Ashley Madison owner agrees to pay $1.6 million to settle U.S. investigations - The Washington Post

The homepage of the Ashley Madison website is displayed on an iPad, in this photo illustration taken in Ottawa, Canada July 21, 2015. Cheating spouses website AshleyMadison.com, facing hackers' threats to leak clients' nude photos and sexual fantasies, said it is heartened by some initial public response that sees the site as a victim. The website's Canadian parent, Avid Life Media, confirmed a breach of its systems that has put the real names, credit card information and other details of as many as 37 million customers at risk. Avid Life said it has since secured the sites and closed unauthorized access points.  REUTERS/Chris Wattie

The owner of dating site Ashley Madison has agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation and state charges related to the huge 2015 data breach, the FTC<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/12/operators-ashleymadisoncom-settle-ftc-state-charges-resulting"> announced </a>Wednesday.

“This case represents one of the largest data breaches that the FTC has investigated to date, implicating 36 million individuals worldwide,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a news release. “The global settlement requires AshleyMadison.com to implement a range of more robust data security practices that will better protect its users’ personal information from criminal hackers going forward.”

Ruby, the Canadian company that owns Ashley Madison, said the proposed settlement will help the company and its members move on.

“Today’s settlement closes an important chapter on the company’s past and reinforces our commitment to operating with integrity and to building a new future for our members, our team and our company,” said chief executive Rob Segal in a statement. Segal was appointed in April and has sought to rebrand the company, including changing its name from Avid Life Media to Ruby.

The Ashley Madison hack was notable in part because the site aimed to help people discretely cheat on their significant others, yet the data breach left personal information about its users exposed. Hackers who called themselves the Impact Group posted a large cache of data stolen from the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/18/hackers-claim-to-have-leaked-ashley-madison-data-trove-online/">site online</a>, which was quickly turned into a searchable database that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09/09/why-the-wife-of-a-pastor-exposed-in-ashley-madison-leak-spoke-out-after-his-suicide/?utm_term=.820f5f4b73b9">wreaked havoc on some users’ lives</a>.

It also revealed that the site created fake users to lure men into paying for premium messaging service — a practice the FTC calls deceptive <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/10/online-dating-service-agrees-stop-deceptive-use-fake-profiles">has cracked down on before.</a>

Ruby has since said it stopped using <a href="http://media.ashleymadison.com/avid-life-media-breaks-its-silence/">bots</a>. Under the terms of the proposed settlement Ruby would be barred from using such deceptive practices in the future and required to set up a comprehensive security plan, according to the FTC.

The proposed settlement calls for an $8.75 million judgment against Ruby, but the company won't actually be on the hook for that amount. Instead, the bulk of that figure will be “partially suspended” after it pays $828,500 to the commission, according to the FTC’s news release. Ruby will also have to pay $828,500 to a coalition of 13 states and the District of Columbia which worked with the FTC on the settlement. The total amounts to more than $1.6 million. If the government finds that the company misrepresented its financial circumstances, then Ruby may have to pay the full judgment. The deal will become official once a federal district court judge signs off on it.

Ruby had already entered into a <a href="https://media.rubylife.com/one-year-after-ashley-madison-criminal-hack-ruby-voluntarily-enters-compliance-agreement/">compliance agreement</a> with Canadian privacy regulators that requires the company to improve its security and made similar arrangements with Australian authorities. Officials from both countries <a href="https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/commissioner-initiated-investigation-reports/ashley-madison#overview-of-investigation">collaborated on an earlier investigation</a> of the breach and assisted the FTC's investigation, according to the agency’s news release.

“In the digital age, privacy issues can impact millions of people around the world,” Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said in a statement. “It’s imperative that regulators work together across borders to ensure that the privacy rights of individuals are respected no matter where they live.”

Andrea Peterson covered technology policy for The Washington Post. She left The Post in December 2016.

Andrea Peterson

The Washington Post

Tech Policy

Technology

1 in 25 Americans has faced or been threatened with ‘revenge porn’ - The Washington Post

A woman uses a computer keyboard in this photo illustration taken in Sydney June 23, 2011. Australia cleared a key hurdle on Thursday in setting up a $38 billion high-speed broadband system after phone operator Telstra agreed to rent out its network for the nation's biggest infrastructure project in decades.  REUTERS/Tim Wimborne (AUSTRALIA - Tags: BUSINESS POLITICS)

One in 25 Americans has been threatened with or faced a vicious form of digital harassment in which explicit images are shared online without the subject's consent, according to a <a href="https://datasociety.net/blog/2016/12/13/nonconsensual-image-sharing/">report</a> released Tuesday by think tank Data & Society and the Center for Innovative Public Health Research.

This kind of non-consensual image sharing, commonly known as “revenge porn,” has made headlines in recent years. But there had been little data on how widespread this type of harassment is until this new report, which was based on a telephone survey of more than 3,000 U.S. Internet users age 15 or older.

The survey found that young women and people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are the most affected by this form of cyberharassment. Fifteen percent of respondents who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual said someone had threatened to share nude or scantily clad images or videos of them without their consent; 7 percent said those pictures had been exposed. Ten percent of women younger than 30 said they had faced similar threats, while 6 percent said their images had been posted.

[Man sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for stealing nude photos in infamous celebrity hack]

Men faced similar rates of exposure overall but fewer threats, according to the study. Amanda Lenhart, lead author of the report, said that researchers decided to ask about threats because it is a common coercive tactic among domestic-violence victims.

Revenge porn can be carried out by vindictive ex-lovers who post images shared in confidence, Lenhart said. But this type of harassment can also happen when an attacker breaks into a victim's email or cloud-storage accounts or hacks a victim's webcam, the report noted.

Seeing their intimate images exposed online “is a devastating experience” for victims and can cause deep emotional scarring, Lenhart said. In some cases, it can lead to trust issues and employment problems — particularly if the victim has a job such as a teaching position or one that requires them to be in the public eye — Lenhart said.

[The Leslie Jones hack used all the scariest tactics of Internet warfare at once]

Revenge porn can also threaten victims' safety, Lenhart said, especially if the images are posted along with other personal information about the subject. Some victims <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/19/revenge-porn-victim-maryland-law-change">have said</a> that their harassers posted the images online with their full name, location and employment details — along with messages that might encourage a viewer to sexually assault the victims.

There are some legal options available, University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron said. For instance, if a victim took a photo themselves, they may be able to use a federal copyright law to get them taken down. And 34 states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books aimed at punishing the perpetrators of revenge porn, she said.

But some victims struggle to get police to respond to this type of harassment, according to Citron. “Law enforcement is playing catch-up on both training about the law and technology,” she said. “When victims go to law enforcement, the response is commonly to say that nothing can be done.”

And even after a legal victory, it can be extremely difficult to ensure that all of the images are taken offline, Lenhart said. “That’s the challenge of the Internet,” she said. “Things are copied and spread.”

A screencap of a search for "geocities" in the beta version of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. (Andrea Peterson/Washington Post)

There’s a powerful new way to dig up dead websites - The Washington Post

It can be hard to find sites that have disappeared from the Internet. But the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is on the verge of rolling out a feature that will make tracking down dead websites much easier, according to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.

The Wayback Machine has been helping people see past Internet sites over the past 15 years, but searchers always needed to know the URL of a website to find the archived copies. Soon, however, you'll be able to use keyword searches to find old websites -- in fact, you can already test it out through a <a href="https://web-beta.archive.org/">public beta.</a>

The new search feature is not quite like Google, where all the text on each page on a website is indexed to help with searches. The Wayback Machine feature lets you search for an archived website's main page, although it does not have the capacity to enable searches for specific web pages on that site. But once you're there, you're able to navigate around the old websites.

[47 percent of the world’s population now use the Internet, study says]

"There’s a billion" websites, Kahle explained, "and that’s all we can get to work.”

But the feature is still a big step in terms of usability. Kahle said that he, too, has struggled with the lack of keyword search availability in the Wayback Machine. “I use the Wayback Machine mostly by going to Google, finding a URL and then going to the Wayback to find previous versions of it," said. "But what if the site is completely gone?”

The ever-changing online ecosystem is partly to blame for all that hoop jumping: The Internet’s history is filled with the digital corpses of entire sites that are hard, if not impossible, to find through Google.

[Yes, the Internet is a scarier place for women than for men]

Take Geocities. It was once a hugely popular hosting service that was acquired by Yahoo but is now defunct everywhere except Japan. Today, the first Google search result for “geocities” is a Wikipedia page about the service, followed by stories about its demise, but not the actual geocities.com URL, which currently redirects to a page about Yahoo services for small businesses.

But if you search for “geocities” in the test version of the Wayback Machine, the first result is geocities.com. That result shows the tool captured over 200 million copies of some 37 million pages that were once hosted on the domain.

And that’s the real power of the Wayback Machine’s new search: It makes it easier for us to see how the Web used to look.

U.S. border agents stopped journalist from entry and took his phones - The Washington Post

Award-winning Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou has had plenty of scary border experiences while reporting from the Middle East for the past decade. But his most disturbing encounter was with U.S. Customs and Border Protection last month, he said.

On Oct. 1, customs agents detained Ou for more than six hours and briefly confiscated his mobile phones and other reporting materials before denying him entry to the United States, according to Ou. He was on his way to cover the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on behalf of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

If Ou had already been inside the U.S. border, law enforcement officers would have needed a warrant to search his smartphones to comply with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/supreme-court-police-must-get-warrants-for-most-cellphone-searches/2014/06/25/e2ff1326-fc6b-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html">a 2014 Supreme Court ruling</a>. But the journalist learned the hard way that the same rules don't apply at the border, where the government claims the right to search electronic devices without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing.

[These migrants died in anonymity, trying to cross the border from Mexico. A Texas doctor works to get them back home.]

That alarms civil liberties advocates because smartphones have become the hub that connects all aspects of a person's digital life. The status quo means the most intimate photos or messages of anyone who crosses the border could end up in the government's hands. It's even more concerning when wielded against people like journalists, who may have confidential information stored on their devices, critics argue.

“[W]e believe that CBP took advantage of Mr. Ou’s application for admission to engage in an opportunistic fishing expedition for sensitive and confidential information that Mr. Ou had gathered through his newsgathering activities,” wrote American Civil Liberties Union attorney Hugh Handeyside in a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu_letter_to_dhs-cbp_regarding_edward_ou.pdf">letter</a> to the CBP and the Department of Homeland Security last week. The ACLU is helping Ou respond to the matter.

In an emailed statement, CBP declined to discuss Ou’s situation because the agency does not comment on individual travelers. However, everyone “arriving to the U.S. are subject to CBP inspection” which “may include electronic devices,” the agency said.

[TSA Instagram showcases the wacky and weird from airport checkpoints]

“Keeping America safe and enforcing our nation's laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully examine all materials entering the U.S.,” the statement said.

The government has long asserted the authority to inspect anyone and anything crossing into the country, according to Rachel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel to the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program. That power is backed up by legal precedent and amounts to an exception to the unwarranted search and seizure protections baked into the Fourth Amendment, she said.

“They can conduct these type of searches without a warrant or without suspicion,” Levinson-Waldman said.

That search power was formally extended to cover things like laptops and smartphones a little less than a decade ago, she said, while legal challenges have been met with mixed results. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security’s office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/crcl-border-search-impact-assessment_01-29-13_1.pdf">found</a> that requiring reasonable suspicion for electronic device searches would be “operationally harmful” while not providing the same level of civil liberties benefit.

[U.S. courts: Electronic surveillance up 500 percent in D.C. area since 2011, almost all sealed cases]

According to <a href="https://www.aclu.org/government-data-about-searches-international-travelers-laptops-and-personal-electronic-devices">documents</a> the ACLU obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the electronic devices of more than 6,500 people traveling across the U.S. border were searched between October 2008 and June 2010, and nearly half of those people were U.S. citizens. CBP did not immediately provide more recent statistics when requested.

The power has been wielded against a range of people, from therapists to engineers, The Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763.html">previously reported</a>. It’s unclear how many journalists have faced such searches.

But the ACLU argues the agency’s treatment of Ou was “unjustified and unlawful,” saying it wasn’t “necessary” or “appropriate” — a threshold set in the statute outlining CBP’s search authority.

Ou said he's unclear about why he was detained. One agent told him his name was the same as a "person of interest" on the watch list of an unspecified law enforcement agency, but later said the name match was not the "official" reason he was denied entry, according to Ou.

[Fearing Trump’s wall, Central Americans rush to cross the U.S. border]

During the interrogation, CBP officers requested Ou unlock his mobile phones so they could search them, he said. After he refused — explaining that he had an ethical obligation to protect his reporting sources — the agents took the devices away, he said.

When the phones were returned hours later, it was clear that someone had tampered with the SIM cards and potentially made copies of data on the devices, he said. Because the phones were encrypted, Ou is not sure how much — if any — information they were able to access.

The ACLU is asking that the government destroy any copies of Ou’s data it obtained during his detainment. It is also requesting an explanation for why he was stopped and assurances that he won’t face similar treatment going forward.

Mark Harrison, Ou’s editor and the head of CBC News’s health, science and technology unit, said the news agency has not faced similar problems at the border in the past and expressed concern about the precedent. “This has the potential to expose and compromise confidential sources,” Harrison said. “It goes against the very principles of a free and independent media.”

Another recent incident involving a journalist occurred in July, when Wall Street Journal reporter Maria Abi-Habib said she was stopped and asked to turn over her mobile phones by Homeland Security officers while flying into Los Angeles. The officials backed off only after she referred them to the Journal’s legal team, according to a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153973202893533&amp;set=a.394672588532.173707.506773532&amp;type=3&amp;theater">Facebook post</a> by Abi-Habib.

"My rights as a journalist or US citizen do not apply at the border," she wrote.

San Francisco’s light-rail system was held hostage by hackers - The Washington Post

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was hit with malware that held its computer systems hostage on Friday and caused problems over the weekend as attackers reportedly sought a ransom to release their digital grip on the system.

In a <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/update-sfmta-ransomware-attack">press statement Sunday</a>, SFMTA confirmed it was the victim of ransomware — a type of malware that makes computer data inaccessible by scrambling it with encryption. The hacker then demands payment for the digital key that can unlock the information.

SFMTA said transit services were not affected by the attack.

But fare machines inside the stations were lit up with “OUT OF SERVICE” messages over the weekend, according to the <a href="http://www.sfexaminer.com/alleged-muni-hacker-demands-73000-ransom-computers-stations-restored/">San Francisco Examiner</a>, which was among the first outlets to report on the incident. And trains kept running — with passengers getting a free ride, the SFGate <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Free-rides-for-Muni-customers-after-apparent-10637873.php">reported.</a>

SFTMA said in its statement that the situation was contained. Spokesperson Paul Rose told trade publication <a href="http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/muni-vows-we-wont-pay-ransom-p-2327">BankInfoSecurity</a> that the agency "never considered paying the ransom" and had an IT team able to "fully recover" its systems.

Station agent computers displayed the message “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 ,Enter.” on Friday and Saturday, according to the <a href="http://www.sfexaminer.com/alleged-muni-hacker-demands-73000-ransom-computers-stations-restored/">Examiner.</a>

A person in control of the cryptom27@yandex.com email address took credit for the attack and demanded SFMTA to cough up more than $70,000 worth of bitcoins, a type of digital currency, according to the Examiner.

In an emailed response to The Post, the operator of the address did not mention a ransom, however, and said it had not intentionally targeted the transit system.

“We Gain Access Completely Random and Our Virus Working Automatically ! We Don’t Have Targeted Attack to them !," the email read.

The email described the attack as a “proof of concept” and said SFMTA systems were poorly secured.

The person wrote that they would be happy to “advise” SFMTA on how to correct its security problems. But the apparent attacker also said they would release 30 gigabytes of data — including “employees data” and contracts — they claimed to have obtained in the attack if the transit agency did not secure its systems.

Ransomware attacks have been on the rise this year.

In April, the FBI <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/incidents-of-ransomware-on-the-rise">warned</a> that ransomware infections had hit hospitals, school districts and even local law enforcement agencies. The FBI advised businesses to regularly back up their data so it can be restored if they’re attacked.

One reason this type of attack remains popular is that, well, “it tends to work,” according to Tod Beardsley, senior security research manager at cybersecurity firm Rapid7.

“Regular backup and recovery systems have a tendency to never be tested in non-crises, so oftentimes, the victims are left with two unappealing solutions, they can either attempt to restore from untested backups, or simply pay the ransom for the decryption keys,” he explained.

Yes, the Internet is a scarier place for women than for men - The Washington Post

A new report on online harassment highlights how the Internet can be a scarier place for women than for men.

Women are more likely to be distressed by the harassment they face online and to self-censor themselves, according to the<a href="http://datasociety.net/blog/2016/11/21/online-harassment/"> report</a> published Monday by researchers at Data & Society.

The study found that nearly half of American Internet users have been targeted by some form of online harassment. While men and women experienced harassment at the same rates, women were more likely to face “more serious violations,” according to the report.

For instance, 1 in 10 female Internet users said they have faced sexual harassment online vs. 1 in 20 male Internet users, according to the survey on which the report is based. Women were also more likely to be harassed over long periods of time and subjected to damaging rumors.

That’s one reason women have a more harrowing experience online, according to Amanda Lenhart, the paper’s lead author.

“The tactics applied more often to harassment of women are more varied, longer-lasting and often designed to provoke fear,” she said.

“In many cases, the harassment more often aimed at women has further-reaching repercussions — personal, financial and professional,” Lenhart said.

Women who said they faced online harassment were “almost three times as likely as men to say the harassment made them feel scared,” according to the study — and twice as likely to say it made them feel worried.

Men were more likely to say they weren’t bothered by harassing behavior — and were less likely to describe what they experienced as harassment at all.

Of the people who said they went through some of the harassing behavior asked about in the survey, just 40 percent of men thought their experiences counted as “harassment or abuse” compared with 50 percent of women.

Some of that gap is because of the different types of behavior men and women experience online. But it’s also connected to who has power in our culture at large, according to Lenhart.

“If you generally find yourself in a powerful subject position in your life, these experiences of harassment and abuse do not appear to have the same impact as they do on those who are more often subject to the power and control of others,” she said.

Trump’s pick for attorney general could be bad news for Silicon Valley - The Washington Post

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/jeff-sessions-is-expected-to-bring-sweeping-changes-to-the-justice-department/2016/11/18/f480019c-ad93-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html">attorney general</a> probably wouldn’t have been the tech industry’s first choice.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, is on the opposite side of several issues that are close to Silicon Valley’s heart and related to the Justice Department.

Here are some key areas where tech giants could clash with Sessions if his nomination is successful.

When Apple and DOJ faced off over an encrypted iPhone used by one of the shooters in a mass killing in San Bernardino, Calif., the tech industry <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/google-facebook-and-other-powerful-tech-firms-filing-briefs-to-support-apple/2016/02/28/beb05460-de48-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html">rallied around Apple.</a>

But Sessions came out strong on the government’s side.

“Coming from a law enforcement background, I believe this is a more serious issue than Tim Cook understands,” Sessions told<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-23/apple-fbi-row-spurs-senate-move-to-force-encrypted-data-access"> Bloomberg News</a> in February. “In a criminal case, or could be a life-and-death terrorist case, accessing a phone means the case is over,” he added.

The tech industry and civil society “have really come together to fight mandates for encryption back doors” — and there’s no reason to think that will change if Sessions is attorney general, said Robyn Greene, policy council and government affairs lead at New America's Open Technology Institute.

Reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to require the government to get a warrant to search the contents of your inbox is something Congress (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/30/most-americans-think-the-government-should-get-a-warrant-for-e-mails-right-now-it-often-doesnt-need-one/">and the public</a>) generally supports — even if they haven’t managed to get it done yet.

But earlier this year, Sessions proposed an <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/31427/beware-emergency-exception-loophole-email-privacy-act/">amendment</a> to an ECPA reform bill that <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/senate-judiciary-committee-must-pass-email-privacy-act-without-weakening">alarmed</a> some privacy advocates.

The amendment would have required phone and Internet service providers to hand over data with no judicial process if a government representative says it’s an emergency — amounting to a significant expansion of power for local, state and federal law enforcement.

The tech industry at large says it wants ECPA reform that provides greater Fourth Amendment, or search-and-seizure, protections for its users. Many tech giants — including Google, Apple and Microsoft — are part of the <a href="http://digitaldueprocess.org/index.cfm?objectid=37940370-2551-11DF-8E02000C296BA163">Digital Due Process coalition</a>, a group pushing to update the law to that effect. Basically, the tech industry has been arguing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/05/01/the-white-house-finally-notices-online-privacy-rules-are-decades-out-of-date/">for more protections, not fewer</a>.

The amendment Sessions proposed suggests that he’s not on the same page as Silicon Valley and may advocate for similar exceptions as attorney general, Greene said.

But she is optimistic about the ECPA reform's chances going forward, especially after a package without an emergency amendment like Sessions's <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/27/email-privacy-bill-passes-house-unanimously/">unanimously passed the House</a> earlier this year.

“It’s not clear how much a possible Sessions-led Department of Justice could stop it — at the end of the day, it's the president that has to sign the bill,” Greene said.

Immigration 
Sessions is a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/11/09/sen-jeff-sessions-is-known-for-fighting-immigration-now-he-could-lead-trumps-pentagon/">longtime</a> proponent of more limits on immigration. In October, he <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/indianola/2016/10/25/jeff-sessions-considers-eliminating-h-1b-program/92723844/">suggested</a> that the United States may want to do away with the H-1B visa program, which allows companies to recruit foreign workers if they can’t fill positions domestically.

That puts him at odds with the tech industry, which generally wants to expand that program. In fact, a group backed by Facebook chief executive <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-immigrants-are-the-key-to-a-knowledge-economy/2013/04/10/aba05554-a20b-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html">Mark Zuckerberg </a>called FWD.us supports immigration reform — including more H-1B visas. In 2014, an ad campaign from the group rattled Sessions so much that he <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=7DD783F1-C883-4FB2-8619-4563123FACF3">lashed out at Zuckerberg</a> during a speech on the Senate floor.

Although immigration isn’t a primary part of DOJ’s portfolio, the agency can go after companies it alleges have committed visa fraud — and <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/infosys-settlement-idINDEE99T08I20131030">has in the past.</a> Sessions has pushed for DOJ to do more on that front, signing <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2015/4/sessions-durbin-lead-bipartisan-group-of-senators-demanding-federal-investigation-of-socal-edison">onto a letter last year</a> that urged the agency to investigate H-1B practices at utility company Southern California Edison.

“As the chief law enforcement officer of the country, Sessions would have incredible power to delve into things he thinks are important — and we know he's been outspoken about this,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

Apple will fix ‘touch disease’ in iPhone 6 Plus devices — for a price - The Washington Post

An attendee displays the new Apple Inc. iPhone 6, left, and iPhone 6 Plus for a photograph after a product announcement at Flint Center in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Apple Inc. unveiled redesigned iPhones with bigger screens, overhauling its top-selling product in an event that gives the clearest sign yet of the company's product direction under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Apple is offering a fix for some iPhones stricken with “touch disease,” a problem in which a flickering bar appears at the top of a device’s display and its touch screen stops responding.

The tech company will repair iPhone 6 Plus devices with the issue for $149, it <a href="https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6plus-multitouch/" target="_blank">announced Thursday.</a>

Apple says it will contact people who have already paid the company or an authorized service provider to fix the problem and reimburse them for the price difference.

The problem is caused when devices are “dropped multiple times on a hard surface” and then face “further stress,” the company said.

Repair tech site <a href="http://ifixit.org/blog/8309/iphone-6-plus-gray-flicker-touch-death/" target="_blank">iFixit</a> says the issue seems to be a design flaw: The placement of key touch-screen-related chips causes them to become dislodged “as the phone flexes or twists slightly during normal use,” the site said.

“Touch disease” is also reported to affect regular iPhone 6 devices, but Apple did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether it would be offering similar discounts on repairs for that model.

In August, three California customers <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/30/apple-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-iphone-touch-disease/" target="_blank">launched a federal class-action suit</a> against Apple over the issue. That lawsuit has <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/iphone-6-plus-touch-disease-lawsuit" target="_blank">since expanded</a>, and another suit was <a href="https://www.ksl.com/?sid=41302259&amp;nid=148&amp;title=utah-law-firm-sues-apple-over-touch-disease-problems" target="_blank">filed in Utah</a>. The lawsuits allege that the company knew about the problem but failed to offer repairs.

Now, at least some customers can have the problem fixed — for a price.

Web users’ online rights are on the decline worldwide as governments target messaging apps - The Washington Post

Messaging apps are facing increased pressure from government authorities as online rights around the world are slipping, according to a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016">Freedom House report </a>released Monday.

Internet freedom declined for the sixth year in a row, the pro-democracy think tank's “Freedom on the Net”  report shows. The report looks at online access, censorship and surveillance in 65 countries around the world.

“In a new development, the most routinely targeted tools this year were instant messaging and calling platforms, with restrictions often imposed during times of protests or due to national security concerns,” the report says.

Twenty-four countries restricted access to social media platforms and communication tools between June 1, 2015, and May 31, 2016, according to the report — up from the 15 countries that Freedom House identified the previous year.

WhatsApp was the most commonly restricted service, with 12 countries blocking the app or disabling some of its features, the report says.

In some cases, governments appeared to be limiting access to popular communications tools to make it harder for activists and dissidents to organize, the report says. In Uganda, for example, officials told Internet service providers to block WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook during parts of the country’s presidential election period <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/world/uganda-election-social-media-shutdown/">in February</a> and <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/05/12/uganda-blocks-facebook-twitter-whatsapp/#1DTRujjMkZqb">then again in May</a> around the inauguration, according to the report.

“In both instances, the unprecedented blocking worked to silence citizens’ discontent with the president’s 30-year grip on power and their efforts to report on the ruling party’s notorious electoral intimidation tactics,” the report says.

In another example, messaging app Telegram was blocked in Bahrain for several days around the fifth anniversary of a major protest. The government action was "likely to quash any plans for renewed demonstrations," the report said.

[Brazil’s latest WhatsApp ban is pushing users to other encrypted messaging apps]

Some services, including WhatsApp, earned the ire of governments because they use forms of encryption so strong that their developers can’t turn over the content of users’ messages, even for legitimate law enforcement purposes.

In Brazil, regional courts ordered blocks against WhatsApp three times in 2015 and 2016 “after it failed to turn over encrypted communications to local authorities during criminal investigations,” the report notes — despite parent company Facebook's insistence that it didn’t have access to the information sought by the courts. Those bans were among the reasons Brazil went from being categorized as having a “free” Internet last year to “partly free” in the new report.

Besides encryption, another reason communications apps were blocked or restricted was that their functions can cut into the profits of major state-run or private telecom companies, according to the report. “In the past year, restrictions to protect market interests escalated most prominently in the Middle East and North Africa,” the report says, citing restrictions in nations such as Morocco, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.

Adult FriendFinder hit with one of the biggest data breaches ever, report says - The Washington Post

An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code on a man holding a laptop computer, in an office in Warsaw, in this file photograph dated June 24, 2013. The British government has significant work to do to justify its plans to allow the authorities to spy on the public's internet use, a powerful committee of lawmakers said on February 11, 2016, calling for changes to the far-reaching surveillance bill. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/files

A hack against popular adult dating and entertainment company FriendFinder Networks exposed data related to more than 412 million user accounts, according to a report from breach notification <a href="https://www.leakedsource.com/blog/friendfinder">site LeakedSource.</a>

If the report is correct, that would make the breach one of the largest on record in terms of the number of accounts affected. It also would mark the second such incident at the company in two years.

FriendFinder Networks did not confirm or deny the breach when reached by The Washington Post. But the company said in a statement that it had “received a number of reports regarding potential security vulnerabilities from a variety of sources” and that it is investigating. "Immediately upon learning this information, we took several steps to review the situation and bring in the right external partners to support our investigation," the statement said.

[Yahoo discovered hack leading to major data breach two years before it was disclosed]

The Adult FriendFinder data stretched back 20 years and included information such as usernames, emails, join dates and the date of a user’s last visit, according to LeakedSource. Passwords were also included in the trove -- the vast majority of them featured unsecured protections or none at all, the report said.

LeakedSource said the alleged breach includes nearly 340 million accounts from flagship site Adult FriendFinder, plus data from other sites owned by FriendFinder Network, including Cams.com, as well as records from Penthouse.com, which was sold in February. The cache may also include 15 million email addresses connected to deleted accounts, according to LeakedSource.

The new owners of Penthouse.com said they are aware of the alleged breach. "[W]e are waiting on FriendFinder to give us a detailed account of the scope of the breach and their remedial actions in regard to our data," Penthouse Global Media chief executive Kelly Holland said in an emailed statement.

[Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s shocking win?]

The information was stolen last month using a vulnerability exposed around the same time, LeakedSource reported.

The previous FriendFinder Network breach came to light in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/26/online-dating-is-more-normal-than-ever-but-it-also-comes-with-new-risks/">May 2015</a> and affected 3.5 million accounts. Both that hack and others in the adult industry, such as the 2015 Ashley Madison breach that exposed data from about 36 million users, pale in comparison to the scale of the latest alleged FriendFinder Networks data dump.

In fact, if LeakedSource is correct, only the massive Yahoo data breach disclosed in September, which hit more than half a billion accounts, exposed more user accounts. Unlike FriendFinder Networks, Yahoo is a mainstream service.

Andrea Peterson

Washington, D.C.

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Adult FriendFinder hit with one of the biggest data breaches ever, report says