Tag Archive for: fine

FCC to fine Total Call Mobile record $51M for defrauding Lifeline program

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Detailing a litany of blatant, widespread and systematic abuses, the FCC late yesterday announced its intention to fine wireless provider Total Call Mobile some $ 51 million for allegedly creating tens of thousands of phony Lifeline accounts that defrauded the Universal Service Fund of almost $ 10 million.

The fine would be the largest ever levied against a Lifeline provider, according to the FCC.    

The Lifeline program, established in 1996, provides discounted and free landline and mobile phone service to low-income consumers. Derided as “Obama phones,” the program has been controversial and plagued by fraud.

“We reserve the strongest sanctions for those who defraud or abuse federal programs,” said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc.  “Any waste, fraud, or abuse in the Lifeline program diverts scarce funds from the consumers they are meant to serve and undermines the public’s trust in the program and its stewardship.”

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Network World Paul McNamara

TrustPipe fine tunes its security software to target enterprise

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TrustPipe, a startup that made bold claims last year about stopping 100% of network-borne attacks on endpoints, has retooled its software and distribution system in order to better fit into enterprise security schemes.

ridgley evers

Ridgely Evers

The changes it plotted out last fall were so extensive that the company held off delivering its platform to customers, says co-founder and CEO Ridgely Evers. The revised version is available now.

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Network World Tim Greene

Mozilla: We’re not getting money from Google any more but we’re doing fine

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For many years, Firefox developer Mozilla generated substantial income from a sponsorship deal with Google; the search and advertising firm paid Mozilla in return for Firefox making Google its default search engine. That deal was ended last year, with Firefox defaulting to Yahoo in the US, Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China.

Given the prior dependence on the Google deal, this was a big shift for the open source browser developer. Mozilla has just released its 2014 financial report; last year it had just shy of $ 330 million of revenue, 98 percent of which came from its search deals.

In 2014 that meant the Google deal, but now the organization says that it isn’t receiving anything from Mountain View. Although Google remains the default search engine within Europe, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer, told CNET that “We don’t have a commercial relationship with Google at this point.”

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab

1,000,000 lost credit cards = £150,000 fine

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A UK travel company has been fined £150,000 for putting an “internal only” parking database system on the internet without securing it first. The vulnerable system was used as a stepping stone for a crook to steal more than 1M e-commerce records.
Naked Security – Sophos