Searching for trouble

  • Carrier IQ, your smartphone spyware company, is trying to talk its way out of its personal information stealing, but the class-action lawsuits are already arriving.
  • Still having trouble mastering the delicacies of personal branding on LinkedIn? This infographic will show you how.
  • The trouble with current accident avoidance technology is that it's usually reserved to the more expensive vehicles available on sale. That's not to criticize it of course.
  • The latest scams target cellphones and social networks. Here's how to protect yourself. Consider "grandparent scams," in which con artists call senior citizens, often late at night. One of them poses as the victim's grandchild, often sounding like they are sobbing or extremely upset and say they are in jail or in trouble and need cash right away. "All scams have an emotional hook," says Peter Ziverts, vice president of policy development at Western Union. He says to be suspicious of requests that insist you send money by wire without allowing a check or PayPal option.
  • In the future, smartphones and tablets could allow access at the sight of their owners face or a single touch.
  • If even your grandmother is on Twitter, you can bet terrorists are too. And that's what got the micro-blogging service in trouble this weekend, as an Israeli legal group threatened to sue Twitter for allowing terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab and Hezbollah to use its services. "It has come to our attention that Twitter Inc. provides social media and associated services to such foreign terrorist organizations," wrote Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center. "Please be advised that (doing so) is illegal and will expose Twitter Inc. ...
  • Welcome, kids, to TIL – Today I Learned. Today’s TIL is “Don’t post your correspondence with AppleCare representatives or Apple will totally tell the government on you.â€? David Boles had a nice Apple monitor that died on him. He had a little trouble transferring AppleCare coverage to his new monitor after it pooped out and posted some advice on his blog. Nothing major, just “don’t forget to connect your AppleCare accounts.â€? Very innocuous.
  • In a potentially troublesome decision, a federal district court has found that a start-up violated anti-spam and computer crime laws by creating and marketing a browser to let users view their social networking accounts in one place. The case demonstrates the difficulties facing those who seek to empower users to interact with closed services like Facebook in new and innovative ways.
  • Dell has trouble envisioning a long-term market for 11.6-inch gaming PCs and is apparently discontinuing its Alienware-brand M11x laptop, but when it comes to Ultrabooks, the OEM needs no further convincing than its XPS 13. The XPS 13 is supposedly selling so well that Dell is can't build the things fast enough.
  • Even as the Air Force searches for the reason pilots are getting sick flying the F-22, a new mystery about the troubled stealth fighter jet has come to light: Why are mechanics on the ground getting sick in the plane as well?