The world's third largest bot net, known as Grum and  thought to be responsible for around 18 per cent of the world's email spam, has been shut down. While the confirmation of the downing was made by security firm Fireeye, several other groups were also involved, including: anti spam network …

Senators in the US have been grilling Facebook's privacy and policy manager Rob Sherman, over the company's facial recognition technology. While they saw little wrong with the traditional manual photo tagging tools made available to users, the Senate was keen to learn more about Facebook's tag suggestions: how they work …

Vivendi SA, the company with a 61 per cent stake in Activision Blizzard, has purportedly called in the assistance of both Barclays and Goldman Sachs to help facilitate and broker the sale of the publishing house, though to whom, is currently unknown. One of the rumours circulating around sites like …

YouTube has announced new privacy pro feature that allows video uploaders to blur the faces of everyone in a video with just a simple click. According to the blog post detailing the feature, the idea is to allow anonymity for those that need or deserve it. Examples given include children …

While many companies have been centered in the sights of copyright lobbyists over the past few years, one of the biggest that performs the same sort of search functions as many a torrent site, Google, seemed to skate by with ease – presumably because in most instances its staggering financial …

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn, is set to open a new fabrication plant in Indonesia, that will purportedly cost around a billion dollars to build. However once created, it's said that it will open up a million jobs for the local inhabitants. This would be a welcome investment in the region, where …

Blizzard has announced in a forum post that in order to curb bot farming, it will be reintroducing limits on gameplay in Diablo III, namely how many games a player can create within a certain period of time. While the idea is to prevent people from using automated bots to …

Following on from the Amazon river safari and its whistlestop tour of certain Antarctic areas in 2010, Google's Streetview has now added a host of new images to its library, making it possible to further explore the region. Now available are shots of Shackleton, Scott's Hut, the South Pole telescope, …

Feeling the serious threat that Netflix poses to its movie business in the UK, BSKYB is set to launch a new service called Now TV tomorrow, 17th July, offering movies on the PC, Mac and some Android devices. Day one, the service will offer 600 films and access to 11 …

Two of the biggest BitTorrent trackers in the world, OpenBitTorrent (OBT) and PublicBitTorrent (PBT) have gone offline to protest a silence by the makers of Utorrent, over a money saving protocol enhancement – or lack thereof. Being not-for profit trackers, both OBT and PBT are sensitive to waste, especially when …

The auctions for the original World of Warcraft server blades have now been completed, with Blizzard raking in an impressive $300,000 (£212,000) from the sale. Beginning in October last year, Blizzard has been trickling the blade's onto auction site eBay, with all proceeds going to the St. Jude Children's Research …

OldTweets was launched this week, providing users with the opportunity to look back to the first year of social network Twitter, to see what early adopters were talking about. While this might seem like a very dry way to spend your time, it has some interesting aspects that are worth …

Two new screenshots for GTA V have appeared online as part of a Rockstar QnA session with fans. These aren't fakes either, but full blown official images released by Rockstar itself – and they look very pretty indeed. The question that prompted the release was “why don't you give us more …

The administrator of several Italian file sharing websites has been arrested after selling on the information of some 300,000 of his users. While the sites themselves were shut down last November, with such a number of users between them, the owner who went by the online pseudonym of Tex Willer, …

Despite a European court ruling last week, that validated the resale of games from a digital download platform, Valve has announced that it plans to make no changes to its current setup on Steam – squashing the hopes of those looking to make a quick buck on their old game …

Google is set to team up with Marvell and OnLive, to deliver a cloud gaming experience from within its TV sets. To handle the remote gameplay, Google will be relying on Marvell's ARMADA 1500 chipset. According to the trio of firms, ARMADA is “the ideal processor to power tomorrow's ‘smart' …

The Pan European Game Information (PEGI) system of classifying games is set to come into effect on the 30th of July, after years of delays. Currently the UK uses a mixture of the traditional British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rating – but only if it contains mature content – …

Fan funding website Kickstarter is set to debut in the UK soon, according to the website's official Twitter feed. While so far the British have only been able to send dollars overseas to back American based projects, in the near future ones based on the isle will be able to …

Greenhost, a webhost in the Netherlands has been issued a court order to take down its Pirate Bay proxy, a service that showcased the abilities of the company's plugin ‘Repress'. Repress was designed as an anti-censorship tool and turns any WordPress blog that uses it into a fully working proxy. …

Software giant Microsoft has a new company to merge with its already multitudinous collection: Perceptive Pixel. Specialising in multi-touch displays and software development, the company was announced as a new Microsoft acquisition by Steve Ballmer, with it being made clear that the buy was part of Microsoft's Windows 8 release …

Microsoft's Xbox Live platform has gone down. Apparently the software giant is aware of the problem as the service status page has been updated with errors and explanations, but no reason has been given for the downtime as of yet. It appears to have been unintended. At the time of …

A rumour has emerged that Amazon could be developing a smartphone to compete directly with Apple's iPhone. Foxconn is said to be working with the retailer on the production of the handset, while other claims suggest Amazon is attempting to buy up wireless technology patents in an effort to avoid …

Despite copyright lobbyists like the British Phonographic Industry cheered when many European nations announced their intention to block torrent search site The Pirate Bay, a Dutch ISP has spoken out about file sharing traffic, saying that in-fact, the number of people torrenting has increased since the block was put into …

Internet meme and creepypasta regular Slender Man, has become the antagonist of a new game simply titled Slender. Currently in development by Parsec Productions, the game involves the player making their way through a forest at night, discovering several outbuildings and vehicles, often which have a post-it note attached too …

Square Enix, the company that has so frequently denied having anything to do with a remake or re-release of its most beloved of games, Final Fantasy VII, has now confirmed its plans to make a new PC version of the game available. This echos what was said on a now …

Members of European Parliament have sunk the ACTA ship, voting to reject the treaty and make it un-enforceable by member nations. While there is still the potential for countries outside the EU to enact it, it would take a large majority to successfully pass it and with the consensus on …

Rape. Beyond the brutal act, simply the word itself is expressive and emotion invoking; though it has multiple connotations in today's world. It can describe a horrific sexual assault, or even that someone has logged into a Facebook account and made the user seem to say something foolish. It can …

And legal council. We covered the overt threat from Google towards Youtube ripping site Youtube-MP3.com last month, where it was made clear that should it not shut down voluntarily, Google would be forced to bring to bear its staggeringly well funded legal team. Instead of bowing to this potential tidal …

Regardless of the license agreement signed by the end user, the purchaser of software has the right to sell it on, an EU court as ruled. While this declaration was made with regards to software in general, by their very nature games are applicable. The ruling was made by the …

The Beats brand, founded by Hip Hop artist Dr Dre and now with HTC as its majority share holder, has announced the acquisition of music streaming service MOG. Using a platform similar to the ever more popular Spotify, MOG offers a library of some 16 million songs, listenable to for …