Amazon in a Luxembourg court Tuesday contested a once-record privacy fine levied against the e-commerce giant for its advertising practices by the diminutive country’s data protection authority. At the hearing in Luxembourg’s administrative court, Amazon lawyer Thomas Berger accused the Luxembourg regulator of attacking the company based on unfound allegations, Bloomberg reported. Amazon’s European headquarters…

France’s privacy watchdog has imposed a €60 million ($63.88 million) fine against Microsoft’s Ireland subsidiary for dropping advertising cookies in users’ computers without their explicit consent in violation of data protection laws in the European Union. The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) noted that users visiting the home page of its Bing…

Fireball: Adware with potential nuclear consequences

Advertising can sometimes be annoying — and sometimes it can be malicious. Businesses that make their money selling advertisements sometimes go too far trying to make sure you see their ads. Recently researchers found that one such business — a big digital-marketing agency — went as far as installing adware on 250 million computers running…

Adware vs. Ad Fraud: Viva la Difference!

Both earn their money in the advertising trade but they each have very different means of operation and targets. Adware and ad fraud are in basically the same business, and neither care very much how they make money as long as it keeps pouring in. But there are some major differences. To understand these differences…