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Zombie hand cookies. (credit: Rakka)

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a $1.35 million fine and give users more control over "supercookies" that identify customers in order to deliver targeted ads from Verizon and other companies. Verizon's use of the supercookies without properly notifying users violated a net neutrality rule that requires Internet providers to disclose accurate information about network management practices to consumers, the FCC said.

Verizon's settlement with the Federal Communications Commission, announced today, stems from an investigation into the carrier's "practice of inserting unique identifier headers [UIDH] or so-called 'supercookies' into its customers’ mobile Internet traffic without their knowledge or consent," the FCC said. Verizon began inserting the identifier—which could not be deleted by consumers—into its subscribers' HTTP Internet traffic in December 2012 and made some limited disclosures in its privacy policy. But the company "did not specifically disclose the presence of UIDH and its uses until October 2014," the FCC said.

ProPublica reported in January 2015 that an online advertising clearinghouse called Turn was taking advantage of the unique identifiers, also known as "zombie cookies," and using them "to respawn tracking cookies that users have deleted." Shortly after that, Verizon said it would offer customers a way to opt out.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s request for an appeal on a ruling that said the company was liable for violating antitrust laws and engaging in price-fixing by letting publishers set prices for e-books sold on Apple's iBooks platform. Now out of options, Apple will have to pay $400 million to e-book consumers and $50 million to plaintiff’s lawyers, as per a settlement that the company reached in 2014.

In 2012, Apple and five publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan) were sued by the Department of Justice and 33 states’ attorney general offices for conspiring to offer e-books at a higher price than Amazon’s loss-leading $9.99. The publishers all eventually settled for a total of $166 million to states and consumers, but Apple held out and eventually lost a judgement in Manhattan district court.

The company then appealed to the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that it had actually boosted competition by offering new-release books for $12.99 to $14.99. "Antitrust laws are intended to foster competition, not keep prices down at any cost,” Apple wrote in a rebuttal to the district judge’s ruling in 2014.

George W. Bush stands next to a Frenchified cardboard version of himself. (credit: The Smoking Gun)

A year and a half after he was indicted, a Romanian man who broke into the e-mail of a family member of two former presidents is set to be extradited to the United States.

Romania's top court approved the temporary extradition of Marcel Lehel Lazăr, also known as "Guccifer" and "Micul Fum," according to a report by IDG News. Lazăr allegedly broke into the e-mail account of an unnamed family member of both former president George H. W. Bush as well as George W. Bush, intercepting images including family photos and self-portraits painted by George W. Bush. The hack exposed other deeply personal information about the family, including family e-mails planning a possible funeral for the older former president, written when he was hospitalized in late 2013.

The Romanian suspect, a former cab driver, will face charges of wire fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking, and obstruction of justice. He has been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia. The Romanian court decision allows him to be extradited for up to 18 months to face the charges.

Storage device manufacturer Seagate's executives informed employees last week that their income tax data had been shared with an unknown outside party as the result of a targeted phishing attack. On March 1, a Seagate employee sent the data to an outside e-mail address after receiving an e-mail purportedly from Seagate's CEO Stephen Luczo requesting 2015 W-2 data for current and former Seagate employees. The employee, believing the request to be real, forwarded the W-2 reporting data—exposing everyone at Seagate to potential tax fraud and identity theft.

The Seagate breach comes less than a week after Snapchat employees' data was leaked in the same way. Security reporter Brian Krebs reported the breach after learning of it from a Seagate employee who had been given written notification of the breach.

Seagate's spokesperson Eric DeRitis confirmed the incident to Krebs: "On March 1, Seagate Technology learned that the 2015 W-2 tax form information for current and former US-based employees was sent to an unauthorized third party in response to the phishing e-mail scam. The information was sent by an employee who believed the phishing e-mail was a legitimate internal company request.” DeRitis told Krebs "several thousand" employees were affected, and that the company is working with federal law enforcement; employees will receive two years of credit protection from the company.

Valery Polyakov looks out of Mir as space shuttle Discovery approaches the space station in 1995. (credit: NASA)

When Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko returned from space last week after 340 days, they showed few outward signs of fatigue. Moreover, they had the self-satisfaction of putting in nearly a year of very hard work on the International Space Station. Their efforts, along with those of hundreds of scientists on Earth, will undoubtedly advance our knowledge of the effect of long-duration spaceflight on human health.

But to call Kelly and Kornienko pioneers in the truest sense of the word, as those who ventured into the truly unknown, would be a disservice to the Russian cosmonauts who did so much more than two decades ago in more cramped, less comfortable conditions aboard the Mir space station.

Before NASA’s one-year mission, four Russian cosmonauts had spent a year or more in space, beginning with Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov in 1987. Russian and Kazakh space officials were quick to remind Kelly and Kornienko of this last week after they landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan.