A US man who sent more than 27 million spam emails to Facebook users has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Sanford Wallace, 47, is nicknamed the “Spam King” and last year pleaded guilty to federal charges including fraud and criminal contempt in connection with using electronic mail. Wallace, who is […]

Chatbots are on the rise, but what are they and why is everyone talking about (and to) them? Facebook is widely expected to launch an app store for chatbots at its developer conference this week. Meanwhile, Microsoft has described chatbots as the “new apps” with chief executive Satya Nadella saying that they “unlock conversation as […]

A new type of phishing email that includes the recipient’s home address has been received by thousands of people, the BBC has learned. Members of the BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours team were among those who received the scam emails, claiming they owed hundreds of pounds to UK firms. The firms involved have been […]

Several large websites have been hit by an attack that made them display malicious adverts that led to some visitors being infected with ransomware. Sites hit included MSN, BBC.com, the New York Times, AOL, Newsweek and several others. The malicious adverts were piped to the sites via four separate ad networks, say security researchers. The […]

Is there such a thing as security so good it’s a danger to society? That’s the bigger picture at hand as Apple continues to fight an order to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. That fight made its way to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee, the government body […]

It all began with a car crash. I was doing some ironing when my mum came in to tell me that a family friend had been killed in a road accident in Thailand. My phone was on the worktop behind me. But the next time I used the search engine on it, up popped the […]

Communications regulator, Ofcom has told BT to open up its cable network, allowing competitors to connect the internet to homes and offices. Ofcom also says that the country is suffering from a digital divide between those who have the latest technologies, and those who do not. It has proposed that decent, affordable broadband should be […]

A new therapy which involves a patient embodying themselves in a virtual reality avatar of a crying child could help with depression, research has suggested. Patients wear a headset that projects a life-sized image, firstly of an adult and then of a child. The new research tested the technology for the first time on patients […]

Designs for passenger pods that could travel through airless tubes have been revealed by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Hyperloop is a conceptual transport system in which passenger pods could be fired through vacuum tubes at more than 600mph (1,000km/h). The MIT team came first in a SpaceX competition to design […]

Many residents moving into newly-built homes are finding broadband services slow or non-existent, an investigation from broadband advice site Cable.co.uk has revealed. It has received hundreds of complaints from owners of new homes about poor broadband. According to the Home Builders Federation, BT Openreach has failed to connect new homes on time. In response, Openreach […]

Bosses have been urged not to indulge in invasive surveillance by reading their employees’ private messages. A series of groups spoke out after Europe’s top court ruled a Romanian man whose employer read his messages had not had his rights violated. He broke company policy by using a work account to talk to his family. […]

Apple is using all of its worldwide network of stores as temporary classrooms this week to teach coding. The technology firm is using its 468 stores as bases for tutorials in the annual “Hour of Code” project. Craig Federighi, one of Apple’s top executives, says he wants to “set off a spark” in young learners. […]

Pub chain JD Wetherspoon says card data of 100 customers has been stolen from a database after it was hacked. “Very limited” credit and debit card information was accessed in the hack in June and it could not be used for fraud, the company said. Other personal details, including names and email addresses may also […]

The security of the UK’s biggest internet service providers needs “major improvement”, according to one expert. Security consultant Paul Moore examined the publicly available information of the UK’s six biggest ISPs. He said he found plenty of bugs that could be exploited by hackers. But he said most ISPs had been in contact with him […]

Vtech, a company which specialises in electronic toys and educational material for children, has had its app store database, Learning Lodge, hacked. The firm said that there was “unauthorised access” to the database on 14 November. The app is a gateway for customers to download games, e-books and other content on to their Vtech devices. […]

It was launched in February 2012 with modest ambitions to give young people a small cheap programmable device – and has become Britain’s most successful homegrown computer. Now Raspberry Pi is getting smaller and cheaper. The latest edition is the Raspberry Pi Zero. It is slower than the full-size version (though faster than the original […]

The FBI has linked a hacker to the theft of 1.2 billion internet credentials – the largest heist of its kind. A hacker known as “mr.grey” is named in court documents filed by the bureau last year, according to the Reuters news agency. The hacker was linked to the stolen logins via a Russian email […]

YouTube owner Google says it will help fund up to $1m (£650,000) in legal fees for some content creators who have received copyright takedown notices. It will step in if it feels their material is considered to be fair use. However the firm admitted that only a handful of people have been chosen to benefit […]