Yahoo!News reveals that “German ministers agreed on Thursday to update data protection laws for the digital age in the wake of scandals showing how easily personal details can be bought on the Internet.  The new dangers were brought home in mid-August when a former call centre worker handed authorities a CD containing the bank details of 17,000 people that he said his employer had procured from a lottery firm.  The whistle-blower, Detlef Tiegel, boasted that he had the details of 1.5 million others, and after a series of similar revelations it became clear that what the 36-year-old had revealed was only the tip of the iceberg.”

In a different article, Yahoo!News reports that “

[t]he popular social networking Web site Facebook has agreed to test replacing its own link for reporting abuse with a bigger one developed by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.  Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Facebook will display a "Report Abuse!" icon on a small fraction of its pages that display videos instead of its own link for reporting objectionable material.  Users that find offensive material may click on the icon to receive safety tips, a place to report the user to Facebook and the option to block the offender.”

According to the Mercury News, Apple and its U.S. wireless partner AT&T are being sued for selling too many iPhones by a customer who says the high-speed phone network has been ‘overloaded’ and unable to deliver promised performance.  The iPhone 3G, designed to work with AT&T’s faster third-generation network, switches over to slower networks because of the ‘high volume of 3G iPhones sold,’ according to an Aug. 29 complaint filed in San Diego. Plaintiff William J. Gillis Jr. is seeking class-action, or group, status on behalf of other users.”

BBC News points out that “Google has rescinded an article of the user agreement for its new browser, Chrome, released on Tuesday.  The initial agreement claimed rights over ‘any Content which you submit, post or display on or through’ the browser.  Google reworded the agreement on Wednesday, leaving those rights in the hands of Chrome’s users.”

In a different article, BBC News writes that “[t]he summer saw a surge in the number of hijacked home PCs or ‘zombies,’” according to security experts.  The Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks zombie numbers worldwide, said it had seen at least a threefold increase in the last three months.  More than 450,000 computers are now part of zombie networks, or botnets, run by hi-tech criminals, it said.  The rise is believed to be linked to attacks that booby-trap websites to try to infect the machines of visitors.”