The takedown of the Internet service provider, Triple Fiber Network, comes after a months-long investigation by the FTC in collaboration with other government agencies and industry.

The takedown is an unprecedented move by the FTC and marks an escalation of the government and security community's investigations of the Internet service providers that facilitate online crime.

The ISP hosted the command-and-control servers for the Cutwail botnet, among others, according the security firm Symantec. The security company found more than 600 IP addresses controlled by 3FN that were also launching attacks.

Facebook has rewritten its privacy policy to cut out legal jargon and has indicated it plans to broaden the types of user data it sells to advertisers.

User data will be "anonymised", the new policy says.

"Most advertisers already do this in other places on the web. Should Facebook provide this, we'll continue to respect your privacy by not sharing your information with advertisers, and we'll anonymize any information we receive."

He's back at it, pushing for the UK (and others) to pass laws kicking people off the internet (so-called "three strikes" laws) while insisting that due to piracy there's less money to make movies and fewer movies being made.

The problem, again, seems to be that the folks at the movie studios (just like those at the record labels) only like to count the big hits as successes -- rather than the smaller projects that actually make money and make up the majority of the actual market.

American internet TV service Hulu could stage an abrupt turnaround and begin charging viewers for the right to watch programmes online.

According to News Corp's deputy chairman, Chase Carey, the advertising-supported free-to-air model that Hulu has used so far is not viable in the long term.

AT&T has been one of the biggest opponents of the new regulation, along with Verizon Communications and cable company Comcast. On the other side of the debate are consumer advocacy groups and large Web-based technology companies, such as Google and Amazon.

"AT&T is practiced in spending money on so-called astroturf groups to give the appearance there is widespread support for their agenda," said Timothy Karr, campaign director for the advocacy group Free Press.

The CEO of Russia's No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet's biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world.

"I'd like to change the design of the internet by introducing regulation - internet passports, internet police and international agreement - about following internet standards," he continued. "And if some countries don't agree with or don't pay attention to the agreement, just cut them off."

China has banned foreigners from investing in the country's online games industry "in any form," as a way to restrict content that censors have deemed unhealthy to the public.

The rule also prohibits foreign investors from indirectly influencing domestic online game businesses by agreements or even offering tech support.

The restrictions come on the heels of a wider campaign to shut down online games operating in China without approval and, as it were, containing "unhealthy" content.

A well known security researcher was banished from Twitter for more than two days for including the address of a malicious website in a two-month-old dispatch.

No, it wasn't a direct message, and no, there was no malware involved with the site. And yes, the URL contained spaces to prevent the security challenged from accidentally visiting the site.

As The Reg and plenty of others have pointed out, the site has become a hot bed for come ons that try to trick people into visiting sites that steal their personal information or install malware.

PayPal suspended the account of a white-hat hacker on Tuesday, a day after someone used his research into website authentication to publish a counterfeit certificate for the online payment processor.

"This is not something I had anything to do with, and they responded by suspending my account," Marlinspike told The Reg. "I've been the one trying to warn them of this in the first place."

She didn't explain how they determined programs such as Wireshark and Cain & Abel have legitimate uses and the tools offered by Marlinspike do not. She also didn't explain why Marlinspike's banishment came less than 24 hours after the release of the bogus PayPal certificate.

As part of a bitter and ongoing fight with Canada's large carriers, a group of small Canadian Internet Service Providers has launched a campaign to try to drum up consumer support for keeping key network infrastructure affordable to small ISPs.

The centre of the fight is the network infrastructure built and run by the large carriers. The small ISPs want to ensure that Bell and Telus can't refuse to give them access to the broadband networks or offer them a access at a price that makes it impossible for the small ISPs to compete.