investigate

Google has found itself in the middle of another privacy probe.

The Web giant is under investigation by U.S. and European regulators for bypassing user privacy settings in Apple's Safari Web browser, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. In a practice it has since ceased, Google used special code to get around Safari's privacy controls in order to track users on computers and mobile devices.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is reportedly looking into whether the Google's action violated a 2011 settlement agreement between the agency and the company over privacy concerns … Read more

The torrent-downloading site The Pirate Bay announced last week in a blog post that the Swedish authorities had launched a new criminal investigation into its activities.

"The Swedish district attorney Fredrik Ingblad initiated a new investigation into The Pirate Bay back in 2010," the blog said. "Information has been leaked to us every now and then by multiple sources, almost on a regular basis."

Today, the torrent news site TorrentFreak confirmed that the Swedish police were looking into The Pirate Bay. Apparently, authorities requested that the Swedish hosting company Binero, where The Pirate Bay is registered, … Read more

Along with being home to Silicon Valley, California is also an epicenter of cybercrime.

That led California Attorney General Kamala Harris to announce today the creation of a new state Justice Department unit to combat crimes that enlist technology.

The eCrime unit aims to "make sure that vulnerable populations are safe, that consumers are safe, and that we allow good behavior to occur," Harris said at a news conference in San Jose, Calif (see video of news conference below). "But where there are predators and predatory practices, we want to ensure we have the skills and technology … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that Apple and a group of publishers colluded on e-book pricing, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general," Sharis Pozen, acting antitrust chief at the Justice Department, said at a congressional hearing in the agency's first public confirmation of the investigation.

Apple declined to comment on the matter.

The European Commission cited Apple, which sells iBooks, and five publishers yesterday in a probe into alleged anti-competitive practices in Europe. Apple and the … Read more

European regulators have begun scrutinizing whether Samsung was fair in matters concerning the overlap of standards and patents, the latest development in a global legal battle with Apple over smartphone technology.

Lawsuit watcher Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents spotted the move in an Apple court filing. The Apple filing said, "Samsung's litigation campaign and other conduct related to its declared-essential patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung's behavior violates EU competition laws."

And the EC confirmed the move in a statement to CNET: "The Commission … Read more

Editor's note: Since this story was published, we have learned that multiple arrests have been made as part of the investigation. Read the most current news here: "FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation"

The FBI searched homes of alleged Anonymous members in New York and California this morning, CBS News has learned.

A law enforcement source confirmed for CBS News that FBI agents with search warrants conducted raids at four New York residences this morning in connection with an ongoing investigation into the hacking group.

No arrests were made, the source said, but agents seized computers … Read more

Sony has come under investigation as part of a wider probe by the U.S. Department of Justice into the competitive practices of the rechargeable-battery industry, the company revealed in a financial filing today.

Sony Electronics was first contacted in May with a subpoena from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. A company spokesman told Bloomberg Sony is cooperating with the probe.

"Sony understands that the DOJ is investigating competition in the secondary batteries market. Based on the stage of the proceeding, it is not possible to estimate the amount of loss or range of possible loss, if any, … Read more

The German antitrust authority said today that it is unable to investigate the establishment of a consortium set up to buy hundreds of open-source patents from Novell due to the consortium members withdrawing their application in that country.

Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and EMC filed a notification with the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) on December 6, telling the competition authority that they intended to unify under the name of CPTN Holdings to buy 882 patents from Novell (not including the company's Unix copyrights). The filing was the first public identification of Microsoft's partners in the venture, which was announced … Read more

The scandal surrounding Mark Hurd's departure from the world's largest technology company in August has officially drawn attention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal today, the SEC is examining allegations that Hewlett-Packard's former chairman and chief executive passed valuable information about his company's pending acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) several months before the deal was made public in 2008.

But the inquiry into Hurd's actions is broader than that. The SEC is also looking into several things he reportedly did prior to being … Read more