Myspace (yes, they are still around, believe it or not) has settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission over Myspace’s alleged misleading of their users as to how Myspace was handling user personal information. Put plainly, Myspace was sharing the personal information of their users with advertisers, but misleading users about how they were using their personal information.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined game developer RockYou.com $250,000 for, among other things, failing to adequately secure their customers’ user data. While the FTC slammed Rock You for COPPA (the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule) violations, in part because RockYou collected information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent, the Feds made a point of noting that “the company’s security failures put users’ including children’s personal information at risk” while at the same time claiming that they had adequate security measures in place. Adequate security measures our foot! They stored their user data in plain – i.e. unencrypted – text! The FTC settlement and fine follows a 2 year investigation into the hacking of RockYou servers in 2009 which exposed the date of 32 million users.

The only way that you could have missed the “1 trick of a tiny belly” or “One tip to a tiny belly” ads that have been everywhere – absolutely everywhere – on the Internet would be if you hadn’t been on the Internet yourself. Well it turns out that those “1 tip” ads, some of which tout “Cut down a bit of your belly everyday by following this 1 weird old tip”, are part of a massive network of scams which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has uncovered.

Why yes, we did, not two weeks ago, tell you of a possible T-Mobile merger with Sprint Nextel. However, it seems that AT&T had other ideas, and has made a flat-out aquisition bid for T-Mobile USA, to the tune of $39 billion. You just know that the resulting love child – IF the deal is allowed to go through, as it creates one hell of a monopoly – will have to be called, even if not officially, AT&T&T-Mobile, or, just, AT&T&T.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today published its updated rules governing the publication of endorsements and testimonials by “consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities” (in other words, everybody). The updated rules governing online testimonials and endorsements arguably now cover bloggers, Internet marketers, affiliates, and others who promote (including through endorsing or testimonial) products or services on the Internet. The bottom line is, if you talk about a product or service, and if you put it out on or via the Internet, and if you stand to gain on it, you’d better disclose that relationship.

It had to happen sooner or later. The heydey of the wild frontier Internet, where ISPs had unfettered artistic license to create the landscape they wanted, is over. Like Adam and Eve in the proverbial garden of Eden, it was theirs to lose, and lose it they are about to, it seems. Now, as some Internet providers are moving to restrict bandwidth usage and charge outrageous amounts for “over usage” – much like the phone company once did, legislation has been introduced to regulate ISPs, and even to have a Federal agency oversee them – much like the telephone companies now do.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting ready to issue new guidelines which state that bloggers who review a product or service are under an obligation to disclose to their readers if the product or service being reviewed is a sponsor of the blog, or if the blogger otherwise is getting compensation (sometimes known as “Blogola”, as a play on the word “payola) for the review.

Authorities in the U.S. and New Zealand have coordinated to take down big time male enhancement and supplement spammers Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith, and their Target Pharmacy, Canadian Healthcare, Inet Ventures, Tango Pay, Click Fusion, and TwoBucks Trading spam operations. Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith were the muscle behind what Spamhaus has called “the biggest spam gang in the world,” and they recruited countless affiliates to send their spam through a spam affiliate program called Affking.

We received a note from a reader who was trying to unsubscribe from a mailing, but it gave no option to unsubscribe. Here’s what to do when that happens.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which is the new Federal anti-spam law, only applies to commercial email. It does not apply to the private, personal email which you send