It's not all that uncommon to see articles on the Web that have clearly been stolen from another source. These acts of content theft, however, are usually done by unprofessional, less than reputable people. With that said, I'm actually quite surprised to see that a writer for a well known online magazine such as GamePro has been caught plagiarizing another online source.

I'm not quite sure how the writer thought he'd get away with it, seeing as many gamers read multiple reviews of a game before purchasing it. You'd think it'd be pretty obvious that many paragraphs were almost 50% word for word with an IGN review. One of the funnier things about the story is that many people from NeoGAF (the site that initially broke the story) actually were upset the plagiarizer was fired. I don't understand why people would defend a so called "journalist" who steals from other journalists. It's writing 101 that you don't plagiarize another person's work.

Anyway, the guy got fired so all is right in the world... for now at least.

A new ruling by a federal judge in Seattle may have significant repercussions in future online privacy litigation. That ruling, made by Judge Richard Jones, held that an IP address is not personal information because it doesn't directly identify a person, but rather, a computer. While this ruling was made regarding a class-action lawsuit brought against Microsoft, the decision could impact everything from future RIAA and other piracy lawsuits to Web and software agreements.

In the referenced court case, the issue at hand was that Microsoft was collecting IP addresses from its software users. Some of those users sued, claiming their personal information was being taken, which was against Microsoft's own user agreement. Now that the court ruled IP addresses are not personal information, it means collecting IP addresses is completely acceptable even if a user agreement says no personal information will be collected. If that sounds scary, it shouldn't.

Many people seem to be up in arms about the ruling, mostly due to unfounded fears they have that they will now be tracked by anybody and everybody online. This is fear is so off-the-wall/conspiracy theory-like that it's hard to argue with people with this belief. Ok, so it may be hard to argue, but I'll try anyway...
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Advertisers using a CPC model (cost per click, where you pay a certain amount for each click) are constantly struggling with click fraud. For those that don't know, click fraud is a practice that usually involves a publisher displaying CPC ads and then clicks on those ads so that they get paid. That fraudulent activity can either by done manually or by an automated program.

Companies that provide CPC solutions, such as Google's AdSense, try to prevent click fraud, but are apparently losing that battle as a new report suggests click fraud to have grown to 17.1% last quarter.
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Identity theft has been an increasing concern for many. With credit card theft, online account hacks, and a multitude of other identity related crimes constantly on the rise, law enforcement agencies seem to always be a few steps behind. For one FBI agent, however, three years undercover proved to be quite a revealing and successful operation.

Mularski, the undercover FBI agent, was able to infiltrate a popular online identity theft black market, where people would buy and sell stolen credit cards, accounts, and machines used for counterfeiting. Not only was he able to grant access to the site while posing as an identity thief, he was able to eventually work his way up to administrator where he was given access to all transactions on the site as well as user information that law enforcement agencies were able to use to track down and arrest 59 people while preventing an estimated $70 million in bank fraud.

It's quite an interesting read so be sure to read the full story.

Apparently a good number of high profile Twitter accounts were hacked and used for various underhanded motives. Some were used to make fun of celebrities, such as Bill O'Reilly's account saying "Bill O Riley is gay" and Rick Sanchez's account saying "i am high on crack right now might not be coming to work today". Other accounts were used to for profit, such as president-elect Barack Obama's account posting a link to an survey where an affiliate makes money per sign up.

The messages all seemed to be written by different people with different purposes, but all happened at the same time which was a weird coincidence. It appears that it may have all started with one person "Gmz", posting the various account credentials on a forum where others likely grabbed them to use for their own reasons.

Obviously impersonating others online is incredibly unethical. Whether you are doing it maliciously to embarass them or to use their influence to make money, what you are doing is wrong. Of course, not only is it wrong, it will likely lead to some nasty consequences if you are dumb enough to target the next president while leaving behind an easily trackable trail in an affiliate link.