John Oates

UN patent body WIPO is advertising for a new IT chief in a move widely seen as a reprisal against the current man in the job who blew the whistle on the dodgy behaviour of his boss. The World Intellectual Property Organisation's chief information officer Wei Lei complained to the chief ethics officer when director general …

Companies that suffer a data breach can expect to see their share price fall by five per cent and watch two to three per cent of customers take their business elsewhere. Researchers at Ponemon looked at the share prices of 113 companies that had lost customer data, tracking their value from 30 days before their respective …

The Conservatives have pledged to introduce a digital charter in the party's manifesto today, which also rehashes a number of familiar-sounding ideas about “digital by default” government and backs the failing identity authentication platform Verify. Under the section entitled “Prosperity and security in a digital age”, the …

The UK's Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has opened a formal investigation into the use of big data analysis during the Brexit referendum. Denham has also written to all political parties warning them to follow data protection and processing rules as they apply to campaigning in the run-up to the General Election …

The European Commission (EC) and the US have pushed back against moves for a wider ban on laptops on aircraft but talks on the subject will continue in Washington next week. Homeland security deputy Elaine Duke met two European Commissioners yesterday to discuss the need for extending the ban to flights from Europe to US …

The European Commission has fined Facebook €110m (£94.4m) for giving misleading or incorrect information about its takeover of messaging giant WhatsApp. There were two separate offences – one when Facebook first notified the European Commission that it wanted to buy WhatsApp and a second when it responded to an EC request for …

Dell's latest BIOS update is bricking some machines – apart from a power light, they refuse to boot up at all, say users. The Texan tech titan's own support forums are filling up with frustrated users who took the support assistant’s advice to download the latest program. Many of those who installed the update now cannot boot …

Beleaguered Canadian train and plane giant Bombardier has signed a six-year $700m contract with IBM to outsource tech management and, er, cut costs – something Big Blue has expended considerable effort doing itself. The aerospace and transportation business last year confirmed it was axing more than 14,000 staff worldwide, …

West Yorkshire police are seeking a giant penis who may have witnessed a serious assault in Leeds city centre in April. via yorkshire police. yes really. inflatable penis costume An image helpfully supplied by West Yorkshire police - almost certainly of a person modelling the costume rather than the alleged witness In the …

The Information Commissioner's Office has fined Fareham telco Onecom Limited £100,000 for sending spam texts. The unwanted messages for mobile phone upgrades were sent between late 2015 and June 2016. The ICO received 1,050 complaints about the spam campaign. Although 944 of the messages did not identify the company, the ICO …

Obit "So what are going to say about him now that he’s gone? Are you going to say he was a good man? Will you be saying he was a happy man?...  Fuck no." Legendary Vulture Lester Haines Lester Haines: 1960-2016 Lester Haines was born in London in September 1960, and was the eldest of five: he had three brothers and a sister. …

Comment The distributed denial of service attack that took down DNS provider Dyn, and with it access to a chunk of the internet, was one of the largest such assaults seen. The attack exploited Internet of Things devices – notably webcams built by XiongMai Technologies. The gadgets had default login passwords that allowed them to be …

NSFW UK comms regulator Ofcom has released in-depth research into the British public’s attitudes to fucking swearing. Researchers found that context is bloody everything and there is still strong support for the 9pm watershed, with less tolerance for anything but mildly offensive language and gestures before that time. Tone and …

Dredgers clearing Portsmouth harbour in the UK have found yet another unexploded Second World War bomb. The 500kg device meant Pompey’s retail and chain boozer park Gunwharf Quays was evacuated at 11pm last night as a precaution. The bomb is being towed out into the Solent where it will be destroyed by controlled explosion. …

The BBC Director-General was forced to intervene in a row over providing children’s puppet Sooty with a lady friend. A documentary on the creator of the Sooty Show Harry Corbett - nephew of fish and chip entrepreneur Harry Ramsden - revealed his suggestion of a female friend for his creation led to a massive row within the …

Update The European Space Agency was set to crash its Rosetta space probe into comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as the final stage of its 12-year research mission at 12.18pm BST today (7:18am EDT). The 19km descent from orbit was to end with a walking pace impact but Rosetta is not designed for landing and is not expected to survive. …

Apple may have dampened down expectations when it released the last set of quarterly financial figures, and predicted revenues down again year-on-year for the current quarter, but at least one analyst disagrees. Ton Sacconaghi, Wall Street analyst at Bernstein, predicts Apple shares moving up to $125 based on his calculations …

US military lunacy department DARPA has begun offering a podcast. This is cautious move from an agency more famous for being well ahead of the technology curve and creating killer laser beams, cyborg soldiers and telepathic control systems. Of course the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) also created much of …

Our attention has been drawn to the work of a plucky reporter Julie Bort from Business Insider, who spent a day shadowing Oracle CEO at its OpenWorld jamboree in San Francisco. Finally – a chance to see the real glamour behind the scenes with a top flight chief exec. The day started with coffee at 8am although we were …

Europol’s annual cyber-crime survey warns that the quality of spearphishing and other "CEO fraud" is continuing to improve and "cybercrime-as-a-service" means an ever larger group of fraudsters can easily commit online attacks. Many threats remain from last year – banking trojan attacks are still an issue for businesses and …

Telecoms regulator Ofcom has written a network tracking Android app so the great British public can help it sniff out not-spots. The app runs in the background gathering anonymous data on network performance, voice call success, mobile data performance and app usage. It downloads a small amount of data every 15 minutes, less …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written to HP Inc demanding it reverse its attempt to prevent any third-party ink cartridges or refilled cartridges from working in its Officejet Pro printers. HP Inc, and many other printer makers, have traditionally sent users a Doomsday warning message when anything but their own …

Just over three weeks after announcing a global Galaxy Note 7 recall, Samsung says six out of ten owners in the US and South Korea have returned their potentially exploding phablets. The numbers are even higher in Singapore, where 80 per cent of owners of the recalled devices have got around to swapping them. Samsung is still …

A German privacy regulator has told Facebook to stop collecting user information from WhatsApp. Hamburg’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information issued an administrative order to immediately stop the collection and storage of data from German WhatsApp users. It also told Zuckerberg’s social media giant to …

A study from Michigan State University has found that a ride on a rollercoaster is just the ticket for those needing help in passing a kidney stone. More specifically, you need to get yourself to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World Florida. And you need to sit at the back. To verify their findings, the doctors …