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.

A Federal court in San Jose has rejected Apple’s request for a dismissal of the class action lawsuit against Apple initiated by an angry parent whose child was able to purchase $200 worth of in-app purchases through a free app. Garen Meguerian, the lead plaintiff in the case, says that his daughter was able to purchase the $200 worth of “zombie toxin” and “gems” without his knowledge or permission.

Much of the technology world was stunned to learn that an antitrust lawsuit against technology giant, Apple Inc, and several book publishers, was filed by the US. Government Wednesday morning. The lawsuit charges that Apple and the named publishers conspired to raise the retail prices of electronic-books in order to shun the competition, namely Amazon.com, who many say has monopolized the e-book industry.

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.

A Federal court ruling this week by Judge Robert Blackburn, of Peyton, Colorado, says that you can be ordered by the court to provide the password to decrypt encrypted data, or face contempt of court, and that being forced to reveal your passphrase does not violate the Fifth Amendment (the 5th Amendent includes, among other things, the right against self-incrimination). In the ruling, Judge Blackburn ordered Ramona Fricosu, whose laptop hard drive is encrypted with PGP, and who is charged with taking part in a mortgage scam, including charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, to decrypt her hard drive or face, among other sanctions, contempt of court.

When is your Twitter account (or Facebook or other social media account) not your Twitter account? At what point does your work-related use of your social media account convert that account to your employer’s intellectual or other property? Noah Kravitz is being sued by his former employer, PhoneDog, over what is now, in theory, Kravitz’s personal Twitter account. An account which he says he converted to his own use with PhoneDog’s blessings, only to have them turn around and bite him in the back. Kravitz used Twitter while he worked for Phone Dog – using the Twitter handle @PhoneDog-Noah – and when he stopped working for PhoneDog he changed his Twitter ID to @noahkravitz – but it was the same account, with the same followers – 17,000 followers – and PhoneDog now claims that Kravitz’s Twitter account is actually their intellectual property, and that a Twitter account by any other name is still theirs. But there is way more to this story.

You knew that Facebook uses you in their advertising, right? Those sidebar advertisements (so called “sponsored stories”) where you often see your friends featured – “So and so likes this advertiser” – they do that with your likeness too. We have often ranted about it – now someone is doing something about it: In the case of Fraley v. Facebook plaintiff Fraley and others are suing Facebook in a class action suit, and the Federal court has approved Fraley versus Facebook moving forward. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh agreed that there was a chance that the plaintiffs could win their case based on claims that Facebook has committed fraud, and violated California law with unauthorized use of their image and name, in using Facebook friends’ images and names in advertising displayed in the Facebook sidebar.

In a lovely “we told you so” moment, we can report that two key Federal agencies – both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) – are opposing the planned merger of AT and T and T-Mobile. We predicted Federal opposition to the merge when AT and T first announced their plans to takeover T-Mobile, and the Feds are opposing the merging for much the same reasons that we said that they would.

Facebook is being sued over its using its ability to track Facebook users’ Internet browsing history even while they are logged out of Facebook. The Facebook lawsuit, filed in Federal court in Mississippi on October 12th against Facebook, Brooke Rutledge claims that, among other things Facebook is in direct violation of U.S. Wiretapping laws. But perhaps more to the point, it is in violation of treating its users with common decency, following them with Facebook super cookies and the like. The complaint also seeks to turn the lawsuit into a class action, so others can join the law suit.

If the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has its way, the proposed merger between AT and T and T-Mobile will be vetoed, because it will create a monopoly in violation of antitrust law. According to papers filed by the DOJ in Federal court, “AT and T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.”

The United States Justice Department has announced today a settlement in which Google will forfeit $500 million for leading users to Canadian pharmacies which illegally sell and send prescription drugs to consumers in the United States, without requiring proof of a prescription.

The Huffington Post (which variously also goes by HuffPost, Huff Post, HuffPo, or Huff Po), is being sued in a class action law suit by its own bloggers. The lawsuit, which names Ariana Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, the two co-founders of the Huffington Post, as defendants, alleges deceptive business practices and unjust enrichment. AOL, which recently acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million (which is what triggered the lawsuit) is also a named defendant.

A few months ago we wrote about the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed “Do Not Track” list and legislation. One of the biggest invaders of your privacy is cookies that track you, and that respawn after you (think you) have deleted them, or, as they are known, “Zombie Cookies” (so-called because they come back from the dead). As defined in Wikipedia, “a zombie cookie is any HTTP cookie that is recreated after deletion from backups stored outside the web browser’s dedicated cookie storage.” Variations on this theme include the Adobe Local Shared Object (LSO) cookie, and the Evercookie. There was a Zombie cookie law suit last summer, levelled against such industry giants as ABC, NBC, MTV, ESPN, MySpace, and Hulu, alleging that they were using Zombie cookies that respawned after being deleted because their backups were being stored in Flash. That technology was provided by Quantcast, who was the lead defendant in the Zombie cookie lawsuit. Not long after, the FTC announced their “Do Not Track” legislation proposal, and now Consumer Reports is asking their members to contact their Congressmen in support of the proposal.

Online dating giant Match.com has been sued, again, this time in Federal court in Texas. The lawsuit alleges that fewer than half of all singles profiles listed on Match .com are legitimate, with more than half of the profiles being either those of previous Match customers who had cancelled their accounts or, even, scam profiles.

Earlier this year, Google was sued over its Google Buzz service. The Google Buzz lawsuit alleged that, among other things, with the rollout of Google Buzz, Google was in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Part of the issue was that when Google flipped the switch on Google Buzz, they had automatically created a social network for each of their Gmail users, assigning ‘followers’ to their Gmail users. The followers could see the users’ activities in other Google properties such as Picasa and Google Reader. In at least one known instance, that had the effect of suddenly allowing a woman’s abusive ex-husband to follow her Google Reader conversations with her new boyfriend.