending its shares up 2%.
(Reuters, 9/5/19)
2019 Sep 5, Indonesia said it has partially lifted an internet blackout imposed following civil unrest in the country's easternmost region of Papua, but is yet to restore access in areas where the most violent protests erupted.
(Reuters, 9/5/19)
2019 Sep 12, Google said it has agreed to pay close to 1 billion euros ($1.10 billion) to French authorities to settle a fiscal fraud probe that began four years ago in a deal that may create a legal precedent for other large tech companies present in the country.
(Reuters, 9/12/19)
2019 Sep 24, The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google will not have to apply Europe's "right to be forgotten" law globally in a landmark case that has pitted personal privacy rights against freedom of speech.
(Reuters, 9/24/19)
2019 Oct 17, A Palestinian court blocked access to 59 websites critical of the Palestinian Authority. The decision was made public on Oct. 21 and drew wide criticism. Most of the sites are run by supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas or Mohammed Dahlan, rivals to President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' government called on the attorney general to overturn the decision.
(AP, 10/22/19)
2019 Oct 24, Argentina gave the go-ahead to Amazon.com Inc's Web Services division AWS to build an $800-million data facility in Buenos Aires, which would mark a massive investment for the company in South America.
(Reuters, 10/25/19)
2019 Nov 1, Russia's "sovereign internet" law, which President Vladimir Putin signed back in May, took effect. It gives the country's government power to block access to content whether from within or from outside Russia "in an emergency," which is up to the government to decide.
(Engadget, 11/2/19)
2019 Nov 11, SpaceX launched 60 mini satellites, each weighing 575 pounds, from Cape Canaveral. This was the 2nd batch of an orbiting network meant to provide global internet coverage.
(SFC, 11/12/19, p.A6)
2019 Nov 15, Apple removed 181 vaping apps from its online store as regulators cracked down e-cigarette products.
(SFC, 11/16/19, p.D3)
2019 Nov 17, Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency said authorities have restricted internet access in Iran, after nearly two days of nationwide protests triggered by a petrol price hike.
(AFP, 11/17/19)
2019 Nov 21, Iran began restoring internet access in the capital Tehran and a number of provinces after a days-long nationwide shutdown meant to help stifle unrest over fuel price hikes. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards said several alleged ringleaders of the recent unrest in the country have been arrested by intelligence services. The Guard’s official news service Sepah News reported that the unidentified individuals had links to foreign security services.
(Reuters, 11/21/19)(Bloomberg, 11/21/19)
2019 Nov 26, Russian internet giant Yandex was given the green light to pursue planned changes to its governance structure, after President Vladimir Putin signed a law late today concerning the management of Russian offshore companies.
(Reuters, 11/27/19)
2019 Nov 26, A court in Vietnam sentenced a Facebook user to six years in prison for a series of posts he made on the social media platform that the Southeast Asian country's government said were "anti-state".
(Reuters, 11/26/19)
2019 Dec 6, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders promised to invest $150 billion to bring high-speed internet to “every household in America" while breaking up and better regulating monopolies he says currently limit access to drive up their profits.
(AP, 12/6/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Walt Disney Co's Disney+ has been downloaded 22 million times on mobile devices since the launch of the streaming service in November, according to a report by research firm Apptopia.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 17, A bulletin issued by the US Navy showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Last month US army cadets were instructed not to use TikTok, after Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the army using TikTok in their recruiting.
(Reuters, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 20, India's police banned public gatherings in parts of New Delhi and other cities for a third day and cut internet services to try to stop growing protests against a new citizenship law that have left 11 people dead and more than 4,000 others detained.
(AP, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 25, Iran's semiofficial ILNA news agency reported that authorities have shut down mobile internet service in some provinces over security concerns.
(AP, 12/25/19)
2019 Dec 26, Russia's Ministry of Communications announced that it has successfully tested a countrywide alternative to the internet. The government's "sovereign internet" law, which allows content to be blocked in an "emergency situation," took effect in November, and Pres. Vladimir Putin recently signed a law that bans the sale of devices without pre-installed Russian apps.
(Endgadget, 12/26/19)
2019 Dec 26, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of Wikipedia, saying the Turkish government's two-year ban on the online encyclopedia constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017, accusing it of being part of a “smear campaign" against the country.
(AP, 12/26/19)
2020 Jan 6, Facebook said it is beefing up its policies for removing videos that have been edited of synthesized in ways that aren't apparent to the average person. FB said it is beefing manipulated videos known as deepfakes, the false but realistic clips created with artificial intelligence and sophisticated tools.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 22, In Switzerland top NGOs including Greenpeace and Amnesty International called for the $1.1 billion sale of the .org internet domain to a private company to be blocked, saying it could do "irreparable harm." The directors of 10 leading NGOs published an open letter at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos urging ISOC and ICANN, the internet's governing authority, to stop the sale.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 25, Limited mobile data services and internet was temporarily restored in Jammu and Kashmir, ending nearly a six month communications lockdown. Access was limited to about 300 "whitelisted" websites and internet speed remained low. The decision will be reviewed on Jan. 31.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Feb 9, A report released by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., said North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong Un, to evade a “maximum pressure" US sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Tel Aviv court ordered Facebook Inc to unblock the private account of a worker at Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. Similar rulings were expected for other employees in the coming days. Facebook's messaging service WhatsApp had accused the Israeli firm of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users in a hacking spree targeting diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials across the globe.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iranian cyberpolice announced the arrests of 24 people accused of online rumor-mongering about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has claimed 19 lives in the country. The health ministry announced four more deaths and 44 new infections, including in six previously unaffected provinces. This brought the total to 139 cases.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy's Enel said it agreed on the need to provide the country with an ultrabroadband network, after Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri urged parties involved in the plan to find an agreement.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Mar 4, India lifted some restrictions on internet access in Kashmir, including allowing access to social media websites for the first time since the restive Himalayan region was locked down and its autonomy revoked in August.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 20, Google's google.com/covid19 went live on the web late today offering education, prevention and local resources related to the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 30, Facebook Inc pledged $100 million in financing and advertising spending to support news organizations, including local publishers in the United States, reeling from pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020 Mar 30, India's health ministry invited doctors in Indian-administered Kashmir to an online training session on managing ventilators. Most, however, were unable to attend because of long-running curbs on the internet that have prevented those living in Kashmir from accessing information about the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020 Apr 2, Twitter said it has deleted 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras and Indonesia, saying they violated company policy and were a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation".
(The Guardian, 4/2/20)
2020 Apr 6, Peace activists in the Gaza Strip took part in a web conference with Israeli activists. Within days Hamas-run security forces arrested several of the activists on treason charges.
(AP, 4/9/20)
2020 Apr 8, Rakuten, a Japananese technology company, launched the first full-scale 5G virtualized network. In October Rakuten Mobile launched the world's first 5G network based on Openran, a new technology seen as an alternative to products by Ericsson, Nokia and China's Huawei.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.47)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Apr 10, Russia's Prosecutor General's Office started blocking access to "fake news" social media posts criticizing quarantine measures taken by the city of Moscow to curb the new coronavirus. Russia last year passed legislation with tough new fines for people spreading misinformation or insulting the state.
(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Apr 23, Amazon said its Indian arm will soon add small local shops as sellers on its platform as a way to provide them broader online exposure and offer consumers a greater selection of merchandise.
(Reuters, 4/23/20)
2020 Apr 23, Alphabet Inc's Google said all advertisers would have to complete a verification process before buying ad space on its platform, starting this summer, in a bid to make its ad practices more transparent.
(Reuters, 4/23/20)
2020 Apr, A Trump app was launched. The smartphone app aimed to become a one-stop news, information and entertainment platform for supporters of Donald Trump and has since often placed among the Top 10 in Apple's rankings of news apps, sometimes above those of individual news organizations such as CNN, the New York Times and Reuters.
(Reuters, 6/2/20)
2020 May 14, A coalition of 20 groups, including Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission saying that the video app TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is collecting personal information of kids under 13 without their parents' consent.
(AP, 5/14/20)
2020 May 15, An Indonesian tax official said the government will require big internet companies to pay value-added taxes (VAT) on sales of digital products and services from July as part of efforts to boost revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/15/20)
2020 May 23, India-based Reliance Industries Ltd said it has launched an online grocery service, JioMart, in a move aimed at rivalling Amazon.com's local unit and Walmart Inc's Flipkart in the huge Indian market.
(AP, 5/24/20)
2020 May 27, President Trump threatened to impose federal regulations on — or even shut down — social media platforms after Twitter added a fact-checking reply to his tweets about mail-in voting.
(Yahoo News, 5/27/20)
2020 May 28, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to chip away at regulations protecting social media companies from lawsuits over content posted on their platforms.
(The Week, 5/29/20)
2020 May, Facebook agreed to pay $52 million to 11,250 moderators who developed post-traumatic stress disorder from looking at the worst of the internet.
(Econ., 10/24/20, p.19)
2020 Jun 11, Twitter said that China has stepped up its effort to spread misinformation on the platform by creating tens of thousands of fake accounts that discussed the Communist Party’s response to the virus and the Hong Kong protests. Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts pushing false information favorable to China's communist rulers.
(NY Times, 6/12/20)(SFC, 6/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jun 17, A collection of American civil-rights groups began a #StopHateForProfit campaign aimed at Facebook. By July 1 more than 600 firms had pulled ads from the platform.
(Econ., 7/4/20, p.58)
2020 Jun 18, Facebook and Twitter both pushed back against Trump’s use of inflammatory material. Facebook removed advertisements by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a red triangle that the Nazis used to classify Communist political prisoners during World War II. Twitter added a warning — an exclamation point with the label “Manipulated Media" — to a Trump tweet that featured a video of two toddlers running down a sidewalk. The video, which included a headline about a “racist baby," had been made to look like a CNN segment.
(NY Times, 6/19/20)
2020 Jun 22, The encrypted instant messenger Telegram said it's ramping up efforts to develop anti-censorship technologies serving users in countries where it is banned or partially blocked, including China and Iran.
(TechCrunch, 6/22/20)
2020 Jun 26, Facebook said that it will flag all "newsworthy" posts from politicians that break its rules, including those of Pres. Donald Trump.
(SFC, 6/27/20, p.C1)
2020 Jun 29, In Ethiopia musician Hachalu Hundessa (34), well known for his political songs, was shot and killed on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. Several people were arrested. Demonstrations soon broke out in response and seven died during the spontaneous protests. Security forces cut off the Internet when the violence started.
(BBC, 6/30/20)(Econ., 7/11/20, p.37)
2020 Jun 29, New Delhi said late today that TikTok was among the 59 apps which it believed posed a "threat to sovereignty and integrity," following its recent border clash with China. Some 200 million users soon lost access to the app. Roposo, a local rival, got 2.2 million sign-ups in 48 hours.
(Reuters, 6/30/20)(Econ., 7/25/20, p.50)
2020 Jul 2, European law-enforcement agencies said they had infiltrated a secret global criminal chat system used to plot the murder of rival criminals, money laundering, and the selling of illegal goods.
(Business Insider, 7/2/20)
2020 Jul 14, Ethiopia entered its third week without internet service for almost everyone after days of deadly unrest, as the government said it’s trying to prevent speech that could further inflame ethnic tensions.
(AP, 7/14/20)
2020 Jul 15, Tweets promising bitcoin rewards hit some of the platform's largest accounts this afternoon, rolling through some of the largest and most influential Twitter accounts. Big companies were hit as were major political and politics-adjacent figures. Twitter put out a statement promising to investigate and "fix it," and locked down the accounts of those impacted and restricted all verified accounts.
(Good Morning America, 7/16/20)
2020 Aug 5, Instagram, a unit of Facebook, launched Reels, a TikTok look-alike.
(Econ., 8/8/20, p.52)
2020 Sep 27, A US federal judge temporarily halted a Trump administration order that would have blocked new downloads of TikTok in the United States, granting the Chinese-owned app a reprieve.
(NY Times, 9/27/20)
2020 Sep 30, Twitter Inc said it had removed 130 accounts, which appeared to originate in Iran, as they were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first US presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.
(AP, 9/30/20)
2020 Sep, Telefonica, a Spanish multinational telecommunications company, teamed with Japan-based Rakuten to deploy Openran more widely in its 5G networks by 2025.
(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Oct 8, Facebook said it had closed accounts in multiple countries, from government or military-linked networks it said were spreading disinformation. This included 17 pages, 50 accounts and six Instagram accounts from Myanmar.
(AFP, 10/9/20)
2020 Oct 8, Twitter said it has closed an Iran-based network of accounts fanning the flames around racial justice protests in the US sparked by the death of George Floyd. Twitter also said it had closed more than 900 accounts linked to the Thai army for attacking prominent opposition figures and diffusing pro-government and military propaganda.
(AFP, 10/9/20)
2020 Oct 10, It was reported that the Tuber app launched this week in China allows access to some content on Western social media sites long banned domestically such as YouTube, marking the first product by a major Chinese tech firm that helps internet users bypass the Great Firewall.
(Reuters, 10/10/20)
2020 Oct 20, The US Justice Dept. alleged that Google ties up phone-makers, networks and browsers in deals that make it the default search engine.
(Econ., 10/24/20, p.11)
2020 Oct 21, Quibi, the beleaguered short-form content company started by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, announced that it was shutting down just six months after the app became available.
(NY Times, 10/21/20)
2020 Nov 17, Twitter launched these ephemeral tweets, dubbed "fleets", after having tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
(Reuters, 11/18/20)
2020 Nov, British mobile phone operator Vodafone said it would use a technology called Openran to replace some gear made by Hauwei, a Chinese firm whose products are considered to much of a security risk to be used in the new 5G mobile networks.
(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Dec 18, OneWeb, the satellite firm rescued by the British government and India's Bharti Group, resumed flights in its push to provide global broadband coverage as 36 of its satellites blasted off into orbit from Russia's Far East. The launch was the first fully commercial flight from Russia's new Vostochny cosmodrome.
(AP, 12/18/20)
2020 Dec 23, Russian lawmakers approved a raft of new measures restricting political activity as well as tightening control over the internet.
(SFC, 12/24/20, p.A3)
2021 Jan 6, HKChronicles, a Hong Kong website that publishes material mainly related to anti-government protests in 2019, was blocked by the city's internet service providers (ISPs). Hong Kong police had invoked the city's national security law for the first time to block HKChronicles.
(Reuters, 1/10/21)
2021 Jan 8, Alphabet Inc's Google suspended Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives for its hands-off approach to content moderation, citing posts inciting violence. Apple Inc gave the service 24 hours to submit a detailed moderation plan.
(AP, 1/9/21)
2021 Jan 8, Twitter Inc deleted new tweets posted by US President Donald Trump on official government account @POTUS and suspended the account of his presidential campaign, after booting his personal account off the platform permanently.
(Reuters, 1/8/21)
2021 Jan 11, German prosecutors took down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet and arrested its suspected operator, an Australian man (34). The darknet is a part of the web accessible only with specialized identity-cloaking tools.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2021 Jan 12, It was reported that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who was knighted for inventing the internet navigation system known as the World Wide Web, wants to re-make cyberspace once again with a new startup called Inrupt.
(Reuters, 1/12/20)
2021 Jan 13, It was reported that Uganda has ordered internet service providers to block all social media platforms and messaging apps. ahead of a contentious election.
(BBC, 1/13/20)(Econ., 1/16/21, p.9)
2021 Jan 14, Hong Kong internet service provider Hong Kong Broadband Network said it had blocked access to a pro-democracy website to comply with the city’s national security law.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2021 Jan 18, Ugandans celebrated the resumption of internet services after a shutdown was imposed ahead of last week's election. However, social media platforms remain blocked and are only accessible using Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
(BBC, 1/18/21)
2021 Jan 21, Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced the end of Loon, its internet-beaming balloon company, that was providing online access from the stratosphere.
(AP, 1/22/21)
2021 Jan 25, Iranian users of the Signal messaging service said they have lost access to the app on their mobile devices. They could use the system through virtual private networks, services that shield internet users by encrypting their data traffic. Some still had access through desktop version of the app.
(AP, 1/25/21)
2021 Jan 27, Alphabet unit Google opened a center in Dublin to tackle harmful online content, in a move also designed to ease regulatory concerns about how the company and other tech giants police a growing problem on the internet.
(Reuters, 1/27/21)
2021 Jan 29, India's Haryana state blocked mobile internet across most of its districts, following clashes between protesting Indian farmers and groups of men shouting anti-farmer and pro-police slogans.
(Reuters, 1/29/21)
2021 Feb 6, Myanmar's new military junta cut all internet access. The junta had ordered the blockage of Facebook and other social media platforms in recent days. Facebook called on authorities to unblock access to social media services.
(Reuters, 2/6/21)
2021 Feb 7, Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Myanmar for the second consecutive day to protest last week's military coup and show support for the country's elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Internet access was restored.
(Reuters, 2/7/21)
2021 Feb 8, Chinese users lost access to Clubhouse, adding it to thousands of websites and social media apps the ruling party blocks the public from seeing using the world's most extensive system of internet filters.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 14, In Myanmar sightings of armored personnel carriers Yangon and leaked orders of an impending internet shutdown raised political tensions late today, after vast numbers of people around the country flouted orders against demonstrations to protest the military’s seizure of power.
(AP, 2/14/21)
2021 Feb 17, Online brokerage Public.com, which competes with Robinhood, said it had raised $220 million in fresh funds from new and existing investors, lifting its valuation to $1.2 billion.
(Reuters, 2/17/21)
2021 Feb 18, Facebook blocked all news in Australia as the country prepared to make tech companies pay for the news on their platforms.
(NY Times, 2/18/21)
2021 Feb 24, Iranian authorities began shutting down the mobile data network in the restive province of Sistan and Baluchestan. Rights groups called the disruptions an apparent “tool to conceal" the government’s harsh crackdown on protests convulsing the area.
(AP, 2/27/21)
2021 Feb 26, A US federal judge approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
(AP, 2/26/21)
2021 Mar 16, It was reported that Chinese app stores have removed Alibaba Group's UC Browser for mobiles, after it was criticized on Chinese state television's annual consumer rights show for including medical ads by unqualified companies.
(Reuters, 3/16/21)
2021 Mar 18, Alphabet Inc's YouTube said it is rolling out a short-form video-streaming service on its platform in the United States as it looks to better compete with rival TikTok in the hugely popular category.
(Reuters, 3/18/21)
2021 Mar 25, OneWeb launched 36 satellites into orbit from a cosmodrome in the far east of Russia as part of the satellite firm's plans to deliver global high-speed internet access. OneWeb resumed flights in December after emerging from bankruptcy protection with $1 billion in equity investment from a consortium of the British government and India's Bharti Enterprises.
(Reuters, 3/25/21)
2021 Mar 26, Kenya's biggest telecoms operator Safaricom started trials for 5G high-speed internet network using technology from Nokia and Huawei. Safaricom is part owned by South Africa's Vodacom and Britain's Vodafone.
(Reuters, 3/26/21)
2021 Apr 2, Myanmar's wireless broadband internet services were shut down by order of the military. Protesters continued to defy the threat of lethal violence to oppose the junta's takeover.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 8, An information blackout under Myanmar's military junta worsened as fiber broadband service, the last legal way for ordinary people to access the internet, became intermittently inaccessible on several networks.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Naspers' Dutch-listed subsidiary Prosus NV sold a 2% stake in the Chinese gaming and social media giant in the world's largest-ever block trade, reducing its stake to 28.9%. Investors in Naspers Ltd, a South African multinational consumer Internet company, said they want proceeds from a $14.7 billion stake sale in its Tencent Holdings investment to go towards blockbuster acquisitions or a share buyback.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 14, Turkey's Competition Board said it had fined Google more than 296 million lira ($36.65 million) for abusing its dominant position in the search engine services area.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 23, Dan Kaminsky (42), a computer whiz who helped develop technology to protect the backbone of the internet, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F8)
2021 Apr 29, Chinese financial watchdogs summoned 13 internet platforms engaged in finance business, including heavyweights Tencent and ByteDance, to order them to strengthen compliance with regulations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 May 1, China's main internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said it has found that 33 mobile phone apps have broken data privacy rules by collecting data without consent, among other issues.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 13, Google said it has won a deal to provide cloud services to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has launched a slew of Starlink satellites, to provide high-speed internet.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 19, Microsoft Corp said it is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 Jun 8, A problem at SF-based Fastly meant internet users couldn't connect to a host of popular websites early today including The New York Times, the Guardian, Twitch, Reddit and the British government's homepage.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Fastly, the SF-based company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world's top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 22, The US Justice Department said American authorities seized 33 of Iran’s state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation. Three other seized websites were operated by the Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group, Kata'ib Hizballah, which more than a decade ago was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jul 4, China's cyberspace regulator said that it had ordered smartphone app stores to stop offering Didi Global Inc's app after finding that the ride-hailing giant had illegally collected users' personal data.
(Reuters, 7/4/21)
2021 Jul 22, A monitoring group said mobile phone internet service in Iran is being disrupted a week into protests in the country's southwest over water shortages. The unrest has seen at least three people killed.
(AP, 7/22/21)
2021 Aug 5, Two Russian news outlets and a legal aid group backed by a leading Kremlin critic shut down after authorities blocked their websites, the government's latest moves targeting independent media, opposition supporters and human rights activists ahead of Russia’s September parliamentary election.
(AP, 8/5/21)
2021 Aug 27, It was reported that China is framing rules to ban internet companies whose data poses potential security risks from listing outside the country, including in the United States.
(Reuters, 8/27/21)
2021 Aug 30, In South Sudan internet services were disrupted and security forces patrolled the streets after activists called for protests against President Salva Kiir's government.
(Reuters, 8/30/21)
2021 Sep 6, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree changing internet regulations to combat "arbitrary removal" of accounts, profiles and content. Bolsonaro urged people on Twitter and Facebook to follow him on Telegram, a messaging service with a more hands-off approach to content.
(Reuters, 9/6/21)(NY Times, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 8, Researchers said a misinformation campaign on social media in support of Chinese government interests has expanded to new languages and platforms. They said it even tried to get people to show up to protests in the United States. The operation was identified in 2019 as running hundreds of accounts in English and Chinese aimed at discrediting the Hong Kong democracy movement.
(Reuters, 9/8/21)
2021 Sep 9, It was reported that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is temporarily banning social media companies from removing certain content, including his claims that the only way he’ll lose next year’s elections is if the vote is rigged. Bolsonaro met by videoconference with truckers leading blockades of highways over high fuel prices in multiple states across the country. He said the allied truckers had agreed to stand down on Sept. 12, a move that could bring significant relief to global commodity markets.
(NY Times, 9/9/21)(Reuters, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 11, It was reported that China's industry ministry has told technology companies including Alibaba Group Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd to stop blocking each other's website links from their platforms.
(Reuters, 9/11/21)
2021 Sep 15, A US federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, that challenged the National Security Agency's mass interception and searching of Americans' international internet communications.
(Reuters, 9/16/21)
2021 Sep 17, Around 700,000 people in Myanmar were estimated to have lost internet access after attacks on telecommunication equipment run by Mytel, the partly army-controlled company said amid reports that dozens of its towers were damaged.
(Reuters, 9/17/21)
2021 Sep 18, India's antitrust authority found in a report on its two-year probe that Google abused the dominant position of its Android operating system in India, using its "huge financial muscle" to illegally hurt competitors.
(Reuters, 9/18/21)
2021 Oct 1, Texas man Seth Aaron Pendley (28), who wanted to blow up an Amazon data center in Virginia to disrupt the internet and upset "the oligarchy," was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Pendley had communicated with an undercover FBI agent instead of an explosives supplier.
(NBC News, 10/1/21)
2021 Oct 2, It was reported that Mauritius-based AFRICNIC, a non-profic that assigns internet addresses in Africa, has been sued by Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. AFRICNIC has revoked 6.2 million African addresses obtained by Heng under contested circumstances from 2013 to 2016.
(SFC, 10/2/21, p.A3)
2021 Oct 27, Indonesia's 2019 decision to block internet access during periods of social unrest was lawful, its constitutional court ruled, in a move activists said sets a dangerous precedent for internet freedom in the world's third largest democracy.
(Reuters, 10/27/21)
2021 Nov 9, Satellite internet company Viasat said it will enter Latin America as an internet provider targeting remote communities with limited connectivity, seeking to win customers where telecoms have failed to make inroads. A day earlier Viasat announced that it was buying rival Inmarsat for $7.3 billion.
(Reuters, 11/9/21)
2021 Nov 10, A Sudanese court ordered the country’s three main telecommunications providers to restore internet access. However, authorities did not show any sign yet of carrying out that order.
(AP, 11/11/21)
2021 Nov 26, The Indian government advised people against subscribing to Starlink Internet Services, a division of billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX aerospace company, as it does not have a license to operate in the country.
(Reuters, 11/26/21)
2021 Dec 10, Cybersecurity firm Cloudstrike said a software vulnerability in the online game Minecraft is rapidly emerging as a major threat to internet-connected devices arund the world. New Zealand's computer emergency response team was among the first to report the flaw a day earlier. The flaw in open-source Apache software was discovered on Nov. 24 by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.A5)
2021 Dec 23, The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it will scrutinize online platforms such as social media networks and video-sharing sites to clamp down on fake accounts and information as part of its drive to "clean up" the internet.
(Reuters, 12/23/21)
2021 Dec 25, OVD-Info, a Russian organization that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid to detainees, said that government regulators blocked its website, the latest move in a months-long crackdown on independent media and human rights organizations.
(AP, 12/25/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Internet
Return to home
Return to home
1895 Paul Otlet (1868-1944), Belgian librarian, met future Nobel Prize winner Henri La Fontaine, who joined him in planning to create the Mundaneum, a master bibliography of all the world’s published knowledge. Otlet and LaFontaine eventually persuaded the Belgian government to support their project, proposing to build a “city of knowledge" that would bolster the government’s bid to become host of the League of Nations.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1)
1934 Paul Otlet (1868-1944), head of the Mundaneum in Belgium, sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes," as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. In his 1934 book “Monde" he laid out his vision of a “mechanical, collective brain" that would house all the world’s information, made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network.
(www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1)
1948 Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek, professors at MIT, established a small acoustics consulting firm and soon added a former student of Bolt’s, Robert Newman. In 1949 BBN won its first major consulting contract, designing the acoustics for the UN General Assembly Hall.
(www.bbn.com/about/timeline/)
1962 Aug, The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, 4 starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1 p.3)(www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#Origins)
1964 Engineer Paul Baran proposed the use of distributed networks for communication. His architecture became the foundation of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.72)
1966 Robert W. Taylor (1932-2017) began working at the Pentagon for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). He quickly called for the agency’s three computers to be able to intercommunicate. His idea led to Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet.
(SSFC, 4/16/17, p.C10)
1968-1998 American Engineer Jon Postel (1943-1998) coordinated the Internet’s protocols and addressing system over this period.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.68)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel)
1969 Sep 2, The first Internet message was a packet switch delivered to UCLA from BBN Corp. (Bolt Beranek and Newman). The 1st 2 machines of ARPANET were connected at Prof. Len Kleinrock's lab at UCLA. The US Dept. of Defense’s Advanced Research and Projects Agency (ARPANET) launched a self-healing computer network with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). By the early 1980’s the military component became a separate network and the true birth of today’s Internet is marked. By 2007 some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap the Internet and start over.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_hi_te/rebuilding_the_internet_8)(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.3)(SFC, 8/30/99, p.C10)(SFC, 9/3/99, p.C1)
1969 Oct 29, Researchers sent the first inter-node message between two sites on ARPAnet. The first e-mail message crossed the Arpanet as a team under Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA communicated with a team under Douglas Englebart at Stanford. The US Dept. of Defense’s Advanced Research and Projects Agency (ARPANET) launched a self-healing computer network with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) [see Sep 2].
(http://tinyurl.com/lpq766)(WSJ, 1/14/99, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET)
1969 Frank Heart (1929-2018) oversaw the first routing computer for the Arpanet. He led a Bolt Beranek and Newman team to build the Interface Message Processor (IMP) to switch data among Arpanet computers.
(SFC, 6/27/18, p.D5)
1971 Jul 4, Michael S. Hart (1947-2011) began typing the Declaration of Independence into the memory of a mainframe computer at the Univ. of Illinois. This led him to begin Project Gutenberg, an effort to put US historical documents on line. It was later expanded to include books out of copyright.
(WSJ, 11/21/96, p.B12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart)
1971 Ray Tomlinson (d.2016), an engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), invented an e-mail program that allowed users to exchange messages across a distributed network. He devised the @ symbol to designate a digital address. In 1972 Tomlinson modified the program to run on ARPANET where it became a quick hit.
(http://tinyurl.com/6s97pv)(SFC, 10/23/96, p.B1)(TIME, 10/20/14, p.65)(Econ, 3/12/16, p.80)
1971 French politicians challenged IRIA, a state funded computer science institute, to begin research into a national computer network. Louis Pouzin was chosen to head the project, which became known as CYCLADES. The project’s first connection debuted in 1973.
(Econ, 11/30/13, TQ p.20)
1972 Jul, Robert Metcalf (b.1946) at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) combined packet switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the foundations for computer networks. This system was called Ethernet and marked the first Internet message. The IEEE committee 802.3 later defined the Ethernet standard. He later fixed May 22, 1973, as the birthdate of Ethernet, a day on which he circulated a memo about his ideas to PARC colleagues.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R26)(SFEC, 3/28/99, Z1 p.8)(Econ, 6/12/04, p.26)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.23)
1972 Vinton Cerf, hearing-impaired since birth, developed e-mail-like text messaging protocols for the Arpanet.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.D3)
1973 May 22, Robert Metcalf (b.1946), at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), circulated a memo about his Ethernet ideas to PARC colleagues. He later fixed this day as the birthdate of Ethernet. Metcalf had combined packet switching from the Arpanet and single wire broadcasting to lay the foundations for computer networks. Bob Metcalf described ethernet for the 1st time in a patent memo.
(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.23)(SFC, 10/25/00, p.A16)
1973 Researchers Robert Kahn, of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Project Agency, and Vinton Cerf, of Stanford Univ., developed a standard for incompatible networks to send messages and files to one another. It was a new language called TCP/IP, and it included a way to route data packages among different kinds of networks. This allowed the Internet to be born.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R28)
1974 May, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf published a paper that outlined the protocols of the Internet. Cerf and Kahn used aspects of a data network created by Frenchman Louis Pouzin that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Kahn and Cerf’s Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was updated in 1978. In 2004 Cerf and Kahn received the A.M. Turing Award for their work. By December full specifications for the new proposal were published.
(SFC, 6/11/05, p.C1)(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.33)(Econ, 11/30/13, TQ p.19)
1978 Feb 16, The 1st Computer Bulletin Board System was Ward & Randy's CBBS in Chicago.
(www.historyoftheinternet.com/chap3.html)
1979 Jun, Robert Metcalf of Xerox Corp. started 3Com Corp., consulting company, and soon began producing Ethernet hardware. The company specialized in connecting computers using the Ethernet system, which he helped develop. The early Ethernet adapters sold for $5000. In 1994 they sold for $100.
(WSJ,11/14/94, p.R26)(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.24)
1979 Roy Trubshow and Richard Bartle, Univ. of Essex students, created the 1st text-only MUD (Multi-User Dungeon).
(NW, 11/25/02, p.48)
1980 Jun 25, The Associated Press chose 11 major newspapers to launch a cooperative experiment to deliver news electronically to computer-equipped homes.
(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F2)
1982 Sep 19, Prof. Scott E. Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon Univ. posted an emoticon, the first online smiley face, in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m., during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.
(AP, 9/18/07)
1982 Sep, 3Com under Robert Metcalf started shipping EtherLink adaptor cards for IBM’s new personal computer.
(Econ, 12/12/09, TQ p.24)
1982 William Gibson authored “Neuromancer," a science fiction short story in which he coined the term cyberspace.
(Econ, 7/12/14, SR p.3)
1982 Symantec, a provider of security technology, was founded. It went public in 1989 and was acquired by Norton in 1990.
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.I1)
1982 Rich Skrenta (b.1967), a freshman in Pennsylvania, developed Elk Cloner as a practical joke. It was the 1st virus to hit computers worldwide and later became known as a "boot sector" virus. When it boots, or starts up, an infected disk places a copy of the virus in the computer's memory. Whenever someone inserts a clean disk into the machine and types the command "catalog" for a list of files, a copy gets written onto that disk as well. The newly infected disk is passed on to other people, other machines and other locations.
(AP, 9/1/07)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
1982 France launched Minitel, a national videotex communications network. It became outdated with the rise of the Internet and was scheduled to close in 2011. During the first half of 1982, the Division of l'lnformatique Parlementaire studied the feasibility of an internal videotex system for the Chamber of Deputies in France and in September 1982, M. Louis Mexandeau, Minister of the PTT gave his support to the project. On 30 October 1982, the Bureau of the Assemblée Nationale approved implementation in two phases; first of 100 terminals; and secondly equipment to support all deputies with constituencies in metropolitan France.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel)
1983 Jan 1, TCP/IP became the standard for Internet protocol.
(SFC, 8/30/99, p.C10)
1983 Paul Mochapetris, an Internet address system researcher, grouped computers into groups. "Thus .edu signified a university, .gov indicated a government agency. Corporations got .com."
(WSJ, 10/11/99, p.B1)
1984 Apr 1, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant launched the Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) in Sausalito. In La Jolla, Ca., Larry Brilliant, physician and head of Network Technologies Int’l. in Michigan, pitched the idea for a public computer conferencing system to Stewart Brand, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Their meeting led to the 1985 founding of “The Well" online service that operated as a collection of conferences. It used the PicoSpan conferencing software. In 2001 Katie Hafner authored “The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community."
(Wired, 5/97, p.100)(SSFC, 5/27/01, DB p.69)
1984 Mike Lazaridis founded Research In Motion (RIM) while a student at the Univ. of Waterloo in Ontario. RIM went on to produce the hand-held Blackberry e-mail device.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.68)
1984 Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, envisioned a computer system for researchers to share documents and databases. This grew to become the World Wide Web. In 2004 Lee won the 1st Millennium Technology Prize.
(WSJ, 10/1/99, p.W6)(SFC, 4/16/04, p.C1)
1984 Ray Ozzie left Lotus Development and founded Iris Associates, which created Lotus Notes, a collaborative software program. Iris was acquired by Lotus in 1994 and Lotus was acquired by IBM in 1995. In 2006 Bill Gates named Ozzie to succeed him as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ozzie)
1985 Mar 23, Joshua Silver, Oxford physicist, began contemplating the development of self adjusting eyeglasses. By 2009 some 30,000 of Silver's specs had been distributed to the poor in 15 countries; his eventual target is 100 million pairs.
(SSFC, 1/11/09, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/96buv9)
1985 Mar, The Well online conferencing service went live from Sausalito, Ca., with a VAX computer, 6 modems and 6 phone lines.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.B5)(Wired, 5/97, p.106)
1985 Radia Perlman, software designer and network engineer, earned the name “Mother of the Internet" for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol, a fundamental function to the operation of network bridges.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.A6)
1986 Jan 16, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) held its first meeting in San Diego. It was formed to develop technical standards for the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force)(Econ, 3/5/15, p.56)
1986 Jan, The first PC virus, called Brain, was discovered in the wild. Though it achieved fame because it was the first of its type, the virus was not widespread as it could only travel by hitching a ride on floppy disks swapped between users. The first virus to hit computers running a Microsoft Corp.'s operating system (DOS) came when two brothers in Pakistan wrote a boot sector program now dubbed "Brain," purportedly to punish people who spread pirated software.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4630910.stm)(AP, 9/1/07)
1986 Aug, Dr. Clifford Stoll, the computer systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley, discovered computer break-ins. He monitored them for approximately 12 months and realized that the had confused Lawrence Berkeley with Lawrence Livermore.'' A West German citizen used global communications networks to secretly gain access to more than 30 computers belonging to the US military and military contractors.
(http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/6.68.html)(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1986 Oct 14, California Lottery’s first online computer game, Lotto 6/49, began to run.
(SSFC, 10/9/11, DB p.42)
1986 The US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was created. Under the act the release of a computer virus was illegal, but the construction of such viruses was not.
(WSJ, 3/31/05, p.B1)
1986 German hackers in Hanover, working for the KGB, sneaked into American military networks. The “Cuckoo’s Nest" cyber attack was caught when an official noted a 75-cent billing error revealing unauthorized use of a computer network.
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
1987 Sep 14, The first e-mail from China was sent to an int’l. network and proclaimed: “Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world."
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.3)
1988 Nov 2, A computer worm, named Morris, unleashed by a Cornell University graduate student began replicating, clogging thousands of computers around the country, but causing no real damage. The virus infected an estimated 6,000 university and military computers over the Internet.
(AP, 11/2/98)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
1989 Mar, The first versions of HTML that launched the Web appeared. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. His document describing the initial project was titled: “Information Management: A Proposal."
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W26)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.4)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.32)
1989 The Univ. of Phoenix began teaching online.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.101)
1989 America Online (AOL) made its debut. In 1998 Kara Swisher wrote "aol.com: How Steve Case beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web. [see Control Video in 1982]
(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.1,8)
1989 Brewster Kahle founded WAIS, a company named after the Wide Area Information Server protocol, to make software for online publishing. The protocol was an early form of internet search engine, which had been developed by Thinking Machines with Apple, Dow Jones and KPMG. In 1995 AOL bought the firm.
(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.34)
1989 John McAfee, an engineer for Lockheed, posted his VirusScan software on an Internet bulletin board as freeware. He earned $5 million in the first year and founded McAfee Associates. The company merged with Network General in 1997.
(SFC, 11/13/12, p.A8)
1990 Astrophysicist Clifford Stoll authored “The Cuckoo's Egg," a true account of the tracking of a hacker who probed the US's most sensitive secrets, using keywords, such as "thermonuclear war." Stoll's pursuit of a hacker trying to access American computer networks led to the discovery of a West German spy ring.
(www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Clifford-Stoll/dp/0671726889)
1990 The World Wide Web server prototype was built. The Archie file transfer protocol was developed. A semi-crawler search engine was built.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1990 Thomas Campana Jr., Chicago-area engineer, created a system to send e-mails between computers and wireless devices. He founded a company called NTP that filed suit in 2001 against Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry wireless device.
(SFC, 12/1/05, p.C8)
1991 Aug, James Gossling developed his new computer language called Oak. It was to be the progenitor of the new Java software for the Internet by Sun Microsystems.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.238)
1991 David Gelernter (b.1955), professor of computer science at Yale, authored “Mirror Worlds," in which he accurately described websites, blogging, virtual reality, streaming video, tablet computers, e-books, search engines and internet telephony.
(Econ, 12/3/11, TQ p.27)
1991 Al Gore as US Senator held hearings that led to the passage of the National High-Performance Computer Technology Act. It boosted federal support of the Internet by about $1 billion a year.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.154)
1991 Cambridge Univ. scientists set up a video to monitor their coffee pot in the Trojan Room and spawned the Web cam revolution. In 2001 Spiegel Online paid $4,750 for the $70 coffee pot.
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.B3)
1991 Quantum Computer Services changed its name to America Online.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.B1)
1991 Aug, The World Wide Web was launched by Tim Berners Lee of CERN.
(Economist, 9/1/12, TQ p.11)
1992 Mar 6, Personal computer users braced for a virus known as “Michelangelo," set to trigger on March 6, but only scattered cases of lost files were reported. The Michelangelo computer virus threatened computer systems around the world. It was designed to lodge itself into a corner of the system and infect any floppies put into the system, and to eventually mangle the hard drive.
(Sp., 5/96, p.68)(AP, 3/6/02)
1992 Internet domain registrations began (DNS). Network Solutions Inc. of Science Applications Int’l. was given the naming oversight in a contract with the National Science Foundation. America’s Dept. of Commerce created ICAAN, a non-profit corporation to run the DNS. Jon Postel (1943-1998), an American engineer, was assigned to head ICAAN, but he soon died.
(WSJ, 6/5/97, p.B5)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.73)
1992 Network Solutions won a government contract to be the exclusive registrar of Internet addresses.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.B5)
1992 Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, creators of the TCP/IP Internet protocol, founded the Internet Society.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.33)
1992 America Online, a popular Internet company, went public.
(WSJ, 5/24/99, p.R8)
1993 Jun, Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the Univ. of Illinois released their first version of the Mosaic Browser, a software tool that simplified searching for material on the World Wide Web. Andreeson went on to found Netscape Corp. In 1998 Joshua Quittner and Michella Slatalla published “Speeding the Net," a history of Netscape Communications.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.242)(WSJ, 6/25/98, p.A20)
1993 Aug 13, US Court of Appeals ruled that congress must save all e-mails.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1993 Ward Cunningham (b.1949) founded the 1st Wiki site, The Portland Repository." The site was developed so that multiple users could revise and update information. He joined Microsoft in 2003.
(WSJ, 7/29/04, p.B1)(www.en.wikipedia.org)
1993 Arthur Hair received a patent titled "Method for Transmitting a Desired Digital Video or Audio Signal." He and Scott Sander then launched Sightsound.com to build a market for transmitting music and video over the internet.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.B1)
1994 Apr 4, Jim Clark and Marc Andreeson founded Mosaic Communications Corp., the predecessor of Netscape Communications. The company soon introduced the Netscape Navigator browser.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1994 Apr, Charles H. Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies. It developed Front Page, the first software program to allow people to develop a Web site without mastering a programming language. He sold the company to Microsoft after 20 months for $133 million.
(WSJ, 12/15/99, p.A20)
1994 Spring, David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduates students of Stanford Univ., started a guide to their favorite sites on the Internet: Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web." They later named the site Yahoo: "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)
1994 Nov 28, Mosaic changed its name to Netscape Communications.
(WSJ, 4/21/99, A1)
1994 The SF Chronicle newspaper began its SFGate site on the Internet.
(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)
1994 Jeff Bezos quit his job on Wall Street, flew to Fort Worth, Texas, and then drove with his wife to the Pacific Northwest. He sketched out a plan to set up a catalogue retailing business and after a year his company, Amazon, sold its first book.
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.23)
1994 John McAfee, founder of the anti-viral firm McAfee Associates, sold his stake for over $100 million. Network Associates after 7 years renamed itself to McAfee Inc.
(WSJ, 4/21/07, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee)
1994 Tribal Voice was founded by the software millionaire John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates. On its website, the company described itself initially as a 'Native American' company run by Native Americans. As the company grew, the Native American references gradually disappeared. In 1999 McAfee sold his stake for $17 million.
(WSJ, 4/21/07, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee)
1994 Lou Montulli, computer programmer at Netscape, invented "cookies" to help enable purchasing products from a Web site.
(WSJ, 2/28/00, p.B1)
1994 Scientists at Carnegie Mellon Univ. created a search engine. Rights were bought by CMGI Inc., an Internet venture fund, and Lycos was formed in 1995.
(SFC, 3/29/00, p.D3)
1994 The first Internet stock trade was completed by K. Aufhauser & Co., later part of Ameritrade Holding Corp.
(WSJ, 6/2/99, p.C1)
1994 theGlobe.com, an internet startup, was founded by Cornell students Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
1994 Sky Dayton founded EarthLink, an Internet access provider.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.13)
1994 Jeff Taylor founded Monster.com, an online job-search site.
(Econ, 3/27/04, p.66)
1994 Britannica posted a web site for its reference work.
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A1)
1994 Brian Pinkerton of the Univ. of Washington released WebCrawler. It was able to index entire pages. It was later bought out by AOL. Lycos and InfoSeek soon followed.
(Econ, 9/18/04, TQ p.33)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1995 Jan, Commercial internet service became available in China.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.6)
1995 Mar, David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduates students of Stanford Univ., turned their hobby into a business. In 1994 they had started a guide to their favorite sites on the Internet: Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web." The site was soon renamed Yahoo: "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/20/07, p.B5)
1995 Apr 1, theGlobe.com went live and attracted over 44,000 visits within the first month.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
1995 May, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates wrote a memo titled "The Internet Tidal Wave," which rallied the company to compete with Netscapeby integrating web browsing into other products.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1995 Jul 16, Amazon.com went live on the Internet. The 1st book sold on the site was “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought."
(SFC, 7/5/05, p.E2)
1995 Aug 9, Netscape Communications went public and was valued at $2.2 billion. In 1999 Jim Clark and Owen Edwards authored "Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft."
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)(SFEC, 6/27/99, BR p.6)
1995 Aug 30, Cable News Network joined the internet ("This is CNN").
(MC, 8/30/01)
1995 Aug, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
1995 Sep 13, The FBI made at least a dozen arrests, capping a nationwide two-year investigation of pedophiles and pornographers using the America Online computer network.
(AP, 9/13/00)
1995 Sep 23, Guillermo Gaede, an Intel engineer, was arrested in Phoenix. He had used his computer to tap into plans for the Pentium & 486 chip manufacturing process and video taped the information in May 1993. He sent the info to his former employer Advanced Micro Devices who notified federal authorities. He claimed to have been double-crossed by the FBI and also to have passed info from AMD to Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran.
(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A23)
1995 Sep, The US government came up with a new proposal security in computer communications, dubbed by critics as Clipper II.
(Wired, 9/96, p.224)
1995 Nov 20, Salon produced its 1st online issue. Salon.com was founded in SF as an online publisher by former staffers of the SF Examiner. The company purchased the Sausalito online community Well in 1999 from Bruce Katz, the founder of Rockport Shoes. In June 1999 it became a public corporation with an IPO at $10/share.
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.B1)(SFEC, 6/27/99, p.B1)(SFC, 7/28/00, p.A19)
1995 Nov, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0 and gave it away for free in a challenge to Netscape’s Navigator browser.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1995 Dec 7, Bill Gates announced Microsoft’s Internet counterattack on Netscape and the browser market.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B1)
1995 Dec 15, Louis Monier of Digital Equipment Corp. unveiled the Alta Vista search engine. It used several hundred “spiders" in parallel to index the web. The engine was co-invented by Paul Andrew Flaherty (1964-2006) of DEC. Alta Vista faded with the rise of Google and was acquired by Yahoo in 2003 as part of a $1.7 billion purchase of Overture Services. In 2013 Yahoo announced the closure of Alta Vista.
(Econ, 9/18/04, TQ p.33)(SFC, 3/24/06, p.B5)(SFC, 7/9/13, p.D2)
1995 World Chats, one of the earliest 3-D online chat rooms, introduced the use of onscreen “avatars" for Internet communication.
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1995 A group of 7 Swiss artists registered the domain name of Etoy.com with Network Solutions. In 1999 the toy company EToys.com sued the artists and forced them to shut their web site down. In 2003 Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler authored: “Leaving Reality Behind: “Etoy vs. eToys.com & Other Battles to Control Cyberspace."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.AM3)
1995 Pierre Omidyar founded eBay as a site for auctioning items. Originally called Auction Web it also helped his fiancée trade her Pez dispensers. In 2002 Adam Cohen authored "The Perfect Store," a chronicle of the rise of eBay.
(WSJ, 6/25/02, p.D9)(Econ, 6/11/05, p.66)
1995 Craig Newmark founded Craigslist in San Francisco. It was an Internet forum for finding jobs, housing, and goods for sale. In 2004 Ebay acquired a 25% stake from a former employee’s equity sale.
(SFC, 8/14/04, p.C1)
1995 The first Internet gambling casino opened, but games could only be played for fun. The first real money Internet casino opened in 1996.
(SFC, 7/2/07, p.C1)
1995 Metacrawler search engine technology was developed.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1995 VocalTec, an Israeli company, was the first company to release commercial PC-to-PC calling software, which it called Internet Phone. However, many competitors soon followed. In 2010 VocalTec merged with YMax Corp, maker of magicJack, an Internet phone gadget.
(AP, 8/14/10)
1996 Feb 8, John Peter Barlow, Internet activist, issued the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from Davos, Switzerland.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.14)(http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)
1996 Feb 8, In a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep." Section 230 of the act protected online intermediaries that host or republish speech against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.
(https://tinyurl.com/y8m8yhc6)(https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)
1996 Feb 15, A US federal judge temporarily blocked the Communications Decency Act (CDA), saying the government had to explain what material it considered indecent before it could enforce the law, designed to protect children from sexually explicit material on computer networks.
(AP, 2/15/01)
1996 Feb, Kevin Mitnick, 33-year-old computer wizard, was arrested in Raleigh, N.C. with the help of computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura. Mitnick was accused of breaking into the systems of software companies and attacking the computers of Internet service providers (ISPs). In 1999 he admitted breaking in to computer systems at Sun Microsystems and Motorola where he stole software and installed programs that caused millions of dollars in damage. He was ordered to pay token restitution of $4,125 and was prohibited from any access to computers and the Internet for 3 years following his release.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A3)(SFC, 8/10/99, p.A3)
1996 Spring, Yahoo went public at $13 per share and quickly rose to $33 in its 1st day of trading.
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.B1)
1996 Apr, The web site DJ.com launched RealAudio’s technology to broadcast 24 channels of music over the web. The site was later renamed Spinner.com.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)
1996 Apr, Takafumi Horie (23), a student at the Univ. of Tokyo, set up Livin’ on the Edge Inc., a Web-site design company. In 2000 the company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and in 2004 the name was changed to Livedoor, after an Internet service provider that it took over in 2002.
(WSJ, 2/3/06, p.A1)
1996 May 12, Brewster Kahle founded the non-profit Internet Archive. With a former colleague he also co-founded a firm called Alexa, to track and analyze the paths people follow as they move around the Web. In 1999 Amazon bought Alexa for an estimated $250 million.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive)(Econ, 3/7/09, p.34)
1996 May, The US government released a draft proposal on computer security that was dubbed Clipper III.
(Wired, 9/96, p.226)
1996 Jul 4, Hot Mail, a free internet E-mail service began.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail)
1996 Aug 13, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0.
(http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release33.html)
1996 Aug 18, "Where Wizards stay Up Late, The Origins of the Internet" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon was reviewed.
(SFEC, 8/18/96, BR p.3)
1996 Sergey Brin and Larry Page, post-graduate students at Stanford, came up with Google's original search algorithm.
(Econ., 8/1/20, p.15)
1996 The $1.6 billion FLAG project (Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe) was completed for transmission of data from Europe to the Far East. Neil Tagare pushed the project with financial assistance from Nynex.
(SFC, 3/15/99, p.B7)
1996 UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier founded Inktomi Corp. to provide software for Internet Service Providers. Their software was incorporated in the widely-used HotBot search engine, which displaced AltaVista as the leading web-crawler-based search engine.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inktomi)
1996 David Warthen and venture capitalist Garrett Gruener (42) co-founded Ask Jeeves Inc., a company devoted to scouring the Net for data based on simple questions. www.ask.com. In 2004 the company moved operations from Emeryville, Ca., to Oakland.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.B9)(SFC, 9/12/03, p.A10)(SFC, 7/19/04, p.F5)
1996 Michael Lynch, British software entrepreneur, founded Autonomy as a kind of Google for corporate data.
(Econ, 2/28/09, p.70)
1996 Following the success of Doom, id Software released Quake, a first-person shooter that also allowed users to create their own levels, which were called modifications or mods.
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1996 Instant messaging was created by the Israeli company Mirabilis.
(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.E3)
1996 Microsoft launched Expedia Travel Services, an online travel assistance site. In 2001 it was sold to Barry Diller, who spun it off from his InterActive Corp. (IAC) in 2005 as a separate company. By 2014 it was the world’s biggest travel agent.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.66)(Econ, 6/21/14, p.65)
1996 Eliezer Yudkowsky (16) set up the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). He and a group of followers, dubbed transhumanists, believed that a kind of artificial intelligence, a super intelligence, will emerge over the next 25 years. "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter than human intelligence."
(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.A1)
1996 Yahoo and SoftBank created Yahoo Japan.
(SSFC, 5/15/16, p.D3)
1997 Feb 7, In Japan Hiroshi Mikitani launched Rakuten, an e-commerce company. By 2012 it was Japan’s biggest cybermail service.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten)(SFC, 5/19/12, p.D3)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.60)
1997 Mar 6, The first ever Webby Awards ceremony was held in SF at Bimbo’s 365 Club in North Beach.
(SFC, 3/7/96, p.A1)
1997 Mar 6, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launched the first official royal Web site.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1997 Mar 19, The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Internet indecency.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1997 Apr 8, Microsoft Corp released Internet Explorer 4.0.
(http://tinyurl.com/dax6p)
1997 May 1, An Int’l. committee agreed to create 7 new (WWW) World Wide Web domains. The new suffixes would be: .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info and .nom for individuals.
(SFC, 5/2/97, p.A1)
1997 May 27, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, was first presented by the author at the Linux Kongress and was published as part of a book of the same name in 1999. It was based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)
1997 Jun 26, The Supreme Court struck down a congressional attempt to keep pornography off the Internet, saying it violated the First Amendment; the court also let stand the president's line-item veto authority without addressing its constitutionality.
(AP, 6/26/98)
1997 Jun, Ding Lei founded NetEase, a Chinese Internet technology company providing online services centered on content, community, communications and commerce.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetEase)
1997 Sep 8, It was announced the America Online Inc. (AOL) would take over Compuserve in a 3-way deal that involved WorldCom.
(SFC, 9/8/97, p.A3)(AP, 9/8/98)
1997 Dec, Michael Robertson launched a web site called MP3.com as a repository for music in the MP3 format.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)
1997 Don Tapscott authored “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation."
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.98)
1997 The US Senate opened hearings on the Internet browser battle.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)
1997 Amazon.com, an online book seller founded by Jeff Bezos, went public.
(WSJ, 5/24/99, p.R23)(Econ, 6/21/14, p.26)
1997 AOL launched Instant Messenger (AIM), an instant messaging and presence computer program. It used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.
(SFC, 2/11/10, p.D3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Instant_Messenger)
1997 Scott Kurnit founded About.com, a web site for information originally known as the Mining Company. The New York Times Company bought About.com in 2005.
(WSJ, 7/7/99, p.A23)(Econ, 8/18/12, p.59)
1997 Electronic Arts launched Richard Garriott’s Ultima Online, the 1st truly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).
(NW, 11/25/02, p.47)
1997 Phil Goldman (d.2003 at 39), Steve Perlman and Bruce Leak, the founders of WebTV, sold their firm to Microsoft for $425 million.
(SFC, 12/30/03, p.A19)
1997 The website Sixdegrees was launched as a means for social networking.
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A4)
1997 ING Direct, an online banking service under Dutch parent ING Groep NV, was launched in Canada. In 2000 it began operations in the US from Wilmington, Del. By the end of 2007 it had over 7 million customers and $62 billion in deposits. In 2008 Arkadi Kuhlman, ING’s US chief, and Bruce Philp, chairman of ING Direct’s marketing partner, authored “The Orange Code: How ING direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause."
(WSJ, 12/10/08, p.A17)
1997 Alexander Pircher, a student in Darmstadt, Germany, created a web site called Anonymouse.org, which allowed users to type in a Web address in a box and with a click the Anonymouse server fetches and displays the page. This allowed anonymous Web searches.
(Econ, 12/2/06, TQ p.3)
1997 The online company Priceline was founded with the idea to let consumers bid for hotel rooms and flights. In 2005 it acquired Booking.com, a Dutch website that aggregates hotel inventory. In 2012 it acquired Kayak, an aggregator of travel listings. In 2017 the market value of Priceline passed $100 billion.
(Econ 7/29/17, p.53)
1997 IslamOnline began as a student project at the Univ. of Qatar with cash from Sheika Mozah, a wife of Qatar’s emir, and with an endorsement from Egyptian-born scholar, Yussuf al-Qaradawi.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.51)
1997 Yandex, a Russian search engine, was founded. In 2011 it listed on NASDAQ. By 2017 its products and services included taxis, shopping, payments, music and education.
(Econ, 9/30/17, p.59)
1998 Jan 17, Matt Drudge reported over the Internet that Monica Lewinsky had paid numerous service calls to the White House.
(WSJ, 10/24/00, p.A22)
1998 Jan 22, Microsoft under court pressure signed an agreement giving PC makers the freedom to install Windows 95 without an Internet Explorer icon.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A30)
1998 Mar 3, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that his company wasn't a monopoly out to crush rivals in the Internet software market.
(AP, 3/3/99)
1998 Mar 19-1998 Mar 25, CeBIT, the world’s largest exhibition for information and communications, was held in Hanover, Germany. 600,000 visitors were expected.
(FT, 3/4/98, p.IT4)
1998 Mar 20, An Indiana man, Chris Dean (35), was arrested for sending the pipe bomb that killed Christopher Marquis of Vermont. Marquis had defrauded Dean in a $400 trade of Citizens Band radio equipment arranged on the Internet.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A3)
1998 May 18, The US Justice Dept. filed an antitrust action against Microsoft Corp. for embedding its own browser in its operating system, thus limiting competition from others such as Netscape. The Justice Department and Microsoft reached a settlement in 2001.
(SFC, 5/19/98, p.A1)(AP, 5/18/08)
1998 Jun 16, A woman (40) in Florida gave birth to a baby boy, named Sean, live on the Internet.
(SFC, 6/17/98, p.A3)
1998 Jun, An appeals court panel ruled in favor of Microsoft and considered Internet Explorer and Windows and integrated product.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1998 Jul 26, AT&T and British Telecommunications PLC announced they were forming a joint venture to combine international operations and develop a new Internet system. The joint venture, known as Concert, proved a money-loser and was shut down.
(AP, 7/26/03)
1998 Aug, F. Thomson Leighton and Daniel Lewin founded Akamai based on technology they had developed at MIT in 1995. Their main product, FreeFlow - a system that routed Internet traffic - began selling in April 1999. Lewin (31) was aboard AA Flight 11 on Sep 11, 2001, and died when hijackers crashed the plane into the WTC.
(WSJ, 12/8/99, p.C28)(SFC, 9/14/01, p.A29)
1998 Sep 16, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, responding to a report in an Internet publication, Salon Magazine, admitted to "indiscretions" with a woman in the 1960s at a time when both were married.
(AP, 9/16/99)
1998 Sep 18, A federal judge in San Jose awarded the Church of Scientology a $3 million settlement against Grady Ward for publishing secret scriptures on the Internet. Grady would not have to pay the full fine if he refrains from publishing church secrets and pays the church $200 per month for the rest of his life.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A23)
1998 Sep, In Dubai, UAR, the construction of a new multi-million prison was set to begin. Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum conceived of the facility as a prison for 2,000 "guests" of white-collar crimes. The prison will have a gym, theater, conference center, and be equipped with internet access.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.D8)
1998 Oct 17, Jon Postel (55), an influential Internet pioneer, died. Since 1968 he had directed the network’s Internet assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) that allowed computers to be matched with web addresses. Two weeks before he died he submitted the framework for a new organization to succeed the IANA, a non-profit entity (ICANN) with an internationally diverse board of directors.
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.A22)(Econ, 11/19/05, p.68)
1998 Oct, The US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in an effort to protect writers and artists from piracy in the free-for-all world of Net music.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.B1)(SFC, 8/13/01, p.D1)
1998 Nov 13, The globe.com, founded by Tod Krizelman and Stephen Paternot, went public and leaped from $9 to $97 a share. In 2001 Paternot authored “A Very Public Offering."
(WSJ, 5/2/01, p.A17)(WSJ, 8/27/01, p.A13)
1998 Nov 23, It was reported that American Online planned to purchase Netscape Communication for about $4 billion in stock.
(SFC, 11/23/98, p.A1)
1998 Nov 24, America Online confirmed it was buying Netscape Communications in a deal ultimately worth $10 billion.
(AP, 11/24/99)
1998 Oct, The board of directors for ICANN was seated. The Clinton administration created ICANN, the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers. It had been run by Jon Postel (d.1998), director of the Computer Networks Division at Information Sciences Institute at the Univ. of Southern Calif. ICANN was expected to become independent in 2006.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.B5)(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.B6)(Econ, 11/20/04, p.66)
1998 Dec 3, Digital MP3 file-squishing technology was reported as a threat to recording industry. MPEG Layer 3 was a compression technology that allowed CD quality music to be sent over the internet. The Rio portable player by Diamond Multimedia was released to stores in the midst of piracy concerns.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.B1)
1998 Dec 4, From China it was reported that Lin Hai (30), a software entrepreneur, had been arrested for inciting subversion by providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to "hostile foreign organizations. [see Apr 1998]
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.A10)(Wired, 2/99, p.127)
1998 Pres. Clinton signed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. It mandated a moratorium on any state or local taxes on Internet access.
(WSJ, 12/8/03, p.B1)
1998 Algis Ratnikas launched Timelines of History on a web site provided by theGlobe.com. Accumulation of data had begun in 1996.
(AR, 11/29/98)
1998 Amazon.com bought Junglee, a comparison-shopping website, for $230 million. Junglee was co-founded by Ashish Gupta. In 2006 Gupta helped found Helion Venture Partners, an Indian venture capital firm.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.102)
1998 Sergey Brin, a Russian immigrant, and Larry Page of Stanford Univ. raised $1 million and launched the Google search engine in Menlo Park, Ca. By 2003 over 200 million searches were logged daily. In 2004 Google filed for IPO. Google's core search technology patent, owned by Stanford, was set to expire in 2011.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.I1)(WSJ, 4/30/04, p.A1)
1998 InnoCentive was conceived by 3 scientists working for Eli Lilly as a way to solve problems by using the Internet. In 2001 it was spun off as an independent start-up.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.75)
1998 Netscape released its browser code to allow the general community to produce Mozilla, an open-source browser, later named Firefox.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)
1998 The BBC under John Birt launched Internet online operations.
(Econ, 6/18/05, Survey p.52)
1998 Bill Gross pioneered the pay-per-click Internet advertising model. In 2003 Yahoo acquired his Overture Services.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.62)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.66)
1998 Samih Toukan founded Maktoob in Amman, Jordan, a software firm dedicated to replacing English with Arabic in e-mail systems. Maktoob.com was the world’s 1st Arab language Web site. In 2000 the firm received a $2.5 million cash injection from an Egyptian investment bank and launched the first Arabic e-mail.
(SFC, 9/9/00, p.A14)(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.C1)(Econ, 4/12/14, p.40)
1998 Microsoft invented the key technology for web-based software: Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX), but failed to exploit it.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.69)
1998 PayPal was founded as a way of moving money between Palm Pilots.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.87)
1998 Disney purchased Infoseek and turned it into Go.com.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1998 China’s Ministry of Public Security created its “Golden Shield" for domestic internet surveillance and filtering.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.5)
1998 Yossi Vardi (b.1942), Israeli entrepreneur, sold Mirabilis Ltd., the creator of the ICQ instant messaging service, to American Online for over $400 million.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.56)(www.enewsbuilder.net/viab/e_article000077316.cfm)
1998 Tuvalu leased the .tv suffix of its internet address to a Toronto firm, Information CA, and prime Minister Bikenibeu expected royalties of at least $60 million a year.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Yahoo! with 637 employees matched the market capitalization of Boeing with 230,000 employees.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.9)
1998-1999 America traced a series of computer break-ins at the Pentagon, NASA and elsewhere to a computer in Russia, which denied involvement.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1999 Jan, Shawn Fanning (18), a computer science student at Boston's Northeastern Univ., wrote Napster, a software program to share music files over the Internet. He and Sean Parker founded the Napster file-sharing service.
(SFC, 3/3/00, p.A7)(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
1999 Feb 25, The FCC ruled that connecting to the internet constitutes a long-distance call.
(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.B3)
1999 Mar 18, The 3rd annual Webbies was held at the Herbst Theater under the direction of Tiffany Schlain (28).
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A17)
1999 Mar 29, The Melissa computer virus, first reported Mar 26, was spreading and infecting E-mail in tens of thousands of computers. In Dec. David L. Smith, a New Jersey programmer, pleaded guilty to creating the virus and spreading it through a sex Web site. It was reported to have caused $80 million in damage.
(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A3)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.B1)
1999 Mar, Jack Ma (b.1964), a former English teacher, launched Alibaba.com to support small business people in China. In 2005 Yahoo agreed to pay $1 billion in cash and turn over its Chinese operations to Alibaba in return for a 40% stake in the Chinese e-commerce company. On Nov 6, 2007, Alibaba became listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In 2009 Liu Shiying and Martha Avery authored “Alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the world’s Biggest Online marketplace."
(WSJ, 8/12/05, p.A1,B1)(SFC, 11/5/07, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/4/09, p.A13)
1999 May 6, A US appeals court ruled that government restrictions on the export of encryption software violated free speech.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May, Chinese hackers broke in and vandalized American government websites in retaliation for the May 7 American aircraft bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The White House website closed for three days.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
1999 Jun 6, The Worm.Explore.Zip virus was first detected in Israel. The virus was disguised as an e-mail attachment and destroyed files when opened.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.A6)
1999 Jun 11, The FBI was seeking the creator of Worm.Explore.Zip, a file-destroying computer virus which had hit some of the nation’s biggest corporations.
(AP, 6/11/00)
1999 Jun 23, House Republicans unveiled their "e-Contract," a pitch to the high-tech community that included a promise to keep the Internet free.
(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun, Naver was incorporated as NHN Corp. by ex-Samsung employees, and launched on September 12 as the first Web portal in South Korea that used its own proprietary search engine. In 2017 Naver was the fifth most used search engine in the world, following Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Bing.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naver)(Econ, 2/28/09, p.71)
1999 Aug 2, Argentina-based MercadoLibre, a pan-Latin American e-commerce and fintech firm, was founded. Founder and CEO Marcos Galperin established the company while attending Stanford University. Projected revenues in 2020 were $3.2 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MercadoLibre)
1999 Aug 18, Ramos Horta of Indonesia, 1996 Nobel Prize winner, warned the government that computer hackers would wreak electronic mayhem on the country if voting in the East Timor referendum is hampered.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.D10)
1999 Aug 31, In Argentina the online-auction site DeRemate was launched. In 2002 daily visits averaged 160,000 as Internet users climbed to 2.7 million.
(WSJ, 9/4/02, p.B5A)
1999 Sep 16, The White House said it would allow US firms to export computer encryption technology.
(SFC, 9/17/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep, Yodlee.com, trusted leader in providing compelling financial solutions, put the Internet to work for individuals by bringing together all personal information, from hundreds of sources, in one convenient, secure site.
(http://tinyurl.com/ru3g5)(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.B1)
1999 Nov 11, The computer virus dubbed Bubbleboy was reported to spread through electronic mail without attachments.
(WSJ, 11/11/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 21, Organizers called for a "Jam Echelon Day," an effort to overload US National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers with e-mail containing words such as "bomb." Echelon was a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.A7)
1999 Nov 30, It was reported that the EU passed the Electronic Signature Directive, a law that gave legal status to digital signatures.
(WSJ, 12/1/99, p.A24B15)
1999 Dec 6, AT&T agreed in principle to give competing Internet providers access to its high-speed cable lines.
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.A3)
1999 Dec 7, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Napster for being a haven for music piracy.
(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
1999 Dec 13, Mayfield Fund and @Ventures, the affiliated venture capital arm of CMGI, announced that they have completed the initial $7.50 million round of venture capital funding for a photography Internet startup. Snapfish.com, formerly code-named 'Project SkyTalk,' will offer a revolutionary new business model in the photography market. In 2005 the company was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.
(www.snapfish.com/release12132000)(SFC, 4/10/10, p.D1)
1999 Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, authored "Weaving the Web."
(WSJ, 10/1/99, p. W6)
1999 Barry M. Leiner (d.2003 at 57) authored a technical history of the Internet. In the 1980s he worked as a manager at DARPA and helped establish the Internet Activities Board (IAB), which set technical standards for the Internet.
(SFC, 4/19/03, p.A17)
1999 Anthony B. and Michael C. Perkins authored "The Internet Bubble." The founding editors of Red Herring and Red Herring Online believed that Internet stocks were overvalued.
(WSJ, 11/1/99, p.A52)
1999 Netflix was founded in Los Gatos, Ca., as an Internet based company for DVD rentals sent via mail.
(WSJ, 10/17/05, p.A1)
1999 Pyra software company released Blogger for free. It allowed users to set up a Weblog, a simple personal web site program. By 2002 some 500,000 weblogs were on the Internet.
(NW, 8/26/02, p.42)
1999 Over 1000 World Wide Web search engines were in operation.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
1999 In China Ji Qi founded Ctrip, a new Internet firm, catering to the Chinese traveler. He later followed up with Home Inns, a chain of basic hotels.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.64)
1999 In China Fang Binxing began working on the “Great Wall," a system to guard the handful of gateways through which all foreign content and communications enter China, while at the National Computer Network and Information System Security Administration Center.
(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.9)
1999 NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s top mobile phone operator, pioneered internet access through its i-mode service. In 2001 it pioneered 3G technology and in 2005 embedded a credit card into a wireless chip enabling consumer financial payments.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.71)
1999 Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, agreed for Softbank to buy a 30% stake in the Hangzhou-based Alibaba website founded by Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, for $20 million. In 2017 Alibaba was valued at $270 billion and Softbank still owned 28%.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.58)
1999 Malaysiakini, an independent online newspaper in Malaysia, was founded as a free site. In 2002 it was forced to start charging for use.
(Econ, 3/15/08, p.52)
1999 In Russia legislation was passed that created SORM-2, a Russian acronym for the system of Operative and Investigative procedures. It required every Internet service provider to install monitoring equipment that allowed access by Russian security agencies.
(SFC, 3/11/00, p.A1)
1999 Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa sold Thawte, a company that made digital certificates and security software to support internet commerce, to VeriSign for over $500 million.
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.33)
1999 South Korea initiated OPEN (Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications), an Internet-based anti-graft program.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.D6)
2000 Jan 1, In California the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act became law. It validated all transactions formed, transmitted and recorded electronically, with certain exemptions.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.B1)
2000 Jan 7, Pres. Clinton announced a $91 million program to protect computer security as part of the 2001 fiscal budget.
(SFC, 1/800, p.A1)
2000 Jan 19, Transmeta Corp. leaders unveiled a pair of new microprocessors named Crusoe designed for hand-held Internet-access devices.
(SFC, 1/20/00, p.B2)
2000 Jan 20, It was reported that the number of Internet users in China had more than doubled over the last 6 months from 4 to 8.9 million, most of them young single men.
(SFC, 1/20/00, p.C16)
2000 Jan 24, A torrent of data to the US National Security Agency brought the system to a crashing halt that lasted 3½ days.
(Econ, 2/27/10, p.18)(http://intellit.muskingum.edu/nsa_folder/nsa00.html)
2000 Jan 26, In China the State Bureau of Secrecy issued a 20-article circular that banned discussion of state secrets on the Internet, in e-mail, and in chat rooms or bulletin boards. Content and service providers were also required to undergo a "security certification" prior to operation.
(SFC, 1/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 3, The Ford Motor Co. said it would provide new PCs and a printer with Internet access to its 300,000 employees at $5 per month over 3 years.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 4, Delta Air Lines said it would provide new PCs and Internet access to its 72,000 employees at $12 per month over 3 years.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 7, An apparent team of computer hackers shut the Yahoo web site down with a "denial-of-service" attack that mimicked millions of phantom users.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 8, Net hackers shut down at least 4 popular Web sites including Amazon.com, eBay, CNN.com and buy.com with "denial of service attacks."
(SFC, 2/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 2/8/01)
2000 Mar 3, It was reported that student use of Napster software to download music files from the Internet was clogging up university networks and causing officials to block or limit access to the site.
(SFC, 3/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 3, It was reported that 6 prestigious int’l. universities and cultural institutions planned to sell knowledge and education over the Internet via the Fathom Web site.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.A5)
2000 Apr 5, The Netscape 6 browser was introduced.
(WSJ, 4/5/00, p.B1)
2000 Apr 13, The heavy metal rock group Metallica filed suit against Napster for copyright infringement and racketeering.
(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.B1)
2000 May 4, The e-mail virus “I Love You" bug hit millions of computers around the world. It was considered the most virulent, most damaging ($2.6 bil), most costly and most rapidly spread virus to date.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A1)(SFC, 5/6/00, p.A1)
2000 May 18, Another computer virus, described as a complex polymorph, began to spread around the world.
(SFC, 5/19/00, p.A1)
2000 May 26, The “Killer Resume" computer virus began to circulate.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A1)
2000 May 28, Donald W. Davies, who helped pioneer packet switching, died in London at age 75.
(WSJ, 6/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Jun 9, The FBI began discussions on the “Serbian Badman Trojan: computer virus disguised as a movie clip and embedded in some 2000 commercial and home computers.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A7)
2000 Jun 16, The US Senate passed a bill to allow e-signatures for online contracts. Pres. Clinton said he would sign the bill.
(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A3)
2000 Jun 30, Pres. Clinton signed legislation for “digital signatures."
(WSJ, 7/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 26, Napster Inc. was hit with a preliminary injunction to halt all illegal song swapping over the Internet.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 8, Richard Clarke, top cyberspace official of the US National Security Council, warned that several nations had already created information-warfare units for disrupting computer networks.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Luis von Ahn, computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, together with Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper and John Langford coined the term CAPTCHA (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) in a joint paper. This led to the use of mangled text to verify human users of computer software over the Internet. The Recaptcha system was launched in 2007 and used words that machines could not read.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.16)
2000 Elong Musk was ousted as boss of PayPal.
(Econ, 10/22/16, p.56)
2000 Orbitz, an online travel assistance site, was put together by a group of airlines for direct sales to consumers. In 2004 it was sold to Cendant for $1.25 billion.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.66)
2000 Gurbaksh Chahal (18), India-born entrepreneur in San Jose, Ca.,, sold his company Click Agent for $40 million to competitor Value Click in an all stock merger. In 2007 he sold his 2nd company, Blue Lithium, to Yahoo for $300 million.
(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.F1)
2000 The Alta Vista search engine began allowing multi media searching.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Google and Yahoo partnered to provide search on yahoo.com. Google indexed over 1 billion pages, making it the largest index on the Web.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Switch began building a series of colocation centers in Las Vegas. Its business got a boost in December 2002, when it acquired a former Enron broadband services facility out of bankruptcy. In 2010 the SWITCH SuperNAP, a huge data center, opened near the Las Vegas airport.
(Econ, 1/7/12, p.28)(http://tinyurl.com/7r3deaq)
2000 Data centers consumed .6% of the world’s electricity. By 2005 this reached 1%.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.19)
2000 Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine, was founded. It went public in 2005.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2000 Japan recorded the 1st known case of two or more people using the Internet to form a suicide pact. Hundreds of suicides, if not more, from various countries copied that pattern in the following years.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.66)
2000-2001 Israeli and Arab hackers vandalized and crashed each others’ websites over a 4-month period. Attacks also occurred against telecom films supplying internet connections.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.64)
2001 Jan 15, Jimmy Wales (35), a retired futures and options trader, founded Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia. It started as an offshoot of Nupedia, a free, online encyclopedia written by experts. Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales came up with the idea of allowing anybody to edit entries. In 2009 Andrew Lih authored “The Wikipedia Revolution: How as Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia."
(SFC, 12/6/05, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/18/09, p.A13)(SFC, 1/15/11, p.D1)(Econ, 1/15/11, p.14)
2001 Mar 6, US District Judge Marilyn Patel ordered Napster to block access to its files of Millions of downloadable songs protected by copyrights.
(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D3)
2001 Jul 19, The Code Red computer worm began hitting Internet-connected computers, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft software. This was among the first network worms to spread rapidly because it required only a network connection, not a human opening an attachment.
(SFC, 7/30/01, p.D1)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
2001 Jul 23, The US Pentagon shut down public access to its web sites due to a computer worm called the Code Red worm. It defaced web sites with the words “Hacked by Chinese."
(SFC, 7/24/01, p.A2)
2001 Aug 2, Houston launched SimHouston, a program to provide each of its 1.8 million residents with free e-mail accounts and access to word processing software.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C1)
2001 Aug 8, US Federal authorities announced the arrests of 100 people nationwide in an Internet child pornography operation, Landslide Productions Inc., based in Fort Worth, Tx.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A3)
2001 Aug 27, Michael Dertouzos, MIT computer scientist, died at age 64. His books included “"The Unfinished Revolution: Human Centered Computers and What They Can Do For Us." He also helped drive the creation of the WWW Consortium to ensure uniformity on the Web.
(SFC, 8/31/01, p.A24)
2001 Aug, theGlobe.com shutdown its flagship site and laid off 50% of its employees. The company continued hosting some of its partner sites and publishing Computer Games, but the domain of www.theglobe.com displayed nothing more than an informational message about the site's termination until 2003.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com)
2001 Sep 18, The new computer worm, W32.Nimda, struck the Internet.
(SFC, 9/19/01, p.D1)
2001 Sep 30, ExciteAtHome, a firm that connected cable companies to the Internet, declared bankruptcy. A month later some 764,000 AT&T customers found their Internet access shut down.
(SSFC, 12/2/01, p.A16)
2001 Oct 8, Mena and Ben Trott released Movable Type, a weblogging tool. Operations quickly expanded and in 2002 they named their company Six Apart.
(www.sixapart.com/about/history)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.68)
2001 Oct 9, Pres. Bush appointed Richard Clarke as special adviser for cyberspace security.
(SFC, 10/10/01, p.A4)
2001 Dec 11, US Federal agents carried out dozens of raids and seized computers in some 27 cities and 21 states suspected of pirating software over the Internet. The “Warez" network of software pirates was targeted.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Lawrence Lessig (46), Stanford professor and cyberlaw expert, founded Creative Commons, which offered an alternative to standard copyrights through various gradations of permission for use. Creative Commons (CC) licensing was founded by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with support of the Center for the Public Domain. It was devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.31)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons)
2001 In Canada the website AshleyMadison.com was launched with the slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair."
(SSFC, 11/10/13, p.A6)
2001 KaZaA, an internet file-sharing program, was founded in Amsterdam by Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.54)
2001 Keyhole released the first commercial geobrowser. Google bought Keyhole in 2004 and launched Google Earth in 2005.
(Econ, 9/8/07, TQ p.18)
2001 Infospace bought Webcrawler.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2001 Ben and Mena Trott of SF created “Movable Type," a software blogging tool to operate web logs, i.e. blogs on the Internet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.3)
2001 Gyorgy Gattyan, a Hungarian entrepreneur, launched LiveJasmin, an Internet cam company featuring live sex chats. The garage project later became Docler Holding. In 2013 the company became headquartered in Luxembourg. By 2015 he was Hungary’s richest man and his porn site LiveJasmin received 40m visitors a day.
(www.itone.lu/article/gyorgy-gattyan-simple-recipe)(Econ, 10/1/11, p.64)(Econ, 9/26/15, p.62)
2001 In India Ramesh Ramanathan and Swati Ramanathan, founded the Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy. It started as a movement to enable citizen participation in public governance and evolved into a robust institution for Citizenship and Democracy. In 2010 the center introduced the website http://ipaidabribe.com.
(www.ipaidabribe.com/node/77)
2002 Jan 19, It was reported that China had imposed new Internet controls and required service providers to screen all e-mail messages for political content.
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)
2002 Oct 21, Hackers launched coordinated attacks on the 13 organizations principally responsible for managing the Internet’s domain naming system.
(SSFC, 1/22/12, p.H1)
2002 Nov 1, A US judge upheld the 2001 proposed settlement between Microsoft and the Dept. of Justice. US federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved a settlement between the Dept. of Justice and Microsoft that added some restrictions on the company, but fell short of a breakup and other tough measurements sought by the government.
(SFC, 11/2/02, p.A1)(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.D1)
2002 Nov 9, Allan Chu (17) of Saratoga, Ca., won top honors in a Siemens Westinghouse competition for his work on a new algorithm to compress Internet data.
(SFC, 11/12/02, p.A17)
2002 Dec 14, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, a Silicon Valley startup, to manage his own network of business contacts. The co-founders included Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish and Yan Pujante. In 2016 Microsoft agreed to acquire the company for $26.2 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.76)(SFC, 6/14/16, p.A1)
2002 Richard Hunter authored “World without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing."
(http://tinyurl.com/4c9c2lo)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.77)
2002 David Sheff authored “China Dawn," a close-up look at the young men building Internet infrastructure in China.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A24)
2002 Bram Cohen created BitTorrent, an online file sharing program. It increased the download time for large files by breaking them into pieces and reassembling them on arrival.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.F3)
2002 eBay bought PayPal, founded by Elon Musk, for $1.5 billion in shares.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.71)(Econ, 3/24/07, p.78)
2002 Yahoo acquired Inktomi.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2002 The website www.meetup.com became a forum for clubs of all kinds.
(Econ, 7/16/05, Survey p.16)
2002 Friendster pioneered social networking via Web sites. It was funded by entrepreneur Jonathan Abrams. In 2006 Friendster was granted a patent covering “a method and apparatus for calculating, displaying and acting upon relationships in a social network."
(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.B1)
2002 Google’s index surpassed 3 billion Web pages.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2002 Gary McKinnon was caught in London and after breaking into 97 US military and NASA computers, while allegedly searching for UFO’s. His hacking from 2001-2002 caused an estimated $700,000 of damage. In 2008 McKinnon (42) was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. He also lost an appeal against being extradited to the US to face charges. In 2009 he offered to plead guilty to a criminal charge in Britain to avoid extradition to the United States.
(SFC, 7/31/08, p.A14)(AP, 1/12/09)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.51)
2002 The Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) was founded as concerns of data leakage, intellectual property protection, and export control compliance began to rise. It was a cooperative effort by the leading defense and aerospace firms, supported by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop a framework of policies and mechanisms to enable secure collaboration across multiple jurisdictions.
(http://tinyurl.com/3sfx69x)
2003 Jan 10, Iraq blocked all e-mail services following a batch of messages from disguised US agencies urging dissent and military defections. Some service was restored the next day.
(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.A14)
2003 Jan 15, Lufthansa introduced Internet access to passengers on a flight from Germany to Washington DC.
(SFC, 1/15/03, p.B1)
2003 Jan 25, A computer worm slowed Internet traffic. The “slammer" virus sought vulnerable Microsoft “SQL Server 2000" software.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/28/03, p.A1)
2003 Apr 29, The governor of Virginia signed a tough antispam law that called for prison and asset seizures.
(WSJ, 4/30/03, A1)
2003 Apr, Google acquired Applied Semantics. The AdSense name was originally used by Applied Semantics, a competitive offering to AdSense. The name was adopted by Google after Google acquired Applied Semantics.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense)
2003 May 9, The Fizzer computer virus began circulating aided by its ability to propagate through the Kazaa file sharing network.
(WSJ, 5/13/03, p.D3)
2003 May 19, It was reported that a loose affiliation of people worked to coordinate Internet attacks on span generators. E-mail marketer Optinrealbig.com was one of those targeted.
(WSJ, 5/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Jul, Yahoo paid $1.6 billion for Overture Services, a pioneer in the paid-search advertising business. Overture was called GoTo.com and came out of a factory of companies called Idealab, developed by Bill Gross in 1996. Yahoo started its own search engine this year and stopped using Google.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-com p.17)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.62)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2003 Aug 12, An Internet worm targeting Microsoft Corp Windows users was spreading rapidly around the world, triggering computer crashes and slowing Web connections. Dubbed Blaster but also known as LoveSan or MSBlaster, carried a message for the Microsoft chairman: "Billy Gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"
(AP, 8/12/03)
2003 Aug 29, Jeffrey Lee Parson (18), suspected of writing a variant of the "Blaster," a virus-like computer worm, was arrested in his hometown, the Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins. He was charged with one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer and faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. Parson pleaded guilty in August 2004 and was subsequently sentenced on January 28, 2005 to 18 months in prison followed by a three-year supervised release program, and was required to do 225 hours of community service. He was ordered to pay restitution of $497,546.55 to Microsoft Corporation and $1,056 to specific individuals to have their computer hard drives cleaned.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A2)(www.rbs2.com/parson2.html)
2003 Aug, Skype, founded in Amsterdam as Kazaa in 2001, released the 1st version of its software which allowed people to make free voice and video calls over the internet.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.79)
2003 Sep 18, Anti-virus companies warned of a new computer worm circulating through e-mail that purports to be security software from Microsoft Corp.
(Reuters, 9/18/03)
2003 Oct 31, A new e-mail virus, "Mimail.C.," started spreading to corporate computers and is headed for home computers, but computer security experts said they expect the outbreak to wind down over the weekend.
(AP, 11/1/03)
2003 Oct, Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California by Andy Rubin (b.1962), Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. In July 2005 Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million. Its key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin)
2003 Nov, In China Jiang Lijun (39) was sentenced to four years in prison for posting Internet articles calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party. In 2006 it was reported that Yahoo's Hong Kong unit gave authorities a draft e-mail that had been saved on Jiang's account. Yahoo also provided information in the cases of Li Zhi and Shi Tao.
(AP, 4/19/06)
2003 Dec 5, Yahoo Inc. said it is working on technology to combat e-mail spam by changing the way the Internet works to require authentication of a message's sender.
(AP, 12/6/03)
2003 Dec 16, Pres. Bush signed legislation to curb unsolicited commercial e-mails.
(WSJ, 12/17/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 31, The JenniCam website, begun by Jennifer Ringley in 1996, shut down. 7 years earlier she installed a Web camera in her Pennsylvania college dorm room and kept it on for 24 hours a day recording every detail of her life.
(SFC, 12/12/03, p.B4)
2003 Apple released its Internet browser, Safari.
(NW, 4/21/03, p.E12)
2003 Google bought Blogger, a web service created by Evan Williams, that allowed anybody to create a blog with a few clicks. Williams went on to create Twitter, a service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: What are you doing."
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.110)
2003 Microsoft introduced its own web spider to index web pages.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-com p.16)
2003 AOL spun off Mozilla.org with a $2 million cash cushion. Ms. Mitchell Baker, former Netscape attorney, turned Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, into a non-profit foundation.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)(SFC, 1/28/08, p.E2)
2003 MySpace.com, an Internet social networking website, was founded. By 2006 it was the 4th biggest site on the Web. In 2009 Julia Angwin authored “Stealing Myspace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America."
(SFC, 3/10/06, p.A16)(SSFC, 3/29/09, Books p.J1)
2003 Oh Yeon Ho turned his South Korean Ohmy News website into a for profit firm. In 2006 his website averaged 700,000 visitors and 2 million page view per day.
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.9)
2003 Matt Mullenweg founded WordPress, an internet blogging tool, as a college student in Houston. It grew to become a backbone for many of the Web’s most popular sites.
(SFC, 7/26/13, p.C1)
2003 Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab (f.1999) created SecondLife, a metaphysical universe, on the Internet. The company sold virtual property and made money when residents leased property by charging an average of $20 per virtual “acre" per month. In 2008 Wagner James Au authored "The making of Second Life."
(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.16)(http://lindenlab.com/)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.78)(WSJ, 3/12/08, p.D8)
2003 Xing, a professional social network website, was founded by Lars Hinrichs of Hamburg, Germany. It went public in 2006.
(Econ, 9/27/08, p.76)
2004 Jan 1, The 1st US anti-span law, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, went into effect. It made it illegal for advertisers to falsify their identity and required an effective way for recipients to get themselves removed from advertiser lists.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 9, A new Swen-style Trojan horse, dubbed Trojan.Xombe and posing as a critical update from Microsoft, was detected on the Internet.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 27, A new Windows computer virus, a self-propagating worm known as Mydoom or Novarg, continued to spread over the Internet.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.B1)
2004 Jan 28, A new strain of the Mydoom virus emerged. Mydoom.B was programmed to launch an attack against Microsoft's web site the following week.
(SFC, 1/29/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 13, The FCC began writing rules to enable users to access the Internet through electric power lines.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.B1)
2004 Feb 28, It was reported that 70% South Koreans had high-speed Internet connections.
(Econ, 2/28/04, p.61)
2004 Feb, The Palo Alto-based Facebook.com, an Internet social networking website, was founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. He put Harvard’s yearbook on the internet and the creation spread to Yale and beyond. He soon faced a lawsuit from 3 other Harvard students, who alleged he stole their idea. In 2009 Ben Mezrich authored “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal."
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A1)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.69)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.66)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.72)
2004 Mar 10, Four major US Internet service providers filed a series of lawsuits meant to shutdown a number of leading spammers.
(SFC, 3/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 12, An FBI proposal was made public to require all broadband Internet providers to support easy wiretapping.
(SFC, 3/13/04, p.C2)
2004 Mar 15, A new computer worm, named "Phatbot," began appearing in the Asia-Pacific region. Most call it a variation of the longstanding Gaobot or Agobot family, and sometimes as Polybot. When the worm is run, it sets the system to autostart the worm at boot time; attempts to terminate security software running on the computer; and probes network shares in an attempt to spread itself.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 20, A quickly spreading Internet worm destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of personal computers worldwide morning by exploiting a security flaw in a firewall program designed to protect PCs from online threats. The "Witty" worm wrote random data onto the hard drives of computers equipped with the Black Ice and Real Secure Internet firewall products. It spread automatically to vulnerable computers without any action on the part of the user.
(WaP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 30, AT&T officially began to offer phone calls via the Internet (VOIP) in 2 state, New Jersey and Texas.
(WSJ, 3/30/04, p.B1)
2004 Apr 1, Google introduce Gmail, a Web based e-mail service with one gigabyte of free storage per user. In 2007 the storage was expanded to “free unlimited." Google’s index passed 8 billion pages this year.
(WSJ, 6/13/07, p.B1)(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2004 Apr 15, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, became the 1st recipient of Finland’s Millennium Technology Prize.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.84)(www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/16/HNbernerslee_1.html)
2004 Apr 29, Google unveiled an IPO that could raise as much as $2.7 billion.
(SFC, 4/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Apr, The Anti-Phishing Working Group counted some 1,125 phishing attacks this month. The scam of duping computer users into revealing private data developed into a serious threat in the 2nd half of 2003 when banks in Australia and New Zealand came under attack. Each attack sends an estimated 50k to 10 million phishing e-mails.
(WSJ, 5/27/04, p.B1)
2004 Apr, Some 64% of all Internet e-mail was identified as spam. Up from 60% in Jan.
(WSJ, 5/28/04, p.B1)
2004 May 3, The fast-spreading "Sasser" computer worm has infected hundreds of thousands of PCs globally and the number could soon rise sharply. When a machine is infected, error messages may appear and the computer may reboot repeatedly.
(Reuters, 5/3/04)
2004 May 7, German authorities arrested Sven Jaschen, an 18-year-old high school student, for creating the "Sasser" network computer worm. Jaschan also confessed to writing the Netsky virus and was suspected to be responsible for 70% of the 2004 virus infections. In 2005 Jaschan was found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data. He was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months.
(AP, 5/8/04)(USAT, 5/11/04, p.4B)(SFC, 7/29/04, p.C3)(AP, 7/8/05)
2004 May, Factiva, a web-based news and information service, launched a new reputation-management service. Factiva, a joint venture between Dow Jones and Reuters, was run by Clare Hart.
(Econ, 5/15/04, e-con p.18)
2004 Jun 16, A new computer worm targeting mobile phones was reported. It was dubbed “Cabir" and reportedly written by a virus-writing group in Spain known as 29A.
(WSJ, 6/16/04, p.B9)
2004 Jul 26, A new variation of the Mydoom computer virus spread across the Internet.
(SFC, 7/27/04, p.D1)
2004 Aug 7, AP reported that a beheading was broadcast on 2 Arab TV stations. The video of the beheading was fake and had been initially made and posted on the Internet in May by 3 people from the SF Bay Area. Benjamin Vanderford of SF said he made the video to show how easy it is to spread lies over the Internet.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.A12)
2004 Aug 18, Google said it now expects its stock to trade between $85 and $95 per share, down from its old forecast of between $108 and $135. It also said the total number of shares to be sold will be cut to 19.6 million, down from 25.7 million.
(AP, 8/18/04)
2004 Aug 19, Google, the Internet search engine, began trading shares at $85 per share. 14.1 million shares were recently sold in a Dutch Auction at $85 per share. Google shares closed up 18% at $100.33.
(SFC, 8/19/04, p.A1)(SFC, 8/20/04, p.A1)
2004 Sep 14, Firefox, developed by Mozilla, released a new Web browser.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.76)
2004 Sep 15, Amazon unveiled a new search engine called A9.com.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.76)
2004 Sep, SF Mayor Newsom announced the launch of free wireless Internet service at Union Square. He soon planned to extend free service to Civic Center Plaza, Portsmounth Square and Ferry Plaza.
(SFC, 10/29/04, p.F1)
2004 Oct 5, The first Web 2.0 Conference opened for a 3-day session at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.
(Econ, 3/21/09, p.71)(http://conferences.oreillynet.com/web2con/)
2004 Oct 10, It was officially “Craigslist day" in SF. Craig Newmark started the classified ad Internet service in 1995 and in 2004 it was in 57 cities and 5 countries.
(Econ, 10/16/04, p.59)
2004 Oct 14, Google Inc. introduced a program that quickly scours hard drives for documents, e-mails, instant messages and past Web searches.
(AP, 10/14/04)
2004 Oct 28, AMD released its new $185 personal Internet Communicator for consumers in developing countries.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.C3)
2004 Oct, Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons and Geoff Donaker co-founded Yelp in San Francisco to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics. In 1012 the company was valued at $1.3 billion.
(SSFC, 7/15/12, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp,_Inc.)
2004 Nov 3, Jeremy Jaynes of North Carolina became the first person in the US to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk email. He was charged in Virginia because his emails went through an AOL server there. In 2008 the Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s antispam law unconstitutional and reversed Jaynes’ conviction.
(WSJ, 9/13/08, p.A2)(www.phonebusters.com/english/legal_2004_nov3.html)
2004 Nov 10, Microsoft unveiled a preview of its new Internet search engine.
(SFC, 11/11/04, p.C1)
2004 Nov 23, The UN Working Group on Internet Governance (40 delegates) met in Geneva.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.65)
2004 Dec 13, Google announced plans to digitally scan the book collections of 5 major libraries, including the Univ. Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, NY Public Library and Oxford, which agreed to books published before 1900.
(SFC, 12/14/04, p.A1)
2004 Nov, Digg, an Internet-based provider of content submitted by users, went live. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson founded Digg.com, a web-based news site using collaborative editing to focus on news in technology.
(SFC, 6/23/06, p.D5)(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P4)
2004 Eric Jackson authored “The PayPal Wars." It describes how PayPal launched its online payment service and set out to revolutionize the world's currency markets. It describes how Max Levchin and David Gausebeck developed the Gausebeck-Levchin test to tell if a machine or a person was signing up accounts over the Internet.
(www.worldaheadpublishing.com/titles/ppw.php)(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.D3)
2004 FiXs was founded and based in Fairfax, Virginia, to pilot a federated identity transaction model and was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation. A long-standing affiliation with the DoD credentialing program has enabled participating government organizations and industry members to establish secure and interoperable identity verification and authentication for secure facility and system access.
{USA, Virginia, Internet}
(http://www.fixs.org/)
2004 Joe Kraus co-founded JotSpot as the first company to provide an application wiki. JotSpot has since launched several other products.
(http://www.jot.com/)(Econ, 4/22/06, Survey p.14)
2004 PatientsLikeMe, a social networking health site, was founded by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers: brothers Benjamin Heywood and Jamie Heywood and longtime family friend Jeff Cole.
(Econ, 3/3/12, TQ p.22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PatientsLikeMe)
2004 Ruby on Rails, created by David Heinemeier Hansson, made its debut and rapidly become one of the most powerful and popular frameworks for building dynamic web applications.
(http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book)
2004 WiMax technology, a long-range wireless standard, provided high-speed Internet access from a maximum range of 30 miles.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.64)
2004 GetJar, an independent app sales portal, was founded in 2004 by Lithuanian-born serial entrepreneur Ilja Laurs. By 2010 with roughly 57,000 applications contributed by about 350,000 registered developers, the GetJar catalog yielded about 60 million downloads per month, up from 15 million monthly a year ago and second in volume only to the App Store.
(www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/february/204586.html)
2004 Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa began funding the Ubuntu project, which made a user-friendly version of Linux, an open source operating system.
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.33)
2004 Google’s index surpassed 8 billion web pages.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2004 In China Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, set up an online payments system called Alipay.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.55)
2005 Mar 3, AOL launched a new beta version of its web browser Netscape 8.0.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.B1)
2005 Mar 10, It was reported that a Texas ranch has implemented a computer-assisted remote hunting website allowing paying hunters to bag big game from their home computers.
(SFC, 3/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 12, It was reported that Bernardo Huberman, researcher at Hewlett-Packard, had described software called Tycoon for directing computons on computing grids. He used the term “computon" to describe a packet of electromagnetic energy.
(Econ, 3/12/05, TQ p.6)
2005 Mar 21, Barry Diller's electronic commerce company IAC/InterActiveCorp announced that it is buying online search engine Ask Jeeves Inc. for $1.9 billion and taking aim at the Internet's advertising market leaders.
(http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/3/3/64797233.html)
2005 Mar 22, IBM unveiled new anti-span technology called FairUCE. It used a giant database to identify computers sending spam and returned e-mails from those listed back to the sending machine.
(WSJ, 3/22/05, p.B1)
2005 Mar 31, A US Commerce Dept. study on Internet traffic, ordered in 1998, was published under the title “Signposts in Cyberspace."
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.C3)
2005 Apr 11, Officials said UC Berkeley will lead a 5-year, $19 million project, funded by the NSF, to prevent a hacker threat from decimating US computer networks.
(SFC, 4/12/05, p.B1)(WSJ, 4/12/05, p.B3)
2005 Apr 23, The first YouTube video was uploaded. The 18 second clip showed founder Jawed Karim visiting a zoo. In December Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim officially launched YouTube, an Internet based site for sharing video clips. The three founders knew each other from working together at another Internet start up, PayPal. The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine's Day in 2005.
(http://tinyurl.com/7tk55mq)(Econ, 4/29/06, p.68)(WSJ, 10/13/06, p.A12)(Econ, 5/3/14, p.58)
2005 Apr, ICANN authorized the .jobs and .travel domain names.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.57)
2005 Apr, Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally providing state secrets to foreigners. He had detailed how his newspaper colleagues were instructed not to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 1989 pro-Democracy action. He was identified by his e-mail address provided by Yahoo. Shi Tao was released on Aug 23, 2013.
(WSJ, 9/8/05, p.A16)(SFC, 9/9/13, p.A4)
2005 Jun 1, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the web suffix .xxx for porn oriented web sites.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.59)
2005 Jun 27, The US Supreme Court also ruled that cable-TV companies are not required to share their high-speed Internet connections with rivals.
(WSJ, 6/28/05, p.B1)
2005 Jun 28, Google unveiled a free 3-D satellite mapping technology.
(SFC, 6/29/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 30, A 2-year, 11-nation investigation, called Operation Site Down, culminated with arrests and the shut down of 8 major pirated film and software distribution servers. Over 120 cyberpirates were identified.
(SFC, 7/1/05, p.B1)
2005 Jul, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, a student from El Salvador, was indicted for selling spyware. He had created and sold an $89 program called Loverspy for users to help catch cheating lovers. In 2013 Perez-Melara (33) was added to the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminals list.
(SFC, 11/8/13, p.A16)
2005 Aug 5, Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine, went public on NASDAQ and closed up 354% at $122.54.
(SFC, 8/6/05, p.C1)
2005 Aug 14, The FBI and antivirus software companies began to notice that a computer virus called Zotob had started to spread [see Aug 16].
(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.A13)
2005 Aug 16, Several new computer worms hit systems running MS Windows 2000. On Aug 25 authorities in Morocco arrested Farid Essebar (18) for writing the Zotob worm. Atilla Ekici (21) was arrested in Turkey for paying Essebar to write the worm. In 2006 Morocco sentenced Farid Essebar (19) to 2 years in prison and Achraf Bahlouo (21) to one year for their role in unleashing the Zotob worm. Ekici’s trial continued in Turkey.
(SFC, 8/27/05, p.A2)(WSJ, 9/14/06, p.B3)(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.A1)
2005 Aug 29, A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges relating to the theft of the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software, considered among the company's crown jewels. William Genovese, Jr. (28) admitted selling the source code for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0. On January 27, 2006, he was sentenced to 2 years in jail.
(AP, 8/29/05)(www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/genovesePlea.htm)
2005 Sep 6, The Wikipedia, which surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, was fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events. The online encyclopedia, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., was written entirely by volunteers.
(Reuters, 9/6/05)(SFC, 12/6/05, p.A1)
2005 Sep, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp acquired MySpace.com, an Internet social networking website, for $580 million. In 2011 Murdoch sold MySpace for $35 million.
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.A1)(Econ, 7/16/11, p.26)
2005 Sep, Telebid, a German online auction, was launched. It used purchased-credits, instead of symbolic offers, for bidding. Over the next few years it expanded into Austria, Canada, Spain, Britain and America. In 2008 it changed its name to Swoopo.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.58)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo)
2005 Oct 19, Police in Bosnia arrested a cyber-jihadist who called himself Maximus. Mirsad Bektasevic, a Swedish teenager of Bosnian extraction, was sentenced to jail along with 3 others for plotting attacks to take place in Bosnia or other European countries. On his computer police found contacts with other jihadists in Europe including Younis Tsouli (Irhabi007), whom British police arrested 2 days later.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.28)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irhabi_007)
2005 Nov 16, A UN technology summit opened in Tunisia after an 11th-hour agreement that leaves the United States with ultimate oversight of the main computers that direct the Internet's flow of information, commerce and dissent.
(AP, 11/16/05)
2005 Nov 29, The Firefox web browser was upgraded to version 1.5.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.64)
1998 Nov, Tencent, a Chinese internet company, was founded in Shenzhen.
(Econ, 7/10/10, p.61)(www.tencent.com/en-us/at/abouttencent.shtml)
2005 Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother from Minnesota, was accused of sharing 24 songs using KaZaA, an Internet file sharing program. In 2007 a jury ruled against her and awarded record companies almost $10,000 per song in statutory damages. She was found guilty again in a 2nd trial in 2009 in which the jury awarded damages of $80,000 per song.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)
2005 Disney launched a free online game called Virtual Magic Kingdom in conjunction with its 50th anniversary. It became very popular and in 2008 fans protested plans to shut the site down.
(WSJ, 5/20/08, p.B1)
2005 Etsy, a website dedicated to makers of handmade goods, began operations. The company became profitable in 2009 and by 2013 sales were expected to surpass $1 billion.
(SFC, 11/11/13, p.D3)
2005 Global Voices Online was launched by former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief, Rebecca MacKinnon and technologist and Africa expert, Ethan Zuckerman while they were both fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University to create links between bloggers in different countries.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.62)(http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/)
2005 Krishnan Ganesh founded TutorVista, an Internet service using Indian tutors for Western students.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.76)
2005 The Internet news hub Huffington Post was founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. In 2011 the site, which attracted some 25 million monthly visitors, was sold to AOL.
(AP, 2/7/11)(Econ, 2/12/11, p.71)
2005 Yahoo bought Flickr, the first popular photo sharing website, for a reported $35 million.
(Econ, 5/14/16, p.53)
2005 Microsoft released MSN Search, powered by its own internally developed search engine. MSN had previously relied on Yahoo for its search function.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2005 Trump University began operations online and promised students the secrets of real estate success. It started holding in-person seminars in 2007 and was shut down by New York, its headquarters state, in 2010.
(SFC, 2/7/18, p.D2)
2005 Estonia became the first country to implement Internet voting in a nationwide election.
(http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-estonia.html)(AP, 11/9/12)
2005 Viadeo, a social network for professionals, was founded in France and by 2014 was the 2nd largest in the field behind LinkedIn. In 2008 Viadeo bought Tianji, a Chinese business networking site.
(Econ, 8/16/14, p.52)
2005 Russian internet investors Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger pooled their interests in mail.ru, a Russian web portal, and created Digital Sky Technologies (DST).
(Econ, 7/10/10, p.61)
2006 Jan 19, Global News Blog, a weblog of Global Geopolitics Net, began breaking news and analysis on global security and intelligence issues. The site is sponsored by the Eurasia Research Center. Alan Fogelquist, the site editor, is a historian and geopolitical analyst.
(http://globalnewsblog.com/blog/?m=200601)
2006 Jan, The US National Science Foundation launched 2 initiatives improve the Internet. The Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) planned an advance test bed network for piloting new protocols and applications. The Future Internet Design (FIND) planned to examine how best to equip the internet for the needs of the future.
(Econ, 3/11/06, Survey p.32)
2006 Feb 23, A New Zealand teenager hacked into the University of Pennsylvania computer system. Owen Thor Walker (18), known by his online name "AKILL," also was linked to a network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. In 2008 Walker was ordered to pay more than $11,000 in fines but avoided a conviction so that he can help police solve computer crimes.
(AP, 7/15/08)
2006 Mar 1, China moved ahead with 3 new internet address suffixes in the Chinese language, as national variants to .cn, .com and .net.
(Econ, 3/4/06, p.61)
2006 Mar 9, Google announced that it has bought Upstartle LLC, whose Writely.com service allows users to create, edit and share documents online.
(WSJ, 3/10/06, p.A16)
2006 Mar 21, Twitter, an Internet service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: “What are you doing," was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. “Just setting up my twttr" wrote Jack Dorsey. The company had begun as a side project at Odeo, an ailing podcasting business bankrolled by Evan Williams. By 2011 tweets per day exceeded 230 million.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)(Econ, 10/1/11, p.68)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.16)
2006 Apr, As of this month Google held 43% of the US search engine market share. This reached 50% counting AOL, which used Google’s search engine technology; Yahoo had 28%, MSN had 13% and Ask, owned by IAC/Interactive Corp, had 6%.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.65)
2006 Jun 26, Foundem, a small British shopping comparison site, discovered that all of its obvious comparison shopping keywords no longer applied for the company due to changes made by Google.
(www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/19/google_hand_of_god/)
2006 Jul 19, Alain Rappaport premiered the web site www.medstory.com, a consumer search product for information on health and medicine.
(SFC, 7/19/06, p.C1)
2006 Jul 27, Pres. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act of 2006. It required convicted child molesters to be listed on a national Internet database and face a felony charge for failing to update their whereabouts.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A1)(www.fd.org/odstb_AdamWalsh.htm)(Econ, 8/8/09, p.9)
2006 Aug 2, AOL shifted to an advertising strategy as customers cancelled their dial-up service and jumped to high-speed Internet connections.
(SFC, 8/3/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 1, Brazil pressured Google to turn over data from Web sites that the government said were used by criminals. Authorities gave Google 15 days to comply or face a daily fine of $23,000.
(SFC, 9/2/06, p.C1)
2006 Sep 18, A court in Belgium ordered Google to remove all links to French and German language newspaper reports published in Belgium due to copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.D7)
2006 Sep, The ChaCha phone service (800-224-2242) began providing answers using a combination of automation and people-powered search.
(www.chacha.com/)(WSJ, 4/24/08, p.D1)
2006 Oct 9, Google Inc. agreed to acquire YouTube Inc., a leading video-sharing Web site, for $1.65 billion in stock.
(SFC, 10/10/06, p.E1)(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.B14)
2006 Oct 17, Megan Meier (b.1992) of Missouri committed suicide following a series of cruel messages on the MySpace online social network. In 2008 Lori drew (49) of Missouri was indicted for perpetrating an online hoax, which led to Meier’s suicide. Drew was convicted on Nov 26 of only three minor offenses for her role in the Internet hoax. The federal jury could not reach a verdict on the main charge against 49-year-old Lori Drew, conspiracy, and rejected three other felony counts of accessing computers without authorization to inflict emotional harm. A final decision on the verdicts was still pending in 2009.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier_suicide_controversy)(SFC, 5/16/08, p.A4)(AP, 11/27/08)(Econ, 7/11/09, p.232)
2006 Dec 8, McAfee, an Internet security firm, reported that organized gangs have adopted "KGB-style" tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime.
(AP, 12/8/06)
2006 Lawrence Lessig authored “Code: Version 2.0," in which he noted that online communities were transcending the limits of conventional states. He predicted that members of these communities would find it “difficult to stand neutral in this int’l. space."
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.59)
2006 Amazon.com under Jeff Bezos launched Amazon Web Services and invented cloud-computing as a pay-as-you-go service.
(Econ, 6/21/14, p.23)(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2006 Tim Berners Lee, creator of the world wide web, helped establish the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), a collaboration between MIT and the Univ. of Southampton on web science, a field that blends sociology with computer science.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.32)
2006 Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa) began developing Joost, a system for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer TV technology (www.joost.com/).
(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost)
2006 Microsoft retired MSN Search in favor of the Live Search brand.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2006 In Russia Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai founded VKontakte and it grew to become the biggest social network in the country. In 2013 Durov left Russia and gave up his role and ownership stake after Pres. Putin’s allies took control of the company.
(SFC, 3/8/18, p.C6)
2007 Jan, Avaaz, a web-based political movement, was launched with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens everywhere to help close the gap between the world we have and the world most people want.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.62)(www.avaaz.org/en/about.php)
2007 Feb 22, Abdel Kareem Nabil (22), an Egyptian blogger arrested in 2006, was convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger. Nabil was convicted for calling Islam a brutal religion in a piece he wrote in 2005 after Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria. In 2009 an Appeals court upheld his 4-year sentence. Nabil, aka Kareem Amer, was released on Nov 5, 2010, and then re-arrested, held for 11 days and beaten.
(AP, 2/22/07)(AP, 12/22/09)(AP, 11/17/10)(Reuters, 11/24/10)
2007 Mar, The Website DoMyStuff.com, founded by Darren Berkovitz, went live as a hiring hall for personal assistants.
(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.D1)
2007 Apr 13, Google said that it will purchase DoubleClick, an Internet services company, for $3.1 billion. This transformed Google into an powerhouse across the entire digital advertising industry.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.A3)(SFC, 10/5/20, p.C1)
2007 Apr, The web site mediapredict.com began operations. The NYC-based start-up used editorial feedback from a large number of volunteers in a game format to help executives decide which manuscripts should become books.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.73)(http://mediapredict.com/)
2007 May 8, Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems. The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2007 May 9, In the early hours Internet traffic in Estonia spiked to thousands of times the normal flow. May 10 was heavier still, forcing Estonia’s biggest bank to shut down its online service for more than an hour. Hansabank continued under assault and worked to block access to 300 suspect Internet addresses. On March 12, 2009, Konstantin Goloskokov, an activist with Russia's Nashi youth group and aide to a pro-Kremlin member of parliament, said he had organized a network of sympathizers who bombarded Estonian Internet sites with electronic requests, causing them to crash.
(www.lunchoverip.com/2007/05/estonia_under_c.html)(Reuters, 3/12/09)
2007 May, Mahalo.com, a web directory (or human search engine), was launched in alpha test by Jason Calacanis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalo.com)
2007 May, Twitter, an Internet service that allows users to send short messages in response to the question: “What are you doing," was incorporated. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide.
(http://twitter.com/)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.D3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)
2007 Jun 4, China promised to better control emissions of greenhouse gases, unveiling a national program to combat global warming, but rejected mandatory caps on emissions as unfair to countries still trying to catch up with the developed West. The government also said it will license no new Internet cafes this year while regulators carry out an industry-wide inspection, amid official concern that online material is harming young people.
(AP, 6/4/07)
2007 Jun, Wenda, a question-and-answer “knowledge community" product, developed by Google in China, was launched in Russia.
(Econ, 10/13/07, SR p.7)
2007 Jun, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi founded Dropbox, a San Francisco-based Internet file-storage company.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%28service%29)(SSFC, 7/14/13, p.D1)
2007 Jul 5, British media reported that a Scottish house had been used as a makeshift bomb factory to carry out the terror attacks in London and Scotland. Three "cyber-jihadis" who used the Internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers were jailed for between six-and-a-half and 10 years in the first case of its kind in Britain. Morocco-born Younis Tsouli (23), an al-Qaida-inspired computer expert who dubbed himself "the jihadist James Bond," was sentenced to 10 years in prison for running a network of extremist Web sites. Accomplices Tariq al-Daour and Waseem Mughal also got prison terms.
(AP, 7/5/07)(AFP, 7/5/07)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.29)
2007 Jul 18, Thailand’s Computer Crime Act, intended to prevent cybercrimes, came into force. Most prosecutions that followed under the act were for online content that supposedly endangered national security.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.54)(www.prachatai.com/english/node/117)
2007 Jul 23, Hewlett-Packard acquired Opsware, a software company founded by Marc Andreessen, for $1.6 billion. He formed Opsware, a Web service company, in 1999 under the name Loudcloud Inc., which was renamed to Opsware in 2002.
(SFC, 7/24/07, p.B1)
2007 Jul 24, Intel Corp. said it has fabricated the first modulator made from silicon that can encode data onto a beam of light at a rate of 40 billion bits per second (gigabits). Such speeds represented a rate 40 times faster than most corporate data networks.
(WSJ, 1/25/07, p.B4)
2007 Aug 28, EarthLink, the Atlanta-based Internet provider, announced that it no longer believed the providing citywide Wi-Fi for San Francisco was viable for the company.
(SFC, 8/30/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 28, Chicago abandoned plans for a city-wide Wi-Fi network to access the Internet as EarthLink underwent restructuring.
(www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/08/30/too-windy-for-wi-fi.aspx)
2007 Sep 21, Google filed with the EU competition regulator for permission to buy rival DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
(Reuters, 9/21/07)
2007 Oct 5, Europe's .eu Internet domain registrar EURid said the Internet address www.sex.asia is likely to be the domain name most in demand next week when dot Asia Web sites are launched.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Oct 10, Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation (2003), said he plans to move the small operation from St. Petersburg, Florida, to SF.
(SFC, 10/11/07, p.C1)
2007 Oct 12, Two men were sentenced to prison in the first successful criminal prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act. James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, and Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California, were convicted in June of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and obscenity. Last week, the judge in the case sentenced Schaffer to 63 months and Kilbride to 72 months in federal prison.
(www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1000096UTGDC)
2007 Oct 15, Internet addresses began in 11 languages that do not use the Roman alphabet.
(WSJ, 10/11/07, p.B1)
2007 Oct 24, Microsoft secured a deal to buy 1.6% of Facebook, a social networking site, for $240 million.
(SFC, 10/25/07, p.A1)
2007 Oct 29, African leaders and technology experts met in Rwanda to discuss plans to boost the continent's development by securing universal Internet access by 2012.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Nov 1, An alliance including Google announced a plan to make social networks as open as Netscape’s browser made the web.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.78)
2007 Nov 5, Google introduced Android, a new operating system for cell phones. It was expected to appear in phones in the second half of 2008.
(SFC, 11/6/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 6, Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba.com soared in its debut on the Hong Kong stock market. It opened at $3.86 and closed at $5.09.
(AP, 11/6/07)(SFC, 11/7/07, p.C1)
2007 Nov 24, Beginning today and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. The culprits' use of botnets to push a dark form of SEO (search-engine optimization), called a "Google bomb," to boost their sites' Google rankings.
(www.pcworld.com/article/id,141796/article.html)(PCWorld, 1/28/08)
2007 Nov 27, Google said it will spend millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of a plan to clean the environment and reduce the company’s own power bill.
(SFC, 11/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 30, New Zealand officials said police have questioned the suspected teenage kingpin of an international cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. Earlier this month, Ryan Goldstein, 21, of Ambler, Pa., was indicted in the case. Authorities allege that the New Zealand suspect and Goldstein were involved in crashing a University of Pennsylvania engineering school server Feb. 23, 2006. On Feb 29 Owen Thor Walker (18) was charged with two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with a computer system and possessing software for committing crime, and two counts of accessing a computer system without authorization. In 2008 Walker pleaded guilty to 6 charges of computer hacking.
(AP, 11/30/07)(AP, 2/29/08)(SFC, 4/2/08, p.C2)
2007 Dec 15, It was reported that Google is testing a new service called Knol, that enlists selected users to write about the breadth of human knowledge in competition with Wikipedia.
(SFC, 12/15/07, p.C1)
2007 Dec 17, US trade officials said the US has reached a deal with the EU, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica.
(AP, 12/17/07)
2007 Julian Assange, a former Australian hacker, founded Wikileaks, an international publishing service for whistle-blowers.
(Econ, 6/12/10, p.67)
2007 Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012), outspoken conservative writer and activist founded the online-based Breitbart News.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News)(Econ, 12/10/16, p.66)
2007 Change.org, an online petitions site, was launched.
(Econ, 6/1/13, p.62)
2007 Dell Computer created IdeaStorm, “a way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another."
(www.dellideastorm.com/about)
2007 Google garnered 56% of the US Internet search market. Yahoo’s share sank to 20% and Microsoft’s grew to 14%.
(SFC, 2/2/08, p.C1)
2007 Tom Costello and his wife Anna Patterson of Menlo Park, Ca., founded Cuil, an Internet search engine. By mid 2008 they claimed to have an index of 120 billion Web pages. They launched www.cuil.com on July 28, 2008.
(SFC, 7/28/08, p.D1)(WSJ, 7/28/08, p.B5)
2007 Lumos Labs launched Lumosity, a website of online games designed to improve users’ cognitive performance.
(Econ, 8/10/13, p.56)
2007 Tumblr, an American online content sharing site, was founded by David Karp.
(SSFC, 5/19/13, p.A10)
2007 Mark Pincus founded Zynga Game Network. The company had a smash hit with the social online game FarmVille in 2009. By the end of 2010 the San Francisco-based company was valued at $5.4 billion.
(SFC, 11/19/10, p.D8)
2007 In India Sachin Bansai and Binny Bansal setup shop in a flat in Bangalore and began an e-commerce business that delivered books to people’s homes. By 2011 their firm, Flipcart, was one of India hottest Internet businesses.
(Econ, 10/22/11, SR p.18)
2008 Jan 16, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed that criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities outside the US. He offered few specifics on what actually went wrong.
(www.pcworld.com/article/id,141564-c,hackers/article.html)
2008 Jan 31, The Mideast and India suffered a 2nd day of telecom woes after two undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean sustained damage.
(WSJ, 2/1/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 15, It was reported that a new computer virus called Mocmex, identified as a Trojan Horse from China, had been discovered in digital photo frames. It recognized and blocked antivirus software from over 100 security vendors and collected passwords for online games.
(SFC, 2/15/08, p.C1)
2008 Feb 21, Google Inc. said will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.
(AP, 2/21/08)
2008 Mar 11, EU regulators cleared Google's $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick, saying the acquisition won't curb competition for online ads.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Mar 12, Hulu.com, a free video Web site, was launched as a online joint video venture between NBC and News Corp. In 2010 it announced that it would begin selling subscriptions.
(Econ, 7/3/10, p.63)(www.hulu.com/about/company_timeline)
2008 Mar 13, AOL said it will acquire Bebo, a social Web site, for $850 million.
(SFC, 3/14/08, p.C1)
2008 Mar 14, It was reported that China had likely surpassed the US last month in its number of Internet users.
(WSJ, 3/14/08, p.B3)
2008 Mar 17, Hannaford Bros., a grocery store chain in the Northeast US and Florida owned by Belgium’s Delhaize Group SA, disclosed that as many as 4.2 million customer account numbers had been stolen between Dec 7 and Mar 10. The intrusion was not discovered until Feb 27 and occurred over a network system that experts had believed to be secure.
(WSJ, 3/31/08, p.B4)
2008 Mar 23, Network Solutions, an American network provider, said it had suspended a website that Dutch MP Geert Wilders had reserved to post his anti-Islamic film, which has sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash.
(AP, 3/23/08)
2008 Mar 25, Officials said Indonesia plans to restrict access to pornographic and violent sites on the Internet after the country's parliament passed a new information bill.
(Reuters, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 25, It was reported that Syria is cracking down more on Internet use, imposing tighter monitoring of citizens who link to the Web, as well as jailing bloggers who criticize the government and blocking YouTube and other Web sites deemed harmful to state security.
(AP, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 26, TimeRime BV was founded by Marijn Bom, Jaap Joziasse, Gerard Pastwa and Pico Wilbrenninck, as a spin-off of the Dutch webdevelopment company Hoppinger.com.
(www.timerime.com/)
2008 Mar 27, Adobe systems, the maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop, launched a basic version available for free online.
(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Apr 8, Indonesian Internet companies blocked access to YouTube and MySpace, heeding a government order aimed at stopping people from watching an anti-Islam film by a Dutch lawmaker.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 8, The UN refugee agency unveiled a new partnership with Internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 16, Computer consultant John Schiefer (26) pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to raiding hundreds of thousands of computers with spyware to steal users' identities and commit fraud.
(AFP, 4/17/08)
2008 Apr 23, German publisher Bertelsmann said it planned to publish the world's first reference book based on entries from Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. The single volume, 992-page tome would contain about 50,000 condensed entries and sell for about $31.80.
(AP, 4/23/08)(SFC, 4/24/08, p.C1)
2008 May 12, The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said that an Egyptian government-owned Internet service provider on May 4 blocked the Egyptian Movement for Change - Kefaya website, in the latest crackdown on the country's cyber dissidents.
(AFP, 5/12/08)
2008 May 12, Powerset, a SF-based Internet company founded in 2005, announced a limited release of its search engine. Executives said it fielded queries in natural language with attempts to deduce intent.
(SFC, 5/12/08, p.D1)(www.powerset.com/)
2008 May 13, EarthLink said it is pulling out of its high-speed Internet network in Philadelphia, and that it would shut down the operation on June 12.
(SFC, 5/14/08, p.C3)
2008 May 13, Microsoft Corp. introduced its WorldWide Telescope, bringing the free Web-based program for zooming around the universe to a broad audience.
(AP, 5/13/08)(SFC, 5/13/08, p.A1)
2008 May 14, Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service, reported it had signed an agreement to be acquired by Comcast. It was founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring and was based in Mountain View, Ca.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaxo)
2008 May 15, CBS Corp. announced it was buying SF-based Cnet Networks, an Internet technology news provider, for $1.8 billion in cash.
(SFC, 5/16/08, p.C1)
2008 May 17, Spanish police announced the arrest of five people this week suspected of hacking into or outright disabling thousands of Internet pages, some of them run by government agencies in the US, Latin America and Asia. Two of the suspects were 16 years old. The others were 19 or 20.
(AP, 5/17/08)
2008 May 19, Google made available a free service allowing customers to manage their medical records online at www.google.com/health.
(SFC, 5/20/08, p.D1)
2008 Jun 18, Sweden's Parliament narrowly approved a contentious law that gives authorities sweeping powers to eavesdrop on all e-mail and telephone traffic that crosses the Nordic nation's borders. Outrage over the statute soon led to 2 million protests, filed by e-mail. In September the government approved 15 changes following the widespread protests.
(AP, 6/18/08)(AP, 7/2/08)(SFC, 9/26/08, p.A4)
2008 Jun 25, Dozens of Belarusian news Web sites filled their pages with grim black banners to protest a new media law that will severely restrict the last source of independent information in the repressive ex-Soviet state.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 Jun, Evri, a Semantic Web company, was launched in beta test. Evri’s first CEO, Neil Roseman, conducted a demo of Evri.com at the All Things Digital conference in May 2008. On March 11, 2010, Evri announced it's acquisition of Radar Networks and its key property Twine.com.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evri)
2008 Jul 13, Terry Childs (43), a San Francisco computer engineer, was arrested on felony charges for allegedly plotting to hijack the city’s computer system. Childs, who continue to draw his $127,735 annual salary, refused to provide passwords to the network system and was held in lieu of a $5 million bail. Mayor Newsom met with Childs on July 21, who provided system code. Cisco engineers had the system back under control by July 22. On April 27, 2010, Childs was convicted of felony computer tampering. On April 27, 2010, a Superior Court jury concluded that his crime cost the city over $200,000, making him eligible for a maximum state sentence of 5 years.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.B1)(SFC, 7/23/08, p.B1)(SFC, 4/28/10, p.C1)
2008 Jul 23, Google unveiled a new service dubbed “Knol," an Internet encyclopedia, in which contributing authors would share in ad revenue.
(SFC, 7/24/08, p.C4)
2008 Jul 31, Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm on cybersecurity, split from Booz & Co., in order to focus on the public sector. Booz & Co. continued focused on the private sector. Their non-compete agreement expired in August, 2011.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.69)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton)
2008 Jul, Alexandra Carmichael and Daniel Reda launched CureTogether to help the people they knew and the millions they didn’t who live in daily chronic pain.
(Econ, 3/3/12, TQ p.22)(http://curetogether.com/blog/about/)
2008 Aug 7, Heavy shelling overnight in the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia wounded at least 21 people. Cyber attacks from Russia began to target Georgian government Web sites. An organization known as the Russian Business Network was the leading suspect in the attacks. Georgia’s Pres. Saakashvili ordered the shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.
(AP, 8/7/08)(WSJ, 8/12/08, p.A9)(Econ, 8/30/08, p.49)
2008 Sep 2, Google’s new Web browser, named Chrome, became available for download.
(WSJ, 9/2/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 4, German ministers agreed to update data protection laws for the digital age in the wake of scandals showing how easily personal details can be bought on the Internet.
(AFP, 9/4/08)
2008 Sep 6, Yahoo! Japan announced support for victimized users whose Yahoo IDs were used illegally. The company admitted that its online auction site suffered a huge security breach and agreed to reimburse users who had been charged fees relating to fraudulent transactions.
(http://blog.trendmicro.com/caution-needed-jp-yahoo-auctions-site-phished/)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.76)
2008 Sep 9, O3B Networks Ltd., founded by Greg Wyler (38), announced plans to launch as many as 16 satellites that could provide Internet service to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Latin America by 2010 at a cost of some $650 million.
(WSJ, 9/9/08, p.B1)(www.o3bnetworks.com/)
2008 Sep 23, Google and T-Mobile unveiled the T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use the Google’s Android operating system.
(SFC, 9/24/08, p.C1)
2008 Sep 24, Google introduced a $10 million project to reward 5 winners in an Internet competition for an idea making the world a better place.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.C1)
2008 Sep 24, Oracle unveiled a joint project with Hewlett Packard for a storage server for data warehousing: the HP Oracle Database Machine.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.C1)
2008 Oct 1, Spanish police said they have staged their biggest ever operation against Internet child pornography, arresting 121 people suspected of involvement in a network that reached 75 countries. Some 800 police took part in Operation Carousel, an investigation that began last year in cooperation with Brazilian police.
(AFP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 18, Thingiverse, a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files, was launched Zach Smith as a companion site to MakerBot Industries, a DIY 3D printer kit making company.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingiverse)
2008 Oct 28, Google along with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild announced a settlement regarding the use of copyrighted book material. Google agreed to pay $125 million to start the Books Rights Registry, resolve legal fees and deal with other issues relating to authors and online book use.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.C1)
2008 Oct 29, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a coalition of human-rights groups founded the Global Network Initiative to create guidelines for technology companies in internet-restricting countries. GNI was founded upon its "Principles of Freedom of Expression and Privacy."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Network_Initiative)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.57)(Economist, 10/6/12, p.70)
2008 Oct 31, Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous cryptography buff, unveiled a project he dubbed bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.
(Econ, 5/9/15, SR p.16)
2008 Nov 4, The Federal Communications Commission ruled that a valuable chunk of wireless spectrum will be open to whatever mobile devices Americans want to use, amounting to a political setback for traditional telephone companies and a partial win for Google.
(http://tinyurl.com/5uyqzj)(SFC, 11/7/08, p.C1)
2008 Nov 6, A Romanian computer programmer who hacked into computers used by the U.S. Navy, the Department of Energy and NASA was convicted on Romanian charges and ordered to pay thousands in damages. Victor Faur (28) was also given a 16-month suspended prison sentence. In 2006 Faur was indicted in the United States on nine federal counts of computer intrusion and one of conspiracy.
(AP, 11/10/08)
2008 Nov 12, The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board announced the release of a joint final rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The act made it illegal for financial institutions to transfer funds between punters and online gambling sites. Compliance was required by Dec 1, 2009.
(www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20081112b.htm)(WSJ, 11/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 17, Yahoo said co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang will resign his post as CEO, but continue his previous role as “Chief Yahoo" and remain on the company’s board.
(SFC, 11/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 19, In Miami, Florida, police arrived to find Abraham Biggs (19) dead in his father's bed 12 hours after the Broward College student first declared on a Web site that he hated himself and planned to die. It was only then that the Web feed stopped. Some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.
(AP, 11/22/08)
2008 Nov 26, Qatar based Al Jazeera launched Sharek, a website where photos and videos can be submitted for use, once verified, in Al Jazeera’s television and online reports.
(Econ, 7/9/11, SR p.10)(http://tinyurl.com/5hsj2k)
2008 Dec 12, A court in Australia approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 17, Microsoft said will release an emergency patch today to fix a perilous software flaw allowing hackers to hijack Internet Explorer browsers and take over computers.
(AFP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 19, Egypt's communications ministry says Internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea have been cut, causing massive Internet outages.
(AP, 12/19/08)
2008 Dec 20, The NY Times said China has blocked access to its Web site, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard professor, authored “The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It," in which he explains how the promise of the Internet might not be realized, and points the way toward reducing the current risks.
(Econ, 9/4/10, p.76)
2008 NATO set up a research center in cyberdefence in Tallinn, Estonia. It was scheduled to be formally inaugurated in 2009.
(Econ, 12/6/08, TQ p.21)
2008 Randall Stross authored “Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know."
(WSJ, 9/17/08, p.A25)
2008 Foreign intelligence inserted a flash drive into a US military laptop on a post in the Middle East. In 2010 it was disclosed that the malicious code placed on the drive uploaded itself onto a network run by the US military’s Central Command and resulted in the most significant breach of US military computers.
(SFC, 8/26/10, p.A7)
2008 Leah Busque founded TaskRabbit, an online and mobile marketplace that allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to others in their neighborhood. Users name the task they need done, name the price they are willing to pay, and a network of pre-approved TaskRabbits bid to complete the job. By 2013 TaskRabbit employed some 15,000 workers.
(Econ, 6/1/13, p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaskRabbit)(SFC, 8/16/13, p.D2)
2008 Nathan Eagle founded a service called txteagle, a Boston-based service, to distribute small jobs via text messaging in return for small payments.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.73)(http://smlxtralarge.com/2010/01/19/the-future-of-worktxteagle/)
2008 The Chronicle of Life Foundation was established by Kai Pommerenke, a UC Santa Cruz economist, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its mission was to save personal memories and any photos or other files, thus creating a chronicle of one’s life. The service was launched for public use on Dec 20, 2010.
(SFC, 1/10/11, p.D4)(www.chronicleoflife.com/index)
2008 Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss settled a lawsuit with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The brothers requested payment of their $45 million settlement to be made in shares of Facebook. By the time Facebook went public in 2012 their stock was worth some $300 million.
(SSFC, 12/24/17, p.D5)
2008 The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) began in Canada as an online computing course. By 2012 MOOCS were offering college students lectures for a fraction of the cost of attending a university.
(Econ, 6/28/14, p.21)
2008 Spotify, a Swedish Internet music streaming service, was founded.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.64)
2008 Syrian authorities blocked 225 internet sites this year, up from 159 in 2007.
(Econ, 7/25/09, SR p.13)
2009 Jan 3, Bitcoin, the “world’s first decentralized digital currency" was introduced. It was devised in 2008 by programmer Satoshi Nakomoto (thought not to be the person’s real name). It was run by a peer-to-per network and limited to 21 million coins. By 2013 the leading exchange was Mt.Gox, a Tokyo-based firm.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin)(Econ, 6/18/11, p.83)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.69)
2009 Jan 5, China launched a major crackdown on Internet pornography targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google.
(AP, 1/5/09)
2009 Jan 12, State media said China has shut down 91 websites for pornographic and other "vulgar" content, as well as a political blog portal, since announcing its latest bid to ensure Internet morality.
(Reuters, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 12, Kazakh PM Karim Masimov told his ministers to start personal blogs to get them closer to the people of the former Soviet state.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 15, Police in New Zealand said they had nabbed a man who was trying to crack a bar's safe after posting security camera footage of the act on the Internet networking site Facebook.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 18, Kyrgyzstan began to come under a massive cyber attack attributed to Russian “cyber-militia." Less than 20% of the country’s 5.3 million population had online access. Proposed reasons for the attacks included the US use of an air base for operations in Afghanistan or a hit on the fledgling Kyrgyz opposition, which has used the Internet to express its discontent.
(WSJ, 1/28/08, p.A10)
2009 Jan 27, The social-networking site Facebook removed a group whose title advocated raising money so a gunman could be hired to "liquidate" Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales. The Spanish-language group, created in August, had 8,069 members and had drawn the attention of at least one outraged blogger, when The Associated Press alerted Facebook. Creator Hony Pierola (20) denied any malice.
(AP, 1/27/09)
2009 Jan 29, Swiss police said they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation last year while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. They arrested 16 people and seized 1.1 tons (1.2 US tons) of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($780,000).
(AP, 1/29/09)
2009 Feb 10, The European Union announced that it has signed a pact with 17 social networking providers including Facebook, MySpace and Google to improve safeguards against the bullying of teenagers online.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 26, British prosecutors said they would not bring charges against Gary McKinnon, a computer expert accused by a US attorney of the "biggest military hack of all time," dealing a blow to his bid to avoid extradition.
(AP, 2/26/09)
2009 Mar 4, The Finnish Parliament approved controversial legislation that allows employers to track workers' e-mails.
(AP, 3/4/09)
2009 Mar 6, In Thailand Chiranuch Premchaiporn was arrested for violating the country’s Computer Crime Act. She faced 10 charges for not preventing comments on bulletin boards that might have offended the royal family.
(http://tinyurl.com/4j6w77d)(Econ, 2/5/11, p.54)
2009 Mar 16, The Vatican said it will launch a Chinese version of its website on March 19 in an effort to bring more of Pope Benedict's message to China, whose communist government does not allow Catholics to recognize his authority.
(Reuters, 3/16/09)
2009 Mar 17, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, owned by the Hearst Corp., printed its last newspaper edition. It will become exclusively Web-based as Seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to move to online only.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.A8)
2009 Mar 23, Advance Publications Inc., owner of the Ann Arbor News and 7 other Michigan newspaper, announced that the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News will publish its last print edition in July and then become a community oriented Web site.
(WSJ, 3/24/09, p.B5)
2009 Mar 29, Canadian researchers said a shadowy cyber-espionage network based mostly in China has infiltrated secret government and private computers around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama. They said the network, known as GhostNet, had infected 1,295 computers in 103 countries and penetrated systems containing sensitive information in top political, economic and media offices.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 30, An “Open Cloud" manifesto was published. IBM and other tech companies issued a statement of principles that called for keeping cloud computing services as open as possible.
(www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090329_463505.htm)
2009 Apr 1, In Sweden a new law cracking down on online copyright violation went into force leading to a sharp drop in internet traffic.
(AP, 4/3/09)(http://tinyurl.com/c96saw)
2009 Apr 7, US military leaders said the Pentagon has spent over $100 million in the past 6 months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.C3)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 8, The Wall Street Journal reported that cyberspies have penetrated the US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 9, Vandals in the San Jose, and San Carlos, Ca., chopped fiber optic cables disrupting service for hundreds of thousands of people in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
(SFC, 4/10/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 9, French lawmakers rejected a tough new Internet piracy bill that would cut off illegal downloaders, in a surprise setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy's government.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 14, The EU started legal action against Britain for not applying EU data privacy rules that would restrict an Internet advertising tracker called Phorm from watching how users surf the Web.
(AP, 4/14/09)
2009 Apr 17, Five of Germany's leading Internet providers agreed to block access to sites identified by national criminal investigators as hosting child pornography, as authorities reported the breakup of an international ring.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 17, A Swedish court found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top illegal file-sharing websites, sentencing them to a year in prison in a landmark ruling.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 22, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet approved a new law to require the vast majority of the country's Internet service providers to block child pornography sites.
(AP, 4/22/09)
2009 May 4, South Korean news reported that North Korea runs a cyber warfare unit that tries to hack into US and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.
(AP, 5/5/09)
2009 May 5, The British International news portal One News Page was launched. One News Page (http://www.onenewspage.us/) was founded by Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer (38) a successful internet entrepreneur who has been working in the commercial online arena since 1999.
(www.onenewspage.co.uk/press.php)
2009 May 15, The Wolfram Alpha Internet search engine was officially launched. Stephen Wolfram, British physicist, described it as a “computational knowledge engine." It was created to compute answers from its own source of materials.
(Econ, 5/16/09, p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Alpha)(Econ, 6/4/11, TQ p.30)
2009 May 20, SF-based Craigslist sued South Carolina’s Attorney Gen’l. Henry McMaster to block him from filing criminal charges against the online classified site for abetting prostitution.
(SFC, 5/21/09, p.C1)
2009 May 20, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heinemen signed a bill to prevent registered sex offenders from using social networking sites such as Facebook.
(SFC, 5/21/09, p.A4)
2009 May 24, Iran blocked access to Facebook, prompting government critics to condemn the move as an attempt to muzzle the opposition ahead of next month's presidential election.
(AP, 5/24/09)
2009 May 26, Iran restored access to Facebook, after a block on the social networking Web site last week generated accusations that the government was trying to muzzle one of the main presidential campaign tools of the reformist opposition.
(AP, 5/26/09)
2009 May 28, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, said it will spin out the company and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)
2009 May 29, President Barack Obama said the nation for too long has failed to adequately protect the security of its computer networks. He will name a new cyber czar to take on the job.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 May 29, Cuba criticized Microsoft for blocking its Messenger instant messaging service on the island and in other countries under US sanctions, calling it yet another example of Washington's "harsh" treatment of Havana.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 Jun 8, The Wall Street Journal reported that China will require all personal computers sold in the country from July 1 to come with software that blocks access to certain websites. The program aimed to prevent the spread of pornography and other "unhealthy" content. On June 16 the government backed away from the order required use of installation of the Green Dam Youth Escort software, but the software would come pre-installed or included with all PCs sold on the mainland as of July 1.
(AFP, 6/8/09)(AP, 6/9/09)(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C3)
2009 Jun 15, Virgin Media, the cable TV operator owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, launched a new kind of music download subscription service with Universal, the world's largest music company.
(AP, 6/15/09)
2009 Jun 15, Georgia’s Supreme Court ordered Expedia Inc. and its Hotwire.com subsidiary to collect and pay hotel occupancy taxes to the west Georgia city of Columbus in a possible precedent for cities across the country.
(SFC, 6/18/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 16, The British government declared a goal for Britain become the world's "digital capital" by building cutting-edge broadband, telecoms and media infrastructure to cement its role as a "global economic powerhouse."
(AFP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 16, The Norwegian firm Opera Software unveiled new technology that allows it Opera 10 Web browser to also function as a file server. A feature called Opera Unite enables users to push content and establish communications without the need for a 3rd party.
(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 17, It was reported that security researchers at Finjan, a venture–funded security company in San Jose, have identified a sophisticated online network, called GoldenCashworld, that was used for buying and selling access to infected PCs. The network included tools for creating malicious code and stolen credentials for about 100,000 Web sites.
(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 18, China's Internet watchdog condemned the Chinese-language version of Google for "disseminating pornographic and vulgar information."
(AP, 6/18/09)
2009 Jun 19, Google Inc. said that it was working to block pornography reaching users of its Chinese service after a mainland watchdog found the search engine turned up large numbers of links to obscene and vulgar sites.
(AP, 6/19/09)
2009 Jun 18, In a replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial a federal jury ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset (32) of Minnesota willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. The new trial was ordered after the judge in the case decided he had erred in giving jury instructions. Thomas-Rasset's second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.
(AP, 6/19/09)
2009 Jun 20, Italian police in Sicily said they have arrested 14 people and placed more than 250 under investigation in the country's biggest sweep against Internet child pornography.
(AP, 6/20/09)
2009 Jun 26, In Texas security guard Jesse William McGraw (25), head of the Elecktronik Tribulation Army, was arrested for hacking into computers at a Dallas medical clinic in hopes of launching a massive computer attack around July 4.
(SFC, 7/1/09, p.A4)
2009 Jun 28, Swiss police said they have uncovered a child pornography ring involving more than 2,000 people in 78 countries.
(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jun 29, The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China urged Beijing to reconsider implementing a controversial Internet filter, saying it raised serious concerns about security, privacy and user choice.
(AP, 6/29/09)
2009 Jun 30, China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Web surfers hours before it was due to take effect.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 4, Attacks began on more than two dozen Internet sites in the United States and South Korea and some were disabled by hackers. South Korea's spy agency later said the attacks were possibly linked to North Korea. Some of the affected US government Web sites, such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service, were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 7, Google announced its new operating system, Google Chrome OS, which would initially target low cost netbooks.
(SFC, 7/9/09, p.C1)
2009 Jul 9, South Korean Web sites were attacked again after a wave of Web site outages in the US and South Korea that several officials suspect North Korea was behind.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 10, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that a research institute affiliated with the North's Ministry of People's Armed Forces received an order on June 7 to "destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant." The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the North has between 500-1,000 hacking specialists.
(AP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 13, China's Health Ministry ordered a hospital to stop using electric shock therapy to cure youths of Internet addiction, saying there was no scientific evidence it worked.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 14, South Korean police said hackers extracted files from computers they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, a sign that they tried to steal information from the victims.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 21, Several Chinese Internet sites and parts of popular Web portals went offline amid tightening controls that have already left mainland Web users without access to Facebook, Twitter and other well-known social networking sites.
(AP, 7/21/09)
2009 Jul 29, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. agreed to a 10-year Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc. The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 31, A jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum (b.1983), a student at Boston Univ., to pay damages of $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over the Internet. He was later ordered to destroy his illegal music files — but a judge declined to force him to stop promoting the activity.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Tenenbaum)(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Jul, Chinese authorities, following riots in Xinjiang province, put the province under electronic lockdown for the next 10 months. Clashes between Uighurs and Hans left some 200 people dead in Urumqi.
(AP, 9/3/09)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.15)(Econ, 8/9/14, p.38)
2009 Aug 13, Australian police said a 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 13, Chinese officials retreated from a plan to install anti-pornography software on every computer sold, but said Internet cafes, schools and other public places must use the program.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 14, A Taiwanese telephone company said Seabed movements believed caused by Typhoon Morakat damaged seven undersea cables linking Asian nations, disrupting Internet and telephone services.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 17, Albert Gonzalez (28) of Miami, a former informant for the US Secret Service who helped the agency hunt hackers, was indicted in New Jersey and charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information. He allegedly stole information from 130 million credit and debit card accounts in what federal prosecutors called the largest case of identity theft yet. He was already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case. On Aug 28 Gonzalez agreed to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison.
(AP, 8/18/09)(SFC, 8/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 24, The Stockholm District Court threatened to fine Internet provider Black Internet 500,000 Swedish kronor (about $70,000) unless it stopped serving Pirate Bay. Court documents showed the company has to comply with the order until the ongoing case between Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry is over.
(AP, 8/25/09)
2009 Aug, In China a new micro-blogging service (Sina Weibo), similar to Twitter, began operating. Property mogul Pan Shiyi, co-founder of SOHO China, was signed on for one of the first 20 accounts.
(Econ, 10/30/10, p.42)(Econ, 4/6/13, SR p.7)
2009 Sep 2, Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (30), who writes under the pen name Me Nam, at her home in Nha Trang. Quynh's arrest was the latest in a series of police moves against writers who criticized government policies toward China. The government tightened its rules for bloggers earlier this year, saying they must restrict their writings to personal matters. Quynh was released on Sep 12.
(AP, 9/4/09)(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 8, The EU said that a member states could be allowed to ban gambling websites if its intention was to stop crime.
(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 14, Google rolled out Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of online newspapers in much the same way as they leaf through pages in print.
(www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/internet/15google.html)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep 15, The Obama administration embraced cloud computing to help reduce government waste and ease environmental impact.
(SFC, 9/16/09, p.C1)
2009 Sep 25, An Australian court sentenced Belal Khazaal (39), a former Qantas Airways baggage handler, to 12 years in prison for publishing a do-it-yourself jihad book on the Internet. The book was titled "Provisions of the Rules of Jihad: Short Judicial Rulings and Organizational Instructions for Fighters and Mujahideen Against Infidels." Khazaal had also been convicted in absentia by Lebanese military courts in 2003 and 2005 on terrorism-related charges.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Sep 30, The US government and ICANN, the body in charge of assigning Internet addresses, signed an agreement that allows for greater global participation in the Internet domain name process. The agreement, which allows ICANN to become a "private sector led organization," subjects ICANN to periodic reviews by a panel that includes a US representative and independent experts, essentially allowing the organization to no longer report solely to the United States.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, Google rolled out Google Wave for a test involving some 100,000 people. The product was billed as a revolutionary way to collaborate online.
(Econ, 9/19/09, p.74)
2009 Sep, Turkey banned MySpace, an Internet-based social networking site.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.67)
2009 Oct 15, Google Inc. said it is launching a new online service for booksellers next year called Google Editions, which will let readers buy books and read them on gadgets ranging from cell phones to possibly e-book devices.
(AP, 10/15/09)
2009 Oct 15, It was reported that the Taj network, funded by the National Science Foundation, now connects India, Singapore, Vietnam and Egypt to the larger Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD) global infrastructure, and "dramatically improves existing US network links with China and the Nordic region," according to an NSF statement.
(www.livescience.com/technology/091015-global-gloraid-taj-cyber-net.html)
2009 Oct 18, Amazon Chief Almir Surui (35), unveiled a project in partnership with Google, to make public the encroachment of illegal mining and logging on his people’s 600,000 acre reserve in Brazil. Almir was evacuated for his safety to the US in 2006. Eleven chief of the Surui and neighboring tribes have been shot and killed this decade.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.A1)
2009 Oct 29, A US District judge in San Jose awarded Facebook $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case filed against online marketer Sanford Wallace, known as the “Spam King." Wallace filed for bankruptcy in June.
(SFC, 10/31/09, p.D1)
2009 Nov 10, An Australian student sparked fears of a new era of computer viruses after creating a worm which infects Apple's iconic iPhone with pictures of 1980s pop star Rick Astley.
(AFP, 11/10/09)
2009 Nov 14, In Iran local newspapers reported that the government has formed a special unit to monitor Web sites and fight Internet crimes, in a clear attack on an opposition that relies almost exclusively on online means to broadcast its message.
(AP, 11/14/09)
2009 Nov 15, Egypt’s information technology minister said Egypt will apply for the first Internet domain written in Arabic. The announcement was made at a conference grouping Yahoo's co-founder and others to discuss boosting online access in emerging nations.
(AP, 11/15/09)
2009 Nov 16, In Shanghai President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism.
(AP, 11/16/09)
2009 Nov 19, Google unveiled its new Chrome operating system for an always-connected netbook.
(SFC, 11/20/09, p.D1)
2009 Dec 1, In India newspaper executives and editors gathered from around the world heard calls to seek more payment for their content on the Internet as they decried their industry's sharply falling advertising revenues.
(AP, 12/1/09)
2009 Dec 4, In China the file-sharing site BTCHINA, a major source of overseas movies, television shows and games in the country, was closed. Another site, VeryCD.com, was down on Dec 9 and a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily said other file sharing sites would be closed in the coming days. The closures were said to be a fight against copyright infringement, but could be seen as another measure aimed at controlling what content the country's Web users can find online.
(AP, 12/9/09)
2009 Dec 5, The Defense Advance Research projects Agency (DARPA) conducted an experiment challenging teams around the country to locate the submit the correct geographic coordinates of 10 weather balloons in return for a $40,000 cash prize. Over 4,000 teams participated and the winning answer came after 8 hours and 56 minutes. Social networking sites played a major role in the game theory simulation. Riley Crane, a post doc research fellow at MIT’s media lab, led the winning team using an elaborate information gathering pyramid.
(SFC, 12/7/09, p.A9)
2009 Dec 6, Iranian authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before expected student protests on Dec 7, to deny the opposition a vital means of communication. Authorities also ordered journalists working for foreign media organizations not to leave their offices to cover the demonstrations.
(AP, 12/6/09)
2009 Dec 9, Time Warner, which acquired America Online (AOL) in 2001, span off AOL and its 7,000 employees as a separate company under CEO Tim Armstrong (38).
(SFC, 5/29/09, p.C2)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.73)
2009 Dec 10, A consortium including Google and KDDI Corp signed a deal to build and operate an international undersea cable system, estimated to cost $400 million. Globe Telecom, part owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, and units of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications were also part of the consortium.
(Reuters, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 15, Australia said it would push ahead with a mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet, despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said new laws would be introduced to ban access to "refused classification" (RC) sites featuring criminal content such as child sex abuse, bestiality, rape and detailed drug use.
(AFP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 16, In Belarus the Nasha Niva independent newspaper said President Alexander Lukashenko has issued a decree to tighten state control over the Internet.
(AFP, 12/16/09)
2009 Dec 17, The Obama administration handed out the first $182 million of a $7.2 billion pot of stimulus money that will go toward building high-speed Internet networks and encouraging more Americans to use them.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 18, A Paris court ruled that Google Inc. is breaking French law with its policy of digitizing books, handing the US Internet giant a euro10,000 ($14,300)-a-day fine until it rids its database of the literary extracts.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Dec 18, South Korea's military said it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the US and may have been carried out by North Korea.
(AP, 12/18/09)
2009 Dec 22, The Obama administration announced that Howard Schmidt is the president's choice to be his cyber security coordinator.
(http://tinyurl.com/yfhswrz)
2009 Dec 27, Syrian security agents detained Tal al-Mallohi (19), a high school student blogger, after summoning her for questioning. Authorities have not allowed al-Mallohi's family to communicate with her since she was picked up. On Sep 20, 2010, The New York-based Human Rights Watch called for her immediate release. On Feb 14, 2011, she was sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges of spying for a foreign country.
(AP, 9/20/10)(SFC, 2/15/11, p.A2)
2009 Ken Auletta authored “Googled: the End of the World As We Know It."
(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.E1)
2009 John Freeman authored “The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox."
(SSFC, 11/22/09, Books p.F7)
2009 Code for America, a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)3 organization, was founded to bring web-industry professionals to work with city governments in the United States in order to promote openness, participation, and efficiency in municipal governments.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_for_America)
2009 Dataminr, a New York startup, was launched to scour the Twittershphere for important events and news not yet reported by mainstream media.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.71)
2009 Fiverr was founded by Shai Wininger and Micha Kaufman as a global online marketplace offering tasks and services beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed. The Fiverr website was launched in February, 2010.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiverr)
2009 Joel Simkhai created Grindr, a dating app for the iPhone that allowed gay men to find one another. The application used GPS technology to allow gay men to find one another within walking distance.
(SFC, 3/19/10, p.F1)
2009 Yahoo bought Maktoob, a Jordanian Internet portal, for $175 million.
(Econ, 7/13/13, p.56)
2010 Jan 6, It was reported that Santa Barbara-based Cybersitter has filed a $2.2 billion lawsuit against China, accusing Beijing of stealing its technology to bar Internet access to political and religious sites in China. The suit alleges that the Chinese makers of Green Dam illegally copied more than 3,000 lines of code from its filtering software, and conspired with China's rulers and computer manufacturers to distribute more than 56 million copies of the pirated software throughout China.
(AFP, 1/6/10)
2010 Jan 12, Google's announced that it was considering a withdrawal from China, after what it said were attacks from China on human rights activists using its Gmail service and on dozens of companies.
(Reuters, 1/13/10)
2010 Jan 13, Britain’s Huddersfield University launched an investigation after its students allegedly started an Internet craze for a Hitler drinking game. The original page on the social networking site had nearly 12,000 members but has now been shut down, although another similar page has since been set up.
(AFP, 1/13/10)
2010 Jan 14, Los Angeles-based Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, the law firm representing a Santa Barbara company that sued China for allegedly pirating its Internet content filtering software, said its attorneys on Jan 11 started received emails containing Trojans, which can allow outside access to the target's computer.
(AP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 14, Hundreds of Bulgarians protested against planned legal amendments allowing mass monitoring of emails, electronic messages and phone calls to fight crime and corruption.
(AP, 1/14/10)
2010 Jan 15, The US State Department said it will soon give China a formal diplomatic message expressing its concern about cyber attacks that prompted Google Inc to threaten to pull out of China.
(Reuters, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 15, Iran's police chief warned opposition supporters not to use cell phones and e-mail messages to organize protest rallies against the government, saying those who do so will be prosecuted and punished.
(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 15, Malaysian student Mohamad Tasyrif Tajudin (25) was charged after allegedly posting comments on Facebook about throwing a gasoline bomb amid a recent spate of attacks on churches, most of which were hit by Molotov Cocktails. He was charged under Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act for improper use of the Internet, which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a fine if found guilty.
(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 18, It was reported that Alaska corporations and a multinational firm are planning to build the first fiber optic cable between Asia and Europe through the Arctic. The project estimated at $1 billion, involved laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cable from Tokyo, along the Alaska coast, through the Northwest Passage, past Greenland to London.
(SFC, 1/18/10, p.D3)
2010 Jan 18, The OSCE, Europe's main security and human rights watchdog, said that Turkey was blocking some 3,700 Internet sites for "arbitrary and political reasons" and urged reforms to show its commitment to freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 19, China’s Foreign Ministry said Google Inc will not be treated as an exception to China's demand foreign companies obey its laws, a week after the world's largest search engine warned it could pull out of China. Google said it had postponed the launch of two mobile handsets in China, in the latest fallout from its threat last week to withdraw from the Asian giant over cyberattacks and censorship.
(Reuters, 1/19/10)(AFP, 1/19/10)
2010 Jan 22, Beijing issued a stinging response to US criticism that it is jamming the free flow of words and ideas on the Internet, accusing the United States of damaging relations between the two countries by hoisting its "information imperialism" on China. An attorney for a US free speech group said US trade officials have asked for more information as they consider whether to pursue a possible World Trade Organization case against Chinese Internet barriers.
(AP, 1/22/10)(Reuters, 1/22/10)
2010 Jan 25, China sharply rebuked the United States, denying involvement in any Internet attacks and defending its online restrictions as lawful after Washington urged Beijing to investigate an attack against Google.
(AP, 1/25/10)
2010 Jan 26, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the US of trying to use the Internet as a tool to confront the Islamic Republic, declaring that such a policy only showed Washington's frustration. The US Senate voted in July to adopt the Victims of Iranian Censorship Act which authorizes up to $50 million for expanding Farsi language broadcasts, supporting Iranian Internet and countering government efforts to block it.
(Reuters, 1/26/10)
2010 Feb 1, President Barack Obama unveiled a multitrillion-dollar spending plan, pledging an intensified effort to combat high unemployment and asking Congress to quickly approve new job-creation efforts that would boost the deficit to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion. Obama also made his first YouTube interview and spent about 40 minutes answering about a dozen of over 11,000 questions submitted by YouTube users following his State of the Union address.
(AP, 2/1/10)(SFC, 2/2/10, p.A9)
2010 Feb 6, China’s state media said a man who operated a porn website has been sentenced to 13 years in jail and fined 100,000 yuan (15,000 dollars), amid an ongoing campaign to crack down on online sexual content.
(AFP, 2/7/10)
2010 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued new guidelines to local authorities and lifted a ban imposed in December on individuals acquiring .cn domain names. Individuals wanting to set up a website will have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meet regulators, before their domain name can be registered.
(AFP, 2/23/10)
2010 Feb 11, In Australia a shadowy group of cyber-activists succeeded in jamming key Australian government websites for a second consecutive day and warned they could shut down the sites for months in protest over controversial plans to filter the Internet. Codenamed "Operation: Titstorm", the hacking campaign involved hundreds of people from around the world and used a technique called Distributed Denial of Service to jam web traffic.
(AFP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 18, It was reported that a new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world. The virus, known as "Kneber botnet," gathers login credentials to online financial systems, social networking sites and email systems from infested computers and reports the information back to hackers.
(Reuters, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 18, Microsoft won unconditional European Union approval for its planned search deal with Yahoo Inc to challenge market leader Google.
(Reuters, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 24, An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations because they did not act quickly enough to remove an online video that showed sadistic teen bullies pummeling and mocking an autistic boy. Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted. In the US, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally gives Internet service providers immunity in cases like this, but no such protections exist in Europe.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Mar 2, It was reported that Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. The Mariposa botnet infected almost 13 million computers across 190 countries. More arrests were expected soon in other countries.
(AP, 3/2/10)(SSFC, 3/14/10, p.D1)
2010 Mar 9, In Switzerland a senior Google executive welcomed a US decision to relax restrictions on exporting Internet communications services to Iran, Sudan and Cuba.
(AP, 3/9/10)
2010 Mar 13, Iran’s Fars the news agency said Iran has busted what it says was a US-funded cyber network group linked to an exiled opposition movement that collected data on its nuclear scientists. 30 members of the network with links to the outlawed People's Mujahedeen and monarchists were said to have been arrested.
(AFP, 3/14/10)
2010 Mar 13, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called for regulation of the Internet while demanding authorities crack down on a critical news Web site that he accused of spreading false information. A Venezuelan police official said security forces have seized two tons of cocaine hidden in two bulldozers at a port in the central state of Carabobo. The cocaine was intended to be smuggled to the Netherlands.
(AP, 3/14/10)
2010 Mar 17, McAfee Inc. reported that hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook's estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.
(Reuters, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 21, China’s state media reported that authorities in Xinjiang have restored access to email services and 32 Internet sites that were blocked after ethnic unrest broke out in the region in July.
(AFP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 21, Conservationists at the CITES meeting in Qatar said the Internet has emerged as one of the greatest threats to rare species, fueling the illegal wildlife trade and making it easier to buy everything from live baby lions to wine made from tiger bones.
(AP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 22, Google announced that its China search engine, google.cn, would automatically redirect queries to its service in China's semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong, where Google is not legally required to censor searches.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 22, In Nigeria the Magajin Gari Sharia court in the northern city of Kaduna ordered the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), one of the country's leading rights groups, to suspend its Twitter and Facebook online debates on Malam Buba Bello Jangebe’s wrist amputation for theft, which was carried out in 2000.
(AFP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 23, Internet giant Google led high-profile criticism of Australia's controversial plan to filter the Internet, saying it went too far and could set a dangerous precedent.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 23, Luxury goods manufacturers said a ruling from the EU's highest court will stop Google Inc. selling their brand names as advertising keywords to unauthorized sellers or counterfeiters.
(AP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 26, Hacker Albert Gonzalez (28), who participated in a cybercrime ring that stole tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers, was sentenced in US District Court to 20 years in prison. Gonzalez was living in Miami at the time of the crimes in the three cases, which occurred over almost two years before he was arrested in May of 2008 and subsequently indicted in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/hackergonzalezsentencedto20yearsforexploits)
2010 Mar 30, Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, while searches on its Chinese-language site became erratic, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2010 Mar 31, Google Inc. says malicious software has been used to spy on Vietnamese computer users opposed to a controversial bauxite mine in the Southeast Asian country. Computer security firm McAfee said the perpetrators may be linked to the communist government.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Apr 6, The US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, ruled that the FDIC has no authority to regulate how Internet service providers manage traffic to their customers.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.35)
2010 Apr 6, A group of Canadian researchers released a report saying a cyber-espionage group based in southwest China stole documents from the Indian Defense Ministry and emails from the Dalai Lama's office.
(Reuters, 4/6/10)
2010 Apr 30, In Argentina over 2,000 adolescents in schools across the province of Mendoza skipped classes and met in a plaza in a mass truancy organized on Facebook. A judge in Mendoza soon ordered Facebook to shut groups created by minors to organize the truancy.
(SFC, 5/13/10, p.A2)
2010 May 6, The US FCC announced a plan to classify the last mile of internet access as a telecommunications service.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.86)
2010 May 14, In Australia the body of Nona Belomesoff (18) was found in an isolated bushland area. Christopher James Dannevig (20) was charged with her murder. He had allegedly set up a fake identity on Facebook and enticed Belomesoff to a nature reserve in Sydney's southwest on May 12.
(AFP, 5/16/10)
2010 May 14, In China Internet service was restored to Xinjiang province, 10 months after it was blocked following deadly rioting in Urumqi, the regional capital.
(SFC, 5/15/10, p.A2)
2010 May 17, A group of French technology firms know as the association for digital Economy in France called on local governments to partner with private companies to build a network of data centers and shared cloud platforms catering to French needs.
(SFC, 5/31/10, p.D5)
2010 May 19, Pakistan's government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 5/19/10)
2010 May 20, The Pakistani government blocked access to YouTube because of "sacrilegious" content on the video-sharing website, signaling a growing Internet crackdown against sites deemed offensive to the country's majority Muslim population.
(AP, 5/20/10)
2010 May 21, Norwegian browser developer Opera Software said it is moving its data processing capacity to a newly-built center in Iceland, one of the first foreign investment deals for the crisis-hit island as it tries to rebuild its economy.
(AP, 5/21/10)
2010 May 21, Pakistani protesters shouted "Death to Facebook", "Death to America" and burnt US flags, venting growing anger over "sacrilegious" caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet.
(AP, 5/21/10)
2010 May 24, Brian Thomas Mettenbrink of Nebraska was sentenced to one year in federal prison for his role in a cyber attack on the Church of Scientology.
(SFC, 5/25/10, p.A4)
2010 May 27, Pakistan restored access to popular video website YouTube, but Facebook and 1,200 web pages remained blocked as a row about "blasphemous" content on the Internet rumbled into a second week.
(AFP, 5/27/10)
2010 May 28, A South Korean couple were convicted of abandoning their newborn daughter, who starved to death while they addictively played an online game raising a virtual child.
(AP, 5/28/10)
2010 May 30, Bangladesh said it has blocked the popular social networking website Facebook over a page that urges people to draw images of Islam's prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 5/30/10)
2010 May 31, Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents.
(AP, 5/31/10)
2010 Jun 3, A federal jury in Minneapolis found vendors Russell and Abby Cole guilty of using an online auction to defraud Best Buy of $41.6 million between 2003-2007. The vendors had the help of Robert Bossany, a Best Buy employee.
(SFC, 6/14/10, p.E3)
2010 Jun 6, Australia’s attorney general said police have been asked to investigate internet giant Google over possible breaches of telecommunications privacy laws. The investigation followed complaints from members of the public about activities of Google employees while taking photographs for Google Maps, the search engine's maps page. Google said it would cooperate with the investigation.
(Reuters, 6/6/10)
2010 Jun 8, France officially opened up its online gaming market, granting 17 licenses to 11 operators three days before the start of the soccer World Cup in South Africa.
(AFP, 6/8/10)
2010 Jun 22, Austin Heap (26) launched Proxyheap, the precursor to anti-censorship software called Haystack. He soon received a license from the US treasury, State Dept. and commerce Dept. to export it to Iran. The software was withdrawn on Sep 10 due to security issues.
(Econ, 9/18/10, p.75)
2010 Jun 25, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, agreed in a meeting to start using Chinese characters for suffixes handed out by Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan-based Internet registries. It started allowing Arabic earlier this year.
(AP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun 29, Google Inc said it will stop automatically rerouting users in China to an uncensored search page, a move that aims to preserve its operating license and signals a fight to save the firm's Chinese business.
(Reuters, 6/29/10)
2010 Jun, Stuxnet, computer malware, was first detected by VirusBlokAda, a security firm in Belarus. It was tailored for Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities. It was able to recognize a specific facility's control network and then destroy it. The code had a technology fingerprint of the control system it was seeking and would go into action automatically when it found its target. In September German computer security researcher Ralph Langner said he suspected that Stuxnet's mark was the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran. Unspecified problems have been blamed for a delay in getting the facility fully operational.
(AP, 9/24/10)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.63)
2010 Jul 9, Google said China has renewed its license to operate a website, preserving the search giant's toehold in the most populous Internet market after it gave up an attempt to skirt Beijing's Web censorship.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 23, Thailand’s Culture Ministry said Facebook and Twitter are causing deteriorating language skills among Thai students and authorities want them to return to the bygone tradition of letter-writing.
(AP, 7/23/10)
2010 Jul 18, In Slovenia a cyber mastermind, suspected of creating a malicious software code that infected 12 million computers worldwide and orchestrating other huge cyber scams, was arrested and questioned. His arrest came about five months after Spanish police broke up the massive cyber scam, arresting three of the alleged ringleaders who operated the Mariposa botnet, which stole credit cards and online banking credentials. On July 28 the FBI later said that a 23-year old Slovene known as Iserdo was picked up in Maribor, after lengthy investigation by Slovenian police, FBI and Spanish authorities. The FBI also identified, for the first time, the three individuals arrested in connection with the case in Spain: Florencio Carro Ruiz, known as "Netkairo;" Jonathan Pazos Rivera, known as "Jonyloleante;" and Juan Jose Bellido Rios, known as "Ostiator.
(AP, 7/28/10)
2010 Jul 26, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised that the release of some 91,000 secret US military documents on the Afghanistan war is just the beginning, adding that he still has thousands more Afghan files to post online. The files were mostly field reports and intelligence assessments from 2004-2009. Pakistan's most powerful spy agency on lashed out against a trove of leaked US intelligence reports that alleged close connections between it and Taliban militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan, calling the accusations malicious and unsubstantiated.
(AP, 7/26/10)(Econ, 7/31/10, p.28)
2010 Jul 30, The Australian government committed to expanding its fiber broadband Internet network to a further 300,000 homes across the vast island continent if re-elected at next month's polls.
(AFP, 7/30/10)
2010 Aug 9, Skype SA, the Internet calling service that was controlled until last year by eBay Inc., filed for a US initial public offering.
(AP, 8/9/10)
2010 Aug 10, Saudi Arabia's telecommunications regulator said it would allow BlackBerry messaging services to continue in the kingdom, citing "positive developments" with the device's Canadian manufacturer.
(AP, 8/10/10)
2010 Aug 19, South Korea said it has blocked North Korea's new Twitter account from being accessed in the South, saying the tweets contain "illegal information" under the country's security laws.
(AP, 8/19/10)
2010 Aug 24, Attorneys general in 17 US states demanded in a joint letter that SF-based Craigslist remove its adult services section because the website cannot adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking.
(SFC, 8/25/10, p.D1)
2010 Aug 26, Canada-based Research in Motion said it was willing to work with India to support the country's needs to lawfully access encrypted services on the company's Blackberry smartphone.
(Reuters, 8/26/10)
2010 Aug 27, Australian police warned social networking sites to be alert to illegal child sex activity, after cracking an alleged pedophile porn ring operating on Facebook. Australian police said six arrests had been made in Britain, including the alleged head of the network, three in Australia and two in Canada.
(AFP, 8/27/10)
2010 Sep 1, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced Ping as the social network of music.
(SFC, 11/12/10, p.D1)(http://venturebeat.com/tag/ping/)
2010 Sep 3, SF-based Craigslist yielded to pressure and removed its controversial adult services section. On Sep 15 Craigslist said the shutdown was permanent.
(SSFC, 9/5/10, p.A1)(AFP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 8, Belgian police say 10 people have been arrested in raids across Europe against hackers who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet. Police said 5 arrests were in Belgium and the other arrests were made in Poland, Norway and Sweden, where the alleged leaders of four computer piracy networks were being held.
(AP, 9/8/10)
2010 Sep 15, Microsoft Corp. unveiled the "beta" test version of Internet Explorer 9, the first of a new generation of Web browser programs that tap into the powerful processors on board newer computers to make websites load and run faster.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 16, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the Jerusalem city government to provide more than $120,000 in funding for a prominent gay community center. It was reported that Israeli government offices, that provide a wide array of public services, are pulling the plug on online payments on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays, creating a potential new source of friction between the religious and secular in the Jewish state.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 18, In Hungary Hacktivity 2010, the largest computer hackers' conference in eastern Europe, kicked off, with some 1,000 participants expected to attend the two-day event.
(AP, 9/18/10)
2010 Sep 22, Rutgers Univ. freshman Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. On Sep 19 his roommate and another student had used a webcam to broadcast live images on the Internet of Clementi having sex with another man. Roommate Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei were soon charged with invasion of privacy.
(www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/nyregion/30suicide.html?_r=1)
2010 Sep 24, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to Newark, N.J., public schools in a move that could enhance his reputation just before the opening on an unflattering movie about him, "The Social Network."
{Donation, Education, New Jersey, USA, Internet}
(AP, 9/24/10)
2010 Sep 25, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency says Iranian nuclear experts met this week to discuss how to remove the malicious computer code, dubbed Stuxnet, which can take over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants.
(AP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 26, Iranian officials said the malicious Stuxnet computer worm has hit 30,000 industrial computers, but denied the Islamic republic's first nuclear plant at Bushehr was among those infected. The malware has infected as many as 45,000 computer systems around the world. 60% of the infected computers were in Iran, 18% in Indonesia, and less than 2% in the US. Two computer servers in Malaysia and Denmark, which controlled the malware, have been shut down.
(AFP, 9/26/10)(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_computer_attacks)(SFC, 9/27/10, p.A4)
2010 Sep 27, Sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security, Cyber Storm III kicked off for a 3-day series of simulated events designed to exploit holes in the nation's cybersecurity system. It was Washington's first chance to test the new National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which was set up last fall to act as a hub for coordinating cybersecurity.
(http://tinyurl.com/24jewsu)
2010 Sep 27, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that the Stuxnet worm is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment in Iran where about 30,000 IP addresses have already been infected.
(AFP, 9/27/10)
2010 Sep 28, AOL acquired SF-based TechCrunch, the operator of an influential network of technology news blogs, for an estimated $25 million.
(SFC, 9/29/10, p.D1)
2010 Sep 30, The South China Morning Post quoted Derek Reveron, a cyber expert at the US Naval War School, as saying: "The Stuxnet worm is a wake-up call to governments around the world." China’s state media had reported this week that the Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc, infecting millions of computers around the country.
(AFP, 9/30/10)
2010 Sep, The FBI and its counterparts in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Britain took down a cyber-theft ring they first got wind of in May 2009 when a financial services firm tipped the bureau's Omaha, Neb., office to suspicious transactions. Since then, the FBI's Operation Trident Breach has uncovered losses of $14 million and counting.
(AP, 11/22/10)
2010 Oct 4, An official said Syria has accused a 19-year-old blogger who is in prison of being a spy in the first comment from authorities on a case that sparked calls by a leading rights group for the young woman's release. Tal al-Mallohi was taken into custody in December. Her blog, known for poetry and social commentary, focused mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 6, Facebook launched a new way for members to organize their friends, archive personal information and a new dashboard to control personal information sought by 3rd party applications and Web sites.
(SFC, 10/7/10, p.D1)
2010 Oct 6, Logitech introduced Revue, a $299.99 set-top box for Google’s new TV service. The device allows users to access websites, Internet video, digital pictures and music from their televisions. Apple’s set-top box was introduced on Sep 1 for $99.
(SSFC, 10/10/10, p.D5)(http://tinyurl.com/2vzxpar)
2010 Oct 8, The Swiss Im Grueene Foundation awarded Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales $104,000 for “democratizing the access to knowledge."
(SFC, 10/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 12, Australian PM Julia Gillard renewed her backing for a controversial Internet filter, saying it was driven by a "moral question."
(AFP, 10/12/10)
2010 Oct 15, A security researcher said criminals are using a Zeus botnet to pillage Charles Schwab investment accounts. Although police in the US, the UK and Ukraine collared more than 100 members of a Zeus crimeware gang three weeks ago, experts warned that the arrests wouldn't stop the botnet. Other gangs can simply step into the void.
(http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=B7C76BC0-1A64-67EA-E459F0D62DD95E83)
2010 Oct 16, In China Li Qiming (22) reportedly hit two students with his car at a university campus in the northern province of Hebei. The drunk man shouted "sue me if you dare" when a crowd stopped him from fleeing. On Oct 26 state media reported that Qiming, the son of a senior police officer, was arrested after the incident sparked outrage on the Internet.
(AFP, 10/26/10)
2010 Oct 21, A partnership backed by Amazon.com, Comcast, Facebook and other technology firms established the “S Fund," a $250 million fund led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to capitalize on the growing reach of social networking.
(SFC, 10/22/10, p.C1)
2010 Oct 22, The WikiLeaks website released 391,831 purported Iraq war logs in the biggest leak of secret information in US history. The documents date from the start of 2004 to Jan 1, 2010. They suggested that far more Iraqis died than previously acknowledged during the years of sectarian bloodletting and criminal violence unleashed by the American-led invasion in 2003. Accounts of civilian deaths included deaths unknown or unreported before now, as many as 15,000 by the count of one independent research group.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, The whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks said it will soon publish 15,000 more secret Afghan war documents.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 23, In Vietnam Le Nguyen Huong Tra, who blogged under the pen name of Do Long Girl, was taken into police custody from a home in Ho Chi Minh City for allegedly slandering a senior government official. Police in Ho Chi Minh City also arrested blogger Phan Thanh Hai, known as Anhbasg, over the weekend and continued to detain Nguyen Van Hai, a blogger known as Dieu Cay, even though he had served out his 30-month sentence on "trumped-up" tax evasion charges.
(AP, 10/26/10)
2010 Oct 24, Lady Gaga became the first singer to reach 1 billion hits on YouTube.
(SSFC, 12/12/10, Par p.9)
2010 Oct 25, In Egypt a planned website, Harrasmap, will allow women to quickly report instances of harassment via text message or Twitter, to be loaded onto a digital map of Cairo to show hotspots and areas that might be dangerous for women to walk alone. The data will be shared with activists, media, and police. Cairo's online map will run off a platform called Ushahidi, an open-source software first developed to report violence in Kenya after 2008 elections there. Since then test models of it have run in South Africa, Gaza and India.
(AP, 10/25/10)
2010 Oct 26, Armenian police arrested Georg Avanesov (27). He allegedly operated the “Bredolab" botnet of nearly 30 million PCs. Investigators alleged that Avanesov made up to US$139,000 each month renting the botnet to criminals who used it for sending spam and for installing password-stealing malicious software.
(www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792148/Spam_report_October_2010)
2010 Oct 28, US microchip giant Intel said it plans to team up with Taiwan to set up a multi-million dollar Internet computing research laboratory.
(AFP, 10/28/10)
2010 Oct 30, Turkey said it was lifting a ban on YouTube more than two years after it blocked the site because of videos deemed insulting to the country’s founder.
(SSFC, 10/31/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 31, Walid Husayin (26), a Palestinian blogger, was arrested in the West Bank. He had set off an uproar in the Arab world by sarcastically claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad. He was caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.
(AP, 11/12/10)
2010 Nov 2, State Vietnam News said blogger Le Nguyen Huong Tra (35), who blogged as Co Gai Do Long, has been detained for "infringing on the interests of the state" after she criticized a security official and his family.
(AFP, 11/2/10)
2010 Nov 4, European computer guards battled against a simulated attempt by hackers to bring down critical Internet services in the first pan-continental test of cyber defenses. All 27 of the EU member nations as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland took part in the simulation. The USA held its own major exercise against a large-scale cyber attack on critical infrastructure in late September with 12 international partners and 60 private companies. Cyber security will be one of the top issues that NATO leaders will tackle at a summit of the 28-nation military alliance in Lisbon on November 20-29.
(AFP, 11/4/10)
2010 Nov 14, In China a court convicted Cheng Jianping (46) of "disturbing social order" after she added a few words to a message written by her fiance, Hua Chunhui, whose Twitter post mocked anti-Japanese protesters. On Nov 16 Amnesty Int’l. urged the government to release Cheng, saying she could be the first Chinese citizen to become "a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet."
(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 15, In South Korea a 15-year-old boy committed suicide after killing his mother in a fight over Internet games.
(AP, 11/16/10)
2010 Nov 28, More than 250,000 classified US State Department documents were released by online whistleblower WikiLeaks. Among the leaked memos was information that Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during its 2006 war with Israel. Memos said the "IRC shipments of medical supplies served also to facilitate weapons shipments." Documents also detailed concerns by US officials in Baghdad about Iran’s influence on Iraq. Memos also said King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. One cable revealed that the US kept nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey.
(AP, 11/28/10)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.35)
2010 Dec 3, Wikileaks struggled to stay online as corporations and governments moved to cut its access to the Internet, a potentially crippling blow for an organization dedicated to releasing secret information via the web.
(AP, 12/3/10)
2010 Dec 3, Online payment service provider PayPal said in a company blog it has cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations.
(AP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 6, Internet giant Google fielded a new champion on the mobile phone market battlefield, a "Nexus S" smartphone made by South Korea's Samsung. It included built-in support for Near Field Communication, a wireless standard that enables customers to make payments over an electronic reader.
(AP, 12/6/10)(SFC, 12/7/10, p.D1)
2010 Dec 7, WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was remanded in custody until December 14 by a London court after he said he would fight extradition to Sweden where he faces rape allegations.
(AFP, 12/7/10)
2010 Dec 8, Cyber attacks apparently organized by Internet activists sympathetic to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange shut down the website of credit card company Mastercard and two Swedish sites. WikiLeaks published a new set of cables, and in a defiant message posted online the secret-spilling website promised that the leaks would keep on flowing despite the arrest and jailing of its founder on sex allegations.
(Reuters, 12/8/10)(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 9, Netherlands arrested a young hacker who confessed to participating in attacks by WikiLeaks sympathizers on websites, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa.
(AP, 12/10/10)
2010 Dec 15, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (26) was named Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010, joining the ranks of winners that include heads of state and rock stars as the person the magazine believes most influenced events of the past year.
(AP, 12/15/10)
2010 Dec 20, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg toured the offices of Baidu, China's top search engine, during a visit that has sparked speculation the social networking magnate is looking for business opportunities in the world's largest Internet market.
(AP, 12/20/10)
2010 Dec 20, Venezuela’s government formally rejected Larry Palmer, Washington's nominee for ambassador. The US State Department said the decision will have consequences on their relations. Venezuela’s parliament passed a law banning for the first time Internet content that promotes social unrest, challenges authority or condones crime, fueling outrage by the opposition.
(AP, 12/20/10)(AFP, 12/21/10)
2010 Dec 25, China’s state media said police are offering cash and other rewards to encourage the country's millions of Internet users to help solve criminal investigations. China announced a 25-basis point increase in benchmark one-year interest rates, providing much-needed reassurance that it was determined to rein in price pressures.
{China, Internet, Banking}
(AFP, 12/25/10)(Reuters, 12/27/10)
2010 Dec 30, Cyber activists said they have brought down Zimbabwean government websites after the president's wife sued a newspaper for publishing a WikiLeaks cable linking her with illicit diamond trading.
(Reuters, 12/30/10)
2010 Nicholas Carr, American commentator, authored “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," in which he claimed that the Internet is on its way to smothering creativity and profound thinking.
(SSFC, 6/6/10, p.F1)(Econ, 11/6/10, SR p.18)
2010 David Kirkpatrick authored “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World."
(Econ, 6/5/10, p.92)
2010 Jaron Lanier (49), virtual reality pioneer, authored “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto."
(SSFC, 2/7/10, p.A19)
2010 Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman authored “The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development."
(Econ, 1/15/11, p.93)
2010 Clay Shirky authored “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age."
(Econ, 1/15/11, p.76)
2010 Tim Wu authored “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Systems." He proposed that America adopt a “Separations Principle" that would enforce a split between creators of content, those that distribute it and makers of devices on which it is consumed.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.77)
2010 Nextdoor, a private online community for neighborhoods, was founded. By 2018 the SF-based company had more than 160,000 neighborhoods in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
(SFC, 1/13/18, p.D4)
2010 Pinterest, an online scrapbooking website, was founded.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D1)
2010 Kevin Systrom developed a filter for a photo-sharing app called "Codename" and posted a snap of a dog by a taco stand. This became the first image posted to what became Instagram. Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram and in 2012 sold it to Facebook for $1 billion.
(Econ., 5/23/20, p.71)
2011 Jan 10, Canada-based Research In Motion said it will filter pornographic internet content for its Blackberry smartphone users in Indonesia, following government pressure to stop access to porn sites or face its browsing service being shut down.
(Reuters, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 13, Canada’s BlackBerry maker Research In Motion said it has given India the means to access its Messenger service and reiterated that no changes could be made to allow monitoring of secure corporate emails.
(Reuters, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 17, Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, promised Indonesia it will meet the country's request to filter out pornographic content on its smartphones in the next four days.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed to publish secret details of offshore accounts after Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss banking whistleblower, handed over data on 2,000 purportedly tax-dodging individuals and firms.
(AFP, 1/17/11)(SSFC, 1/23/11, p.A5)
2011 Jan 19, The European Commission, which regulates the trading of carbon emissions certificates, shut the trading system down following the theft of certificates worth up to $38 million in a spate of computer attacks. The shutdown was expected to last a week.
(SFC, 1/20/11, p.D3)
2011 Jan 23, Iran's state TV said the country has launched its first cyber police unit in the latest attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.
(AP, 1/23/11)
2011 Jan 28, In Switzerland Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of the group that created WikiLeaks, said a new platform called OpenLeaks will allow sources to choose specifically who they want to submit documents to anonymously, such as to a particular news outlet. He hoped it would be fully operational later this year.
(AP, 1/28/11)
2011 Jan 30, The Myanmar opposition group led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi launched its first official website: http://www.nldburma.org/.
(AP, 1/30/11)
2011 Jan 31, India rejected Canada-based Research In Motion's (RIM) offer to allow it only partial access to its BlackBerry data services, while neighboring Pakistan reversed its earlier decision to restrict the popular smartphone's services.
(Reuters, 1/31/11)
2011 Jan 31, In Sri Lanka a group of men broke into the offices of a website critical of the government and set fire to it. A journalist from the publication said that he suspected a government role in the attack.
(AP, 1/31/11)
2011 Jan, WeChat, a Chinese cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Tencent, was first released. By 2016 it was one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat)(Econ, 8/6/16, p.7)
2011 Feb 3, Int’l. groups that coordinate Internet addresses officially allocated the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to regional registries. A new 128-bit address system, IPv6, will begin testing on June 8.
(SFC, 2/4/11, p.D6)
2011 Feb 7, Internet company AOL Inc. said it is buying news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news. Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. The site attracts 25 million monthly visitors.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 7, In Egypt Wael Ghonim (30), a Google Inc. marketing manager, was released from 12 days of detention and gave an emotionally charged television interview, sobbing at times over those who have been killed. He dubbed the protests "the revolution of the youth of the Internet." He was a key organizer of the online campaign that sparked the first protest on Jan 25.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 7, RIA News reported that a Russian man, Yevgeny Anikin (27), has pleaded guilty in court to stealing $10 million from former Royal Bank of Scotland division World Pay in 2008 by hacking into accounts. "I want to say that I repent and fully admit my guilt," Anikin said in his final comments to the court in Novosibirsk in Siberia, where he was charged with theft.
(Reuters, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 8, Cuban officials celebrated the arrival of a 1,600km fiber optic cable from Venezuela, whose government put up the $70 million cost. It was expected to become operational this summer.
(SFC, 2/10/11, p.A2)(Econ, 3/5/11, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/4zgampd)
2011 Feb 10, The US computer security firm McAfee Inc said in a report that hackers working in China over the last 2-4 years broke into the computer systems of five multinational oil and gas companies to steal bidding plans and other critical proprietary information.
(Reuters, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 11, Pandora Media Inc., an Internet radio company, announced plans to go public and raise as much as $100 million from sale of stock.
(SFC, 2/12/11, p.D1)
2011 Feb 16, Google CEO Eric Schmidt unveiled the one-stop payment service, called One Pass, at Berlin's Humboldt University. The announcement came a day after Apple rolled out a long-awaited subscription service for applications designed for its iPhone and iPad. Apple is demanding a 30 percent cut of all subscriptions sold on those mobile apps while Google is charging 10 percent. Schmidt also announced that Google was funding a Berlin-based institute in conjunction with Humboldt University. It would examine the evolution of the Internet and its impact on society.
(AP, 2/16/11)
2011 Feb 17, Cyber crime costs the British economy some 27 billion pounds ($43.5 billion) a year and appears to be "endemic," according to the 1st official government estimate of the issue.
(Reuters, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 17, A top Canadian cabinet minister said a cyber attack on key economic ministries last month was serious but will not affect the timing of next month's federal budget. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp said hackers using China-based servers had broken into computer systems at the Finance Department and Treasury Board.
(Reuters, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 17, China warned the United States not to use calls for uncensored access to the Internet as a pretext to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries.
(AP, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 22, A French creator of specialized search engines filed a new complaint with the European Union about alleged anticompetitive behavior by Google Inc.
(AP, 2/22/11)
2011 Feb 23, Chinese activists said officials have rounded up Internet users who had reposted a call for protests and charged them with subversion as the authoritarian government continued its campaign to crush any Middle East-style democracy movement. Unidentified organizers had issued a renewed appeal to gather peacefully in parks or near monuments at 2 p.m. on Sundays. China's Vice President Xi Jinping urged greater outreach by the ruling Communist Party to handle issues related to education, employment, health care and housing.
(AP, 2/23/11)(AP, 2/24/11)
2011 Feb 24, A British judge ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (39), who rocked the US government by publishing thousands of secret diplomatic memos, must be extradited to Sweden to face sex crimes allegations.
(Reuters, 2/24/11)
2011 Feb 25, China widened its Internet policing after online calls for protests like those that swept the Middle East, with social networking site LinkedIn and searches for the US ambassador's name both blocked. Access to LinkedIn resumed on Feb 26.
(AP, 2/25/11)(AP, 2/26/11)
2011 Mar 2, The US Army filed 22 new charges, including aiding the enemy, against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, suspected of leaking sensitive and classified documents to WikiLeaks.
(SFC, 3/3/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 5, In South Korea unidentified attackers targeted more than two dozen government and private websites. Officials reported no serious damage a day after a pair of similar assaults.
(AP, 3/5/11)
2011 Mar 11, Amazon.com notified its Illinois partners that it will stop doing business with them on April 15 because of a new state law requiring the online store to collect sales taxes.
(SFC, 3/12/11, p.D2)
2011 Mar 14, An Iranian state-owned newspaper reported that Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard's paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the "enemies," in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it's involved in cyber warfare.
(AP, 3/14/11)
2011 Mar 15, A Thailand court sentenced Thanthawut Taweewarodomkul (38), the administrator of an anti-government website, to 13 years in prison on charges of defaming the monarchy and violating the computer crime act.
(SFC, 3/16/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 18, The Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers approved the .xxx domain for adult-content websites.
(SFC, 3/19/11, p.D2)
2011 Apr 4, The names and e-mails of customers of Citigroup Inc and other large US companies, as well as College Board students, were exposed in a massive and growing data breach after a computer hacker penetrated online marketer Epsilon.
(Reuters, 4/4/11)
2011 Apr 4, Israel asked Facebook to pull down a page with 350,000 “fans" calling for “the third Palestinian uprising." Facebook at first refused, but took the page down a day later.
(SSFC, 4/10/11, p.F9)
2011 Apr 8, In Russia a cyber attack paralyzed the website of a popular independent newspaper, days after similar attacks knocked off Russia's most popular blogging site.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 11, Tajikistan state religious affairs committee head Abdurakhim Kholikov said that sending text messages with the "triple talaq," a Muslim ritual whereby a husband can end a marriage by reciting the term for divorce three times, breaches Islamic law.
(AP, 4/11/11)
2011 Apr 13, The US Justice Dept. and FBI said they have seized computers and filed a civil complaint in a bid to disable a malicious botnet system called Coreflood, which has operated for nearly a decade stealing personal passwords and private financial information. The civil complaint was against 13 John Doe defendants related to the Coreflood botnet.
(SFC, 4/14/11, p.D6)
2011 Apr 15, Indictments were unsealed in Manhattan against 11 people including the founders of the three largest online poker sites open to US players. They were charged with bank fraud, money laundering and violating gambling laws.
(SFC, 4/16/11, p.A6)
2011 Apr 16, A senior Iranian military official said experts have determined the United States and Israel were behind a mysterious computer worm known as Stuxnet that has harmed Iran's nuclear program.
(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 Apr 17, Iran’s Kayhan daily reported that an Iranian military commander has accused German engineering company Siemens of helping the United States and Israel launch the Stuxnet virus, a cyber attack on its nuclear facilities.
(Reuters, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 19, Sony Corp. in the US noticed unauthorized activity on its network, and discovered that data had been transferred off the network the next day. The company's general counsel gave the FBI information about the breach on April 22.
(AP, 5/4/11)
2011 Apr 19, Investors announced that West Africa Cable System (WACS), a new $650 million undersea telecommunications cable, has landed in South Africa, saying the link would double the broadband capacity of the continent's largest economy.
(AFP, 4/19/11)
2011 Apr 21, Zoom Video Communications, a video-conferencing service, was founded in San Jose, Ca.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications)
2011 Apr 21, A group of Japanese internet service providers started blocking access to child porn websites as part of efforts to crack down on the spread of sexually explicit images of children.
(AFP, 4/21/11)
2011 Apr 25, A senior Iranian military official said Iran has been hit by a second computer virus, the Stars virus, suggesting it was part of a concerted campaign to undermine the country's disputed nuclear program.
(AP, 4/25/11)
2011 May 10, Malaysian local papers highlighted how underworld groups were using Facebook and other social media to recruit members, the majority of whom are still at secondary school. The next day the government announced a major crackdown on criminal gangs using social networking sites to enlist teenage recruits as "street fighters."
(AFP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 11, In Australia WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's top honor for "exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights", joining the likes of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
{Australia, Internet}
(AFP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 11, Three top French publishers said they were suing US Internet giant Google for scanning thousands of their books for its online library without permission.
(AP, 5/11/11)
2011 May 12, Journalists learned that PR agency Burston-Marsteller had tried to persuade newspaper writers to say nasty things about Google, while concealing that Facebook was paying for the lobbying.
(Econ, 5/21/11, p.72)
2011 May 19, The LinkedIn IPO was priced at $45 per share and closed at $94.25 after reaching a high of $122.70. It was the first major US social networking company to sell stock on a public market.
(SFC, 5/20/11, p.A1)
2011 May 21, Hackers launched a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 23, Square, a startup co-founded by Jack Dorsey (one of the creators of Twitter), unveiled a new payment system that undercut credit card processing fees charged to small businesses and making it easy for them to accept digital payments.
(Econ, 5/28/11, p.79)
2011 May 24, In France the world's most powerful Internet and media barons gathered in Paris in a show of strength to leaders at the G8 summit, amid rows over online copyright, regulation and human rights.
(AFP, 5/24/11)
2011 May 24, Japan’s Sony Corp. said it discovered a security breach affecting 8,500 user accounts in a music entertainment website in Greece that comes on the heels of a hacker attack which forced its flagship gaming site offline.
(AP, 5/24/11)
2011 May 28, Lockheed Martin confirmed that hackers had launched a "significant and tenacious" cyber attack on May 21. Lockheed, a major defense contractor holding highly sensitive information, said its secrets remained safe.
(AP, 5/29/11)
2011 May 28, An Egyptian administrative court fined ousted President Hosni Mubarak and two former officials 540 million Egyptian pounds ($91 million) for cutting off mobile and internet services during protests in January. Egypt charged former Information Minister Anas el-Fekky with "deliberately causing financial harm" to the state-run Radio and Television Union.
(Reuters, 5/28/11)
2011 May 31, Turkey's government defended a new regulation that will filter the Internet and restrict access to websites that show pornography, bomb-making and violent content. The new regulation was set to come into effect in August.
(AP, 5/31/11)
2011 Jun 5, InfraGard, an Atlanta FBI partner organization, confirmed that almost 180 passwords of its members had been stolen and leaked to the Internet. Lulz Security (LulzSec), an online hacking collective, said it was acting in a response to a recent report that the Pentagon was considering whether to classify some cyber attacks as acts of war.
(SFC, 6/6/11, p.A6)
2011 Jun 5, In France, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSL) announced that radio and TV stations would no longer be allowed to promote or recommend their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds on air, unless such sites are part of a news story. The decision, which was first issued quietly on May 27, has now attracted international media outrage thanks to the French bloggers who began writing about it yesterday.
(AP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who had been on medical leave while battling pancreatic cancer, attended a conference of software developers to unveil a new service called iCloud. The iCloud stores music, photos, documents and electronic books “in the cloud," and is able to transfer them between Apple devices, without the need for hooking up a cable.
(AFP, 6/6/11)
2011 Jun 9, In New York officials of Citibank acknowledged that hackers had breached their system in May and gained access to the names, account numbers and e-mail addresses of about 200,000 customers.
(AP, 6/9/11)
2011 Jun 10, The Spanish government announced it had arrested three men who were suspected of being part of the hacker group known as Anonymous; the men, called “hacktivists," were charged with organizing and carrying out the hacking of the websites of Sony Corporation, as well as several banks.
(Reuters, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 11, The International Monetary Fund acknowledged that it had been the victim of a cyber-attack on its computers. The attack was said to be very sophisticated, and its intent was to install spyware. The intruders were able to access and read numerous e-mails and documents; several published reports said the attack was “connected to a foreign government," but did not reveal which one.
(Reuters, 6/11/11)
2011 Jun 13, Police in Turkey rounded up 32 alleged members of Anonymous, hacker group, which had recently attacked a couple of official websites.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.67)
2011 Jun 15, In another hacker attack, a group known as Lulz Security (LulzSec) was able to take down the public website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The group announced the attack at 6pm by sending out a message on Twitter. Service was restored on the CIA site later in the evening, and sources at the agency said no sensitive files were breached.
(Reuters, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 15, Citigroup admitted that its original estimate of the number of people affected by a cyber-attack was low. Rather than about 200,000, hackers gained access to the account information of over 360,000 customers.
(Reuters, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 15, In Arizona a grand jury indicted Donald Lapre, a Phoenix-based TV pitchman, accused of running a nationwide scheme to sell essentially worthless Internet-based businesses to more than 200,000 people. Victims were defrauded of nearly $52 million.
(AP, 6/16/11)
2011 Jun 19, Chinese public relations consultant Chen Hong closed down his website which let people post anonymous tips on official bribery after censors stepped in blocking access to the site for people inside China. His website, http://www.ibribery.com, had drawn 200,000 unique visitors in two weeks.
(AP, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 19, Japanese game maker Sega said hackers have stolen the personal data of some 1.29 million customers of the, in a theft via a website of its European unit.
(AP, 6/19/11)
2011 Jun 20, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced that websites will be able to have any suffix for almost any word in any language for an application fee of $185,000.
(SFC, 6/21/11, p.D6)
2011 Jun 20, British police arrested a man (19) suspected of hacking attacks on int’l. businesses and intelligence agencies. The arrest took place following a joint operation by its Internet crimes unit and the FBI. Police would not say whether the man is believed to be linked to either the Anonymous or Lulz Security (LulzSec) hacking collectives, which have called for "war" on governments that control the Internet and claimed responsibility for a string of high-profile attacks on targets such as Sony, the CIA web page and the US Senate computer system.
(AP, 6/21/11)(SFC, 6/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 21, Indian police said they had ordered Google to stop taking photos of the city of Bangalore for its Street View product because of fears the images could be used by militants.
(AFP, 6/21/11)
2011 Jun 22, The online pranksters at Lulz Security (LulzSec) say they've taken down two government Web sites in Brazil as they continue with their global "Anti-Security" campaign. The cyber attack blocked traffic to the website of the Brazilian presidency and two other government sites.
(AP, 6/22/11)(http://tinyurl.com/3ddjml6)
2011 Jun 20, Wyoming became the first state to begin using a suite of cloud computing tools from Google for its entire executive branch of government, allowing data and applications to be stored on remote servers and accessed over the Internet. The system was formally unveiled on June 22 as Gov. Matt Mead cut a red data cable with scissors.
(AP, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 24, Google said the FTC has opened a broad investigation into its online search and online advertising businesses to see if it has abused its dominant position.
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.56)
2011 Jun 25, The Lulz Security (LulzSec) group of rogue hackers announced it was disbanding with one last data dump, which included internal AOL Inc and AT&T documents.
(Reuters, 6/26/11)
2011 Jun 28, The Vatican inaugurated its new information portal: www.news.va.
(www.news.va/en/news/presentation-of-new-vatican-multimedia-portal)
2011 Jun 29, It was reported that News Corp. has sold Myspace to Specific Media Inc. for $35 million, a fraction of the $580 million it paid in 2005 for the once-hot social media site even as a new generation of Web-based start-ups is enjoying sky-high valuations. News Corp. will also get a 5% stake in Specific Media.
(Reuters, 6/29/11)(SFC, 6/30/11, p.D3)
2011 Jun, The FBI and Interpol conducted "Operation Hive," which resulted in the arrests of two Metulji operators in Bosnia and Slovenia. The world's biggest criminal botnet, that has enslaved tens of millions of computers across 172 countries, was named “Metulji," Slovenian for "butterfly."
(http://tinyurl.com/4346r4y)
2011 Jul 3, Belarus blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and a major Russian social networking site in an attempt to prevent opposition protests on a national holiday. Thousands of police and special forces were deployed in the center of Minsk, the capital.
(AP, 7/3/11)
2011 Jul 8, A 225-page international review showing wide variances of Internet freedom gave Finland the best marks for making citizens' access to a broadband connection a legal right. The report was presented at OSCE headquarters in Vienna.
(AP, 7/8/11)
2011 Jul 14, The US Pentagon said a cyber attack in March by a foreign government stole some 24,000 files from a defense industry computer network.
(SFC, 7/15/11, p.A8)
2011 Jul 18, Lulz Security (LulzSec) hacker group attacked the website of the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun newspaper, replacing the online version with a fake story pronouncing the mogul's death.
(AFP, 7/18/11)
2011 Jul 19, US authorities announced 14 arrests of hackers and said they cooperated with British and Dutch authorities. They were arrested for allegedly mounting a cyberattack on PayPal’s website ion retaliation for the firm’s suspending the accounts of WikiLeaks.
(AP, 7/20/11)(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A7)
2011 Jul 19, Harvard Univ. fellow Aaron Schwartz (d.2013), a student of ethics, was charged with hacking into the MIT computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles from JSTOR, a paywalled repository. Schwartz believed that academic papers should be freely available. The MIT Disobedience Award was later founded partly to commemorate Mr. Schwartz.
(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A7)(Econ 7/1/17, p.72)
2011 Jul 20, Dutch prosecutors released some details about four Dutch citizens arrested on suspicion of involvement in cyber attacks as part of the loosely-knit hackers group known as "Anonymous." They said the suspects are thought to have belonged to a splinter group called AntiSec NL, which hacked the sites of dating service Pepper.nl and communications software maker Nimbuzz, among others.
(AP, 7/20/11)
2011 Jul 25, Saudi authorities blocked the website of Amnesty International inside the kingdom following criticism of a controversial new anti-terrorism draft law.
(AP, 7/25/11)
2011 Jul 27, In Australia a 25-year-old unemployed truck driver (online nickname "Evil"), who had been unable to find a job in information technology, faced 49 charges after a six-month investigation into his online activities.
(AP, 7/27/11)
2011 Jul 27, Scottish teenager Jake Davis (18) was arrested with 16 computers in the Shetland Islands. This was the alleged nerve center of Lulz Security (LulzSec), a group of internet hackers whose targets included computer-security and online gaming firms. The group had broken from Anonymous, another hacker group, three months earlier. Ryan Cleary (19) was arrested in June at his home in Wickford, Essex, charged with attacking websites as part of LulzSec.
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.49)(http://shetlopedia.com/Jake_Davis)(AFP, 8/30/11)
2011 Jul 29, Yahoo Inc., Japan's Softbank Corp. and the China’s Alibaba Group said they have agreed on a compensation plan involving the Web payment service Alipay.
(AP, 7/29/11)
2011 Aug 3, Computer hackers attacked the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange website, prompting the authorities at the bourse to shut it down. ZSE does not conduct trading on the Internet.
(AFP, 8/5/11)
2011 Aug 4, Computer security firms McAfee and Dell SecureWorks said Chinese hackers had attacked over 72 networks beginning in 2006. McAfee dubbed the attacks “Operation Shady RAT."
(SFC, 8/5/11, p.D6)
2011 Aug 6, The group known as Anonymous said it has hacked into some 70 law enforcement websites across the southern and central United States in retaliation for arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain.
(AP, 8/6/11)
2011 Aug 9, South Korean officials said its ministry which handles relations with North Korea has been targeted by hackers in the latest of a series of online attacks on government and corporate websites.
(AFP, 8/9/11)
2011 Aug 11, Online media said authorities in Uzbekistan have blocked dozens of Internet sites in an apparent attempt to further stem the flow of information into the authoritarian Central Asian nation.
(AP, 8/11/11)
2011 Aug 14, The hacker group known as Anonymous struck a Bay Area Rapid Transit website and released customer information in retaliation for BART’s decision to cut cellular phone service to prevent an antipolice protest in San Francisco. Hackers carried out a 2nd attack on Aug 17 breaching the website of the agency’s rank-and-file police.
(SFC, 8/15/11, p.A1)(SFC, 8/18/11, p.A1)
2011 Aug 15, Google moved to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
(SFC, 8/16/11, p.C1)
2011 Aug 21, In Libya large anti-regime protests erupted in several Tripoli neighborhoods where thousands braved the bullets of snipers perched atop high buildings. At the same time, hundreds of rebel forces advanced to within 15 miles west of the capital and were rushing forward in pickup trucks and on foot. Rebels swarmed into Tripoli late in the day and restored the country’s internet connection.
(AP, 8/21/11)(AP, 8/22/11)(Econ, 8/27/11, p.11)
2011 Aug 22, Liu Qi, China’s party secretary for Beijing, told Internet companies to tighten control over material online as Beijing cracks down on dissent and tries to block the rise of Middle East-style protests. He issued the warning following a visit to Sina Corp., which operates a popular microblogging site.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 24, Mexican officials said that civil, tax and administrative cases will be processed through a state website. Officials expected everything from filings to rulings to be done electronically.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 31, The New Zealand Press Association, the country's national news agency, closed its doors after 131 years, the latest victim of media consolidation in the digital age.
(AFP, 8/30/11)
2011 Aug, in Japan Mitsubishi Heavy was attacked with viruses apparently programmed to breach its computers and servers to gain unauthorized access to protected data. The attack was not made public until September when it was reported that no sensitive information was known to have been lost.
(AP, 9/20/11)
2011 Sep 1, The World Economic Forum pronounced Reputation.com, founded in 2006 as ReputationDefender, as one of 31 “technology pioneer" companies. In October the Redwood City, Ca., company posted an advertisement on KCSM TV, a public TV channel in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a focus on gathering users interested in the validity of their identities.
(PBS, 10/10/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation.com)
2011 Sep 2, Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks published its full archive of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables unredacted and easily accessible online, drawing a furious response from its media partners.
(AFP, 9/2/11)
2011 Sep 7, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology named Google's China website operator, Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd., as one of 137 firms whose licenses were renewed following adjustments in their operations.
(AFP, 9/7/11)
2011 Sep 16, Myanmar's new government was reported to have stopped blocking some foreign websites this week, such as the BBC and YouTube, in a gesture toward openness tempered by remaining harsh laws that still keep readers of such sites at risk of arrest.
(AP, 9/16/11)
2011 Sep 18, The journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology reported that online gamers have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade. The gamers produced an accurate model of a monomeric protease enzyme in just three weeks.
(AFP, 9/18/11)
2011 Sep 20, US prosecutors made new allegations in a probe of the Full Tilt Poker website, accusing self-styled "Poker Professor" Howard Lederer and professional poker champion Christopher Ferguson and others of paying themselves more than $440 million while defrauding other players.
(Reuters, 9/20/11)
2011 Sep 22, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg introduced the Facebook "timeline" in San Francisco at the company's f8 conference for some 2,000 entrepreneurs, developers and journalists.
(AP, 9/22/11)
2011 Sep 23, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed compromise legislation under which Amazon.com drops its attempt to overturn by referendum an online sales tax in return for the state agreeing to postpone collections until next September. Amazon said it will create 10,000 full-time jobs in the state and invest $500 million in a variety of facilities.
(SFC, 9/27/11, p.D1)
2011 Sep 23, Chinese blogger Daniel Wu, praised for posting pictures of Chinese officials and their luxury watches online, said he has been forced out of action due to outside "pressure." His commitment to exposing the officials had been praised earlier this month by the state-run Xinhua news agency, which said the fight against corruption should follow his method.
(AFP, 9/23/11)
2011 Sep 26, Israel's national museum and the international web giant Google led a project, that put five Dead Sea scrolls online today. The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah.
(AP, 9/26/11)
2011 Sep 27, The 6th annual Internet Governance Forum opened in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme this year was “Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation."
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.63)(www.intgovforum.org/cms/)
2011 Sep 29, British police and medical regulators said Russian gangs and their Chinese associates are making billions of dollars from selling fake and unlicensed medicines over the Internet, putting thousands of people at risk. More than 2.5 million doses of counterfeit, controlled and withdrawn drugs were seized across 79 countries in seven days of raids coordinated by international police organization Interpol under an operation codenamed Pangea that ended on Sep 27.
(Reuters, 9/29/11)
2011 Sep, In CongoDRC an initiative by Invisible Children launched the LRA Crisis Tracker web site along with Resolve to map out LRA incidents, mostly in northern Congo. New high frequency radios were being distributed to help track the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal militia that 100 US special forces troops were currently helping hunt.
(AP, 11/8/11)
2011 Oct 3, Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, and ABC News announced they will join forces to launch a strategic online news alliance that will deliver content to more than 100 million U.S. users each month.
(http://tinyurl.com/3lrfbm4)
2011 Oct 10, An undersea telecommunications table landed in Sierra Leone, part of a 17,000-km fiber optic line that aims to connect countries along the west African coast to Europe.
(AFP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 15, China's top Communist Party leaders opened a four-day meeting which will be devoted to the country's "cultural development." Analysts said the meeting is largely to strengthen the party's tight control over the media and the Internet.
(AFP, 10/15/11)
2011 Oct 21, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed legislation that repealed a law, enacted earlier this year, that had limited online discussions between teachers and students 18 or younger.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 22, Egypt’s MENA state news agency said a Cairo court has sentenced Ayman Mansour to three years in prison for postings on Facebook deemed to be inciting sectarianism and in contempt of Islam.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 25, Japanese officials said computers in the parliament have been found to be infected with a virus.
(SFC, 10/26/11, p.A4)
2011 Oct 26, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview to BBC Farsi said that in the next two months, the United States would open a "virtual embassy": an online site that would respond to questions about US visa and study options, and that would address the Iranian population directly.
(AFP, 10/27/11)
2011 Oct 28, In Nigeria hackers calling themselves NaijaCyberHacktivists hit the website of the top anti-corruption agency over a government official suggesting tighter Internet control.
(AP, 10/28/11)
2011 Nov 1, It was reported that bloggers and tweeters claiming to belong to the hacker movement "Anonymous" say they plan to expose collaborators of Mexico's bloody Zetas drug cartel, even if some of them seem to have backed away from the plan out of fear.
(AP, 11/1/11)
2011 Nov 4, Groupon (GRPN), an online daily deal company, went public in an IPO at $20 per share and closed $26.11.
(SFC, 11/5/11, p.D1)
2011 Nov 5, Sri Lanka warned websites to register with the authorities after the United States expressed deep concern over Colombo's blocking of a popular Internet-based dissident publication.
(AFP, 11/5/11)
2011 Nov 6, The websites of Israel's army and intelligence services were down today, two days after a hacker group appeared to threaten the Jewish state over its interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla.
(AFP, 11/6/11)
2011 Nov 7, Sri Lanka officials said five news websites have been blocked because they committed character assassination and insulted people including key political leaders.
(AP, 11/7/11)
2011 Nov 9, US federal officials said an Eastern European pack of cyber thieves, known as the Rove group, hijacked at least four million computers in over 100 countries, including at least half a million computers in the US, to make off with $14 million in "illegitimate income" before they were caught. The accused hackers, six Estonian nationals and a Russian national, rerouted the internet traffic illegally on the infected computers for the last four years in order to reap profits from internet advertisement deals.
(ABCNews, 11/9/11)
2011 Nov 10, US Senators Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Robert Casey, D-Pa., sent a letter to the State and Commerce departments requesting an investigation into companies whose technology has been used to monitor activities of Syrian citizens. US companies included NetApp Inc. and Blue coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Ca. The Syrian Internet surveillance project, headed by the Italian company Area, was designed to intercept and catalog virtually every e-mail flowing through Syria.
(SFC, 11/11/11, p.A5)
2011 Nov 16, Google launched its new online music service.
(Econ, 11/19/11, p.68)
2011 Nov 17, Norwegian security officials say the Nordic country has been hit by one of the most extensive data espionage attacks in the country's history. The Norwegian National Security Authority said industrial secrets from the oil, energy and defense industries have been stolen and disseminated.
(AP, 11/17/11)
2011 Nov 18, The US FCC released details of an order directing $4.5 billion a year from universal service and inter-carrier-compensation systems into a new connect America Fund (CAF) to give rural Americans access to high speed internet connections over the next 6 years.
(Econ, 12/3/11, p.42)
2011 Nov 22, Indian IT entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia launched a free text messaging service, JaxtrSMS, promising that it would be as revolutionary as his previous venture, Hotmail.
(AFP, 11/22/11)
2011 Nov 23, A Thai criminal court sentenced Amphon Tangnoppaku (61) to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed offensive to the country's queen.
(AP, 11/23/11)
2011 Nov 24, Bosnian police said they have discovered around 1.5 million pornographic images of children on the computer of a man they suspect of blackmailing United States citizens with money transfers amounting to some $3000.
(AP, 11/24/11)
2011 Nov 28, San Francisco City College officials detected an infestation of computer viruses with origins in criminal networks in Russia, China and other countries. By mid January officials traced at least 723 Internet protocol addresses to the Russian Business Network, a gang in the business of stealing and selling personal information. The network disbanded around 2008, but criminals were reportedly still collecting data.
(SFC, 1/13/12, p.A1)
2011 Nov 29, US Federal authorities said they have shut down 150 websites accused of selling knock-off or pirated merchandise to unsuspecting online bargain hunters.
(AP, 11/28/11)
2011 Dec 6, Facebook started making its Timeline feature available to the approximately two million Facebook users living in New Zealand. The new application takes everything you’ve ever done on Facebook and creates a digital scrapbook that is simultaneously eye-pleasing and addicting.
(http://tinyurl.com/42y7nsq)
2011 Dec 7, Iran blocked an Internet website, http://iran.usembassy.gov/, the United States was touting as a "virtual embassy," and which senior MPs slammed as an attempt to deceive the Iranian people and divide them from the government.
(AFP, 12/7/11)
2011 Dec 16, Zynga, a SF-based internet game company, went public for $10 a share, valuing the company at $1 billion. Shares closed down 5% at $9.50.
(SFC, 12/16/11, p.A1)(SFC, 12/17/11, p.A1)
2011 Dec 16, Beijing city authorities issued new rules requiring microbloggers to register their real names before posting online, as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the Internet.
(AFP, 12/16/11)
2011 Dec 19, Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company announced a combined investment of $300 million in the social networking site Twitter.
(AFP, 12/19/11)
2011 Dec 19, Sudan’s parliament raised taxes on the Internet, mobile phone calls and other telecommunications in a bid to help cover lost oil income from South Sudan.
(AP, 12/20/11)
2011 Dec, In Kenya founder Anthony Ragui (37) launched www.ipaidabribe.or.ke, a website where people can share their stories on corruption a bribery. He used software from an Indian site, also called ipaidabribe, that has collected information on more than 15,000 bribes since it was put up in 2010.
(AP, 1/6/12)
2011 Dec, In Slovakia the "Gorilla" files were mysteriously posted online by an anonymous source. They purportedly documented shady dealings between 2005 and 2006, and suggest that investment group Penta bribed government and opposition politicians to win lucrative privatization deals. They were said to be based on wiretaps and rocked the already-raucous world of Slovak politics. The spy agency, SIS, has refused to confirm the file's authenticity. SIS heads are suspected of sweeping the wiretap findings under the carpet. Police began investigating following the anonymous leak.
(AP, 3/8/12)
2011 Mark Bowden authored “Worm: The First Digital War."
(SSFC, 10/23/11, p.F1)
2011 Steven Levy authored “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives."
(SSFC, 4/17/11, p.G1)
2011 Evgeny Morozov authored “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom."
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.82)
2011 Eli Pariser authored “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You."
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.70)
2011 Kevin Poulsen authored “Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground." It documented the story of hacker Max Butler, aka Iceman, currently serving a 13-year sentence for the theft of credit card data.
(SSFC, 3/6/11, p.G1)
2011 Siva Vaidhyanathan authored “The Googlization of Everything: And why We Should Worry."
(SSFC, 4/17/11, p.G1)
2011 Darren Westlake and Luke Lang launched Crowdcube, a website that helps entrepreneurs raise equity from the public.
(Econ, 11/2/13, p.79)
2011 Snapchat, an image messaging and multimedia mobile application, was launched. It was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown when they were students at Stanford University. The company headquarters are located in Venice, California. By 2016 it was said to be worth $16 billion.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat)(Econ, 4/9/15, p.23)
2011 Twitch.tv, a website that streams live video directly to users’ computers, was founded. On Aug 25, 2014 Amazon.com announced that it would buy Twitch for $970 million.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2011 In China the Zhihu website, meaning “do you know", began operating as a copy of Quora, an American site. By 2016 it was the country’s most popular question-and-answer portal with 100 million active monthly users.
(Econ, 9/3/16, p.40)
2012 Jan 3, Israeli credit card companies said hackers claiming to be Saudis disclosed credit card information of thousands of Israelis on the Internet.
(AP, 1/3/12)
2012 Jan 6, An alleged Saudi hacker (19), oxOmar, posted thousands of Israeli credit card numbers and other personal data online, his second politically motivated attack this week.
(AP, 1/6/12)
2012 Jan 12, Hackers claiming to be from the Gaza Strip defaced the website of the Israel Fire and Rescue services, posting a message saying "Death to Israel."
(AFP, 1/12/12)
2012 Jan 13, A British court ruled that Richard O'Dwyer (23), a student at Sheffield Hallam University, can be extradited to the US to answer copyright infringement allegations. He had created a website allowing people to watch films and TV shows for free. After O'Dwyer was arrested in London in November 2010, he admitted to police that he owned TVShack.net and TVShack.cc and earned about £15,000 (18,000 euros, $23,000) a month from online advertising.
(AFP, 1/14/12)
2012 Jan 16, A hacker network that claims to be based in Saudi Arabia paralyzed the websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline. El Al Israel Airlines took down its website after hacker OxOmar, who has been linked to the Saudi group, warned that both sites would be targeted by allied pro-Palestinian hackers.
(AP, 1/16/12)
2012 Jan 18, A number of Internet sites went dark for 24 hours to raise awareness of twin antipiracy bills pending in Congress. Protests quickly cut into support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) as Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he would no longer back the legislation he co-sponsored.
(SFC, 1/18/12, p.D1)(http://tinyurl.com/7e2o5ma)(Econ, 1/21/12, p.33)
2012 Jan 20, The FBI announced that it had closed down one of the world's largest file sharing sites Megauploader.com. The site, which had over 180 million registered users, was accused of copyright violation and its founder Kim Dotcom (37), aka Kim Schmitz, was arrested in New Zealand. Shortly after, Anonymous launched an attack on several US based sites, including the FBI and Universal Music.
(Reuters, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan 20, Indonesian police said a civil servant, who declared himself an atheist on Facebook, has been arrested and is now facing jail for blasphemy after being attacked by an angry mob. Alexander Aan (30), who wrote "God doesn't exist" on his Facebook page, was beaten by a mob of dozens on Jan 18 in his hometown in Pulau Punjung, West Sumatra province. An was also an administrator of a Facebook group promoting atheism with 1,243 followers. His postings no longer appeared online following his arrest.
(AFP, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan 20, New Zealand police seized a treasure trove of luxury goods from the founder of file-sharing site Megaupload.com as four suspected Internet pirates wanted in the United States appeared in court.
(AFP, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan, Stanford computer science Prof. Sebastian Thrun announced the launch of Udacity for online education, a growing trend in massive open online courses (MOOCS). Udacity courses began in February and in October it raised $15 million from investors.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.101)
2012 Feb 1, A group of Internet hackers said they took down the website of Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s largest state-run bank.
(SFC, 2/2/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 6, Brazil requested an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make it the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments' requests.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 12, Malaysia deported Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi journalist wanted in his home country over a Twitter post about the Prophet Mohammed, defying pleas from human rights group who said he faced execution. His tweet: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you. "I will not pray for you."
(AFP, 2/12/12)
2012 Feb 13, Many Iranian web users said their access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail appears to have been restored after a four day outage.
(AP, 2/13/12)
2012 Feb 14, Hackers claimed to have broken into Combined Systems Inc.'s website and stolen personal information belonging to clients and employees of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based firm, whose tear gas has been used against Egyptian demonstrators. They accused the company of being run by war profiteers who sell "mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around the world."
(AP, 2/14/12)
2012 Feb 17, British student Glenn Mangham (26) was jailed for 8 months after admitting to hacking into Facebook between April and May last year. Mangham claimed he had been trying to expose weaknesses in Facebook's security and was not driven by financial motives.
(AFP, 2/18/12)
2012 Feb 22, Tunisia's court of cassation threw out a ruling banning pornographic websites.
(AFP, 2/22/12)
2012 Feb 27, WikiLeaks said it was publishing a massive trove of leaked emails from the U.S. intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, shedding light on the inner workings of the Texas-based think tank.
(AP, 2/27/12)
2012 Feb 28, Paris-based Interpol said 25 suspected members of the loose-knit Anonymous hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep across Europe and South America.
(SFC, 2/29/12, p.A4)
2012 Mar 1, Chinese state press said Chen Quanguo, China’s top leader in Tibet, has ordered increased controls over the Internet and mobile phones, ahead of upcoming sensitive anniversaries in the restive region.
(AFP, 3/1/12)
2012 Mar 5, A marketing campaign was launched by the Ugandan advocacy group Invisible Children (www.kony2012.com) to vastly increase awareness about Joseph Kony, a jungle militia leader wanted for atrocities by the International Criminal Court and hunted by 100 US Special Forces advisers and local troops. His Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was operating in Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
(AP, 3/8/12)
2012 Mar 6, Five members of Anonymous and Lulz Security were charged in an indictment unsealed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They included 2 men from Britain, 2 from Ireland and an American.
(AFP, 3/6/12)
2012 Mar 7, Iran's state media said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the creation of an Internet oversight agency that includes top military and political figures in the country's boldest attempt to control the web.
(AP, 3/7/12)
2012 Mar 11, Hackers claiming to belong to the Anonymous Internet freedom group posted video messages on Facebook pages of Tunisian Islamists, threatening reprisals over their efforts to introduce Salafist laws.
(AFP, 3/11/12)
2012 Mar 14, Britain launched a website and Facebook page for Iranians, harnessing the power of social media to try to evade Iranian censorship and take its message directly to the people.
(Reuters, 3/15/12)
2012 Mar 17, In Taiwan Lin Mei-heng (31) posted messages on Facebook saying she wanted to take her life after growing suspicious that her boyfriend was having an affair. 9 of her friends attempted to dissuade her from taking her life, but none alerted the police. She was found dead the following day by her boyfriend at her flat in a suburb of Taipei.
(AFP, 3/27/12)
2012 Mar 21, A Bangladesh court ordered authorities to shut down five Facebook pages and a website for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, the Koran and other religious subjects.
(AFP, 3/21/12)
2012 Mar 22, The hacker group Anonymous in Mexico crashed at least two of the websites for Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit, claiming the papal visit is a political move to support the conservative National Action party.
(AP, 3/22/12)
2012 Mar 29, Cafe Press Inc. of San Mateo, Ca., a popular online retailer of personalized products, went public with its initial public offering priced at $19 a share.
(http://tinyurl.com/7dhse9z)
2012 Mar 30, Four giant card-payment processors and large US banks that issue debit and credit cards were reported hit by a data-security breach after third-party services provider Global Payments Inc discovered its systems were compromised by unauthorized access.
(Reuters, 3/31/12)
2012 Mar 31, China’s official Xinhua news agency said authorities have closed 16 websites for spreading rumors of "military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on there. China made a string of arrests and punished two popular microblogs after rumors of a coup linked to a major scandal that brought down a top politician.
(AFP, 3/31/12)
2012 Mar, Chinese computer scientist Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance, an internet technology company. ByteDance later acquired social media start-up Musical.ly and combined it with Douyin into a single application under the TikTok name. TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. It became available in the United States after merging with musical.ly on August 2, 2018.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance)
2012 Apr 3, US Internet giant Google started building one of its three planned data centers in Asia to meet fast growing online demand from the region. A ceremony was held to begin work on the $300 million, 15 hectare (37 acre) site in Changhua county, western Taiwan.
(AFP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 3, An Australian court found Google Inc. guilty of breaching trade law by posting misleading or deceptive advertisements in a ruling that holds search engines responsible for their advertisers' content.
(AP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 4, A Russian antivirus company claimed that some 600,000 Macs, most in the US and Canada, have been infected with a trojan horse virus called "Flashback." Flashback was originally discovered in Sep 2011, and was designed to disguise itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, using Flash player logos. After installing Flashback, the malware seeks out user names and passwords that are stored on your Mac.
(http://mashable.com/2012/04/05/mac-flashback-trojan/)
2012 Apr 6, Two Chinese political websites, Mao Flag and Utopia, said they had been ordered by authorities to shut for a month for criticizing state leaders, the latest move in a broad government crackdown on the Internet.
(AFP, 4/6/12)
2012 Apr 7, Britain's Home Office interior ministry said it was investigating reports that hacking group Anonymous had attacked its website over the government's plans to boost Internet surveillance.
(AFP, 4/7/12)
2012 Apr 9, AOL announced that it would sell license patents to Microsoft in an agreement valued at $1.06 billion.
(SFC, 4/10/12, p.D2)
2012 Apr 10, China's 3 top Internet portals pledged to work with the government to banish online rumors, as jittery authorities cracked down on the web following widespread rumors of a coup.
(AFP, 4/10/12)
2012 Apr 13, A British judge sentenced computer hacker James Jeffery (27) to two years and eight months in jail for breaking into the website of Britain's biggest abortion provider and stealing the personal details of thousands of women.
(AP, 4/13/12)
2012 Apr 20, North Carolina-based Boxun.com was forced to move to a new web hosting service after its previous host said the attacks were threatening its entire business. The website has reported extensively on China's biggest political turmoil in years, underscoring the pivotal role the Internet has played in the unfolding scandal.
(AP, 4/20/12)
2012 Apr 20, Hackers claiming to come from China defaced the website of the Philippines' top university to assert their country's claim over the hotly disputed South China Sea.
(AFP, 4/20/12)
2012 Apr 22, Google launched Street View in Israel, the US Internet giant said, putting on show streets and sites of interest from the Holy Land's three major cities with its 360-degree street-level images.
(AFP, 4/22/12)
2012 Apr 22, Iran's principal oil terminal on Kharg island in the Gulf was disconnected from the Internet. A voracious virus attack hit computers running key parts of Iran's oil sector, forcing authorities to unplug the oil export terminal from the Internet and to set up a cyber crisis team.
(AFP, 4/23/12)
2012 Apr 25, The US Marine Corps said a sergeant will be discharged for criticizing President Barack Obama on Facebook in a case that called into question the Pentagon's policies about social media and its limits on the speech of active duty military personnel. Sgt. Gary Stein will get an other-than-honorable discharge and loose most of his benefits for violating the policies.
(AP, 4/25/12)
2012 May 2, In Algeria Tarek Mameri (23) was detained for posting videos on his blog calling for a boycott of last month's parliamentary election. On June 27 a court slapped an eight-month suspended prison sentence and a 1,000-euro ($1,250) fine on a blogger.
(AFP, 6/27/12)
2012 May 2, Britain’s national police agency closed the website of the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) following an attack by hackers. It was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where a website's host computers are bombarded with requests for information, making them crash.
(AFP, 5/3/12)
2012 May 3, The Italian government said citizens could now click on a government website and indicate where state funds are being wasted.
(SFC, 5/4/12, p.A2)
2012 May 8, A federal judge said Oracle cannot seek $1 billion in damages from Google for infringing on copyrights when it developed Android software, because a jury could not agree on whether it was fair use.
(SFC, 5/9/12, p.D2)
2012 May 9, British police in Newcastle arrested a suspected spokesman (17) for Team Poison, a hacking group that has claimed responsibility for a series of high-profile cyber-attacks.
(AFP, 5/10/12)
2012 May 14, In Kuwait an appeals court upheld a 10-year sentence for tweeter Lawrence al-Rasheedi, who was found guilty of insulting Emir Al Sabah and calling for his overthrow.
(SSFC, 5/20/12, p.A4)
2012 May 18, Facebook's stock closed at $38.23, up 23 cents in its debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market. It had been priced at $38 per share the previous evening.
(AP, 5/18/12)
2012 May 20, Yahoo reached a deal to sell half of its 40% stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce provider, for about $7.1 billion.
(SFC, 5/21/12, p.A5)
2012 May 20, Pakistan blocked Twitter, saying the website had refused to remove posts promoting a Facebook competition involving caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
(AFP, 5/20/12)
2012 May 21, A "threats report" was released by McAfee showed that the number of new pieces of malicious code, or "malware," targeting Windows machines in the first three months of this year was the highest in four years. There was also a rise in malware aimed at mobile gadgets running on Google-backed Android software and at Macintosh computers based on Apple operating systems.
(AFP, 5/22/12)
2012 May 28, Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based internet security firm, said a powerful computer virus, dubbed “Flame," with unprecedented data-snatching capabilities has attacked machines in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
(AP, 5/29/12)
2012 May 30, A senior Iranian military official said Iran's key oil industry was briefly affected by the powerful computer virus known as "Flame" that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users.
(AP, 5/30/12)
2012 May 30, Thai online editor Chiranuch Premchaiporn was handed a suspended jail term for failing to remove a comment critical of the revered monarchy on her website, prompting Google to issue a stark warning over Internet freedom.
(AFP, 5/30/12)
2012 Jun 5, It was reported that Israel has begun to force incoming travelers deemed suspicious to open personal email accounts for inspection.
(AP, 6/5/12)
2012 Jun 8, In Britain 6 men were handed jail sentences for running a website, Confidential Access, that earned millions of pounds by selling fake documents and coaching fraudsters in how to conduct successful scams. Two masterminds ran the site from villas in Alicante in Spain while associates in Britain created fake documents including bank statements, pay slips, driving licenses and bills.
(AFP, 6/9/12)
2012 Jun 9, Indian demonstrators supporting the global hacking movement Anonymous took to the streets to protest against what they consider growing government censorship of the Internet. Concerns about Internet freedom stemmed from an update to India’s Information Technology Act that was given by the IT and communications ministry in April last year.
(AFP, 6/9/12)
2012 Jun 10, Iran's media reported that the nation’s cyber police are poised to launch a new crackdown on software that lets many Iranians circumvent the regime's Internet censorship.
(AFP, 6/10/12)
2012 Jun 13, ICANN revealed the Internet names of 1,400 new generic top-level domain names.
(Econ, 6/16/12, p.76)
2012 Jun 14, In Indonesia Alexander Aan (30) was sentenced to 30 months of prison and a $10,600 fine for posting pro-atheist and anti-Islam comments on Facebook. He was also fined the equivalent of $10,600. Aan was arrested in January after an angry mob reacting to the Facebook posts stormed his office, where he worked as a civil servant.
(http://tinyurl.com/7nvh7m3)
2012 Jun 15, A Scottish authority in Argyll lifted its ban stopping a nine-year-old Scottish girl from photographing her school lunches and posting them on her blog, after the move sparked outrage online. Six weeks ago, Martha Payne began taking photos of the uninspiring lunches provided by her school canteen and posting them on her blog, "NeverSeconds."
(AFP, 6/15/12)
2012 Jun 25, In Scotland the TED Global conference, known for taking an innovative look at cutting-edge issues, opened in Edinburgh. with the theme “radical openness." The 5-day event was set to explore the implications of crowd sourcing, blogs, smartphones and other culture-changing features of the Internet Age.
(AFP, 6/25/12)
2012 Jun 26, Botswana and Namibia inaugurated their links to a 14,000 km (8,700 mile) underground cable system that provides both with faster and cheaper Internet connectivity.
(AFP, 6/26/12)
2012 Jul 2, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it appears Ethiopia is extending and refining its censorship of Internet news with a sophistication that could encourage other authoritarian regimes in Africa. The rollout of a pervasive and sophisticated blocking system started in April to include smaller blogs by exiles and news services, and even individual Facebook pages.
(AP, 7/2/12)
2012 Jul 4, Austrian police said they have identified 272 suspects in the country as part of a months long investigation of internet-based child pornography involving 141 nations.
(AP, 7/4/12)
2012 Jul 4, The European Parliament in Brussels overwhelmingly defeated the international ACTA anti-piracy trade agreement after concern that it would limit Internet freedom mobilized broad opposition across Europe.
(AP, 7/4/12)
2012 Jul 11, Russia’s parliament passed legislation imposing limits on the Internet, presented as a way to protect children.
(SFC, 7/12/12, p.A5)
2012 Aug 9, Google agreed to pay a record $22.5 million to settle allegations by the US Federal Trade Commission that it breached Apple’s Safari Internet browser, allowing it to secretly track Web surfers using Safari.
(SFC, 8/10/12, p.D1)
2012 Aug 10, In Vietnam a Hanoi court convicted blogger Le Thanh Tung (44) of "propaganda against the state" by over Internet articles for the banned Vietnam Freedom and Democracy Movement.
(AFP, 8/11/12)
2012 Aug 14, Malaysia's PM Najib Razak said he would review a legal amendment that critics claim threatens free expression online after they staged a one-day "Internet blackout." NGOs, bloggers and opposition politicians staged the protest earlier in the day by replacing their homepages with black screens featuring messages attacking the new section of the Evidence Act, which went into effect in April despite widespread opposition.
(AFP, 8/14/12)
2012 Aug 17, India demanded social networking websites take down provocative messages and blocked some online content after anonymous threats sparked an exodus of migrants from southern cities. Local media reports estimated that over 35,000 people had fled cities including Bangalore and Mumbai, packing special trains arranged to carry panicked students and workers back to the northeast. The government later said much of the inflammatory Internet activity originated from Muslim-majority Pakistan.
(AFP, 8/21/12)
2012 Aug 21, Sierra Leone said it has signed a $15 million (12 million euro) loan agreement with China for the installation of a fiber optic cable which will boost Internet capabilities.
(AFP, 8/21/12)
2012 Aug 30, Cambodia police arrested Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a co-founder of The Pirate Bay file-sharing website following a request by Sweden. He faced a one-year prison term in Sweden for violating copyright laws.
(SFC, 9/4/12, p.A2)
2012 Aug 30, It was reported that a leak of personal data of more than 60 past and current employees of Nigeria's State Security Service remained easily accessible on the Internet for days and had details about the agency's director-general, including his mobile phone number, bank account particulars and contact information for his son.
(AP, 8/30/12)
2012 Sep 6, Google Inc. said it has chosen a site just outside the capital of Chile for its first data center in Latin America. The $150 million data center will employ just 20 people.
(AP, 9/6/12)
2012 Sep 12, In the Philippines Pres. Aquino III signed the new Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
(SFC, 10/4/12, p.A2)
2012 Sep 13, In Egypt Alber Saber was arrested after neighbors complained he had shared on Facebook the amateur film made in the US that sparked protests across the Muslim world. His arrest came during a wave of public outrage over the film, produced by an Egyptian-American Copt. On Dec 12 a Cairo court convicted and sentenced Saber to three years in prison for blasphemy and contempt of religion.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Sep 13, In Vietnam a record numbers of people visited the dissident blog sites and the bloggers pledged to keep up their struggle for freedom of expression. Vietnam's government has vowed to crack down on three dissident blogs.
(AP, 9/14/12)
2012 Sep 18, YouTube said that it was stopping users in Saudi Arabia from viewing “Innocence of Muslims," an anti-Islam video that has sparked protests across the Muslim world, after the kingdom's press agency reported that the ruler had banned all access to the film and the site appeared to be blocked there.
(AP, 9/18/12)
2012 Sep 24, A Vietnamese court issued jail sentences from 4 to 12 years to three bloggers who wrote about human rights abuses, corruption and foreign policy.
(SFC, 9/25/12, p.A2)
2012 Sep 25, Iran's telecommunication minister said the government has blocked Google's Gmail service following a court order to bar access to the popular email service.
(AP, 9/25/12)
2012 Oct 1, In Iran Mohammad Reza Aghamiri, a member of governmental Internet watchdog committee, told the semiofficial Mehr news agency that authorities have lifted the Gmail ban after resolving technical problems to separate YouTube and Gmail. YouTube remained blocked in response to video clips of an anti-Islam film.
(AP, 10/1/12)
2012 Oct 3, In the Philippines the new Cybercrime Prevention Act went into effect, setting penalties for a range of computer-related crimes with provisions related to libel. Critics said it could lead to imprisonment for simple activities like sharing Facebook and Twitter posts. On Oct 9 the Supreme Court suspended the new law.
(SFC, 10/4/12, p.A2)(SFC, 10/10/12, p.A2)
2012 Oct 11, A former US government official said US authorities believe that Iranian-based hackers were responsible for cyberattacks that devastated Persian Gulf oil and gas companies. Just hours later, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the cyberthreat from Iran has grown, and he declared that the Pentagon is prepared to take action if American is threatened by a computer-based assault.
(AP, 10/12/12)
2012 Oct 17, Bahrain detained four people for defaming the island's king with Twitter posts in a case that is likely to test the limits of expression in the violence-wracked Gulf nation. The four will be held for seven days pending trial.
(AP, 10/18/12)
2012 Nov 3, Cuba denounced the American diplomatic mission on the island for what it called subversive activities designed to undermine the government of Raul Castro. US officials acknowledged that the US Interests Section in Havana does regularly offer free courses in using the Internet to Cubans who want to sign up.
(AP, 11/2/12)
2012 Nov 7, Egypt's top prosecutor ordered government ministries to enforce a ban on pornographic websites, three years after a court denounced the sites as "venomous and vile." The order followed a protest by ultraconservative Salafis.
(AP, 11/7/12)
2012 Nov 9, The Australian government said it has abandoned its 5-year-old pledge to mandate a filter blocking child pornography and other objectionable Internet content. Instead service providers have agreed to block a list of 1,400 websites.
(SFC, 11/9/12, p.A2)
2012 Nov 13, The United Arab Emirates (UAR) set stricter Internet monitoring and enforcement codes giving authorities wider leeway to crack down on Web activists for offenses such as mocking the country’s rules or calling for demonstrations.
(SFC, 11/14/12, p.A3)
2012 Nov 29, Syrian activists said authorities have blocked Internet and cell phone signals in parts of the nation's capital. Two US-based Internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off Internet nationwide. Syrian rebels in Daraa bombed the house of Hussein Rifai, a top member of the country's ruling Baath party, killing him and his three body guards.
(AP, 11/29/12)
2012 Nov, Google began connecting Google Fiber, an ultra-fast broadband network, in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas.
(Econ, 4/13/13, p.64)
2012 Dec 9, Iran said it has launched a video-sharing website in the latest move to create government-sanctioned alternatives to Internet powerhouses such as YouTube. The new site — Mehr, or affection in Farsi — seeks to promote Iranian and Islamic culture and artists.
(AP, 12/9/12)
2012 Dec 14, Envoys from nearly 90 nations signed the first new UN telecommunications treaty since the Internet age, but the US and other Western nations refused to join after claiming it endorses greater government control over cyberspace. The Int’l. Telecommunications Union (ITU) has no technical powers to change how the Internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords.
(AP, 12/14/12)
2012 Dec 28, China passed a new law requiring real-name registration of internet subscribers.
(Econ, 1/5/13, p.33)
2012 Andrew Blum authored “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet."
(Econ, 6/16/12, p.86)
2012 Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, launched Medium, a destination for essays, letters, and “big think" pieces.
(Econ, 9/17/16, p.59)
2012 The Internet site DIY.org was founded in San Francisco as “a place for kids to share what they do and meet others who love the same skills."
(SFC, 7/13/13, p.D1)
2012 Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, a photo-sharing app. The company had tens of millions of users but only 13 employees.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)(Econ, 6/25/16, SR p.10)
2012 PubPeer was launched as a website that allowed people to comment anonymously on research papers.
(Econ, 11/5/16, p.71)
2012 Sebastian Thrun left Google to found Udacity, a startup dedicated to reinventing education of the 21st century.
(Econ, 9/5/15, TQ p.18)
2012 Twitter acquired Vine, which let people post six-second videos.
(Econ, 8/29/15, p.52)
2013 Jan 3, In France Internet Service Provider Free, run by Xavier Niel, upgraded software on its customer modems with online ads blocked by default. The move was aimed chiefly at Google.
(Econ, 1/12/12, p.57)
2013 Jan 8, Students at North Korea's premier university showed Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt how they look for information online: they Google it. Kim Su Hyang, a librarian, said students at Kim Il Sung University have had Internet access since the laboratory opened in April 2010.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 9, Google said it is putting $200 Million into a Texas Panhandle wind farm.
(SFC, 1/10/13, p.C6)
2013 Jan 10, The US Department of Homeland Security urged computer users to disable Oracle Corp's Java software, amplifying security experts' prior warnings to hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses that use it to surf the Web.
(AP, 1/11/13)
2013 Jan 11, A US federal judge barred California from enforcing a voter-approved law that requires 73,000 registered sex offenders to disclose their internet identities to police.
(SFC, 1/12/13, p.C1)
2013 Jan 11, Aaron Schwartz (26), computer programmer, was found dead in his NY apartment. At age 14 he helped create RSS (RDF Site Summary), a web feed format used to publish frequently updated works. He also co-founded Reddit, a social news website which was sold in 2006 to Conde Nast.
(SSFC, 1/13/13, p.A6)(SFC, 1/14/13, p.A5)(Econ, 1/19/13, p.94)
2013 Jan 14, Cuba reportedly began using the ALBA-1 cable to Venezuela, but only for incoming traffic. Outgoing data still travelled via satellite, according to an Internet analysis firm.
(SFC, 1/22/13, p.A2)
2013 Jan 20, In New Zealand indicted Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom launched “Mega," a new file-sharing website that promised users greater privacy and defied the US prosecutors who accuse him of facilitating massive online piracy.
(AP, 1/20/13)
2013 Jan 25, Twitter suspended the account used by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked militant group two days after al-Shabab used the platform to announce a death threat against Kenyan hostages unless Kenya's government meets its demands.
(AP, 1/25/13)
2013 Jan 31, The NY Times said Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated its computer systems over the past four months, stealing reporters' passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of a top Chinese leader.
(AP, 1/31/13)
2013 Jan, Nordea Bank AB, the largest bank in Sweden, said its 250 customers were robbed of eight million Swedish krona (about 1.66 billion won). It was online theft; they stole and withdrew money from the victims’ accounts. The Swedish police only found out what had been happening 15 months after the scheme was started, and the theft was still at large. The theft traced to a Russian hacker who goes by the sobriquet “the Corpse."
(www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/technology/25hack.html?_r=0)
2013 Feb 9, A Cairo court ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world. The ruling can be appealed and based on precedent may not be enforced.
(AP, 2/9/13)
2013 Feb 13, Spanish authorities announced the breakup of a cybercrime gang that used a “ransomware" virus to lock computers throughout Europe. The gang had made at least $1.35 annually.
(SFC, 2/14/13, p.A2)
2013 Feb 17, The NY Times reported that a 60-page analysis by Mandiant, a US computer security firm, has traced one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking groups to Shanghai and the gates of Unit 61398 of the Chinese military.
(SFC, 2/20/13, p.D1)(Econ, 2/23/13, p.12)
2013 Feb 28, US Army Pvt. Bradley Manning (25), accused of providing secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt "should become public," but denied the top charge of aiding the enemy.
(Reuters, 2/28/13)
2013 Mar 6, Iranian authorities blocked many foreign-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, severely restricting access to many websites.
(AP, 3/12/13)
2013 Mar 7, Kuwait government-affiliated newspapers reported that activists Sager al-Hashash and Naser al-Daihani were sentenced to two years and one year for Twitter posts offensive to the country's ruler.
(AP, 3/7/13)
2013 Mar 11, In Bahrain Yousef al-Muhafedha, acting president of the Bahrain Human Rights Center, was found not guilty of posting inaccurate news on Twitter about some anti-government protests.
(AP, 3/11/13)
2013 Mar 12, NYC police officer Gilberto Valle (28) was convicted of conspiracy that opened a window on the Internet world of cannibalism fetishists.
(SFC, 3/13/13, p.A6)
2013 Mar 13, Bahrain’s public prosecutor's office said six people have been detained over the last couple of days for allegedly defaming the country's ruler on Twitter.
(AP, 3/13/13)
2013 Mar 15, North Korea blamed South Korea and the United States for cyber-attacks that temporarily shut down websites this week at a time of elevated tensions over the North's nuclear ambitions.
(AP, 3/15/13)
2013 Mar 18, In New Jersey computer hacker Andrew Auernheimer (27) was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.
(Reuters, 3/18/13)
2013 Mar 20, In South Korea a cyberattack caused computer networks at major banks and top TV broadcasters to crash simultaneously. North Korea was suspected. Initial findings said a Chinese Internet address was the source of the attacks.
(SFC, 3/21/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 21, In France the Union of Jewish French Students sued Twitter for some $50 million for failing to honor a court ruling to identify users who post Holocaust jokes and calls to kill Jews.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, p.A4)
2013 Mar 25, Yahoo acquired Summly, a British startup, for some $30 million. Summly founder Nick d’Aloisio (17) had created an iPhone app to summarize articles in 300-400 characters.
(SFC, 4/18/13, p.66)
2013 Mar 27, Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Telecom executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
(AP, 3/27/13)
2013 Apr 1, Facebook lost a bid to end a trademark-infringement lawsuit over its use of “timeline" and related terms. Timelines Inc. started a website in 2009 that lets users create chronologies tracing historical events. It sued Facebook in September 2011, a week af FB announced it was adding a “timeline" feature to its user pages.
(SFC, 4/2/13, p.D3)
2013 Apr 9, Google said it has chosen Austin, Texas, as the 2nd location for Google Fiber, an ultra-fast broadband network. It began connecting Kansas City last November.
(Econ, 4/13/13, p.64)
2013 Apr 23, A fake tweet asserted that explosions at the White House had injured Pres. Obama. For 43 minutes prices stock exchanges tumbled in what came to be called the first Twitter crash. A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army took credit.
(Econ, 4/27/13, p.68)
2013 Apr 23, Australian police arrested a man they say is affiliated with international hacking collective Lulz Security on a charge of attacking and defacing a government website.
(AP, 4/23/13)
2013 Apr 24, Wikileaks said it has secured a victory in Iceland’s Supreme Court against the financial blockade imposed by Visa and Master Card on donations for the secret-spilling site.
(SFC, 4/25/13, p.A2)
2013 Apr 24, Israel's attorney general upheld a practice to allow security personnel to read people's email accounts when they arrive at the airport, arguing it prevents militants from entering the country.
(AP, 4/24/13)
2013 Apr 25, Spanish agents arrested a Dutch citizen, identified as S.K. (35), for using a vehicle to hack into networks. He was accused of attacking the Swiss-British antispam watchdog group Spamhaus.
(SFC, 4/29/13, p.A3)
2013 Apr 29, A Kuwait appeals court said online activist Sager al-Hashash must serve a jail sentence for Twitter posts deemed offensive to the Gulf nation's ruler, but the prison term was reduced from two years to one.
(AP, 4/29/13)
2013 Apr, AnonGhost, a Mauritania based hacker group, launched a cyber attack dubbed OpIsrael that disrupted access to several Israeli government websites, attracting the attention of security experts worldwide.
(Reuters, 6/28/13)
2013 May 9, Washington state officials said the state Administrative Office of the Courts was hacked between last fall and February, and that as many as 160,000 Social Security numbers and one million driver’s licenses may have been accessed during a data breach of its public website.
(SFC, 5/10/13, p.A8)
2013 May 10, The official China Internet Network Information Center explained in state media reports that a microblog belonging to He Bing, liberal professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, had been suspended because he was "intentionally spreading rumors."
(AP, 5/14/13)
2013 May 11, Marcin Skowronek, an investigator at Europol's European Cybercrime Center in The Hague, said "We are seeing an unprecedented number of cyberscams that include phishing for financial data, viruses, credit card fraud and others." Police Maj. Gen. Pisit Paoin, chief of Thailand's Technology Crime Suppression Division, said in a telephone interview that Thai police have arrested more than 20 suspects involved in the recent $45 million cyber heist including those from Bulgaria, Bangladesh and eastern Europe.
(AP, 5/11/13)
2013 May 12, Kyle Dube (20) of Orono, Maine, used a phony Facebook account created in the name of a student from another school to lure Nichole Cable (15) outside her Glenburn home. He abducted and killed her. Her body was found more than a week later in a wooded area of Old Town, north of Bangor.
(AP, 5/30/13)
2013 May 15, Google announced that you can now email money, just like you would email a photo or Word document. Both parties, payer and recipient, would need Google Wallet accounts.
(Yahoo News, 5/16/13)
2013 May 16, Four British LulzSec hackers, who pleaded guilty to a series of high-profile cyberattacks on computers in the US and Britain, were sentenced to up to 32 months in prison.
(SFC, 5/17/13, p.A2)
2013 May 20, It was reported that Yahoo has agreed to buy Tumblr, a popular blogging service, for $1.1 billion.
(SFC, 5/20/13, p.A1)
2013 May 20, A Norwegian security firm reported that cyber spies had attacked Telenor, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, and that the attack was probably directed from India.
(Econ, 5/25/13, p.61)
2013 May 21, Microsoft Corp. said it is expanding its services for hosting and processing online data in Australia with the establishment of two new "cloud" computing data centers in the country.
(Reuters, 5/21/13)
2013 May 24, Arthur Budovsky, the founder of Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica-based digital currency system long favored by cybercrime scammers, was arrested in Spain. A defendant identified as Budovsky's partner, Vladimir Kats, was in custody in New York. Budovsky was soon indicted in the United States along with six other people in a $6 billion money-laundering scheme described as "staggering" in its scope.
(AP, 5/29/13)(SFC, 5/29/13, p.D1)
2013 May 27, A US report said Chinese hackers have gained access to designs of more than two dozen major US weapons systems.
(Reuters, 5/28/13)(Econ, 6/8/13, p.50)
2013 May 27, Australian Broadcasting Corp. television reported that the plans for the 630 million Australian dollar ($608 million) Australian Security Intelligence Organization building had been stolen through a cyberattack by Chinese hackers on a building contractor.
(AP, 5/28/13)
2013 Jun 3, Jordan said it has blocked 304 unlicensed national news websites in a step toward regulating online media widely criticized by the government and readers for sensational reporting.
(AP, 6/4/13)
2013 Jun 4, Cuba began offering Internet access at more than 100 public access points. An hour of computer time cost about one-fifth the average monthly wage.
(SFC, 6/5/13, p.A2)
2013 Jun 9, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said that Edward Snowden (29), a contractor who says he worked at the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, is the source of leaks about a phone records monitoring program and an Internet scouring program. Snowden was working in an NSA office in Hawaii until he left for Hong Kong on May 20.
(AP, 6/10/13)
2013 Jun 12, In an interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper, Edward Snowden claimed the US has long been attacking a Hong Kong university that routes all Internet traffic in and out of the semiautonomous Chinese region.
(AP, 6/13/13)
2013 Jun 13, An influential committee of British lawmakers accused search company Google of dodging its taxes in a scathing report that said the US Internet company took on highly contrived arrangements serving no purpose other than to avoid paying its fair share.
(AP, 6/14/13)
2013 Jun 13, Vietnam police arrested Pham Viet Dao (61), one of the country's best known bloggers, for posting criticism of the communist government.
(AP, 6/14/13)
2013 Jun 14, In New Zealand Google announced the launch of Project Loon, a collection of helium balloons with antennas controlled to provide Internet access.
(SFC, 6/15/13, p.A4)
2013 Jun 15, Vietnam police arrested Dinh Nhat Uy (30), a blogger accused of posting "erroneous and slanderous" information about the communist government. He is the brother of Dinh Nguyen Kha, a student who was sentenced last month to eight years in jail for spreading propaganda against the state. So far this year, 46 bloggers or democracy activists have been convicted and imprisoned, more than the number of people locked up for violating national security laws in the whole of 2012.
(AP, 6/16/13)
2013 Jun 21, Britain's data regulator ordered Google to delete personal data scooped up in its Street View project — or face contempt of court.
(AP, 6/21/13)
2013 Jun 25, In South Korea major government and news media websites were shut down after anonymous hackers attacked them on the 63rd anniversary of the start of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
(SFC, 6/26/13, p.A3)
2013 Jun 28, Legislators in Grenada approved a bill that makes it a crime to offend people through websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
(AP, 6/29/13)
2013 Jul 4, Ohio educated Andrew Anglin, location unknown, launched “The Daily Stormer," a neo-Nazi website, on Cloudflare, an Internet service provider based in San Francisco. Cloudflare was launched in 2009 with a core belief in the free and open nature of the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer)(SFC, 5/5/17, p.A1)
2013 Jul 8, Iran’s communications minister said all citizens will be assigned an individual email address which the would aid interaction between state authorities and the people.
(Reuters, 7/8/13)
2013 Jul 17, The Online user database of two big companies were reportedly hacked by political hacktivists working in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The private data of the users of TrueCaller and TangoMe were compromised which included private details of their social networks.
(AP, 7/21/13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Syria)
2014 Jul 22, In China the Paper, a new digital news platform, was launched as an offshoot of the Oriental Morning Post in Shanghai.
(Econ, 12/13/14, p.46)
2013 Jul 24, Google announced a plan to bring wireless internet access to at least 31 parks in San Francisco.
(SFC, 7/24/13, p.A1)
2013 Jul 27, In London, England, Ilya Segalovich (48) died of brain cancer. He was the co-founder of Russia's largest search engine, Yandex.
(AP, 7/28/13)
2013 Jul 29, In Saudi Arabia Raif Badawi, editor of the "Free Saudi Liberals" website, was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought. Badawi has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father.
(Reuters, 7/30/13)
2013 Jul 30, In Maryland US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy, but was convicted on 20 of 22 other charges including espionage and theft. He faced up to 136 years in prison for spilling government information to WikiLeaks in 2010.
(SFC, 7/31/13, p.A6)
2013 Jul 30, In New Zealand Hackers disabled several websites of the ruling party, protesting a planned law to widen the surveillance powers of the country's spy agency but the action was criticized by Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom as counter-productive.
(Reuters, 7/30/13)
2013 Aug 3, Twitter said it is handing down new rules to control abusive language, a move which follows a barrage of nasty, harassing, and threatening messages directed at high-profile female users of the microblogging site.
(AP, 8/3/13)
2013 Aug 6, Latvia's government approved the extradition of Deniss Calovskis (b.1985), a man accused by the United States of helping create a virus that affected over a million computers worldwide, including many at NASA, and that allowed hackers to steal millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts. US authorities earlier this year accused Calovskis, along with Romanian citizen Mihai Ionut Paunescu and Russian national Nikita Kuzmin, of participating in a conspiracy that started in 2005 to create and disseminate the so-called Gozi virus. On August 8 the extradition was put on hold after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said it would take on the case.
(AP, 8/6/13)(Reuters, 8/8/13)
2013 Aug 9, Two of Germany's biggest Internet service providers said they will start encrypting customers' emails by default in response to user concerns about online snooping after reports that the US National Security Agency monitors international electronic communications.
(AP, 8/9/13)
2013 Aug 25, China was hit by the "largest ever" attack on its Internet structure, crashing the country's .cn servers.
(AFP, 8/26/13)
2013 Sep 9, In Florida Rebecca Ann Sedwick (12) jumped to her death at a former cement business in Lakeland. Investigators said she was despondent after others posted hate messages to her online. On Oct 15 police said two girls of Crystal Lake Middle School, ages 12 and 14, have been arrested for bullying Sedwick. On Nov 20 prosecutors dropped charges of aggravated stalking against the two girls.
(SFC, 9/13/13, p.A8)(SFC, 10/16/13, p.A12)(SFC, 11/22/13, p.A8)
2013 Sep 9, China unveiled tough measures to stop the spread of what the government calls irresponsible rumors, threatening three years in jail if untrue posts online are widely reposted, drawing an angry response from Chinese internet users.
(Reuters, 9/9/13)
2013 Sep 12, China's government said it will protect from retribution and attacks people who use the internet to report corruption, but only those who use an officially sanctioned website to do so.
(Reuters, 9/12/13)
2013 Oct 1, Pres. Obama’s health insurance exchanges were launched. The launch was plagued with glitches.
(Econ, 10/12/13, p.38)
2013 Oct 31, A Moscow court revoked the registration of web-based news agency Rosbalt for posting videos it said contained profane language, including a clip by punk band Pussy Riot.
(Reuters, 10/31/13)
2013 Nov 3, Hackers claiming links to international activist group Anonymous (Anonymous Indonesia and Anonymous Philippines) defaced dozens of websites belonging to Australian businesses and Philippine government agencies.
(Reuters, 11/3/13)
2013 Nov 4, New Zealand police said they were investigating a gang of young males who boasted online about stupefying underage girls with alcohol then having group sex with them. The case has raised concerns about how to police online bullying.
(AFP, 11/4/13)
2013 Nov 7, Hackers claiming links to international hacking group Anonymous defaced Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong's official website, one day after he said authorities would spare no effort to track them down.
(Reuters, 11/7/13)
2013 Nov 12, Singapore charged a 35-year-old man suspected of hacking a website linked to the prime minister.
(Reuters, 11/12/13)
2013 Nov 15, In NYC hacker Jeremy Hammond (28) was sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally accessing computer systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors. Hammond said his goal was to expose injustices by the private intelligence industry.
(SFC, 11/16/13, p.A6)
2013 Nov 18, In NYC five people were arrested following a global "cyber heist" in which hackers stole $45 million by overriding the cash withdrawal limits of prepaid debit cards. Officials said the cyber-ring managed to steal $45 million in late 2012 and early 2013 by manipulating the limits of prepaid debit cards from Abu Dhabi-based National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah and Bank Muscat of Oman.
(AFP, 11/19/13)
2013 Nov 18, Twitter users in Kuwait and the UAE received prison terms, in the latest sign of widening crackdowns in the region on social media for posts considered offensive or against state security.
(AP, 11/18/13)
2013 Nov, Bitly, popular site for shortening Web addresses, got caught in the crossfire of Venezuela's polarized politics shortly after President Nicolas Maduro decided to block access to sites such as www.dolartoday.com that publish the black market rate for the bolivar, which is now 10 times the official rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar.
(AP, 12/5/13)
2013 Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt authored “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business."
(SSFC, 4/28/13, p.F1)
2013 Jason Healy edited “A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986-2012."
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
2013 Steven Johnson authored “Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age."
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.72)
2013 Thomas Rid authored “Cyberwar Will Not Take Place."
(Econ, 6/29/13, p.75)
2013 The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, was launched on Cloudflare, an Internet service provider based in San Francisco. Cloudflare was launched in 2009 with a core belief in the free and open nature of the Internet.
(SFC, 5/5/17, p.A1)
2013 The Kurds were granted the ".krd" domain name by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a US-based non-profit organization that manages internet addresses.
{Kurds, Internet}
(Reuters, 4/14/16)
2014 Jan 1, The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype.
(Reuters, 1/1/14)
2014 Jan 10, It was reported that al-Shabab, Somalia's al-Qaida-linked group, has ordered telecom companies to shut down mobile internet services over fears the US can use the data to target militants.
(AP, 1/10/14)
2014 Jan 14, The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed the FCC’s online access rules arguing that Internet providers built their networks and therefore have the right to manage their costs and services.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p. A1)
2014 Jan 14, The NY Times reported that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, but not in the United States, that allows the US to conduct surveillance on those machines.
(AP, 1/15/14)
2014 Jan 16, British police working alongside counterparts in the Philippines and Australia said they had dismantled a paedophile ring that streamed live sexual abuse of Filipino children as young as six over the Internet, with victims' parents involved in some cases.
(AFP, 1/16/14)
2014 Jan 18, In Turkey riot police in Istanbul used water canons against hundreds of people protesting a government plan to expand controls over the public’s use of the Internet.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 22, The Chinese government condemned a report on the wealth of the country's elite being hidden in overseas tax havens as illogical and having ulterior motives, as the government blocked websites and censored mention of the story online.
(Reuters, 1/22/14)
2014 Jan 23, Hamas accused Twitter of censorship as an account of its armed wing has been suspended by Twitter administrators.
(AFP, 1/23/14)
2014 Jan 27, An Israeli data protection expert said hackers earlier this month attacked 15 Israeli computers including one used by the defense ministry department dealing with civilians in the occupied West Bank.
(AFP, 1/27/14)
2014 Feb 2, In France a video, posted on Facebook, was filmed in the southeastern town of Fontaine showing two boys pushing an 18-year-old mentally-disabled man in a park, making him fall and shouting at him before shoving him into a stream, from which the bewildered-looking victim emerges and walks away. Over the next two days four boys were detained over the assault and one (12) was released.
(AFP, 2/4/14)
2014 Feb 5, The European Union's antitrust watchdog accepted "far-reaching" concessions offered by Google to settle allegations it is abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, bringing the three-year-old case close to an end.
(AP, 2/5/14)
2014 Feb 5, Turkey's parliament approved internet controls enabling web pages to be blocked within hours in what the opposition decried as part of a government bid to stifle a corruption scandal.
(Reuters, 2/6/14)
2014 Feb 11, The websites of casinos owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. were hacked. These included sites for a Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as casinos in Nevada and Macao.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)
2014 Feb 14, About $2.5 million of Bitcoin was apparently stolen from Silk Road 2.0, a website used to trade mainly illegal drugs. A flaw in Bitcoin’s code was discovered earlier this month.
(Econ, 2/22/14, p.65)
2014 Feb 19, Facebook said it will pay $19 billion in cash and stock to buy WhatsApp, a mobile messaging company founded in 2009. This was the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company.
(SFC, 2/20/14, p.C6)(Econ, 2/22/14, p.54)
2014 Feb 25, The website of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was returning a blank page today. The disappearance of the site follows the Feb 23 resignation of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a group seeking legitimacy for the currency, and a withdrawal ban imposed at the exchange earlier this month.
(AP, 2/25/14)
2014 Feb 26, A US appeals court ordered YouTube to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors. The 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The company argued that the filmmakers and not the actors of "Innocence of Muslims" owned the copyright and only they could remove it from YouTube.
(AP, 2/27/14)
2014 Feb 27, Yahoo Inc. strongly condemned a reported multiyear effort by American (NSA) and British (GCHQ) spy agencies to snatch webcam images from the Internet’s giant’s user accounts in a program code-named Optical nerve starting in 2008.
(SFC, 2/28/14, p.C1)
2014 Mar 4, In Vietnam dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat (50) was sentenced to two years in prison for posting online criticism of Vietnam's authoritarian government.
(AP, 3/4/14)
2014 Mar 14, Hackers knocked out the Russian presidency's website several times and brought down the central bank website.
(Reuters, 3/14/14)
2014 Mar 20, Turkey’s PM Tayyip Erdogan's defiantly vowed, on the campaign trail ahead of March 30 local polls, to "wipe out" Twitter, whatever the international community had to say about it.
(Reuters, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 21, Turkey blocked access to Twitter after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rip out the roots" of the social network where links have proliferated to recordings that appear to incriminate him and other top officials in corruption.
(AP, 3/21/14)
2014 Mar 22, Turkish authorities sought to tighten a clampdown on Twitter after social media users easily evaded the government's attempt to block access to the service.
(AP, 3/22/14)
2014 Mar 26, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to restore access to Twitter, issuing an injunction five days after the government blocked access to the social network.
(AP, 3/26/14)
2014 Apr 3, It was reported that the US government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" — a communications network designed to undermine the Cuba’s communist government, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks. The project, dubbed "ZunZuneo," slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet, was publicly launched soon after Cuba’s 2009 arrest of US contractor Alan Gross.
(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 3, The European Parliament voted to stop Internet providers from charging for preferential access to their networks, a step cheered by consumer groups but bemoaned by the telecommunications industry.
(AP, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 3, Turkey's telecoms authority lifted a two-week-old ban on Twitter, after the constitutional court ruled the block breached freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 4/3/14)
2014 Apr 4, A Turkish court ruled that a blanket ban of social-media website YouTube violated human rights and ordered most of the restrictions be lifted, citing a top court ruling this week that scrapped a similar ban on microblogging site Twitter. But the court soon reversed the YouTube decision, saying the block would remain in place until the audio recordings allegedly showing top-level security talks on Syria are removed.
(Reuters, 4/4/14)(AFP, 4/5/14)
2014 Apr 12, Turkey's PM Erdogan said he will "go after" Twitter, accusing the site of tax-evasion, after it was used to spread damaging leaks implicating his inner circle in corruption scandals.
(AFP, 4/12/14)
2014 Apr 14, Google bought Titan Aerospace, a maker of solar powered drones, for an undisclosed sum. It planned to use the drones to help deliver wireless internet access to remote parts of the world.
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.58)
2014 Apr 22, The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving Aereo, a US internet streaming service that picks up signals of free-to-air TV channels for its subscribers.
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.65)
2014 Apr 22, Brazil's Congress passed a bill guaranteeing Internet privacy and enshrining access to the Web on the eve of a major conference in Sao Paulo on the future of Internet governance that's expected to draw representatives from some 80 countries.
(AP, 4/23/14)
2014 Apr 25, China’s Sina.com temporarily closed its literature site after being accused of hosting pornography, and authorities confirmed they were revoking two crucial licenses, ensnaring one of China's top web portals in an intensifying online crackdown.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Apr 29, Ethiopian police said they have arrested several people for "serious criminal activities." Rights groups said they were journalists and “Zone 9" bloggers detained in a sweeping crackdown against free speech. On Oct 16, 2015, Four of the bloggers and journalists were acquitted of terrorism after 18 months in jail. Journalist Befekadu Hailu, while being acquitted of terrorism charges, remained in custody on charges of inciting violence. Soleyana Gebremichael, in exile in the US, was acquitted of all charges in absentia.
(AFP, 4/29/14)(AFP, 10/16/15)
2014 Apr 30, Saudi Arabia launched an experimental Internet site for Saudi citizens to petition King Abdullah (90) directly and lodge complaints at the initiative of the monarch himself.
(AFP, 5/2/14)
2014 May 2, Philippine officials said police have arrested 58 suspected members of an online extortion syndicate this week in Manila and three other regions. They had reportedly duped hundreds of victims worldwide into exposing themselves in front of webcams or engaging in lewd chats. Some 100 more Filipino suspects were later linked to online blackmail syndicates.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A2)(AP, 5/13/14)
2014 May 12, Indonesia said it has banned the popular video sharing site Vimeo, because it contains nudity, which officials in the world's most populous Muslim country consider to be pornographic material.
(AP, 5/13/14)
2014 May 13, Europe's highest court said people should have some say over the results that pop up when they conduct a Google search of their own name online. The European Court of Justice (ECI) embraced the idea of a digital “right to be forgotten."
(AP, 5/13/14)(Econ, 11/5/16, p.51)
2014 May 20, Police in Iran confirmed the arrest of six young people for posting a video online of them dancing to Pharrell Williams' hit song "Happy," showing them on state television as a public warning to youth in the Islamic Republic.
(AP, 5/21/14)
2014 May 5, Russia’s Pres. Putin signed a new law requiring popular bloggers and commentators with more than 3,000 followers to register as media outlets.
(Econ, 5/10/14, p.49)
2014 May 30, An Iranian an opposition website, Kaleme, said an Iranian court last week sentenced eight people to jail terms ranging from seven to 20 years for crimes including anti-regime propaganda posted on Facebook.
(AFP, 5/30/14)
2014 Jun 6, Thai police warned online critics of the military junta that they will "come get you" for posting political views that could incite divisiveness.
(AP, 6/6/14)
2014 Jun 30, Iraq lifted a 17-day social media ban imposed to disrupt the communications of armed militants who have seized much of its west and north, although about 20 news websites remain blocked.
(Reuters, 7/1/14)
2014 Jul, Amazon Web Services launched Zocalo, a service for storing an d sharing documents. It allowed people to access thjeri material anytime and from anywhere.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.59)
2014 Aug 7, South Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said China has confirmed it had blocked "some foreign messaging applications through which terrorism-related information" was circulating. These included KakaoTalk and Line. It named other blocked apps as Didi, Talk Box and Vower. The service disruptions in China began a month ago.
(Reuters, 8/7/14)
2014 Sep 5, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group sought to raise up to $24.3 billion in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, which would value the company at $163 billion. Those are both IPO records.
(AP, 9/5/14)
2014 Sep 10, Turkey’s parliament approved legislation to tighten the government’s control over the Internet.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.61)
2014 Sep 17, Philippine authorities arrested 43 suspected members of a syndicate that runs a lucrative online cybersex operation catering to clients worldwide.
(AP, 9/18/14)
2014 Sep 26, China's top anti-graft body said Gao Jianyun, a senior internet regulator, has been expelled from the ruling Communist Party on graft charges.
(Reuters, 9/26/14)
2014 Sep 28, Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc., was reported blocked in China amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
(Reuters, 9/28/14)
2014 Sep 29, Canada's broadcast regulator (CRTC) gave American companies Google and Netflix a three-day deadline to turn over subscriber data or have their testimony expunged from a major public hearing. The Internet giants refused to share the data earlier this month.
(AFP, 9/30/14)
2014 Sep 29, The Professional Web Journalists Association, a media rights group, said Sri Lanka's government sabotaged a weekend training program for online journalists for the fourth time in three months, and accused the authorities of continued intimidation and suppression of the media.
(AP, 9/29/14)
2014 Sep, Estonia carried out a dry run of its digital continuity project in conjunction with Microsoft. It aimed to ensure that even if the government is sabotaged it would continue to operate over the internet.
(Econ., 3/7/15, TQ p.3)
2014 Oct 2, Rocket Internet went public in Germany in an IPO valued at $8.2 billion. The company specialized in launching clones of proven internet-business models. The stock opened at €42.50 and immediately fell to €38.00
(Econ, 10/4/14, p.72)
2014 Oct 3, The EU's antitrust authority says it has approved Facebook's proposed $19 billion takeover of the messaging service WhatsApp.
(AP, 10/3/14)
2014 Oct 9, A Japanese judge ordered Google to remove search results of a man's unflattering past in an order the plaintiff's lawyer compared to Europe's "right to be forgotten" ruling.
(AP, 10/10/14)
2014 Oct 13, South Korean messaging app Kakao Talk said it will stop fully cooperating with authorities seeking to access private messages as part of a government crackdown on online criticism.
(AP, 10/13/14)
2014 Oct 28, In Hungary tens of thousands of protesters marched in Budapest against a plan by the government to tax Internet use from 2015. This was the 2nd big rally in three days.
(SFC, 10/29/14, p.A2)
2014 Oct 31, Hungary's PM Viktor Orban said that the government would suspend a planned tax on Internet use and reconsider the matter next year.
(AP, 10/31/14)
2014 Nov 3, In Thailand Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij (36), one of the founders of popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, was arrested under an Interpol warrant as crossed into Thailand from Laos. Neij, along with other Pirate Bay co-founders, was convicted of aiding copyright infringement by a court in Sweden in 2009. He fled the country after being released on bail.
(AP, 11/4/14)
2014 Nov 4, A Thai court sentenced a university student to 2 1/2 years in prison for posting a message on Facebook that the court said insulted the country's king.
(AP, 11/4/14)
2014 Nov 28, In China the standing committee of Xinjiang's parliament, banned the practice of religion in government buildings and stipulated penalties of between 5,000 and 30,000 yuan ($4,884) for individuals who use the Internet, mobile phones or digital publishing to undermine national unity, social stability or incite ethnic hatred.
(Reuters, 11/30/14)
2014 Dec 9, Swedish police raided a server room in Stockholm in an action targeting the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
(AP, 12/10/14)
2014 Dec 11, Google announced it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content.
(AP, 12/11/14)
2014 Dec 15, A Dutch privacy watchdog ordered Google to make changes to the way it handles users' personal data or face fines of up to 15 million euros ($18.7 million).
(AP, 12/15/14)
2014 Dec 19, Google sued to block what it calls overly broad demands by Mississippi in its investigation of online contraband sales, after accusing the state’s attorney general of doing Hollywood’s bidding.
(SFC, 12/20/14, p.D1)
2014 Dec 21, In Belarus three of BelaPAN's websites were blocked, along with the Internet newspaper Solidarnost and the website of the human rights organization Khartiya-97.
(AP, 12/21/14)
2014 Dec 22, North Korea, at the center of a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of Sony Pictures, experienced a complete Internet outage for hours before links were restored on Dec 23.
(Reuters, 12/23/14)
2014 Dec 22, Activists said Russia's Internet watchdog is working to block social networking sites rallying support for a mass protest next month backing Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
(Reuters, 12/22/14)
2014 Dec 26, Sony's PlayStation network remained offline on the second day of an outage that began roiling the online world just as eager video game players were unwrapping new consoles on Christmas morning.
(AP, 12/26/14)
2014 Dec 26, Data from Google's Transparency Report showed online traffic from China to Gmail fell precipitously and dropped to nearly zero on Dec 27. There was a tiny pickup on Dec 29. Tests later showed that China's government had blocked Google IP addresses in Hong Kong used by people on the mainland to access Gmail services.
(AP, 12/29/14)
2014 Dec 26, Iran said it is to expand what it calls "smart filtering" of the Internet, a policy of censoring undesirable content on websites without banning them completely, as it used to.
(Reuters, 12/26/14)
2014 Dec 27, North Korea's Internet and 3G mobile networks were paralyzed again this evening. North Korea called US President Barack Obama a "monkey" and blamed Washington for Internet outages that it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures.
(Reuters, 12/27/14)
2014 Cory Doctorow authored “Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age."
(SSFC, 12/14/14, p.Q1)
2014 Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg authored “How Google Works."
(Econ, 9/27/14, p.85)
2014 E-sports earned some $194 million in revenues worldwide this year.
(Econ, 2/13/15, p.66)
2014 Gitlab, a software company was officially launched by Sytse Sijbrandij and Dmitriy Zaporozhets. It was initially developed as a source code management solution to collaborate within a team on software development. It later evolved to an integrated solution covering the software development life cycle, and then to the whole DevOps life cycle. By 2020 the company with no offices had 1,300 team members living in 65 different countries.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitLab)(Econ., 9/12/20, p.21)
2015 Jan 7, Iran's official IRNA news agency said the judiciary has ordered that LINE, WhatsApp and Tango, three popular apps providing free phone and messaging services, be shut down. Social websites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have already been blocked by censors.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 14, A Turkish court ordered the telecommunications authority to ban access to websites showing Charlie Hebdo's front cover with the image of the Prophet Muhammad.
(AP, 1/14/15)
2015 Jan 23, It was reported that China is blocking VPN services that let users skirt online censorship of popular websites such as Google and Facebook amid a wider crackdown on online information.
(AP, 1/23/15)
2015 Jan 26, Hackers defaced the website of Malaysia Airlines and threatened to dump stolen information online after posting a glimpse of customer data obtained in the attack.
(AP, 1/26/15)
2015 Jan, Twitter acquired Periscope, a live video streaming app for iOS and Android developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_%28app%29)
2015 Feb 3, Thai police said they have arrested six people accused of being part of a conspiracy to slander the country's monarchy on the Internet.
(AP, 2/3/15)
2015 Feb 4, In NYC Ross William Ulbricht (30) of San Francisco was convicted of creating and operating the underground Silk Road website that enabled drug dealers around the world to reach customers.
(SFC, 2/5/15, p.C1)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.33)
2015 Feb 4, China announced that users of blogs and chat rooms will be required to register their names with operators and promise in writing to avoid challenging the Communist political system, further tightening control over Internet use.
(AP, 2/4/15)
2015 Feb 12, England and Wales passed a new law banning "revenge porn" -- sexually explicit images shared online by a former partner without their ex's consent. The devolved governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have responsibility for justice matters, are also looking at introducing similar laws.
(AFP, 2/12/15)
2015 Feb 13, In Virginia Andrus Nomm of Estonia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement in federal court in Alexandria. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Nomm, one of seven men indicted in a massive copyright-piracy scheme run through the now-defunct website Megaupload three years ago, was the first to be brought to the US to face charges.
(AP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 13, The Netherlands extradited Vladimir Drinkman to the US. The Russian was suspected of involvement in a huge data breach that racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over seven years for US companies. Drinkman was arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012.
(AP, 2/13/15)
2015 Feb 19, The website Intercept posted documents saying the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GCHQ had hacked into the networks of Gemalto, a SIM card maker, to steal codes allowing them to seamlesslessly eavesdrop on mobile phones worldwide.
(SFC, 2/21/15, p.A3)
2015 Feb 26, The US Federal Communications Commission voted to enforce "net neutrality" rules for the broadband industry.
(AP, 2/27/15)
2015 Mar 8, Islamic State supporters, facing regular bans and blockages on Facebook and other social networks launched 5elafabook.com, their own CaliphateBook, to spread their militant message over the Internet.
(AP, 3/10/15)
2015 Mar 12, It was reported that Cuba is allowing free, public Internet service for the first time at a Havana cultural center. It quietly began offering open Wi-Fi in recent weeks.
(AP, 3/12/15)
2015 Mar 18, Evolution Marketplace, a website for illegal drugs, was taken down in an apparent “exit scam" by its anonymous administrators who made off with up to $15 million in Bitcoin payments they were holding in escrow.
(Econ., 4/11/15, p.59)
2015 Mar 24, Google announced that it would be bringing Google Fiber to Salt Lake City, which actually will make it the second city in Utah to have access to the service. Google first announced it was bringing Fiber to Provo, Utah back in 2013.
(BGR News, 3/25/15)
2015 Mar 25, Facebook announced that it has started to turn its Messenger service into a platform on top of which other firms can develop content and apps.
(Econ., 3/28/15, p.68)
2015 Apr 3, In southern California Kevin Christopher Bollaert (28) of San Diego was sentenced to 18 years in prison for operating a revenge porn website. In February he was found guilty on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft.
(SFC, 4/4/15, p.A6)
2015 Apr 8, In France hackers purporting to be supporters of Islamic State knocked out channels belonging to public television station TV5Monde and posted material on its social media feeds to protest French military action in Iraq. The network signal was restored the next day but only for recorded programs.
(Reuters, 4/9/15)(SFC, 4/10/15, p.A2)
2015 Apr 10, Canadian researchers said China has expanded its Internet censorship efforts beyond its borders with a new strategy that attacks websites across the globe. The new strategy, dubbed "Great Cannon," seeks to shut down websites and services aimed at helping Chinese citizens circumvent the "Great Firewall".
(AFP, 4/10/15)
2015 Apr 15, The European Union charged Google with abusing its overwhelming dominance in Internet searches and opened a probe into its Android mobile system, massively raising the stakes in the five-year antitrust battle.
(AP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 28, Google says it will give European publishers 150 million euros ($162.33 million) to help them adapt to the challenge of selling news online.
(AP, 4/28/15)
2015 May 7, German media reported that Germany has halted its Internet surveillance for the US National Security Agency (NSA) in response to a row over the BND intelligence agency's cooperation with Washington.
(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2014 May 13, Europe's highest court said people should have some say over the results that pop up when they conduct a Google search of their own name online. The European Court of Justice (ECI) embraced the idea of a digital “right to be forgotten." It found in favor of a Spanish man who wanted Google to remove old references to his history of indebtedness.
(AP, 5/13/14)(Econ, 11/5/16, p.51)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.19)
2015 May 29, In NYC Ross Ulbricht (31), the American convicted of masterminding the criminal website Silk Road, was sentenced in court to life in prison over the online enterprise that sold $200 million in drugs to customers worldwide.
(AFP, 5/30/15)
2015 Jun 4, American officials said China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the US government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers.
(SFC, 6/5/15, p.A10)
2015 Jun 12, France's data privacy agency ordered Google to remove search results worldwide upon request, giving the company two weeks to apply the "right to be forgotten" globally.
(AP, 6/12/15)
2015 Jun 18, Cuba said it's expanding Internet access by adding Wi-Fi capacity to dozens of state-run Internet centers and more than halving the cost that users pay for an hour online.
(AP, 6/18/15)
2015 Jun 19, WikiLeaks published more than 60,000 diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia and said on its website it would release half a million more in the coming weeks.
(Reuters, 6/19/15)
2015 Jul 3, Russian lawmakers voted for a bill forcing online search engines to remove search results about a specific person at that person's request.
(AP, 7/3/15)
2015 Jul 14, The US Justice Department investigators shut down what they called the world's largest-known English-language malware forum, an online marketplace called Darkode where cybercriminals bought and sold hacked databases, malicious software and other products that could cripple or steal information from computer systems. More than 70 cybercriminals in the US and 19 other countries were targets of the investigation.
(AP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 15, Bulgaria’s interior ministry said a man (21), suspected of belonging to a network of Islamist hackers responsible for attacks on more than 3,500 websites worldwide, has been arrested. The man was said to be part of a group using the acronym MECA (Middle East Cyber Army).
(AFP, 7/15/15)
2015 Jul 20, Activists said the Islamic State group is banning private internet access in its Syrian bastion Raqa, forcing residents and even its own fighters to use internet cafes where they can be monitored.
(AFP, 7/20/15)
2015 Jul 31, India ordered Internet service providers to block access to 857 adult websites in what the government has described as a way to protect social decency.
(AP, 8/3/15)
2015 Aug 7, Two Thailand military courts handed down the country’s harshest sentences in recent decades for insulting the monarchy. A man in Bangkok was sentenced to prison for 30 years for six Facebook postings, and a mother of two young girls in the province of Chiang Mai was sentenced to 28 years for seven postings.
(AP, 8/7/15)
2015 Sep 30, In Thailand protesters began blocking access to several government websites over a plan to route all Internet traffic though a single gateway.
{Thailand, Internet}
(AP, 10/1/15)
2015 Oct 5, Belarusian independent media outlets accused the government of blocking their websites less than a week before presidential elections.
(AP, 10/5/15)
2015 Oct 6, Europe's top court ruled that data stored on US servers is potentially unsafe because of government spying, a blow to companies such as Facebook that might need to change the way they handle private data from the region. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down the “safe’harbor" privacy pact between the European Union and America. It was originally signed in 2000 to bridge cultural and political differences regarding online privacy.
(AP, 10/6/15) (Econ, 10/10/15, p.61)
2015 Oct 11, Mobile Internet sites faced a new threat as millions download ad-blockers to their phones and tablets, removing pesky adverts but potentially wiping out billions of dollars in advertising revenue.
(AFP, 10/11/15)
2014 Oct 16, Alipay was rebranded as Ant Financial, a Chinese financial services company that enabled payments by customers who use Alibaba’s e-commerce sites.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Financial)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.57)
2015 Oct 17, Spanish police said they have arrested 81 persons on suspicion of sexually abusing minors and sharing child pornography on the Internet.
(AP, 10/17/15)
2015 Oct 21, YouTube announced a monthly subscription service, starting at $10, for YouTube Red, allowing users to play videos without ads, offline and in the background while using other apps.
(SFC, 10/22/15, p.C1)
2015 Nov 11, Chinese Internet users spent billions of dollars in the planet's biggest online shopping splurge, as "Singles’ Day" hit new heights, despite slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy.
(AFP, 11/11/15)(Econ, 11/12/16, p.61)
2015 Nov 15, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that authorities have arrested administrators of more than 20 groups on the messaging app Telegram for spreading "immoral content", the latest detentions in a clampdown on freedom of expression.
(Reuters, 11/15/15)
2015 Dec 11, Turkey's state-run news agency said the country's communications authority has imposed a 150,000 Turkish Lira (US$51,000) fine on Twitter for failing to remove content it said praised terror and incited violence.
(AP, 12/11/15)
2015 Dec 16, Indonesia deported 49 Taiwanese and one Chinese citizen who were members of a cross-border telephone and Internet fraud ring.
(AP, 12/16/15)
2015 Dec 17, The popular WhatsApp smartphone messaging application came back to life in Brazil as a court threw out a two-day suspension that had infuriated millions of users. A judge had suspended it because the Facebook-owned service failed to disclose information requested by prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation.
(AFP, 12/17/15)
2015 Dec 30, In Egypt a program that had been giving free basic Internet services to over three million Egyptians was shut down. Facebook said it hoped to "resolve this situation soon" so the program, which it had launched with Etisalat Egypt some two months ago, could be restored.
(AP, 12/30/15)
2015 Dec 30, A Russian court sentenced blogger Vadim Tyumenstev (35), from the Siberian region of Tomsk, to five years in jail for what it said was his extremist activity on the Internet after he urged people to attend a protest against high transport fares and criticized Russian intervention in Ukraine.
(Reuters, 12/30/15)
2015 Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov authored “The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries.
(Econ, 9/12/15, p.78)
2015 Nicholas Carlson authored “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!"
(Econ, 1/10/15, p.79)
2015 Andrew Keen authored “"The Internet is Not the Answer."
(SSFC, 1/25/15, p.N3)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.81)
2015 Everipedia was started as a more modern and inclusive alternative to Wikipedia by Theodor Forselius and Sam Kazemian, Everipedia. By 2018 it was building the world's first encyclopedia on the blockchain, incentivizing content creators by allowing them to become stakeholders in the encyclopedia network themselves. With over 3 million unique monthly users and over 6 million wiki articles, everipedia.org surpassed English Wikipedia by content, currently making it the world's largest English Encyclopedia.
(http://news.sys-con.com/node/4207113)
2015 Expedia, an online travel website, bought HomeAway, an Airbnb rival, for $3.9 billion.
(Econ 5/27/17, p.58)
2015 Six Rooms (6.cn), a Chinese live-streaming internet service co-founded by Liu Yan, was sold for close to $400 million to a Chinese entertainment conglomerate. Live-streaming emerged in China following the financial crisis of 2007-08.
(Econ, 2/11/17, SR p.10)
2015 The Chinese firm Pinduoduo, an agriculture-focused technology platform, was founded. It connects farmers and distributors with consumers directly through its interactive shopping experience. In 2017 the company ended its online direct sales model of acquiring fresh produce and other perishables from suppliers to sell to consumers, and transitioned to purely providing online marketplace services to third-party merchants across more categories.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo)(Econ., 1/2/21, p.4)
2016 Jan 13, Italian police arrested 11 people for allegedly running an illegal online gaming business which garnered millions of euros in bets every day.
(Reuters, 1/13/16)
2016 Jan 22, Technology giant Google said it will pay £130 million ($185.4 million, 172 million euros) in back taxes to Britain following a government inquiry into its tax arrangements.
(AFP, 1/23/16)
2016 Jan 31, Cuba announced that it is launching broadband Internet service in two Havana neighborhoods as a pilot project aimed at bringing home access to one of the world's least connected nations.
(AP, 1/31/16)
2016 Feb 11, The Indonesian government told instant messaging apps to remove stickers featuring same-sex couples in the latest high-profile attempt to discourage visible homosexuality in the socially conservative country.
(AP, 2/12/16)
2016 Mar 2, Jason Lawrance (50), a British man, was found guilty of raping five women he met through the US Internet dating service match.com, which he was allowed to use despite complaints to the website from his victims.
(AFP, 3/2/16)
2016 Mar 5, Ray Tomlinson, former engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), died. He had invented an e-mail program that allowed users to exchange messages across a distributed network and devised the @ symbol to designate a digital address. In 1972 he modified the program to run on ARPANET where it became a quick hit.
(http://tinyurl.com/6s97pv)(SFC, 10/23/96, p.B1)(TIME, 10/20/14, p.65)(Econ, 3/12/16, p.80)
2016 Mar 5, In Morocco some 1,300 ICAAN participants gathered in Marrakech for 346 sessions. The meeting of the global organization, charged with the smooth running of the Internet, continued to March 10.
(Econ, 3/5/16, p.55)
2016 Mar 19, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a rare meeting with China's propaganda chief, at a time when Chinese authorities are tightening control over their cyberspace. Zuckerberg was in Beijing to attend an economic forum.
(AP, 3/20/16)
2016 Apr 1, It was reported that North Korea officially announced this week that it is blocking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and South Korean websites in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information. Very few North Koreans have Internet access.
(AP, 4/1/16)
2016 May 13, Belgium-based SWIFT, the global financial system used to move hundreds of billions of dollars a day, said highly sophisticated hackers had gained access to a bank aiming to hijack fund transfers made via the network. SWIFT insisted its own system had not been compromised, but warned that this latest attack was clearly part of a wide-ranging campaign.
(AFP, 5/13/16)
2016 May 13, It was reported that the purported personal details of numerous Chinese business moguls and politically-connected elite were posted this week to an anonymous Twitter account, an embarrassing leak for authorities that has raised concerns about the security of official records.
(Reuters, 5/13/16)
2016 May 14, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Internet was promoting un-Islamic thoughts that should be promptly dealt with.
(Reuters, 5/16/16)
2016 May 31, The European Union reached an agreement with some of the world's biggest social media firms, including Facebook and Twitter, on ways to combat the spread of hate speech online.
(AP, 5/31/16)
2016 Jun 1, Russian social media users voiced their outrage at Twitter's decision a day earlier to suspend popular accounts parodying Pres. Vladimir Putin and other officials.
(AP, 6/1/16)
2016 Jun 8, The Singapore government's Infocomm Development Authority said it has begun disconnecting internet access from the work stations of some government employees, and will expand the removal to all public workers by next June in an effort to make official information systems more secure.
(AP, 6/8/16)
2016 Jun 13, Microsoft Corp. agreed to pay $26.2 billion in cash for LinkedIn, a professional social network company founded in 2002.
(SFC, 6/14/16, p.A1)
2016 Jun 14, CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed that Twitter is investing $70 million into SoundCloud, a streaming music service.
(www.cnet.com/news/twitter-invests-in-soundcloud/)
2016 Jun 22, US, European and Chinese regulators in Beijing said they will jointly enforce product safety in online commerce.
(AP, 6/22/16)
2016 Jun 28, A Singapore court sentenced the founder of a website that published anti-foreign content to eight months in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition. The court said Yang Kaiheng (27) had set up "The Real Singapore" website together with his Australian wife, Ai Takagi, and helped distribute accounts from visitors, some of which contained inaccuracies.
(AP, 6/28/16)
2016 Jun 29, Xinhua News Agency reported that China has replaced its internet regulator Lu Wei, the hard-liner responsible for leading the government's efforts to tighten control over domestic cyberspace and export the ruling Communist Party's philosophy of web control. His successor will be his deputy, former propaganda official Xu Lin.
(AP, 6/29/16)
2016 Jul 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a package of controversial anti-terror amendments dubbed "Big Brother" measures by critics that may cost internet companies billions.
(AFP, 7/7/16)
2016 Jul 12, The EU launched a controversial deal with the United States aimed at curbing government spying on the personal internet infomation of European citizens.
(AFP, 7/12/16)
2016 Jul 15, Japanese messaging app Line rocketed in its Tokyo trading debut after an eye-popping jump in NY a day earlier, as investors cheered the year's biggest technology share sale.
(AP, 7/15/16)
2016 Jul 19, WikiLeaks released nearly 300,000 emails from Turkey’s AK Party dating from 2010 to July 6 this year. Obtained before the attempted coup, the date of their publication was brought forward "in response to the government's post-coup purges". In response Turkey blocked access to the WikiLeaks website.
(Reuters, 7/20/16)
2016 Jul 24, In China the Beijing municipal branch of the national Cyberspace Administration ordered some of China‘s biggest internet companies to stop publishing independent reports on politically sensitive topics.
(Econ, 7/30/16, p.34)
2016 Jul 25, Verizon and Yahoo announced a $4.83 billion deal to buy Yahoo’s core Internet business. This did not include the firms properties in Asia or its portfolio of patents.
(SFC, 7/26/16, p.D1)(Econ, 7/30/16, p.49)
2016 Aug 30, Cambodian police arrested 64 people from mainland China and Taiwan, accusing them of taking part in an internet scam. They were accused of defrauding victims in China using phone calls made over the internet.
(AP, 8/30/16)
2016 Sep 23, Six Chinese agencies announced a coordinated effort to tackle internet and telecoms fraud, the government's latest bid to get to grips with an explosion of such crimes it says have led to huge financial losses.
(Reuters, 9/23/16)
2016 Oct 1, China shut down a website called Consensus Net, a publisher of articles on economic, social and political reform since3 its founding in 2009.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9o9vr4n)(Econ, 2/18/17, p.37)
2016 Oct 19, The European Court of Justice ruled that internet-protocol addresses are subject to Europe’s data protection laws.
(Econ, 11/5/16, p.59)
2016 Nov 18, Facebook announced that it was buying back up to $6 billion of its shares in apparent reaction to a 10% drop in its share price following a warning of slowing growth. Facebook numbered about 1.8 billion monthly users.
(Econ, 11/26/16, p.61)
2016 Nov, Google unveiled a new version of Translate. The old version was called “phrase-based" machine translation. The new version used as artificial neural network lin king digital “neurons" in several layers.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.70)
2016 Dec 1, In Qatar Doha News, an independent English-language news site, accused the Gulf state of censorship, saying two Internet service providers had simultaneously blocked access to it.
(Reuters, 12/1/16)
2016 Dec 12, It was reported that Google is installing multiple servers in Cuba that will host much of the company's most popular content.
(AP, 12/12/16)
2016 Dec 15, Congo DRC internet providers said authorities have ordered that social networks including Facebook and WhatsApp be blocked as of 11:59 PM Dec 18, before President Joseph Kabila's mandate expires on Dec 20.
(AFP, 12/15/16)
2016 Dec 19, Thailand’s Defense Ministry website went temporarily offline as hackers protested the Dec 16 passage of a bill restricting internet freedom. They have been attacking Thai government computer servers, temporarily disabling public access and reportedly copying restricted documents.
(AP, 12/19/16)
2016 Dec 25, Israeli ministers approved a bill that would allow a court to order sites such as Facebook and YouTube to remove material found to be "incitement," which they say contributes to Palestinian violence.
(AFP, 12/26/16)
2016 Dec, Video streaming firm BAMTech, a technology subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company located in Manhattan, NY, agreed to pay $300 million for the rights to stream tournaments for a game called “League of Legends" until 2023. The game was owned by Tencent, a Chinese Internet giant.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMTech)(Econ, 8/19/17, p.56)
2016 Scott Malcomson authored “Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce are Fragmenting the world Wide Web."
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.93)
2016 Data centers consumed 2% of all the electricity produced in the world.
(Econ, 3/12/16, TQ p.9)
2016 An indictment was filed in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern district of New York that charged Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania with stealing more than $100 million from Facebook and Google. He was extradited to the US in 2017. In 2019 Rimasauskas (50) pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his role in the scheme. The stolen money was wired to various locations around the world. The companies said most of the money has been recouped.
(SFC, 3/26/19, p.D1)
2017 Jan 24, French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said that his government has requested blocks for 834 websites and that 1,929 more be pulled from search engines' results as part of the fight against "child pornographic and terrorist content". He also said French authorities ordered the blockage or removal of more than 2,700 websites in 2016.
(AP, 1/24/17)
2017 Jan 26, It was reported that employees from more than a dozen US government agencies have established a network of unofficial "rogue" Twitter feeds in defiance of what they see as attempts by President Donald Trump to muzzle federal climate change research and other science.
(Reuters, 1/26/17)
2017 Feb 5, The website of Austria's parliament was brought down for 20 minutes. A Turkish hackers' group, Aslan Neferler Tim (ANT), or Lion Soldiers Team, whose website says it defends the homeland, Islam, the nation and flag, without any party political links, claimed the attack.
(Reuters, 2/7/17)
2017 Mar 2, Snap, the parent company of social media Snapchat, closed at $24.48, a 44% jump over its IPO price of $17. The company had started in 2011 as Picaboo. The securities sold had no voting power so all the power stayed with co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy.
(SFC, 3/3/17, p.C1)(Econ, 2/4/17, p.53)(Econ, 2/11/17, p.56)
2017 Mar 4, Senior Chinese government adviser Luo Fuhe warned that the country's internet censorship is hampering scientific research and economic development, in a rare public criticism of a sensitive policy that the government has vigorously defended.
(AP, 3/4/17)
2017 Mar 14, Hundreds of Twitter accounts were hijacked amid the ongoing diplomatic feud between Turkey and two European nations, Germany and the Netherlands. Most if not all high-profile accounts soon returned to normal.
(AP, 3/15/17)
2017 Mar 31, Russian prosecutors moved to block calls on social networks for more street protests in Moscow and other Russian cities following a wave of rallies that have cast a new challenge to the Kremlin.
(AP, 3/31/17)
2017 Mar 31, Swedish prosecutors investigating a suspected gang rape and its broadcast via Facebook Live said they had received a copy of the footage from the US social media company.
(Reuters, 3/31/17)
2017 Mar, Ransomware software dubbed Wanna Cry was leaked on to the Internet. The method it used had been discovered years ago by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Only after the theft did the NSA inform Microsoft of the flaw, leading the firm to rush out a fix.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.13)
2017 Apr 1, Russian investigators opened a criminal case against unidentified internet users calling for what authorities say is an illegal anti-government protest in central Moscow on April 2.
(Reuters, 4/1/17)
2017 Apr 4, A Dutchman convicted of cyberbullying lost his appeal against being extradited to Canada to face charges linked to the 2012 suicide of Amanda Todd (15), who suffered online harassment. Aydin C. was sentenced last month to almost 11 years in jail, after being found guilty of 72 charges including computer sex crimes.
(AFP, 4/4/17)
2017 Apr 8, Indian police arrested Sagar Thakkar (24), aka Shaggy, the suspected mastermind behind a call center scam run out of a Mumbai suburb that targeted thousands of Americans and netted more than $300 million.
(Reuters, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 12, Russia banned the use on its territory of US-based Zello, a smartphone app widely used like a walkie-talkie to organize demonstrations and other gatherings. A Russian law demands that Internet services store copies in Russia of all messages sent via them for six months and make them available to authorities on demand.
(AP, 4/13/17)
2017 Apr 13, Facebook said it has targeted 30,000 fake accounts linked to France ahead of the country's two-round April 23-May 7 presidential election, as part of a worldwide effort against misinformation.
(AP, 4/14/17)
2017 Apr 17, Russian officials announced an agreement with Google to settle a two-year-old case against Google for requiring the pre-installation of some of its apps on mobile devices using the Android system. Google is to pay 439 million roubles ($7.8 million) in fines and will not limit the pre-installation of third-party apps.
(AP, 4/17/17)
2017 Apr 18, Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, published a Form 10-K on the American government on the new website USAfacts.org. 2.6 million page views were received on the first day.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.55)
2017 Apr 27, Google activated a line of caching servers in Cuba, becoming the first foreign company with the ability to provide online content in the country.
(CSM, 4/28/17)
2017 Apr 29, Turkey Blocks, an internet censorship monitor, said users in Turkey have been unable to access all language editions of Wikipedia since 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) today. Access to Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for content presenting the country as supporting terror.
(AP, 4/29/17)
2017 May 2, China announced it is tightening rules for online news as censors try to control a flood of information spread through instant-messaging apps, blogs and other media sources that are proliferating across the country. The rules take effect June 1.
(AP, 5/3/17)
2017 May 5, In Austria a Viennese appeals court ruled that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient.
(Reuters, 5/8/17)
2017 May 12, In Azerbaijan the local court in the Baku upheld action by the country's communications ministry to block the access to the Azeri-language website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as well as several key independent news websites. The websites have been unavailable since late March when the ministry shut down the access following a prosecutor's petition decrying "threats to legitimate interests of the government and society."
(AP, 5/12/17)
2017 May 12, Security companies noticed that a piece of malicious software known as WannaCry was spreading across the Internet, first in Britain and Spain and then around the world. In 48 hours it reached 230,000 computers.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.69)
2017 May 12, Britain's National Health Service said hospitals across England have been hit by an apparent "ransomware" attack, but there was no immediate evidence that patient data had been accessed. The cyberattack crippled computer systems at hospitals across England, with appointments canceled, phone lines down and patients turned away.
(AP, 5/12/17)
2017 May 12, A global cyber-attack infected computers at businesses, healthcare facilities and other organizations in dozens of countries, disrupting operations at some facilities. Spain said several Spanish companies had been targeted in ransomware cyberattack that affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said it had recorded at least 45,000 attacks in as many as 74 countries. Code for exploiting the Microsoft bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue," was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools.
(AP, 5/12/17)(Reuters, 5/13/17)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A2)(Reuters, 5/14/17)
2017 May 16, Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber-attacks, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.
(Reuters, 5/16/17)
2017 May 18, The EU fined Facebook 110 million euros ($122 million) for providing misleading information over its 2014 buyout of mobile messaging service WhatsApp.
(AP, 5/18/17)
2017 Jun 9, The Philippine military asked Facebook to close dozens of accounts linked to Islamist militants who attacked a southern city, saying they were being used for propaganda.
(AFP, 6/9/17)
2017 Jun 11, Thai police arrested three Chinese men for operating a "click farm," using hundreds of cellphones and several hundred thousand SIM cards to run up "likes" and views on WeChat, a Chinese social media mobile application.
(AP, 6/13/17)
2017 Jun 23, US social media giant Facebook launched a campaign in Britain to counter the spread of online extremism following warnings from PM Theresa May after four terror attacks in three months. The Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) will act as a forum for charities and other nonprofit organizations to share their experiences of extremism. There are already OCCI schemes in France and Germany.
(AFP, 6/23/17)
2017 Jun 27, The EU slapped Google with a record penalty of $2.7 billion for taking advantage of its dominance in online searches to direct customers to its own businesses.
(SFC, 6/28/17, p.C1)
2017 Jul 7, In Vietnam the mother of Tran Hoang Phuc (23) said she was informed last week that her son was arrested in Hanoi for storing material and using the internet to spread propaganda videos against the government.
(Reuters, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 15, Indonesia’s The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said that it was preparing for the total closure of the Telegram app in Indonesia, where it has several million users, if it didn't develop procedures to block unlawful content.
(AP, 7/16/17)
2017 Jul 16, The encrypted messaging app Telegram said it is forming a team of moderators who are familiar with Indonesian culture and language so it can remove "terrorist-related content" faster, after Indonesia limited access to the app and threatened a total ban. Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai founded VKontakte in 2006. Durov gave up his role and ownership stake in 2013 after Pres. Putin’s allies took control of the company.
(AP, 7/16/17)(SFC, 3/8/18, p.C6)
2017 Jul 18, Users of WhatsApp in China and security researchers reported widespread service disruptions amid fears that the popular messaging service may be at least partially blocked by authorities in the world's most populous country.
(AP, 7/18/17)
2017 Jul 20, European and US authorities said they had shut down AlphaBay and Hansa Market and arrested their operators. AlphaBay, the largest so-called darknet market, was taken down in early July at the same time that authorities arrested Alexandre Cazes (25), a Canadian man living in Bangkok. Dutch police said they had taken control of Hansa market in June. Two men accused of operating Hansa were arrested in Germany.
(SFC, 7/21/17, p.C1)
2017 Jul 24, Thai police said they have seized nearly $21 million worth of assets, from cars to cryptocurrency, belonging to Alexandre Cazes (5), the late founder of dark web marketplace AlphaBay, who died in a Bangkok jail on July 12.
(Reuters, 7/24/17)
2017 Aug 1, Indonesia and encrypted messaging service Telegram said they have agreed to establish better procedures to stamp out distribution of terrorist propaganda on the platform. Indonesian authorities blocked access to some Telegram channels last month, saying it had several forums that were "full of radical and terrorist propaganda".
(Reuters, 8/1/17)
2017 Aug 2, Cambodian officials arrested 175 Chinese citizens after a tipoff from Chinese police about their suspected involvement in an internet phone scam.
(AP, 8/4/17)
2017 Aug 11, China’s Cyberspace Administration said it has launched probes into three of its largest social networking platforms over the suspected dissemination of violence and obscenity.
(AP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 11, Lithuania's top appeals court upheld a decision to extradite Evaldas Rimasauskas to the United States. He was accused of defrauding Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million from 2013-2015.
(AP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 15, Thai student activist Jatupat Boonpattaraksa, also known as Pai, was jailed for two and a half years for posting on Facebook a BBC article deemed offensive to Thailand's king.
(Reuters, 8/15/17)
2017 Aug 18, China launched its first "cyber court" to settle online disputes, as the legal system attempts to keep up with the explosion of mobile payment and e-commerce.
(AFP, 8/18/17)
2017 Aug 19, Los Angeles prosecutors said six people have been charged with selling millions of dollars worth of drugs over the last four years on the dark Web from a home in Altadena.
(SSFC, 8/20/17, p.A9)
2017 Aug 25, Network Solutions blocked the Stormfront.org website, the oldest white supremacist site founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black. The domain name was revoked following complaints that it promotes hatred and is linked to dozens of murders.
(SFC, 8/29/17, p.A5)
2017 Sep 12, Saudi Arabia urged its people to report subversive comments spotted on social media via a phone app. The move was soon denounced by a human rights watchdog as "Orwellian".
(Reuters, 9/13/17)
2017 Sep 20, A court in Slovenia convicted and sentenced two men to prison terms for fatally beating their friend live on Facebook. In February Ales Olovec (20) and Martin Kovac (29) beat up Andrej Cekuta (26) after an argument and streamed it live on social media for 23 minutes before the video was removed.
(AP, 9/20/17)
2017 Sep 21, Facebook said it will provide the contents of some 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators. FB also said it will make political advertising on its platform more transparent.
(SFC, 9/22/17 p.C1)
2017 Sep 25, Amazon Web Services announced a deal with the government of Bahrain to open its first Middle East data centers in the Gulf, expected to be ready by 2019. Amazon had acquired Souq.com, the region's biggest online retailer, for $650 million.
(AFP, 10/2/17)
2017 Sep 25, China's cyber watchdog handed down maximum penalties to several of the country's top tech firms, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Baidu Inc and Weibo Corp, for failing to properly censor online content. Under the rules cited in the notice individuals in charge of the platforms and others directly involved face a maximum penalty of 100,000 yuan ($15,110) each.
(Reuters, 9/25/17)
2017 Sep 26, Russia's communications agency threatened to block access to Facebook if the company refuses to store its data locally. A 2015 Russian law on personal data obliges foreign companies to store it in Russia.
(AP, 9/26/17)
2017 Oct 1, North Korea opened a second internet connection with the outside world, this time via Russia, a move which cyber security experts said could give Pyongyang greater capability to conduct cyber attacks. Dyn Research, which monitors international internet traffic flows, said it had seen Russian telecommunications company TransTeleCom routing North Korean traffic since about 0908 GMT today.
(Reuters, 10/2/17)
2017 Oct 6, Pope Francis denounced the proliferation of adult and child pornography on the internet and demanded better protections for children online — even as the Vatican confronts its own cross-border child porn investigation involving a top papal envoy.
(AP, 10/6/17)
2017 Oct 9, It was reported that Google has discovered Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads on its YouTube, Gmail and Google Search products in an effort to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election.
(Reuters, 10/9/17)
2017 Oct 12, Facebook Inc Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company was fully committed to helping US congressional investigators publicly release Russia-backed political ads that ran during the 2016 US election.
(Reuters, 10/12/17)
2017 Oct 14, It was reported that Twitter has handed over to Senate investigators the profile names of “handles," of 201 accounts linked to Russian attempts at influencing the 2016 US presidential election.
(SFC, 10/14/17, p.A6)
2017 Oct 20, Meeting in Italy G7 countries and tech giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter agreed to work together to block the dissemination of Islamist extremism over the internet.
(AFP, 10/20/17)
2017 Oct 26, Twitter Inc accused Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network, after criticism in the United States that the social network had not done enough to deter international meddling.
(Reuters, 10/27/17)
2017 Nov 11, Chinese online shoppers spent a record $25 billion on this year's "Singles Day" promotion run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, up nearly 40 percent from last year.
(AFP, 11/12/17)
2017 Nov 13, Spain's defense and foreign ministers said they had evidence that state and private-sector Russian groups, as well as groups in Venezuela, used Twitter, Facebook and other Internet sites to massively publicize the separatist cause and swing public opinion behind it in the run-up to the Oct. 1 referendum.
(Reuters, 11/13/17)
2017 Nov 19, China's military launched a website inviting the public to report leaks and fake news, as well as illegal online activities by military personnel, the latest step in a push to ensure Communist Party control over the internet.
(Reuters, 11/19/17)
2017 Dec 8, Swedish music streaming service Spotify and Chinese internet company Tencent said they will acquire new shares representing minority equity stakes in each other for cash.
(AP, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 8, The UN migration agency called on social media giants to make it harder for people smugglers to use their platforms to lure West African migrants to Libya where they can face detention, torture, slavery or death.
(Reuters, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 14, The Republican-controlled US Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era rules requiring all web traffic to be treated equally.
(AP, 12/15/17)
2017 Dec 30, Congolese authorities ordered all internet and SMS services cut until further notice as police banned demonstrations saying that all gatherings of more than five people would be dispersed to ensure public order. Catholic activists called for protests against President Joseph Kabila's refusal to step down from office.
(Reuters, 12/31/17)
2017 Dec 31, Iran blocked access to Instagram and the popular Telegram messaging app used by activists to organize and publicize the protests now roiling the Islamic Republic. The free Telegram app, created by Russian national Pavel Durov, was used by an estimated 40 million Iranians.
(AP, 12/31/17)
2017 PUBG Corp., a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole developed and published PlayerUnknowns' Battlegrounds (PUBG), an online multi-player video game. PUBG soon sold publishing rights in China to Tencent. In 2019 the governments of Iraq and Jordan banned the game, but their decisions proved ineffective.
(Econ, 4/18/20, p.35)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayerUnknown%27s_Battlegrounds)
2018 Jan 11, Facebook said that it would prioritize what friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.
(SFC, 1/12/18, p.C1)
2018 Jan 25, It was reported that Belarusian authorities have blocked access to charter97.org, a popular opposition website, over alleged legal violations.
(AP, 1/25/18)
2018 Jan 26, China's securities watchdog said it had punished a blogger on WeChat with a 200,000 yuan ($31,000) fine for posting market-moving "misinformation" about meetings between corporations and regulators.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Jan 27, Chinese authorities ordered Sina Weibo, a major social media platform, to curb "harmful content" more effectively as they intensify oversight of online expression -- even taking aim at rap music, crude cartoons, dirty jokes and celebrity gossip.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Jan 31, Cuba protested the creation of a US task force on increasing internet access on the island — a measure that's part of President Donald Trump's hardening of US policy on Cuba.
(AP, 2/1/18)
2018 Feb 2, Chinese regulators ordered microblog operators to set up a mechanism to remove false information after the most popular service was criticized for allowing prohibited material to spread.
(AP, 2/2/18)
2018 Feb 5, The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on "the creeping criminalization of the internet," in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year. Agora warned that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 9, It was reported that former Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy has filed a legal case in the United States to get Facebook to release information on PM Hun Sen's use of the social media platform.
(Reuters, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 9, It was reported that Turkey has launched a domestic messaging app to rival Facebook's popular WhatsApp Messenger service, raising concerns among government critics that Ankara could use the new platform to tighten surveillance and bolster an 18-month-old crackdown.
(Reuters, 2/9/18)
2018 Feb 12, Germany’s dpa news agency reported that a local court has ruled that Facebook's insistence that users provide their real names violates the country's data protection laws.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 22, The US Federal Communications Commission published its final order reversing net neutrality regulations. The repeal was set to go into effect April 23. Political debate in Congress, courts and statehouses was expected to continue.
(SFC, 2/23/18, p.A1)
2018 Mar 14, Facebook said it had taken down Britain First's Facebook page and those of its leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, for repeatedly violating rules designed to stop the incitement of hatred against minority groups.
(Reuters, 3/14/18)
2018 Mar 15, Sri Lanka's government ended a weeklong ban on social media that was imposed because of concerns that it was being used to fan anti-Muslim violence in the country's central region.
(AP, 3/15/18)
2018 Mar 19, Facebook Inc. came under intense scrutiny after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.
(AP, 3/20/18)
2018 Mar 20, Russia's Supreme Court threw out an appeal by messaging app Telegram ruling that it can be forced to provide user data to Russian security services.
(SFC, 3/21/18, p.C4)
2018 Mar 21, Turkish lawmakers passed a new law giving the communications watchdog the power to block internet broadcasts, raising fears of a new curb on freedom of expression.
(AFP, 3/22/18)
2018 Mar 26, The Federal Trade Commission confirmed that it is investigating Facebook's privacy practices following a week of privacy scandals including whether the company engaged in "unfair acts" that cause "substantial injury" to consumers.
(AP, 3/26/18)
2018 Mar 28, Facebook unveiled new privacy settings aiming to give its users more control over how their data is shared, following an outcry over hijacking of personal information at the giant social network.
(AFP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 31, An Iranian news site reported that the country will block the Telegram messenger service for reasons of national security. Officials said the app would be replaced by a similar local system.
(AP, 3/31/18)
2018 Apr 6, The European Union said that Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
(AP, 4/6/18)
2018 Apr 9, China's state media reported that four popular Chinese news apps have been temporarily removed from the Android store in China following an order from regulators to tighten control over the spread of information.
(AP, 4/9/18)
2018 Apr 11, Cambodia deported nearly 100 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China in an internet scam. They were arrested last month after a police investigation.
(AP, 4/11/18)
2018 Apr 12, In California Carl Ferrer, the CEO of Backpage.com pleaded guilty to state and federal chargesincluding conspiracy and money laundering and agreed to testify in ongoing prosecutions against others at the website that authorities have dubbed a lucrative nationwide "online brothel".
(SFC, 4/14/18, p.D2)
2018 Apr 13, China's Sina Weibo said in a statement it had begun a "clean-up campaign" to remove "illegal" content, including "manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality".
(AFP, 4/14/18)
2018 Apr 13, A Russian court ordered that a popular messaging app, Telegram, be blocked after the company rejected to share encryption data with authorities.
(AP, 4/13/18)
2018 Apr 14, In China a storm of online protests under the hashtag "I am gay" followed a Sina Weibo statement a day earlier that it would remove "homosexual" content from the popular microblogging platform.
(AFP, 4/14/18)
2018 Apr 16, Weibo.com, one of China's top social networking sites, announced that it will no longer be censoring content related to gay issues after the plan triggered a loud public outcry.
(AP, 4/16/18)
2018 Apr 16, Russia's communications watchdog said it has begun enforcing a nationwide ban for the popular messaging app Telegram. Entrepreneur and app developer Pavel Durov said last week the latest version would have "built-in" features that would be able to circumvent the ban.
(AP, 4/16/18)
2018 Apr 16, Tanzania briefly detained two musicians, including one of the country's most popular singers, after they posted video clips deemed obscene by the authorities, in the latest crackdown on social media users.
(Reuters, 4/17/18)
2018 Apr 18, Iran's state media said the presidency has banned all government bodies from using foreign-based messaging apps to communicate with citizens, after economic protests organized through such apps shook the country earlier this year.
(AP, 4/18/18)
2018 Apr 19, The Belarus parliament passed a measure prohibiting internet users from commenting on forums without authorization and requiring online publications to register with the government as mass media.
(AP, 4/19/18)
2018 Apr 21, China's state news agency Xinhua cited comments from President Xi Jinping underlining a hardening attitude towards online content in comments made at a cyber security conference in Beijing.
(Reuters, 4/21/18)
2018 Apr 22, Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said that it is adding some Google IP addresses to the state registrar of banned sites, as a dispute intensified over Telegram, a banned messaging app.
(SFC, 4/23/18, p.A2)
2018 Apr 30, A leading German nationalist politician won a court injunction forcing Facebook to ensure a user's slur against her can't be seen in Germany.
(AP, 4/30/18)
2018 Apr 30, Iranian TV reported that the state judiciary has banned the popular Telegram instant messaging app to protect national security.
(Reuters, 4/30/18)
2018 Apr 30, In Russia thousands rallied in Moscow in support of internet freedom after authorities tried to block access to the popular messaging app Telegram in the latest onslaught against dissent under Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 4/30/18)
2018 May 2, In China PeppaPig, a cherubic British cartoon character, became an unlikely target of Internet censors as fans used her porcine likeness in rap videos and "gangster" tattoos.
(AP, 5/2/18)
2018 May 5, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the government "does not approve" of the judiciary's recent blockage of the Telegram messaging app.
(AFP, 5/5/18)
2018 May 8, Facebook announced that it is banning foreign advertisements related to Ireland's abortion referendum amid concerns that North American groups are trying to influence the campaign.
(AP, 5/8/18)
2018 May 9, Google announced that it is suspending all advertising connected to Ireland's abortion referendum as part of moves to protect "election integrity".
(AP, 5/9/18)
2018 May 9, A court in Vietnam convicted and sentenced Facebook user Bui Hieu Vo (56) to 4 ½ years in jail for posts that the court said distorted the political situation in the country and opposed the ruling Communist Party and the state.
(AP, 5/10/18)
2018 May 15, Facebook said it pulled or slapped warnings on nearly 30 million posts containing sexual or violent images, terrorist propaganda or hate speech in the first three months of 2018.
(AFP, 5/15/18)
2018 May 24, Algerian blogger Merzoug Touati, arrested last year over social media posts, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage and other charges.
(Reuters, 5/25/18)
2018 Jun 19, Algeria's education minister said the Algerian government is taking the "extreme measure" of temporarily suspending the entire country's internet connection during for the first hour of each baccalaureate exam during the June 20-25 national high school exams period to stop cheating and the leaking of answers.
(AP, 6/19/18)
2018 Jun 23, Chinese authorities blocked HBO's website in China, just days after comedian John Oliver mocked censors working overtime to delete comparisons of President Xi Jinping with the Winnie the Pooh cartoon bear.
(AFP, 6/23/18)
2018 Jun 24, Frank Heart (b.1929), the engineer who oversaw the first routing computer for the Arpanet, died in Lexington, Mass. In 1969 he led a team to build the Interface Message Processor (IMP), to switch data among Arpanet computers.
(SFC, 6/27/18, p.D5)
2018 Jun 26, Facebook said it is ending a program launched in 2014 to build a fleet of drones that could deliver internet to underserved areas of the world. Facebook will close its facility in Bridgwater, southwest England, which has been working on the solar-powered Aquila drone
(AFP, 6/27/18)
2018 Jun 29, Authorities in northeastern India cut internet access after crazed mobs, sparked by rumors spread on smartphones, beat three people to death in Tripura. More than 25 similar killings in recent months across India have been ignited by false information spread on messaging service WhatsApp.
(AFP, 6/29/18)
2018 Jul 1, In Uganda a new tax on social media took effect, angering many who see the revenue measure as an attack on free speech.
(AP, 7/2/18)
2018 Jul 4, India's government said it has asked WhatsApp to take "immediate action" to prevent the social media platform from being misused to spread rumors and irresponsible statements like those blamed for recent deadly mob attacks in the country.
(AP, 7/4/18)
2018 Jul 5, New Zealand's Court of Appeal upheld earlier court rulings that found internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues were eligible to be handed over to US authorities.
(AP, 7/5/18)
2018 Jul 9, Iranians on social media mocked clerical rulers after the hardline judiciary arrested a teenage girl for posting on Instagram videos of herself dancing in her room.
(Reuters, 7/9/18)
2018 Jul 11, Uganda's PM Ruhakana Rugunda said the government will review a tax on the use of social media, after a protest against the controversial measure was broken up by police firing live rounds and teargas into the air.
(AFP, 7/11/18)
2018 Jul 15, Iraqis demanding better public services and jobs took to the streets for the sixth day in the southern oil-rich province of Basra, as authorities put security forces on high alert and blocked the internet in the country's Shiite heartland. Dozens of demonstrators were wounded. The internet was off service across the country for a second consecutive day and foreign airlines announced the suspension of flights.
(AP, 7/15/18)(AFP, 7/15/18)
2018 Jul 16, Egypt's parliament passed a bill targeting popular social media accounts that authorities accuse of publishing "fake news," the latest move in a five-year-old drive to suppress dissent and silence independent sources of news. The law reinforced the state's control over the internet, including social media accounts of organizations and individuals with more than 5,000 followers.
(AP, 7/18/18)(AFP, 8/10/18)
2018 Jul 19, Facebook said it would begin removing misinformation that could lead people to being physically harmed, largely in response to episodes Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India, in which rumors spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities.
(SFC, 7/20/18, p.C1)
2018 Jul 20, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has suspended Crimson Hexagon, a Boston analytics firm, from its site and says it is investigating whether the company's contracts with the US government and a Russian non-profit violated policies.
(AFP, 7/21/18)
2018 Jul 31, A US federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order to stop the release of blueprints to make 3D-printed plastic guns. US-based Defense Distributed, founded by Cody Wilson (b.1988), planned to release blueprints on August 1, which anyone with a specialized 3-D printer could download online. In 2015 and 2017 Wired named Wilson one of the five most dangerous people on the Internet.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cody_Wilson)(SFC, 8/1/18, p.D6)(SFC, 8/2/18, p.A5)
2018 Aug 10, Reporters Without Borders said it had restored its website in Egypt, exactly one year after it was blocked by the authorities. RWB said it was unblocking its site through a website "mirroring" technique, which involves copying content and switching servers.
(AP, 8/10/18)
2018 Aug 11, Spanish police warned of a massive blackmail campaign to expose web users' supposed visits to porn sites unless they pay up, a technique police called 'sextorsion'.
(AFP, 8/11/18)
2018 Aug 17, A Google employee confirmed that more than a thousand Google employees have signed a letter protesting the company's secretive plan to build a search engine, nicknamed Dragonfly, that would comply with Chinese censorship.
(AP, 8/17/18)
2018 Aug 27, Facebook banned Myanmar's powerful military chief and 19 other individuals and organizations from its site to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation.
(AFP, 8/27/18)
2018 Aug 28, More than a dozen human rights groups sent a letter to Google urging the company not to offer censored internet search in China, amid reports it is planning to again provide the service in the giant market.
(AP, 8/29/18)
2018 Sep 1, Egypt's official gazette said President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ratified a law granting authorities the right to monitor social media users in the country as part of tightening internet controls.
(AFP, 9/1/18)
2018 Sep 6, It was reported that police in Thailand have arrested 12 people who shared a Facebook post about a British tourist's allegation that police had refused to accept her rape complaint on the island of Koh Tao in June.
(AP, 9/6/18)
2018 Sep 10, China rolled out new rules on religious activity on the internet amid an ongoing crackdown on churches, mosques and other institutions by the officially atheist Communist Party.
(AP, 9/11/18)
2018 Sep 18, The internet watchdog Citizen Lab said it has used an internet survey technique to identify suspected spyware infections linked to the Israeli company NSO Group in 45 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, India and Turkey.
(AP, 9/18/18)
2019 Sep 26, Gatsby, a platform that uses modern web technologies like React and GraphQL to help developers build better sites faster, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A round led by CRV. Gatsby, launched in 2015, monetizes its tools by offering a hosted service that helps teams of developers stand up a new site quickly, with prices starting at $50/month for one site.
(https://tinyurl.com/yx9zf3ox)
2018 Sep 28, A US diplomat said the United States, Japan and Australia are cooperating on a domestic internet cable proposal for Papua New Guinea as an alternative to an offer by Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that the United States regards as a cybersecurity threat.
(AP, 9/28/18)
2018 Sep 30, California's Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to restore Obama-era regulations barring the telecommunications industry from favoring certain websites. The US Dept. of Justice sued California minutes after net neutrality rules became law, saying states do not regulate interstate commerce.
(SFC, 10/1/18, p.A1)(SFC, 10/2/18, p.A1)
2018 Oct 1, Hungary's Index.hu, the largest source of independent news in the country, briefly took down the front page of its online portal to sound the alarm over what it sees as its declining editorial freedom and to secure funding from readers to help protect its independence.
(Reuters, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 14, Nepalese officials said local internet providers have begun blocking thousands of pornographic websites as part of a government directive aimed at stopping sexual violence.
(AP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 18, Brazilian presidential hopeful Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party accused his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro of creating a criminal group along with businessmen to spread false election-related messages on WhatsApp.
(Reuters, 10/18/18)
2018 Nov 11, Online shoppers in China shattered last year's record of $24 billion in sales on the country's annual Singles Day buying frenzy, as the tradition marked its 10th year.
(AP, 11/11/18)
2018 Nov 26, Police in Cambodia arrested more than 200 Chinese citizens accused of defrauding people in China over the internet.
(AP, 11/26/18)
2018 Nov 29, Indian police said they have arrested nearly two dozen people on suspicion of defrauding people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning them that their computers were infected with a virus and offering to fix the problem at a price. Those arrested over the last two days posed as representatives of Microsoft and other companies and used their logos.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Dec 3, A new leak website, Distributed Denial of Secrets, made its debut wrestling with what to make available to the public, an illustration of the difficulty of balancing full transparency with respect for privacy in an age of mass disclosures. The site's founders eventually decided to pull from its public collection the haul from the Ashley Madison site along with more than a dozen other leaks.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 6, Cuba began offering its citizens full internet access for mobile phones over its 3G network.
(SFC, 12/6/18, p.A5)
2018 Dec 10, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator shut down dozens of online news portals for several hours, citing security reasons. An official said 58 sites were found to be not registered with the information ministry and therefore their content was being examined ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.
(Reuters, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 13, Timothy May (b.1951), an early advocate for guarding the privacy of internet users, died at his home in Santa Cruz County, Ca. In 1988 May authored the one-page Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and in 1992 co-founded the Cypherpunks with John Gilmore and Eric Hughes.
(SFC, 12/23/18, p.C9)
2018 Dec 14, EU leaders called for urgent action to combat fake news on the Internet at a summit, saying more needed to be done to safeguard next year's EU election against disinformation.
(Reuters, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 14, The Amsterdam Appeals Court confirmed the maximum 10 years and eight months sentence imposed in March last year on the man identified by Dutch authorities as Aydin C., who was convicted of fraud and blackmail via the internet for the online abuse.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 20, A Facebook official said the company is shutting down a series of fake news sites spreading false information about the Bangladesh opposition days before national elections.
(AP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 21, The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said authorities closed its website last week when they shut 54 news portals and websites for what they claimed were security reasons, just days before the December 30 polls.
(AFP, 12/22/18)
2018 Dec 28, Bangladesh's telecoms regulator ordered mobile operators to shut down high-speed mobile internet services until midnight Dec 29, the day of a national election, to prevent rumors and propaganda surrounding the vote.
(Reuters, 12/29/18)
2019 Jan 1, Democratic Republic of Congo's government cut internet connections and SMS services across the country for a second straight day as the country nervously awaited results from the weekend's chaotic presidential election.
(Reuters, 1/1/19)
2019 Jan 4, Twitter suspended an account that posted links to sensitive personal data and documents stolen by hackers from hundreds of German public figures and politicians — from every political party but the far-right Alternative for Germany. The breach, discovered by journalists a day earlier, affected politicians at all levels.
(AP, 1/4/19)
2019 Jan 18, Zimbabwe blocked most social media as international criticism mounted of a ruthless security crackdown after anti-government protests.
(AFP, 1/18/19)
2019 Jan 20, Tonga lost internet contact after something went wrong with a fiber optic cable that connects it to the rest of the world. A small internet company that uses satellites soon stepped in to help restore int'l. calls and some other services.
(SFC, 1/24/19, p.A2)
2019 Jan 21, France's data privacy watchdog fined Google 50 million euros ($57 million) for "lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent" regarding ad personalization for users. This was the first penalty for a US tech giant under new European data privacy rules that took effect last year.
(AP, 1/21/19)
2019 Jan 21, A Zimbabwe court ruled that the government exceeded its mandate in ordering an internet blackout during civilian protests last week, as authorities pressed on with rounding up opposition figures blamed for the unrest.
(Reuters, 1/21/19)
2019 Jan 24, It was reported that Chinese internet users have lost access to Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine, setting off grumbling about the ruling Communist Party's increasingly tight online censorship. The Bing search engine resumed service to Chinese users, after a disruption raised fears among social media users that it was the latest foreign website to be blocked by censors.
(AP, 1/24/19)(AFP, 1/24/19)
2019 Jan 28, Facebook said it is tightening requirements for political ads in the European Union ahead of bloc-wide elections scheduled for the spring, its latest effort to fight misinformation and increase transparency on its platforms.
(AP, 1/28/19)
2019 Feb 7, German authorities ruled that Facebook should not be allowed to use customer data from other apps and websites to help target advertisements shown on their Facebook pages without their explicit consent, saying it was exploiting its dominant position in social media. Facebook said it rejected the decision, and would appeal within the one-month frame before it becomes final.
(AP, 2/7/19)
2019 Feb 14, Facebook Inc said it has removed a number of pages and accounts engaged in "inauthentic behavior" targeting people in Moldova, where elections will be held later this month.
(Reuters, 2/14/19)
2019 Feb 14, Chinese tech company SenseNets closed an open database that stored the records of individuals "fully accessible to anyone," after Dutch security researcher Victor Gevers reported leaks of personal information on 2.6 million people in Xinjiang to SenseNets. The database had been exposed since last July.
(AFP, 2/19/19)
2019 Feb 18, China's government accused the United States of trying to block its industrial development by alleging that Chinese mobile network gear poses a cybersecurity threat to countries rolling out new internet systems.
(AP, 2/18/19)
2019 Feb 18, Venezuela's opposition said that the state internet provider CANTV has blocked a webpage where volunteers sign up to answer National Assembly president Juan Guaido's call to help bring in desperately needed humanitarian aid.
(AFP, 2/18/19)
2019 Mar 8, Facebook Inc, which along with other social media companies has faced growing pressure over spurious content spread on its platform, announced it would remove user groups and pages that contained misinformation about vaccinations.
(Reuters, 3/8/19)
2019 Mar 10, In Russia thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow and two other cities to rally against tighter internet restrictions, in some of the biggest protests in the capital in years.
(Reuters, 3/10/19)
2019 Mar 16, Facebook Inc said it removed 1.5 million videos globally of the New Zealand mosque attack in the first 24 hours after the attack.
(Reuters, 3/17/19)
2019 Mar 18, A group of big internet companies added more than 800 different versions of the New Zealand mosque shooting video to a shared database used to block violent terrorist images and videos.
(AP, 3/19/19)
2019 Mar 18, In Egypt new regulations were published in the official gazette late today, allowing the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for "fake news," and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.
(AP, 3/19/19)
2019 Mar 20, European Union regulators fined Google 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) for abusing its dominant role in online advertising, the third big antitrust penalty they've given the internet giant since 2017.
(AP, 3/20/19)
2019 Mar 20, South Korean police said they have arrested two men for using illegal spy cameras at motels to film and livestream videos of about 1,600 guests, raking in about 7 million won ($6,200) over the past three months.
(Reuters, 3/21/19)
2019 Mar 21, Wikipedia's German-language page was blacked out in protest of a proposal to change European Union copyright rules.
(AP, 3/21/19)
2019 Mar 26, Facebook said it has shut down more than 2,600 fake accounts linked to Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo and aiming to influence political sentiment in various parts of the world.
(AFP, 3/26/19)
2019 Mar 28, Cuba and Google signed a deal moving the island one step closer to having a state-of-the-art connection to the internet. They agreed to create a seamless, cost-free connection between their two networks once Cuba is able to physically connect to a new undersea fiber-optic cable that would be laid sometime in the future.
(AP, 3/28/19)
2019 Apr 1, Facebook said it has deleted 712 accounts and 390 pages in India and Pakistan for "inauthentic behavior," many of them linked to India's opposition Congress party days before a general election, and others related to Pakistan's military.
(Reuters, 4/1/19)
2019 Apr 1, Two Israeli researchers said they had discovered a network of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts that promoted PM Benjamin Netanyahu and attacked his political rivals, a week before a national election.
(Reuters, 4/1/19)
2019 Apr 4, Australia's Parliament passed legislation that could imprison social media executives if their platforms stream real violence such as the New Zealand mosque shootings.
(AP, 4/4/19)
2019 Apr 11, Facebook blocked the page of former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in what the firebrand leader is lambasting as part of a "brutal persecution." Correa had been posting information online about an offshore bank account allegedly used by the brother of Ecuador's current president, Lenin Moreno, to stash millions. Facebook prohibits users from sharing private personal information like financial records that may "compromise the identity of people using our platform".
(AP, 4/12/19)
2019 Apr 11, Ecuador arrested Ola Bini (36), an ace Swedish programmer who was an early, ardent supporter of WikiLeaks, as he prepared to board a flight to Japan. Prosecutors alleged a plot to blackmail the country's president over his abandonment of Julian Assange.
(AP, 4/13/19)
2019 Apr 13, It was reported that a Ukraine-based hacker group has posted online the personal information of hundreds of US federal agents and police officers apparently stolen from websites affiliated with alumni of the FBI's National Academy.
(AP, 4/13/19)
2019 Apr 18, Social media giant Facebook banned various far-right British groups including the English Defence League from its network for promoting hate and violence.
(AP, 4/18/19)
2019 Apr 18, Google said it will start giving EU smartphone users a choice of browsers and search apps on its Android operating system, in changes designed to comply with an EU antitrust ruling.
(AP, 4/18/19)
2019 Apr 24, An Indian state court moved to lift a ban on popular video app TikTok in the country, in a boost for its developer Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., reversing its April 3 decision pushing for the ban. The southern state of Tamil Nadu had ordered the federal government to prohibit TikTok downloads, saying the app was encouraging pornography and could expose children to sexual predators.
(Reuters, 4/24/19)
2019 May 1, Russia's Pres. Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure expanding government control over the internet. The law requires internet providers to install equipment to route Russian internet traffic through servers in the country.
(SFC, 5/2/19, p.A2)
2019 May 3, German prosecutors said police have shut down one of the world's largest illegal online markets in the so-called darkweb and arrested the three men allegedly running it. German police had on April 23 and 24 arrested the three German suspects aged 22 to 31 in the states of Hesse, Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The illicit "Wall Street Market" site enabled trade in cocaine, heroin, cannabis and amphetamines as well as stolen data, fake documents and malicious software.
(AFP, 5/3/19)
2019 May 7, Israeli police said two Israelis have been arrested on suspicion of setting up a "dark" Internet site that was used to buy weapons, drugs and stolen credit cards.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 15, Facebook announced it would tighten access to its livestreaming feature as New Zealand's premier Jacinda Ardern and French leader Emmanuel Macron prepared to launch the global "Christchurch Call" initiative to tackle the spread of extremism online.
(AFP, 5/15/19)
2019 May 15, In France world leaders and tech bosses met in Paris to find ways to stop terrorist use of social media to spread deadly ideas.
(AP, 5/15/19)
2019 May 16, Facebook said it banned the Archimedes Group, an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries. FB purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accountsengaged in spreading disinformation.
(SFC, 5/17/19, p.A2)
2019 May 23, In a case with significant First Amendment implications, the US filed 17 new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accusing him of violating the Espionage Act by publishing secret documents containing the names of confidential military and diplomatic sources.
(AP, 5/24/19)(SFC, 5/24/19, p.A10)
2019 May 24, Facebook said it increased the amount of content it restricted access to in Vietnam by over 500% in the last half of 2018, as the Southeast Asian country ramped up its crackdown on online dissent.
(Reuters , 5/24/19)
2019 Jun 3, Russia's communications regulator said that Tinder was included on a list of online services operating in Russia that are required to provide user data on demand to Russian authorities, including the FSB security agency.
(AP, 6/3/19)
2019 Jun 5, YouTube announced plans to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its service.
(SFC,6/6/19, p.D1)
2019 Jun 23, A Sudanese court ordered telecoms operator Zain Sudan to restore internet services, after they were severed nearly three weeks ago when security forces dispersed protesters camping in central Khartoum.
(Reuters, 6/23/19)
2019 Jun 25, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications (MOIC) chaired a meeting with top advertisers, requesting them to stop paying to post ads on YouTube channels featuring "bad or toxic" content.
(AFP, 6/25/19)
2019 Jun 27, Mauritania's government spokesman stepped down after defending a three-day communications blackout imposed during three days of post-election unrest. Fixed internet in the country was restored the next day. The mobile phone network that was disconnected June 23 remained down.
(AFP, 6/28/19)
2019 Jun 27, Authorities in Vanuatu arrested six Chinese nationals following Chinese complaints they were operating an internet scam from the Pacific island.
(AP, 6/29/19)
2019 Jun 28, Authorities in Germany said they have shut down Chemical Revolution, the country's largest online wholesaler of illegal drugs, and arrested 11 people as part of an international investigation into a drugs ring they said spanned five European countries and sold narcotics worldwide.
(Reuters, 6/28/19)
2019 Jul 10, Sudanese activists said the ruling generals restored internet service in the country, following a weekslong blackout imposed during a deadly crackdown early last month.
(AP, 7/10/19)
2019 Jul 19, Twitter suspended the accounts of several Iranian state media outlets. The next day Twitter said this was due to harassment of people linked to the Baha'i faith.
(AFP, 7/20/19)
2019 Aug 19, Walt Disney Co said it will launch its Disney+ video streaming service in Canada and the Netherlands on Nov. 12, the same date as its previously announced US launch. Disney+ will also launch in Australia and New Zealand a week later with the service priced between $6 to $8 per month in these countries.
(Reuters, 8/19/19)
2019 Aug 20, Austria's plan to provide 60 million euros ($66.5 million) for the rollout of ultra-fast broadband internet services in remote rural areas of the Carinthia region won approval from the European Union.
(Reuters, 8/20/19)
2019 Aug 23, France delayed the planned signing of a pledge by Internet platforms to fight hate speech online amid pressure from the United States. A French minister said that he was still hopeful the US will join the initiative.
(Reuters, 8/24/19)
2019 Aug 25, Australian officials said the government will block access to internet domains hosting terrorist material during crisis events and will consider legislation to force digital platforms to improve the safety of their services.
(Reuters, 8/25/19)
2019 Aug 30, Ethiopia's state-run Ethio Telecom said it plans to install a 4G network in the capital and other regions and to upgrade other network services, as the government prepares to open up the sector to private foreign investment.
(Reuters, 8/30/19)
2019 Sep 3, It was reported that US online streaming service Netflix has applied for a license to continue operating in Turkey under new online broadcasting rules that have raised fears over possible censorship in the future.
(Reuters, 9/3/19)
2019 Sep 3, A California appeals court ruled that restaurants, hotels and other businesses that serve the public in California must make their websites accessible to the blind. The court cited a 1990 federal law prohibiting discrimination against the disabled in any place of public accommodation.
(SFC, 9/4/19, p.C4)
2019 Sep 5, Facebook Inc said it is launching its dating services in the United States, sending its shares up 2%.
(Reuters, 9/5/19)
2019 Sep 5, Indonesia said it has partially lifted an internet blackout imposed following civil unrest in the country's easternmost region of Papua, but is yet to restore access in areas where the most violent protests erupted.
(Reuters, 9/5/19)
2019 Sep 12, Google said it has agreed to pay close to 1 billion euros ($1.10 billion) to French authorities to settle a fiscal fraud probe that began four years ago in a deal that may create a legal precedent for other large tech companies present in the country.
(Reuters, 9/12/19)
2019 Sep 24, The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google will not have to apply Europe's "right to be forgotten" law globally in a landmark case that has pitted personal privacy rights against freedom of speech.
(Reuters, 9/24/19)
2019 Oct 17, A Palestinian court blocked access to 59 websites critical of the Palestinian Authority. The decision was made public on Oct. 21 and drew wide criticism. Most of the sites are run by supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas or Mohammed Dahlan, rivals to President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' government called on the attorney general to overturn the decision.
(AP, 10/22/19)
2019 Oct 24, Argentina gave the go-ahead to Amazon.com Inc's Web Services division AWS to build an $800-million data facility in Buenos Aires, which would mark a massive investment for the company in South America.
(Reuters, 10/25/19)
2019 Nov 1, Russia's "sovereign internet" law, which President Vladimir Putin signed back in May, took effect. It gives the country's government power to block access to content whether from within or from outside Russia "in an emergency," which is up to the government to decide.
(Engadget, 11/2/19)
2019 Nov 11, SpaceX launched 60 mini satellites, each weighing 575 pounds, from Cape Canaveral. This was the 2nd batch of an orbiting network meant to provide global internet coverage.
(SFC, 11/12/19, p.A6)
2019 Nov 15, Apple removed 181 vaping apps from its online store as regulators cracked down e-cigarette products.
(SFC, 11/16/19, p.D3)
2019 Nov 17, Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency said authorities have restricted internet access in Iran, after nearly two days of nationwide protests triggered by a petrol price hike.
(AFP, 11/17/19)
2019 Nov 21, Iran began restoring internet access in the capital Tehran and a number of provinces after a days-long nationwide shutdown meant to help stifle unrest over fuel price hikes. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards said several alleged ringleaders of the recent unrest in the country have been arrested by intelligence services. The Guard’s official news service Sepah News reported that the unidentified individuals had links to foreign security services.
(Reuters, 11/21/19)(Bloomberg, 11/21/19)
2019 Nov 26, Russian internet giant Yandex was given the green light to pursue planned changes to its governance structure, after President Vladimir Putin signed a law late today concerning the management of Russian offshore companies.
(Reuters, 11/27/19)
2019 Nov 26, A court in Vietnam sentenced a Facebook user to six years in prison for a series of posts he made on the social media platform that the Southeast Asian country's government said were "anti-state".
(Reuters, 11/26/19)
2019 Dec 6, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders promised to invest $150 billion to bring high-speed internet to “every household in America" while breaking up and better regulating monopolies he says currently limit access to drive up their profits.
(AP, 12/6/19)
2019 Dec 11, It was reported that Walt Disney Co's Disney+ has been downloaded 22 million times on mobile devices since the launch of the streaming service in November, according to a report by research firm Apptopia.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 17, A bulletin issued by the US Navy showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Last month US army cadets were instructed not to use TikTok, after Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the army using TikTok in their recruiting.
(Reuters, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 20, India's police banned public gatherings in parts of New Delhi and other cities for a third day and cut internet services to try to stop growing protests against a new citizenship law that have left 11 people dead and more than 4,000 others detained.
(AP, 12/20/19)
2019 Dec 25, Iran's semiofficial ILNA news agency reported that authorities have shut down mobile internet service in some provinces over security concerns.
(AP, 12/25/19)
2019 Dec 26, Russia's Ministry of Communications announced that it has successfully tested a countrywide alternative to the internet. The government's "sovereign internet" law, which allows content to be blocked in an "emergency situation," took effect in November, and Pres. Vladimir Putin recently signed a law that bans the sale of devices without pre-installed Russian apps.
(Endgadget, 12/26/19)
2019 Dec 26, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of Wikipedia, saying the Turkish government's two-year ban on the online encyclopedia constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017, accusing it of being part of a “smear campaign" against the country.
(AP, 12/26/19)
2020 Jan 6, Facebook said it is beefing up its policies for removing videos that have been edited of synthesized in ways that aren't apparent to the average person. FB said it is beefing manipulated videos known as deepfakes, the false but realistic clips created with artificial intelligence and sophisticated tools.
(SFC, 1/8/20, p.D1)
2020 Jan 22, In Switzerland top NGOs including Greenpeace and Amnesty International called for the $1.1 billion sale of the .org internet domain to a private company to be blocked, saying it could do "irreparable harm." The directors of 10 leading NGOs published an open letter at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos urging ISOC and ICANN, the internet's governing authority, to stop the sale.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
2020 Jan 25, Limited mobile data services and internet was temporarily restored in Jammu and Kashmir, ending nearly a six month communications lockdown. Access was limited to about 300 "whitelisted" websites and internet speed remained low. The decision will be reviewed on Jan. 31.
(Reuters, 1/25/20)
2020 Feb 9, A report released by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Mass., said North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong Un, to evade a “maximum pressure" US sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government.
(AP, 2/10/20)
2020 Feb 18, A Tel Aviv court ordered Facebook Inc to unblock the private account of a worker at Israeli surveillance company NSO Group. Similar rulings were expected for other employees in the coming days. Facebook's messaging service WhatsApp had accused the Israeli firm of helping government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users in a hacking spree targeting diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials across the globe.
(Reuters, 2/18/20)
2020 Feb 26, Iranian cyberpolice announced the arrests of 24 people accused of online rumor-mongering about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has claimed 19 lives in the country. The health ministry announced four more deaths and 44 new infections, including in six previously unaffected provinces. This brought the total to 139 cases.
(AFP, 2/26/20)
2020 Feb 26, Italy's Enel said it agreed on the need to provide the country with an ultrabroadband network, after Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri urged parties involved in the plan to find an agreement.
(Reuters, 2/26/20)
2020 Mar 4, India lifted some restrictions on internet access in Kashmir, including allowing access to social media websites for the first time since the restive Himalayan region was locked down and its autonomy revoked in August.
(Reuters, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 20, Google's google.com/covid19 went live on the web late today offering education, prevention and local resources related to the novel coronavirus.
(AP, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 30, Facebook Inc pledged $100 million in financing and advertising spending to support news organizations, including local publishers in the United States, reeling from pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020 Mar 30, India's health ministry invited doctors in Indian-administered Kashmir to an online training session on managing ventilators. Most, however, were unable to attend because of long-running curbs on the internet that have prevented those living in Kashmir from accessing information about the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 3/30/20)
2020 Apr 2, Twitter said it has deleted 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras and Indonesia, saying they violated company policy and were a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation".
(The Guardian, 4/2/20)
2020 Apr 6, Peace activists in the Gaza Strip took part in a web conference with Israeli activists. Within days Hamas-run security forces arrested several of the activists on treason charges.
(AP, 4/9/20)
2020 Apr 8, Rakuten, a Japananese technology company, launched the first full-scale 5G virtualized network. In October Rakuten Mobile launched the world's first 5G network based on Openran, a new technology seen as an alternative to products by Ericsson, Nokia and China's Huawei.
(Econ, 4/11/20, p.47)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Apr 10, Russia's Prosecutor General's Office started blocking access to "fake news" social media posts criticizing quarantine measures taken by the city of Moscow to curb the new coronavirus. Russia last year passed legislation with tough new fines for people spreading misinformation or insulting the state.
(Reuters, 4/10/20)
2020 Apr 23, Amazon said its Indian arm will soon add small local shops as sellers on its platform as a way to provide them broader online exposure and offer consumers a greater selection of merchandise.
(Reuters, 4/23/20)
2020 Apr 23, Alphabet Inc's Google said all advertisers would have to complete a verification process before buying ad space on its platform, starting this summer, in a bid to make its ad practices more transparent.
(Reuters, 4/23/20)
2020 Apr, A Trump app was launched. The smartphone app aimed to become a one-stop news, information and entertainment platform for supporters of Donald Trump and has since often placed among the Top 10 in Apple's rankings of news apps, sometimes above those of individual news organizations such as CNN, the New York Times and Reuters.
(Reuters, 6/2/20)
2020 May 14, A coalition of 20 groups, including Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission saying that the video app TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is collecting personal information of kids under 13 without their parents' consent.
(AP, 5/14/20)
2020 May 15, An Indonesian tax official said the government will require big internet companies to pay value-added taxes (VAT) on sales of digital products and services from July as part of efforts to boost revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reuters, 5/15/20)
2020 May 23, India-based Reliance Industries Ltd said it has launched an online grocery service, JioMart, in a move aimed at rivalling Amazon.com's local unit and Walmart Inc's Flipkart in the huge Indian market.
(AP, 5/24/20)
2020 May 27, President Trump threatened to impose federal regulations on — or even shut down — social media platforms after Twitter added a fact-checking reply to his tweets about mail-in voting.
(Yahoo News, 5/27/20)
2020 May 28, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to chip away at regulations protecting social media companies from lawsuits over content posted on their platforms.
(The Week, 5/29/20)
2020 May, Facebook agreed to pay $52 million to 11,250 moderators who developed post-traumatic stress disorder from looking at the worst of the internet.
(Econ., 10/24/20, p.19)
2020 Jun 11, Twitter said that China has stepped up its effort to spread misinformation on the platform by creating tens of thousands of fake accounts that discussed the Communist Party’s response to the virus and the Hong Kong protests. Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts pushing false information favorable to China's communist rulers.
(NY Times, 6/12/20)(SFC, 6/13/20, p.A2)
2020 Jun 17, A collection of American civil-rights groups began a #StopHateForProfit campaign aimed at Facebook. By July 1 more than 600 firms had pulled ads from the platform.
(Econ., 7/4/20, p.58)
2020 Jun 18, Facebook and Twitter both pushed back against Trump’s use of inflammatory material. Facebook removed advertisements by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a red triangle that the Nazis used to classify Communist political prisoners during World War II. Twitter added a warning — an exclamation point with the label “Manipulated Media" — to a Trump tweet that featured a video of two toddlers running down a sidewalk. The video, which included a headline about a “racist baby," had been made to look like a CNN segment.
(NY Times, 6/19/20)
2020 Jun 22, The encrypted instant messenger Telegram said it's ramping up efforts to develop anti-censorship technologies serving users in countries where it is banned or partially blocked, including China and Iran.
(TechCrunch, 6/22/20)
2020 Jun 26, Facebook said that it will flag all "newsworthy" posts from politicians that break its rules, including those of Pres. Donald Trump.
(SFC, 6/27/20, p.C1)
2020 Jun 29, In Ethiopia musician Hachalu Hundessa (34), well known for his political songs, was shot and killed on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. Several people were arrested. Demonstrations soon broke out in response and seven died during the spontaneous protests. Security forces cut off the Internet when the violence started.
(BBC, 6/30/20)(Econ., 7/11/20, p.37)
2020 Jun 29, New Delhi said late today that TikTok was among the 59 apps which it believed posed a "threat to sovereignty and integrity," following its recent border clash with China. Some 200 million users soon lost access to the app. Roposo, a local rival, got 2.2 million sign-ups in 48 hours.
(Reuters, 6/30/20)(Econ., 7/25/20, p.50)
2020 Jul 2, European law-enforcement agencies said they had infiltrated a secret global criminal chat system used to plot the murder of rival criminals, money laundering, and the selling of illegal goods.
(Business Insider, 7/2/20)
2020 Jul 14, Ethiopia entered its third week without internet service for almost everyone after days of deadly unrest, as the government said it’s trying to prevent speech that could further inflame ethnic tensions.
(AP, 7/14/20)
2020 Jul 15, Tweets promising bitcoin rewards hit some of the platform's largest accounts this afternoon, rolling through some of the largest and most influential Twitter accounts. Big companies were hit as were major political and politics-adjacent figures. Twitter put out a statement promising to investigate and "fix it," and locked down the accounts of those impacted and restricted all verified accounts.
(Good Morning America, 7/16/20)
2020 Aug 5, Instagram, a unit of Facebook, launched Reels, a TikTok look-alike.
(Econ., 8/8/20, p.52)
2020 Sep 27, A US federal judge temporarily halted a Trump administration order that would have blocked new downloads of TikTok in the United States, granting the Chinese-owned app a reprieve.
(NY Times, 9/27/20)
2020 Sep 30, Twitter Inc said it had removed 130 accounts, which appeared to originate in Iran, as they were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first US presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.
(AP, 9/30/20)
2020 Sep, Telefonica, a Spanish multinational telecommunications company, teamed with Japan-based Rakuten to deploy Openran more widely in its 5G networks by 2025.
(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Oct 8, Facebook said it had closed accounts in multiple countries, from government or military-linked networks it said were spreading disinformation. This included 17 pages, 50 accounts and six Instagram accounts from Myanmar.
(AFP, 10/9/20)
2020 Oct 8, Twitter said it has closed an Iran-based network of accounts fanning the flames around racial justice protests in the US sparked by the death of George Floyd. Twitter also said it had closed more than 900 accounts linked to the Thai army for attacking prominent opposition figures and diffusing pro-government and military propaganda.
(AFP, 10/9/20)
2020 Oct 10, It was reported that the Tuber app launched this week in China allows access to some content on Western social media sites long banned domestically such as YouTube, marking the first product by a major Chinese tech firm that helps internet users bypass the Great Firewall.
(Reuters, 10/10/20)
2020 Oct 20, The US Justice Dept. alleged that Google ties up phone-makers, networks and browsers in deals that make it the default search engine.
(Econ., 10/24/20, p.11)
2020 Oct 21, Quibi, the beleaguered short-form content company started by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, announced that it was shutting down just six months after the app became available.
(NY Times, 10/21/20)
2020 Nov 17, Twitter launched these ephemeral tweets, dubbed "fleets", after having tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
(Reuters, 11/18/20)
2020 Nov, British mobile phone operator Vodafone said it would use a technology called Openran to replace some gear made by Hauwei, a Chinese firm whose products are considered to much of a security risk to be used in the new 5G mobile networks.
(Econ., 11/7/20, p.16)
2020 Dec 18, OneWeb, the satellite firm rescued by the British government and India's Bharti Group, resumed flights in its push to provide global broadband coverage as 36 of its satellites blasted off into orbit from Russia's Far East. The launch was the first fully commercial flight from Russia's new Vostochny cosmodrome.
(AP, 12/18/20)
2020 Dec 23, Russian lawmakers approved a raft of new measures restricting political activity as well as tightening control over the internet.
(SFC, 12/24/20, p.A3)
2021 Jan 6, HKChronicles, a Hong Kong website that publishes material mainly related to anti-government protests in 2019, was blocked by the city's internet service providers (ISPs). Hong Kong police had invoked the city's national security law for the first time to block HKChronicles.
(Reuters, 1/10/21)
2021 Jan 8, Alphabet Inc's Google suspended Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives for its hands-off approach to content moderation, citing posts inciting violence. Apple Inc gave the service 24 hours to submit a detailed moderation plan.
(AP, 1/9/21)
2021 Jan 8, Twitter Inc deleted new tweets posted by US President Donald Trump on official government account @POTUS and suspended the account of his presidential campaign, after booting his personal account off the platform permanently.
(Reuters, 1/8/21)
2021 Jan 11, German prosecutors took down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet and arrested its suspected operator, an Australian man (34). The darknet is a part of the web accessible only with specialized identity-cloaking tools.
(AP, 1/12/20)
2021 Jan 12, It was reported that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who was knighted for inventing the internet navigation system known as the World Wide Web, wants to re-make cyberspace once again with a new startup called Inrupt.
(Reuters, 1/12/20)
2021 Jan 13, It was reported that Uganda has ordered internet service providers to block all social media platforms and messaging apps. ahead of a contentious election.
(BBC, 1/13/20)(Econ., 1/16/21, p.9)
2021 Jan 14, Hong Kong internet service provider Hong Kong Broadband Network said it had blocked access to a pro-democracy website to comply with the city’s national security law.
(AP, 1/14/20)
2021 Jan 18, Ugandans celebrated the resumption of internet services after a shutdown was imposed ahead of last week's election. However, social media platforms remain blocked and are only accessible using Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
(BBC, 1/18/21)
2021 Jan 21, Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced the end of Loon, its internet-beaming balloon company, that was providing online access from the stratosphere.
(AP, 1/22/21)
2021 Jan 25, Iranian users of the Signal messaging service said they have lost access to the app on their mobile devices. They could use the system through virtual private networks, services that shield internet users by encrypting their data traffic. Some still had access through desktop version of the app.
(AP, 1/25/21)
2021 Jan 27, Alphabet unit Google opened a center in Dublin to tackle harmful online content, in a move also designed to ease regulatory concerns about how the company and other tech giants police a growing problem on the internet.
(Reuters, 1/27/21)
2021 Jan 29, India's Haryana state blocked mobile internet across most of its districts, following clashes between protesting Indian farmers and groups of men shouting anti-farmer and pro-police slogans.
(Reuters, 1/29/21)
2021 Feb 6, Myanmar's new military junta cut all internet access. The junta had ordered the blockage of Facebook and other social media platforms in recent days. Facebook called on authorities to unblock access to social media services.
(Reuters, 2/6/21)
2021 Feb 7, Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Myanmar for the second consecutive day to protest last week's military coup and show support for the country's elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Internet access was restored.
(Reuters, 2/7/21)
2021 Feb 8, Chinese users lost access to Clubhouse, adding it to thousands of websites and social media apps the ruling party blocks the public from seeing using the world's most extensive system of internet filters.
(AP, 2/8/21)
2021 Feb 14, In Myanmar sightings of armored personnel carriers Yangon and leaked orders of an impending internet shutdown raised political tensions late today, after vast numbers of people around the country flouted orders against demonstrations to protest the military’s seizure of power.
(AP, 2/14/21)
2021 Feb 17, Online brokerage Public.com, which competes with Robinhood, said it had raised $220 million in fresh funds from new and existing investors, lifting its valuation to $1.2 billion.
(Reuters, 2/17/21)
2021 Feb 18, Facebook blocked all news in Australia as the country prepared to make tech companies pay for the news on their platforms.
(NY Times, 2/18/21)
2021 Feb 24, Iranian authorities began shutting down the mobile data network in the restive province of Sistan and Baluchestan. Rights groups called the disruptions an apparent “tool to conceal" the government’s harsh crackdown on protests convulsing the area.
(AP, 2/27/21)
2021 Feb 26, A US federal judge approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
(AP, 2/26/21)
2021 Mar 16, It was reported that Chinese app stores have removed Alibaba Group's UC Browser for mobiles, after it was criticized on Chinese state television's annual consumer rights show for including medical ads by unqualified companies.
(Reuters, 3/16/21)
2021 Mar 18, Alphabet Inc's YouTube said it is rolling out a short-form video-streaming service on its platform in the United States as it looks to better compete with rival TikTok in the hugely popular category.
(Reuters, 3/18/21)
2021 Mar 25, OneWeb launched 36 satellites into orbit from a cosmodrome in the far east of Russia as part of the satellite firm's plans to deliver global high-speed internet access. OneWeb resumed flights in December after emerging from bankruptcy protection with $1 billion in equity investment from a consortium of the British government and India's Bharti Enterprises.
(Reuters, 3/25/21)
2021 Mar 26, Kenya's biggest telecoms operator Safaricom started trials for 5G high-speed internet network using technology from Nokia and Huawei. Safaricom is part owned by South Africa's Vodacom and Britain's Vodafone.
(Reuters, 3/26/21)
2021 Apr 2, Myanmar's wireless broadband internet services were shut down by order of the military. Protesters continued to defy the threat of lethal violence to oppose the junta's takeover.
(AP, 4/2/21)
2021 Apr 8, An information blackout under Myanmar's military junta worsened as fiber broadband service, the last legal way for ordinary people to access the internet, became intermittently inaccessible on several networks.
(AP, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 8, Naspers' Dutch-listed subsidiary Prosus NV sold a 2% stake in the Chinese gaming and social media giant in the world's largest-ever block trade, reducing its stake to 28.9%. Investors in Naspers Ltd, a South African multinational consumer Internet company, said they want proceeds from a $14.7 billion stake sale in its Tencent Holdings investment to go towards blockbuster acquisitions or a share buyback.
(Reuters, 4/8/21)
2021 Apr 14, Turkey's Competition Board said it had fined Google more than 296 million lira ($36.65 million) for abusing its dominant position in the search engine services area.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Apr 23, Dan Kaminsky (42), a computer whiz who helped develop technology to protect the backbone of the internet, died at his home in San Francisco.
(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.F8)
2021 Apr 29, Chinese financial watchdogs summoned 13 internet platforms engaged in finance business, including heavyweights Tencent and ByteDance, to order them to strengthen compliance with regulations.
(Reuters, 4/29/21)
2021 May 1, China's main internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said it has found that 33 mobile phone apps have broken data privacy rules by collecting data without consent, among other issues.
(Reuters, 5/3/21)
2021 May 13, Google said it has won a deal to provide cloud services to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has launched a slew of Starlink satellites, to provide high-speed internet.
(Reuters, 5/13/21)
2021 May 19, Microsoft Corp said it is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser.
(AP, 5/20/21)
2021 Jun 8, A problem at SF-based Fastly meant internet users couldn't connect to a host of popular websites early today including The New York Times, the Guardian, Twitch, Reddit and the British government's homepage.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 9, Fastly, the SF-based company hit by a major outage that caused many of the world's top websites to go offline briefly this week, blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.
(AP, 6/9/21)
2021 Jun 22, The US Justice Department said American authorities seized 33 of Iran’s state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation. Three other seized websites were operated by the Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group, Kata'ib Hizballah, which more than a decade ago was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
(AP, 6/22/21)
2021 Jul 4, China's cyberspace regulator said that it had ordered smartphone app stores to stop offering Didi Global Inc's app after finding that the ride-hailing giant had illegally collected users' personal data.
(Reuters, 7/4/21)
2021 Jul 22, A monitoring group said mobile phone internet service in Iran is being disrupted a week into protests in the country's southwest over water shortages. The unrest has seen at least three people killed.
(AP, 7/22/21)
2021 Aug 5, Two Russian news outlets and a legal aid group backed by a leading Kremlin critic shut down after authorities blocked their websites, the government's latest moves targeting independent media, opposition supporters and human rights activists ahead of Russia’s September parliamentary election.
(AP, 8/5/21)
2021 Aug 27, It was reported that China is framing rules to ban internet companies whose data poses potential security risks from listing outside the country, including in the United States.
(Reuters, 8/27/21)
2021 Aug 30, In South Sudan internet services were disrupted and security forces patrolled the streets after activists called for protests against President Salva Kiir's government.
(Reuters, 8/30/21)
2021 Sep 6, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree changing internet regulations to combat "arbitrary removal" of accounts, profiles and content. Bolsonaro urged people on Twitter and Facebook to follow him on Telegram, a messaging service with a more hands-off approach to content.
(Reuters, 9/6/21)(NY Times, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 8, Researchers said a misinformation campaign on social media in support of Chinese government interests has expanded to new languages and platforms. They said it even tried to get people to show up to protests in the United States. The operation was identified in 2019 as running hundreds of accounts in English and Chinese aimed at discrediting the Hong Kong democracy movement.
(Reuters, 9/8/21)
2021 Sep 9, It was reported that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is temporarily banning social media companies from removing certain content, including his claims that the only way he’ll lose next year’s elections is if the vote is rigged. Bolsonaro met by videoconference with truckers leading blockades of highways over high fuel prices in multiple states across the country. He said the allied truckers had agreed to stand down on Sept. 12, a move that could bring significant relief to global commodity markets.
(NY Times, 9/9/21)(Reuters, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 11, It was reported that China's industry ministry has told technology companies including Alibaba Group Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd to stop blocking each other's website links from their platforms.
(Reuters, 9/11/21)
2021 Sep 15, A US federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, that challenged the National Security Agency's mass interception and searching of Americans' international internet communications.
(Reuters, 9/16/21)
2021 Sep 17, Around 700,000 people in Myanmar were estimated to have lost internet access after attacks on telecommunication equipment run by Mytel, the partly army-controlled company said amid reports that dozens of its towers were damaged.
(Reuters, 9/17/21)
2021 Sep 18, India's antitrust authority found in a report on its two-year probe that Google abused the dominant position of its Android operating system in India, using its "huge financial muscle" to illegally hurt competitors.
(Reuters, 9/18/21)
2021 Oct 1, Texas man Seth Aaron Pendley (28), who wanted to blow up an Amazon data center in Virginia to disrupt the internet and upset "the oligarchy," was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Pendley had communicated with an undercover FBI agent instead of an explosives supplier.
(NBC News, 10/1/21)
2021 Oct 2, It was reported that Mauritius-based AFRICNIC, a non-profic that assigns internet addresses in Africa, has been sued by Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. AFRICNIC has revoked 6.2 million African addresses obtained by Heng under contested circumstances from 2013 to 2016.
(SFC, 10/2/21, p.A3)
2021 Oct 27, Indonesia's 2019 decision to block internet access during periods of social unrest was lawful, its constitutional court ruled, in a move activists said sets a dangerous precedent for internet freedom in the world's third largest democracy.
(Reuters, 10/27/21)
2021 Nov 9, Satellite internet company Viasat said it will enter Latin America as an internet provider targeting remote communities with limited connectivity, seeking to win customers where telecoms have failed to make inroads. A day earlier Viasat announced that it was buying rival Inmarsat for $7.3 billion.
(Reuters, 11/9/21)
2021 Nov 10, A Sudanese court ordered the country’s three main telecommunications providers to restore internet access. However, authorities did not show any sign yet of carrying out that order.
(AP, 11/11/21)
2021 Nov 26, The Indian government advised people against subscribing to Starlink Internet Services, a division of billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX aerospace company, as it does not have a license to operate in the country.
(Reuters, 11/26/21)
2021 Dec 10, Cybersecurity firm Cloudstrike said a software vulnerability in the online game Minecraft is rapidly emerging as a major threat to internet-connected devices arund the world. New Zealand's computer emergency response team was among the first to report the flaw a day earlier. The flaw in open-source Apache software was discovered on Nov. 24 by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
(SFC, 12/11/21, p.A5)
2021 Dec 23, The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it will scrutinize online platforms such as social media networks and video-sharing sites to clamp down on fake accounts and information as part of its drive to "clean up" the internet.
(Reuters, 12/23/21)
2021 Dec 25, OVD-Info, a Russian organization that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid to detainees, said that government regulators blocked its website, the latest move in a months-long crackdown on independent media and human rights organizations.
(AP, 12/25/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Internet
Return to home
