About 12 million domain names were added to the internet during Q1, up 3.8 percent from Q4 2015, domain registry Verisign said Tuesday in a report. The additional 12 million domains in Q1 brought the total number of registered domains to 326.4 million, including 126.6 million domains using the .com top-level domain and 15.9 million using .net, Verisign said. The domain registry said it processed 10 million new domain registrations on the .com and .net TLDs in Q1, up from 8.7 million domain registrations during the same period in 2015. Meanwhile, ICANN said in a report Tuesday that domain registrations using generic TLDs grew by 7.3 percent year-over-year between 2014 and 2015.

Overseas content theft or pirate websites, which expose consumers to malware and other serious risks potentially leading to identity theft, financial loss and ransomware, rely on legitimate North American companies to operate, said a Digital Citizens Alliance study released Wednesday. In collaboration with cybersecurity firm RiskIQ, the study further examined research done in December that found consumers are 28 times more likely to be exposed to malware on content theft sites, which lure users seeking free movies, TV shows and music. The study said hosting and content delivery network companies aren't doing anything illegal and compared them to a landlord renting to a drug dealer who does business from an apartment. "But just like that landlord, more often than not these companies either look the other way or just don't want to know," the study said. It added such companies are contributing to the threat of computer infections and other consumer risks. “Given that our research shows that 12 million Americans are exposed to malware through content theft websites, we are approaching a cyber epidemic that poses serious concerns about the long-term security of Americans’ computers,” said Digital Citizens Executive Director Tom Galvin in a news release. The study said government authorities can ask hosting and content delivery companies whether they "knowingly" help such pirate sites. Agencies like the FTC or state attorneys general can help raise consumer awareness about visiting pirate sites, it said. The group's advisory board includes employees of a national union, Association for Competitive Technology, i-Safe and National Consumers League, its website said.

Congress.gov, the Copyright Office’s website and other Library of Congress-hosted websites continued to experience intermittent outages at our deadline Tuesday after a distributed denial-of-service attack against LOC’s IT infrastructure. An LOC spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that the DDOS attack began Sunday morning and is affecting LOC’s websites, online services and employees’ access to email. LOC announced the DDOS attack in a tweet Monday. LOC is “working to maintain access to its online services while ensuring security,” emailed a spokeswoman. GAO and Congress have highlighted deficiencies in the LOC IT program in recent years (see 1503310046 and 1509080058), and new Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said IT modernization will be one of her top priorities (see 1604200053).

Google received more than 40,000 global law enforcement requests for user data in the second half of 2015, a 35 percent jump from the same six-month period during the prior year, the company said in an updated transparency report. The company said it provided some data on about 64 percent of the requests, roughly the same number over the past several periods. For all of 2015, Google received more than 76,000 data requests, about 23 percent more than in 2014. Google said more than 81,000 users/accounts were specified in the July-December data requests for 2015. That figure, Monday's report said, is "over-inclusive" and doesn't reflect unique users/accounts because it might include, for example, the same Gmail account listed in several different requests or the company might get a request for a nonexistent account. Google said it "decided it is better to err on the side of a greater number." U.S. law enforcement agencies made more than 12,500 user data requests for the second half of 2015, or about 25 percent more than the same period in 2014, with Google providing some data on about 79 percent of those requests, the report said. The U.S. made the most requests, with Germany ranking second with almost 7,500, the company said. Of the U.S. requests, more than 7,200 were subpoenas, more than 3,700 were search warrants, while about 1,000 were for other court orders, said the report.

Mobile apps by Sega and iTriage allowed third parties to collect and use consumers’ precise location for third-party ads without notifying users or obtaining their consent, said the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council in a Thursday news release. The Sega game, Sonic Runners, also raised issues under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which says no personal information may be collected from children under 13 without obtaining parental consent. While the game used an age gate to meet COPPA, the gate didn’t function properly, ASRC said. Sega and iTriage cooperated with ASRC’s Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program, pledging to comply with Digital Advertising Alliance standards in current and future apps. After Sega was notified about the problems, the video game company removed Sonic Runners from app stores and removed all third-party ads before offering it to the public again, while also pushing a mandatory update to all current users, ASRC said. Later this month, Sega will shut down Sonic Runners forever, said the company’s website. The Aetna-owned iTriage committed to stop using location data for ads and agreed to add real-time notice of data collection and use with links to an opt-out mechanism on its app and the iTriage and Aetna websites. They also pledged to be transparent and give users a choice to participate if they decide to allow third-party use of personal directory data or healthcare data for interest-based ads, ASRC said. “Today’s decisions are a win for both consumers and advertisers,” said Genie Barton, director of the Accountability Program.

Two-thirds of Facebook employees are men and more than half are white, the company said in annual hiring statistics released Thursday. Among its entire workforce, 52 percent are white, 38 percent Asian, 4 percent Hispanic and 2 percent black. One-third are women. The company’s senior leadership is 71 percent white, 21 percent Asian, 3 percent black and 3 percent Hispanic. And 73 percent of senior leadership are men, it said. Facebook said 7 percent of employees responding to a survey self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender or asexual. Facebook said 61 percent of employees responded to the voluntary survey about sexual orientation and gender identity. Facebook said it’s doing better at increasing diversity, with new senior leadership hires over the past 12 months including 9 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic and 29 percent women. Over the next five years, Facebook will donate $15 million to Code.org, which provides computer science education to historically underrepresented populations, it said. Facebook said it will encourage recruiters to strive for more diversity, promote an inclusive working environment and support tech education among underrepresented populations.

Millennials will drive much of the future value of smart home energy management, said an Accenture report Wednesday. About a quarter of millennials identified as early adopters, compared with 17 percent in the 35-54 demographic and 7 percent of those over 55. The 18-34 age group attached more importance than older consumers to a personalized experience across digital channels, including social media, and 83 percent would be discouraged from signing up for additional products and services if their provider couldn't provide a “seamless experience,” the report said. The 9,537 online interviews were done this year in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Domain registry Donuts said it's investing an undisclosed amount in Netki's blockchain-based “wallet names” technology. It said wallet names are user-friendly names for digital currency and other blockchain-based applications that are meant to replace alphanumeric blockchain addresses. The investment is Donuts' second via its Donut Labs initiative. The first was to geofence management firm GeoFrenzy (see 1605030047). Netki's wallet names technology uses domain name system security extension to connect the wallet names to the blockchain addresses, meeting “an unmet market need in the rapidly growing blockchain space,” said Donuts CEO Paul Stahura in a news release.

AT&T and IBM are joining forces on an IoT initiative, combining cognitive computing and global connectivity expertise to create open standards-based tools on the IBM cloud, the companies said Wednesday. The tools will allow developers to improve skills while not having to learn new tools, helping to protect investments businesses have made in IoT solutions, said the companies. The demand for IoT technology is creating demand for skilled IoT developers, they said, citing 2016 VisionMobile data forecasting 10 million active IoT developers by 2020. IBM and AT&T are expanding their commitment and investment in open-source based tools, such as Node-Red and the open MQTT standard, essential for creating IoT solutions, they said. Developers will be able to tap IBM's Watson cognitive computing software and AT&T's IoT Flow Designer and M2X platforms, along with access to its global network, they said. AT&T is also working with IBM on a starter kit to speed up development of IoT projects, they said.

Infidelity website Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life Media, hit last year with theft of sensitive and personal records of about 40 million people (see 1507200017), changed its name to ruby, the company said Tuesday in a news release. "It’s a new day at ruby and renaming [it] is an important step in our journey to completely rebuild the company as a relevant, digital dating innovator that truly cares for our customers,” said CEO Rob Segal, who was appointed in April (see 1607050032) with President James Millership. Last week, Reuters reported that the new leaders acknowledged the FTC was investigating the breach but said they didn't know the probe's focus. The FTC declined to comment Tuesday. Besides changing Ashley Madison's tagline and logo, the company will launch new global digital campaign and TV advertising campaigns Monday.