EU Google probe encourages investors in Russia competitor Yandex

By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK (Reuters) – The European Union's antitrust probe into Google sparked a big rally in Russian search engine Yandex NV last week, even though the “Russian Google” still faces significant challenges, competitive and otherwise. Yandex has amassed a $6.54 billion market capitalization, mainly by selling advertising against the web browser used on 64 percent of Russian desktop computers. With Russian stocks recovering and the EU looking into whether Google has an unfair competitive advantage, some investors hope Yandex can win more screen space and advertising revenue

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Europol Director: hackers target banks, not customers

By Toby Sterling THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Banks, rather than their customers, are increasingly the main target of online thieves, Europol director Rob Wainwright said on Friday in an interview. “That has been an important change,” Wainwright told Reuters after a conference on cyber security in The Hague.

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Sony Pictures condemns Wikileaks release of documents from hackers

Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment objected to the online release by WikiLeaks on Thursday of a searchable database of more than 30,000 documents that were obtained by hackers in a massive cyber attack last year. “The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures was a malicious criminal act, and we strongly condemn the indexing of stolen employee and other private and privileged information on WikiLeaks,” the company said in a statement

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Factbox: EU charges Google in Internet search antitrust case – what next?

By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission charged Google Inc on Wednesday with cheating competitors by distorting Internet search results to favor its own shopping service, and opened a separate investigation into its Android mobile operating system. When the investigation was opened in November 2010, then Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia set out four concerns. The first, to which Wednesday’s statement of objections relates, concerns the way in which Google allegedly positions its Google Shopping service above rivals’ services, irrespective of its merits

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Clinton to announce White House run Sunday; her fame both bonus and burden

By Steve Holland and Jonathan Allen WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton will announce her second run for the presidency on Sunday, starting her campaign as the Democrats' best hope of fending off a crowded field of lesser-known Republican rivals and retaining the White House. The overwhelming favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton will nonetheless face multiple challenges as she returns to the campaign trail seven years after losing the nomination in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has been a high-profile figure in American politics for more than two decades since her husband, Bill Clinton, won the presidency in 1992, and her fame still eclipses the other likely Democratic contenders and Republican opponents.

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Lufthansa says some frequent flyer accounts hacked

Lufthansa said hackers had managed to break into the accounts of some of its frequent flyers and use their miles to make purchases, just two weeks after British Airways suffered a similar attack. The hackers used lists to try to match usernames and passwords – when one matched, they made purchases using the miles on the frequent flyer’s account.

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China to punish Internet firm Sina over series of complaints

China will punish web portal and social media firm Sina Corp after it was identified as operating the most complained about major website in the country, the Internet regulator said on Friday, the latest blow in an ongoing online crackdown. Representatives from Sina, which also operates China's most popular microblog Weibo Corp, discussed “the issues of breaking the law and the recent large quantity of Internet user complaints” with officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and its Beijing branch, the regulator said in a statement on its website. Since President Xi Jinping came to power in early 2013, he has overseen a broad campaign to bring China's Internet under the government's control

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Amazon sues to block alleged fake reviews on its website

Amazon.com Inc has sued four websites to stop them from selling fake, positive product reviews. In a complaint filed on Wednesday in King County Superior Court in Washington, Amazon said the bogus reviews undermine a system that the Seattle-based online retailer launched 20 years ago to help shoppers using its website decide what to buy

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U.S., European police break up network of 12,000 computers taken over by criminals

Law enforcement agencies in Europe and the United States have dismantled a network comprising at least 12,000 in computers that had been taken over by criminals, Europol said on Thursday. The software used to infect the computers was “very sophisticated” but the network was relatively small compared to others uncovered in the past, Europol said in a statement. Those behind the network or “botnet” infected computers with the software and may then have sold to others the right to install further malicious programs, said Paul Gillen, the head of operations at Europol’s Cybercrime Centre.

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