FaceTime and Skype have a new rival in the video-chat market: WhatsApp. The maker of the hugely popular messaging and voice app said Monday it will soon add the ability to place free video calls from within the app. The feature, which is expected to be available in the coming days, will allow the app’s …
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This year, the Opera browser added an option to block online ads. The newer Brave browser goes farther, blocking them by default. But Google would rather fix the problems with ads than strip them off websites. “We feel like there are a lot of challenges in advertising. There are a lot of wrong ways,” Darin Fisher, vice president of Chrome …
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WikiLeaks is known for pushing the boundaries, and it didn’t pull punches Thursday during a freewheeling Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. Staffers from the whistle-blowing site were bombarded with questions that focused heavily on the part WikiLeaks played during this year’s US presidential election. They repeatedly denied conspiring with President-elect Donald Trump in his heated race with Hillary Clinton, …
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Wouldn’t it be nice? Send off a text message with a whoosh, and, presto, you’ve finished voting in the US national election. But here’s some important information: You can’t vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — or for anyone, for that matter — by text message. Electronic voting in the US is very limited, doesn’t involve text messages, and …
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There’s a new cop on the internet privacy beat. In a 3-2 vote Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission passed new rules that for the first time give the agency the authority to police internet service providers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, that share customers’ sensitive personal information with third parties, like advertisers. The FCC’s new rules will require internet …
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Social media is wringing its hands over another potential spying scandal hitting AT&T. This comes almost a decade after the carrier first faced lawsuits over a National Security Agency spy program — and amid a general atmosphere today of privacy worries that wasn’t helped by this month’s accusations that Yahoo had been spying on its users as well. Social Cues …
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The creators of WhatsApp say they’re staying true to their formula of simply letting people connect with each other and now with businesses, all with privacy in mind. Co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton explained Tuesday during the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, California, that the instant messaging app’s plans to help its one …
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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wants consumers to know he has their backs as he makes a final push to get new rules in place to protect online privacy and open competition in the cable set-top box market. In a commentary published Wednesday on CNET, Wheeler ticked off several consumer-friendly policies and rules his agency has adopted since he took office …
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If you are a consumer who feels like you’re being taken advantage of, where do you turn for help? The Federal Communications Commission is the nation’s expert agency on communications technology and has a mandate to protect consumers who rely on our nation’s networks. In recent years, the commission has moved aggressively to meet our consumer protection responsibilities, whether it’s …
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T-Mobile has agreed to a $48 million settlement with the Federal Communications Commission for misleading consumers about its “unlimited” data plan. On Wednesday, the FCC said an investigation found the wireless operator didn’t make clear to customers the speed and data restrictions on its unlimited data plan. Specifically, the FCC received complaints from customers who said they were unaware that …
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