Google admits tracking Safari users

Google has come under attack for violating users' privacy and ignoring their wishes after admitting that it intentionally circumvented security settings in Apple's Safari browser to track users on both desktop computers and iPhones.

"It's time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of web users," the EFF said in a statement, in which it warned: "Google, the time has finally come. You need to make a pro-privacy offering to restore your user's trust … it's time for a new chapter in Google's policy regarding privacy. It's time to commit to giving users a voice about tracking and then respecting those wishes."

The company may also be tracking people without their knowledge on other browsers, including those on its own Android phones, because those do not implement the same security restrictions as Apple does.

The circumvention, carried out by a small piece of code, meant that people could see messages indicating whether their associates in Google "Circles" on its Google+ social network had clicked on ads – but it also let Google and other advertisers see which websites people landed on.
Mayer told the Guardian that his team had been looking into what was being done for two months, and was sure it had been used by Google certainly since December – though it could have been running since July 2011.
Google declined to answer a Guardian request to say when it had begun the tracking.
The search giant insisted that a report in the Wall Street Journal, which first revealed the tracking, mischaracterised its actions, and that the users' identities had remained anonymous throughout – although they were signed in to Google's systems.

Angry Birds Officially Launches on Facebook

Angry Birds fans have a special gift this Valentine;s Day — the wildly popular pig-flying game made its official debut on Facebook.
The Facebook app is similar to the original mobile version, with the addition of social components, brand new power-ups, and exclusive new levels. The added social aspect allows players to compete with their Facebook friends for gold, silver, and bronze crowns in any level. Players can also brag about their scores on the social network and give

Anonymous took down cia.gov

­At approximately 3:10 p.m. Eastern time one of twitter accounts related to the hackers' group announced "cia.gov DOWN. #UMAD?#Anonymous." 
The CIA website became the latest victim in a series of attacks conducted by the elusive group of ha

ckers against US law enforcement agencies and copyright holders. As RT reported earlier, Anonymous took credit for crashing the websites of the US Department of Homeland Security, which was quickly revived, and the FBI.
The CIA seems to be less prepared for fighting Anonymous than other agencies. If the work of dhs.gov was revived in

27 downloads you shouldn't miss this week

The update rate for web browsers is faster than ever, and this has been a particularly busy week for Firefox, starting off with the release of Firefox 10 FINAL. While there aren’t a huge number of big, notable changes,aside from perhaps the rejigged forward button that hides until it is needed, this is still an important milestone and offers impressive performance and stability improvements over previous version as well as better support for third-party addons.

There is also a portable version of the browser available in the form of Firefox Portable 10.0. The release of a new stable version of Firefox means that there has been a spate of releases in the other channels, including Firefox 11 Beta 1. If you’d like to peer a little further into the future, Firefox Aurora 12.0a2 gives a taste of what to expect from upcoming releases.

For anyone who wants to check out the very latest browser, the nightly versions of Firefox are worth checking out, but are not really stable enough for day to day use. This week we have seen the release of Firefox Nightly 13.0a1 (32-bit) and Firefox Nightly 13.0a1 (64-bit).