Big tech companies will now be required to pay a 3% tax of total annual revenues to the French government after a Bill targeting GAFA companies — an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — was passed on Thursday. A new 3% tax will be applied to tech companies that make €750 million globally …
Brussels has warned Facebook it will face sanctions unless it changes what the European commission calls its “misleading” terms and conditions. The EU commissioner in charge of consumer protection, Věra Jourová, said she had run out of patience with the social network after nearly two years of discussions aimed at giving Facebook’s European users more …
Google has been with a $5.1 billion fine by European antitrust officials on Wednesday for abusing its power in the smartphone market, in the region’s latest move to rein in the clout of American tech companies. The penalty of 4.34 billion euros was a record, and far larger than the €2.4 billion, or about $2.8 …
In a plenary session of the European Parliament that will be held today in Strasbourg, France, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will vote on a motion for resolution which includes a clause to ban the use of software programs “that have been confirmed as malicious, such as Kaspersky Lab.” This particular ban clause is …
The deadline for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation compliance is fast approaching, resulting in increased searches for the acronym “GDPR” on Google’s search engine. This organic search increase has prompted companies like Adobe and IBM — which offer consulting services — to buy up search terms, driving up the price of keywords. Since …
The EU in Brussels has warned Twitter and Facebook to give users more clarity about when they take down content and delete accounts to comply with Europe’s consumer protection laws. Social media platforms had been urged to change their terms and conditions to allow users to report incidents of scamming, have the right to take …
The European Commission has suggested that law enforcement authorities could soon have restricted access to the WHOIS database that identifies website owners because the system is on a collision course with the EU’s strict new data protection law. Law enforcement authorities have complained to the Commission about plans to change the system in May because …
This May, a sweeping new data protection law will go into effect across Europe that will change the way tech companies do business anywhere on the continent. It’s called the General Data Protection Regulation, and it is designed to unify all the different privacy policies maintained by European Union states into a single set of …
Smartphones with pre-installed advanced tracking software are on sale in Britain to help employers to snoop on their staff. The devices can be bought in bulk and sold on to unwitting customers, who would have no indication that their messages, location, app usage, call histories, photographs and emails were being monitored at all times. UK …
Social media firms will be required to delete information on children and adults when asked under new laws aimed at giving people a greater “right to be forgotten” online. The Data Protection Bill will make it simpler for people to control how companies use their personal details, with extra powers for the information watchdog to …