Zynga sues Bang With Friends sex app

31 July 2013 Last updated at 07:13 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

The makers of a "casual sex matchmaking app" called Bang With Friends are facing legal action over its name from games studio Zynga.

The app, which launched in January, alerts Facebook friends who express mutual interest in a sexual encounter.

Bang With Friends Inc says it has more than a million registered users

Zynga, which owns games Words With Friends and Chess With Friends, has filed court papers in San Francisco complaining of trademark infringement.

Intellectual property

Zynga says Bang With Friends Inc "selected the name Bang With Friends for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga's game trademarks fully in mind", reports Bloomberg.

"Zynga filed a lawsuit to stop blatant infringement of its valuable 'With Friends' brand," Renée Lawson, the firm's Deputy General Counsel, said in a written statement.

"A company calling itself 'Bang with Friends' - whose own founders played Zynga's 'With Friends' games - decided to gain attention for its sex-related app by leveraging Zynga's well-known mark. Zynga is compelled to file suit to prevent further consumer confusion and protect its intellectual property rights against infringement."

Bang With Friends said it had yet to receive official papers.

"We heard through media reports that Zynga has filed a trademark infringement claim with respect to the 'with friends' part of our name," the company told the BBC.

"As a technology company, we take intellectual property seriously, and will evaluate the case in detail once we receive a copy."

'Cool'

Trademark expert Roland Mallinson, a partner at Taylor Wessing legal firm, said Zynga would have to weigh up whether the legal action would be less harmful to its reputation than any parody of the brand.

"Some parody uses actually support a brand and can make it more 'cool' - but ultimately you want to control your brand and how it is presented," he told the BBC.

"The argument is about some quite generic words - can Zynga have a monopoly on '...with friends'?

"Just because they might have 'Words With Friends' protected does not necessarily mean they can stop Bang With Friends - this would certainly apply in the UK and Europe."

'Offensive content'

The Bang With Friends app was removed from the Apple app store a week after it was initially listed in May but it is still available for Android devices via Google Play.

Apple had pulled the app on the grounds of "offensive content", Bang With Friends Inc chief executive Colin Hodges said in an interview with Business Insider.

"We just want to work with them to get back into their store," he added.

"We feel like our app goes with their guidelines - especially with similar apps that have a matching ability."

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UK blocks car key hack revelation

29 July 2013 Last updated at 08:06 ET

A High Court judge has blocked three security researchers from publishing details of how to crack a car immobilisation system.

German car maker Volkswagen and French defence group Thales obtained the interim ruling after arguing that the information could be used by criminals.

The technology is used by several car manufacturers.

The academics had planned to present the information at a conference in August.

The three researchers are Flavio Garcia, a computer science lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and Baris Ege and Roel Verdult, security researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

"The University of Birmingham is disappointed with the judgement which did not uphold the defence of academic freedom and public interest, but respects the decision," said a spokeswoman.

"It has decided to defer publication of the academic paper in any form while additional technical and legal advice is obtained given the continuing litigation. The university is therefore unable to comment further at this stage."

Radboud University Nijmegen said it found the ban "incomprehensible".

"The publication in no way describes how to easily steal a car, as additional and different information is needed for this to be possible," said a spokeswoman.

"The researchers informed the chipmaker nine months before the intended publication - November 2012 - so that measures could be taken. The Dutch government considers six months to be a reasonable notification period for responsible disclosure. The researchers have insisted from the start that the chipmaker inform its own clients."

Neither VW nor Thales was able to provide comment.

The ruling was issued on 25 June, but the case only gained public attention following an article in the Guardian.

Two-day hack

The presentation - entitled Dismantling Megamos Crypto: Wirelessly Lock-picking a Vehicle Immobiliser - is still listed on the website of the Usenix Security Symposium, which will be held in Washington next month.

Megamos Crypto refers to a transponder built into car keys which uses RFID (radio-frequency identification) to transmit an encrypted signal to the vehicles. This deactivates a system which otherwise prevents their engines from starting.

VW introduced the technology in the late 1990s and it is also used by Honda and Fiat among others.

The researchers said they had obtained a software program from the internet which contained the algorithm devised by Thales to provide the security feature. They said it had been on the net since 2009.

The researchers said they had then discovered a weakness in the code meaning that it could be compromised, and added that there was a strong public interest that the information be disclosed to ensure the problem was addressed.

However, VW and Thales argued that the algorithm was confidential information, and whoever had released it on the net had probably done so illegally. Furthermore, they said, there was good reason to believe that criminal gangs would try to take advantage of the revelation to steal vehicles.

The researchers argued that this risk was overblown since car thieves would need to run a computer program for about two days to make use of the exploit in each case.

They said that removing the sections which VW and Thales wanted expunged would mean their paper would have to be peer reviewed a second time, and they would miss their slot at the conference as a consequence. And they argued that their right to publish was covered by freedom of speech safeguards in the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, the judge ruled that, pending a full trial, the details should be withheld.

Tom Ohta, an associate at the law firm Bristows - which was not involved in the case - said the way the researchers discovered the flaw proved their undoing.

"An important factor here was that the academics had not obtained the software from a legitimate source, having downloaded it from an unauthorised website," he said.

"This persuaded the court that the underlying algorithm was confidential in nature, and bearing in mind the public interest of not having security flaws potentially abused by criminal gangs, led to the injunction."

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Rise in abusive online message cases

30 July 2013 Last updated at 07:14 ET

More than 1,700 cases involving abusive messages sent online or via text message reached English and Welsh courts in 2012, the BBC has learned after a Freedom of Information request.

This is a 10% increase on the figures for 2011, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Nearly 600 charges were brought between January and May 2013, the figures show.

The revelations come as police say they are investigating abusive tweets sent to MP Stella Creasy.

Under the Communications Act 2003, a person is guilty of an offence if they send "a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" by means of an electronic communications network.

The CPS figures show that the number of cases fell between 2010 and 2011, from 1,637 to 1,537, then rose to 1,716 in 2012.

But the CPS could not tell the BBC how many individuals these charges related to nor how many resulted in a successful prosecution.

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A CPS spokesperson said: "We cannot disaggregate offences data centrally to indicate the number of people prosecuted or the outcome of the prosecution proceeding - it is often the case that a person is charged with more than one offence."

Reporting abuse

Ms Creasy received the abusive tweets after publicly backing feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who was also targeted by Twitter "trolls" following her campaign to have a woman featured on a UK banknote.

Both Ms Criado-Perez and Ms Creasy received rape and death threats via Twitter.

On Monday, Del Harvey, Twitter's senior director of trust and safety, blogged that the micro-messaging platform would extend the "report tweet" function, already available on its iPhone app, to Android phones and desktops.

But she did not give a timescale for the change.

Pressure has been building on Twitter to do more to combat abusive messages sent via the platform.

On Monday, Andy Trotter, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers' communications advisory group told BBC Radio 4's The World At One: "They need to take responsibility as do the other platforms to deal with this at source and make sure these things do not carry on.

"They need to make it easier for victims to report these matters and, from a police perspective, they need to know that they can report these things to us."

A Change.org petition calling for Twitter to add a "report abuse" button to its service had attracted more than 71,000 supporters on Tuesday morning.

But while Twitter's rules "explicitly bar direct, specific threats of violence against others", the company says "manually reviewing every Tweet is not possible due to Twitter's global reach and level of activity".

The question for Twitter is how, having made it easier for people to report abusive tweets, it will cope with the potential flood of reports.

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'Hacker heroin frame plot' foiled

30 July 2013 Last updated at 10:23 ET By Matthew Wall Business reporter, BBC News

A respected US-based internet security expert says he has foiled an attempt to frame him as a heroin dealer.

Brian Krebs says the administrator of a Russian cybercrime forum hatched a plan to order heroin, arranged for it to be delivered to his home, then tipped off the police, making it look as if the call had come from a neighbour's house.

Fortunately, Mr Krebs was already monitoring the website and saw the plot being planned in real time.

He alerted the FBI and local police.

"I am little concerned", he told the BBC. "But then there are a lot of things people can do to upset you and get under your skin using a keyboard and few clicks of a mouse.

"But what's the next level?"

The person behind the attempted plot, according to Mr Krebs, set up a bitcoin wallet to accept donations of the digital currency from fellow forum members.

He raised about $200 (£131) worth of bitcoins and used it to buy 12 small bags of heroin using the Silk Road online black market.

The package duly arrived at Mr Krebs's house, and he handed it over to the police.

Hijacked

This is just the latest example of a sustained smear campaign against Mr Krebs orchestrated by hackers and cybercriminals disgruntled at his exposure of their antics.

In March he was visited by a heavily armed police unit tricked into responding to a 911 call that had been made to look as if it originated from his home.

Mr Krebs says he opened the front door to find a squad of policemen pointing a battery of guns at him.

After being hand-cuffed and questioned, he managed to persuade the police they had been hoaxed by hackers.

The informant had used a instant message relay service designed for hearing impaired and deaf people to pretend to be Mr Krebs reporting that Russians had broken into his home and shot his wife.

The phenomenon, known as swatting, after the special weapons and tactics (Swat) teams called out to handle hostage and other dangerous situations, had begun on the West Coast, the police told Mr Krebs, but had been working its way eastwards.

"This type of individual prank puts peoples' lives at risk, wastes huge amounts of taxpayer dollars, and draws otherwise scarce resources away from real emergencies", Mr Krebs blogged.

"What's more, there are a lot of folks who will confront armed force with armed force, all with the intention of self-defence."

Denial of service

Mr Krebs also says his website suffered a major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

This is when a large number of hijacked computers flood another computer server with messages to render it helpless.

The site was taken offline temporarily as a result.

Mr Krebs will be giving a talk about the rise in DDoS attacks for hire at the Black Hat hackers conference in Las Vegas on 1 August.

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UK aims to tackle mobile black spots

30 July 2013 Last updated at 11:03 ET

The government has published details of its plan to provide mobile coverage to 60,000 homes and businesses currently in black spots before the end of 2015.

It has named which parts of the country will share cash set aside for the project, and the order in which they will receive this investment.

It says efforts to identify sites for new masts are already under way in much of Wales, Lancashire and Aberdeenshire.

The Scottish Highlands are among areas where the work will be completed last.

A total of £150m has been set aside for the Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP), which was first announced in October 2011.

The money will be used to buy the right to erect masts on various properties and to pay for the infrastructure itself. The equipment will then be used by country's network operators, Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three.

The government says it hopes the first of the new sites will "go live" by the end of this year.

Phased approach

A map showing which areas are being given priority by communications infrastructure company Arqiva - which is running the project - has been published by the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS).

The scheme has been divided into five phases, the first two of which are already under way.

Areas including the Highlands, Dumfries and Galloway, Argyll and Bute, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Fermanagh and parts of Tyrone are set to be among the last areas dealt with.

But since Arqiva will need planning permission before it can carry out the work, it is possible some places will end up leapfrogging others.

"The project will provide a significant boost to local economies across the UK," said Communications Minister Ed Vaizey.

However, the Countryside Alliance - a lobby group running a "not-spots" campaign - said it was disappointed the government was no longer talking about providing mobile coverage to 99% of the country's population, as suggested by the Treasury in 2011.

"We have previously welcomed the government's investment," said the group's executive chairman Barney White-Spunner.

"We do have concerns, however, that the Mobile Infrastructure Project has been significantly scaled back from its original target, and is now delivering mobile signal to just 60,000 extra premises and 10 sections of A-road where there is no currently signal.

"This falls a long way short of the original target. £150m is certainly a good investment, but we urge government to be more ambitious rather than scale back."

A spokesman from the DCMS responded: "Our refinement work with [communications regulator] Ofcom has indicated that the problem of complete not-spots is not as widespread as first thought.

"There are currently 80,000 premises without coverage, which represents about .3% of total UK premises. The aim of MIP is to cover as many of these as possible, up to the 60,000 announced in the 2012 budget."

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Asda takes Wii U off store shelves

30 July 2013 Last updated at 13:49 ET

Asda says it will no longer sell Nintendo's Wii U games console in its stores.

Customers wanting to buy the machine from the supermarket can still order it online and have it delivered to their homes or to a local store for pick-up.

Asda said rival consoles, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, would still be sold in-store.

This is despite the fact that the Wii U is the newest of the devices having only been launched in November.

The news comes as the Japanese firm revealed that it sold 160,000 Wii U consoles worldwide in its April-to-June quarter - a drop of more than 50% on the previous period.

The device was actually outsold by the six-year-old original Wii which shifted 210,000 units.

Delayed games

The Wii U had been available in about 100 of Asda's 568 stores, but a spokesman for the Wal-Mart owned chain denied the withdrawal was a sign of waning confidence in Nintendo.

"We continue to support Nintendo as a partner," he said

He added that Asda had recently expanded the space allocated to sell Nintendo's 3DS XL and games for the handheld console.

In May, games giant EA said it had stopped developing new games for the Wii U, and Nintendo's company results revealed that sales targets for the console had fallen well below expectations.

Nintendo has blamed disappointing sales on the delayed release of key games, but says new titles, such as a 3D version of the long-running Super Mario series expected this Christmas, should help revive the Wii U's fortunes.

In its latest earnings statement the firm left its Wii U sales forecast unchanged, predicting nine million of the devices would be sold over its current financial year.

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UK completes 4G airwave clearance

30 July 2013 Last updated at 19:00 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

The UK's 4G airwave clearance is set to be completed later this Wednesday, five months ahead of the original deadline.

Engineers are expected to sign off on work in the north-east of Scotland and the Western Isles, paving the way for more super-fast mobile networks.

The spectrum was previously used for analogue TV. More than 270 transmitters have had their signals realigned.

Despite the achievement, most of the UK's networks have yet to set a date for the launch of their 4G services.

At present, EE is the only firm with a fourth-generation network in the UK.

Spectrum sale

EE launched its service last October by using some of the 1800MHz spectrum bandwidth previously used for its 2G services. It also sold on a chunk of the frequency to Three, but made it a condition that its rival could not use it until October this year.

In February Ofcom auctioned off other parts of the spectrum to allow more companies to get involved. These were:

• The 800MHz band previously used by the TV signals. The low frequency is best for providing long-distance 4G services, helping give access to the countryside, as well as offering superior indoor coverage.
• The 2.6GHz band, which had previously been used by operators of cord-free video cameras to send back footage of live events, including London's Olympic Games. The high frequency can deliver faster speeds but across smaller distances, making it best suited for densely populated cities.

Vodafone paid just over £790m for parts of both the two bands.

O2 paid £550m for part of the 800MHz spectrum and Three paid £225m for other parts of the same band.

In addition, EE and BT also submitted winning bids.

'Unfair advantage'

O2, Three and Vodafone had previously opposed EE's early 4G launch claiming it would give the firm an unfair advantage.

Yet more than five months after paying their auction fees, the firms are only providing rough targets for when they plan to launch their next-generation services.

Vodafone and O2 say they intend to begin "this summer". But when questioned they were unable to clarify what they meant by the term.

According to some - including the Met Office - the season runs until the end of August. But it could also mean up to 27 October if used to refer to the day the clocks go an hour back.

Three said it was "on track to launch in Q4", meaning some time in the last three months of the year.

Slow demand

The lack of clarity might appear to offer their competitor a marketing advantage.

Last week, EE announced its 4G service now covered 95 towns and cities offering access to 60% of the UK's population. It added that it had signed 687,000 people up to the facility.

However, some experts believe the other networks have little to gain by rushing out news of their services.

"EE's launch prices were punitive and put quite a lot of people off, which has prevented it from achieving the momentum it could have done," said Marek Pawlowski from the PMN Mobile Industry Intelligence consultancy.

"The user research we've done also suggests few people have seen a tangible benefit. In areas where there isn't much population density the network doesn't exist and in the areas where it is deployed the fact that there are so many people using it means you are unlikely to get the speeds 4G is capable of delivering."

To address such complaints EE is running a price promotion and is rolling out "double-speed" 4G equipment to offer downloads that should average between 24 and 30 megabits per second (Mbps). In theory that is fast enough to download a 45 minute high definition TV show in about three minutes.

"We're on course to cover 98% of the UK's population with 4G coverage by the end of 2014, providing the fastest and biggest network," a spokesman told the BBC.

Even so, others agree most UK subscribers have yet to be convinced they need to upgrade.

"At the moment the demand for superfast data speeds isn't there, unlike in places like South Korea," said David Cleevely, a telecoms expert at the University of Cambridge.

"Most people are using their phones for social networking or email, and when they do use them for video it's often stuff they have preloaded.

"Demand will build as people see their peers using high speed services and go 'wow' - but we don't have the critical mass yet."

Meanwhile as the UK's switchover comes to an end, another European country is beginning the process,

Fourteen counties in Hungary had been given until the end of July to switch off their analogue terrestrial TV transmissions. The others must do so by the end of October.

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HTC warns of first operating loss

30 July 2013 Last updated at 23:56 ET

Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC has warned it may make an operating loss - its first ever - in the third quarter, sending its shares down sharply.

Its shares fell 7% to 159.5 Taiwanese dollars, a near eight-year low.

On Tuesday, the firm warned that it may swing to an operating loss as its revenue projections missed analysts forecasts hurting investor morale.

It said its margins were hurt by "relatively higher cost structure" as well as the "lack of economy of scale".

It said it expects its operating margin in the third quarter to fall to between zero and minus 8% on revenues of between T$50 to T$60bn ($1.7bn-$2bn; £1.1m-£1.3bn)

Most analysts had forecasting a margin of between 2-4% and revenues of close to T$72bn.

Dwindling fortunes

Continue reading the main story

It doesn't seem like the company has any strategy that can turn this around"

End Quote Daniel Chang Macquarie Securities

Once a major global player, HTC has seen its fortunes slide in recent times as it lost market share to rivals such as Samsung and Apple.

It net profit dipped 83% in the second quarter, from a year earlier.

In an attempt to revive growth, it has launched new products - including the HTC One - the response to which, it said, had been encouraging.

"With the help of HTC One, we have regained superphone market share across major markets including China," the company said.

It added that it plans to launch a range of innovative and competitive mid-tier products in the coming months, which it expects will help it "regain momentum and market share in these segments" in the coming months.

While the company said it expected an improvement in the fourth quarter, some analysts were sceptical if it will be able to turn around things in the near-term.

"It doesn't seem like the company has any strategy that can turn this around," said Daniel Chang, an analyst at Macquarie Securities.

HTC shares have fallen 44% over the past 12 months and are trading at their lowest level since 2005.

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Samsung denies phone test trick

31 July 2013 Last updated at 08:19 ET

Samsung has denied claims it deliberately designed its Galaxy S4 chip to perform better in tests used by reviewers than in real-life situations.

It issued a statement after researchers showed the handset achieved a higher graphics processing clock speed when benchmarked by specialist software than when it ran advanced games.

The company acknowledged the two situations created different scores.

But Samsung said its aim had been to prevent users experiencing a fault.

The tests involved the Samsung-designed Exynos 5 Octa chip used in South Korean and other international versions of the handset.

It is not featured in the US or UK editions, which use an alternative chip made by Qualcomm.

Overload protection

The issue was first raised by a contributor to the Beyond3D forum on Saturday.

"Oh hell Samsung, shame on you!" wrote the Luxembourg-based member, nicknamed Nebuchadnezzar.

"This GPU does not run 532MHz; that frequency level is solely reserved for Antutu and GLBenchmark among things."

The reference to the chip's graphics processing unit suggests it was operating 11% faster when running Android and 3D graphics testing programs than it would otherwise achieve.

The claim was then followed up by Anandtech, a review site famed for the detail of its computer chip tests.

Two of its researchers replicated the finding and confirmed the higher frequency only became available when carrying out specific benchmarks.

They pointed out that the discovery had only been made because Samsung made it relatively easy to monitor its mobile chip's GPU clock.

"This seems to be purely an optimisation to... deliver the highest possible GPU performance benchmarks," they wrote.

"We've said for years now that the mobile revolution has/will mirror the PC industry, and thus it's no surprise to see optimisations like this employed.

"Just because we've seen things like this happen in the past, however, doesn't mean they should happen now."

But Samsung has strongly denied the claim.

"Under ordinary conditions, the Galaxy S4 has been designed to allow a maximum GPU frequency of 533MHz," it said.

"However, the maximum GPU frequency is lowered to 480MHz for certain gaming apps that may cause an overload, when they are used for a prolonged period of time in full-screen mode," it said.

"Meanwhile, a maximum GPU frequency of 533MHz is applicable for running apps that are usually used in full-screen mode, such as the S Browser, Gallery, Camera, Video Player and certain benchmarking apps, which also demand substantial performance.

"The maximum GPU frequencies for the Galaxy S4 have been varied to provide optimal user experience for our customers, and were not intended to improve certain benchmark results."

Public indifference?

The allegations have been repeated among much of the tech press, with some publications going so far as to say Samsung had "cheated", "fudged", "rigged" and "cooked" its results.

However, one analyst suggested that in truth such benchmarks and any controversy linked to them was unlikely to have any influence on sales.

"Most consumers look for a smartphone with a great camera, user interface and the apps that they want to use regularly," said Windsor Holden, a mobile industry expert at the consultants Juniper research.

"The criteria the public uses for handset purchase aren't necessarily those which might attract criticism and opprobrium in the technical press."

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Microsoft details Surface's struggle

31 July 2013 Last updated at 10:50 ET

Microsoft has revealed that sales of its Surface tablets totalled $853m (£562m) in their first eight months on sale.

The figure suggests the company may struggle to make a profit out of the product.

It has booked a $900m write-down on the value of unsold Surface RT stock after cutting the device's price.

Its latest financial filing also notes that its advertising budget swelled to promote the machines.

The filing says the Windows Division's sales and marketing expenses were $843m higher in the firm's last financial year than the previous one because of the launch of the Surface tablets and new Windows operating systems.

According to the Verge news site chief executive Steve Ballmer told staff that "we built a few more [Surface RT] devices than we could sell", last week. The firm recently cut the price of the machines by 30%.

The RT designation refers to the fact that the tablets are powered by an ARM-based chip and offer a limited version of the Windows 8 experience.

Users are restricted to running built-in apps or ones downloaded from the firm's own Windows Store. This means they are unable to run titles such as the the full version of Photoshop or the game Bioshock Infinite.

However, the RT versions of Surface are cheaper than the Pro models which are powered by Intel-made chips and run the full Windows 8 OS. The RT editions are also offer thinner, lighter and offer longer battery life.

Many industry watchers have suggested Surface RT tablets were designed to appeal to consumers tempted by iPads or Android-based models, while the Surface Pro was meant to compete with laptops

Legacy software

Microsoft caused surprise when it first revealed it would make its own Windows hardware.

Taiwanese firm Acer said it put off plans to launch its own RT devices because of the competition it would face from the Surface product line.

The move was also reported to be the reason Hewlett Packard decided to make devices running either the full version of Windows 8 or Google's Android OS, but not RT.

Another firm, Asus, did decide to make RT-powered versions of its VivoTab hybrids.

But on Tuesday its chairman, Jonney Shih, told the AllThingsD news site that "the result is not very promising" adding that people still wanted to use a lot of classic Windows software that is not compatible with the platform.

"The problem Microsoft has is that the Surface tablets still aren't as cheap as many of the Android ones out there, and they can't compete with the iPad when it comes to the variety of apps," said Benedict Evans, a tech expert at consultants Enders Analysis.

"The one advantage that Surface has is that both versions of the tablet run Microsoft's Office suite of software - but the programs are still not as touch-optimised as they could be, and the kind of people they would appeal are likely to be more tempted by a laptop.

"While I think the concept of Windows 8 on a tablet will survive, RT might not because you're asking people to buy into a new ecosystem which doesn't support legacy software."

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