Internet & Websites News - Page 29

We all remember the days of MySpace, and if you don't... well, you're probably too young. The social network has been hacked, with over 360 million passwords taken.

The 360 million passwords are being sold, of course, with the hacker being the same one who was selling the data of the 160 million users that were hacked on LinkedIn recently. The data was taken by a hacker called Peace, as well as LeakedSource, a search engine of hacked data.

The credentials haven't been shared just yet, but to verify the data, Motherboard gave the email addresses of five MySpace users and LeakedSource "was able to send back" passwords on all five accounts. The database has 427,484,128 passwords, but only 360 million emails that had a second password attached. Each of the 360 million records contain "an email address, a username, one password and in some cases a second password".

Mostly in line with earlier rumors, Twitter has confirmed that media and @names in replies won't count toward its 140 character limit before too long.

A source previously indicated links wouldn't count either, and while that's not specifically pointed out by Twitter in its blog post, it does say it's "exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising [the service's] unique brevity and speed."

Other changes include the ability to retweet and quote yourself with a simple button click, and new tweets (not replies) that begin with @name will reach all of your followers, eliminating the need for the ".@name" workaround. The latter is good if that's what you want, but bad if you want to privately ask a question, for example; hopefully Twitter creates an option to enable or disable this behaviour, whether per tweet or globally.

AT&T began data capping its U-Verse broadband customers back in 2011, although it didn't enforce its new rules. That changes this week as May 23 has arrived: the date the company said it would begin enforcing caps.

Whereas the cap was 250GB per month in 2011, that's been increased to 300GB for those with 768 Kbps-6Mbps plans; 12Mbps-75Mbps plans will have a 600GB cap, and 100 Mbps-1Gbps means a 1TB cap. Should you exceed the limit (and you'll receive plenty of e-mail warnings before you do), you'll be charged $10 for each 50GB of extra data. Alternately, you can pay a flat $30 extra per month for unlimited data.

AT&T says about 4% of its customers go over the new limits.

Netflix has launched its speed test site Fast.com. Like Speedtest.net (which it links to for comparison purposes), it tells you your current download speed with a brief data test. In this case, the data is downloaded from Netflix servers.

Unlike with Speedtest.net, the test is extremely quick, the site pretty much only features the test itself, and it elects to nix upload speed and ping results, saying it's aimed at consumers of data who want a quick, straightforward tool (which makes sense given a lot of people will learn about it through Netflix).

The company says the results should be similar to what you see with Speedtest.net, so it's not about more accurate results, but simplicity and time.

Google is set to soon integrate shopping advertisements into its image searches on mobile.

"The most common feedback people have left with Google Images is, 'I like these products - how much do they cost and where can I buy them?'" says Google's VP of shopping Jon Alferness.

When you search for an image on your phone like say, couches, sponsored links with couch prices will show up. If you want more specific links, you can sort by colour, type, location, and store.

Fans of football young and old will have the opportunity to easily discover or relive historic games in NFL history soon. The league is currently negotiating a renewed deal with YouTube whereby it will provide three full, classic games for each of the 32 teams for a total of 96 games; all will be available through the NFL YouTube channel, which currently boasts nearly one billion total views.

No exact date is set for the release of the full games yet, but the league says it will be sometime before the start of the new season (September 8).

The deal will also see highlights for games in progress show up in Google searches for NFL teams in a dedicated box that will also include information like broadcast time, kick-off time, and current score.

Google is banning payday loan ads which require borrowers to pay back money within 60 days, as well as ads for loans with an annual percentage rate (APR) of 36% or more. As of July 13, they won't be seen on sites served by AdSense, or at least they'll be seen less (Google says it will monitor the effectiveness). Advertisements for mortgage loans, car loans, student loans, commercial loans, and credit lines won't be affected.

The company states such services and advertisements are predatory and can result in borrowers ending up in a worse financial situation than before they took out the loan, a sentiment echoed by others.

"This new policy addresses many of the longstanding concerns shared by the entire civil rights community about predatory payday lending," says Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "These companies have long used slick advertising and aggressive marketing to trap consumers into outrageously high interest loans - often those least able to afford it."

Amazon is opening up its Prime Video service to everyone today, allowing content creators to make money a la YouTube with a sub-service it calls Amazon Video Direct.

Said content will be available to Prime's tens of millions of users at no extra charge, to Amazon users as supported by ads, and through the Streaming Partners Program as an add-on; rentals and one-time purchases are also a distribution option for creators.

Earnings rates are competitive with YouTube (the same in some cases) and can be maximized with included performance metric tools.

HBO has stepped up its measures to fight Game of Thrones piracy, following the hiring of anti-piracy partner IP Echelon.

Recently, thousands of copyright infringement warnings have been sent out to those pirating the first episodes of the show's sixth season; the company is also requesting takedowns to torrent sites (some of which have removed the torrents in as little as a few minutes -- much quicker than usual), and encouraging ISPs to take action against alleged pirates.

The requests in question also highlight the legal method, something new to these kinds of statements.

Spotify already offers music videos and TV show clips through its streaming service, and will soon offer original TV shows as well. The episodes on offer will range from a few minutes to 15 minutes and will be available to all Spotify users -- premium or not -- that live in the US, UK, Germany, and Sweden. All will be focused on music, and some will tie into albums.

"Music will always be most important, but our audience likes us and wants more from us," said Tom Calderone, Spotify content partnerships chief. "We have to figure out a second act, and I think it will come out of video. The idea is to make sure users know they can come here for something other than playlists."

Calderone joined the company in March of this year after spending 17 years at Viacom, where his put pop stars on the air and rappers on reality TV shows.