New proposals submitted to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) in Dubai aim to redefine the Internet as a system of government-controlled, state-supervised networks, according to a leaked document, ZDNet reports. The leaked document was proposed by a member state bloc comprised of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.

Microsoft made the beta version of its social network, Socl, available to everyone on Tuesday. Socl initially launched seven months ago, but it was open only to invited Microsoft employees and college students. Now it is open for public and all you have to do is to connect your Microsoft or Facebook account to it. After that you can share content or make comments. The big question is, do we really need one more social network?

In response to a set of Internet eavesdropping standards recently adopted by the International Telecommunications Union in a UN Conference in Dubai, US Congress has voted unanimously in favor of a resolution which opposes any sort of U.N. Internet "takeover", Techspot reports. Incidentally, European Parliament members passed their own, similar resolution last month which stated, "the ITU, or any other single, centralised international institution, is not the appropriate body to assert regulatory authority over either internet governance or internet traffic flows".

YouTube will get new cleaner and simpler look starting today. This update will further improve the Guide, which is a feature that was introduced last year and makes is easier to subscribe to the channels.

Facebook users will have until Monday, December 10 to vote on the proposed changes to Facebook's policy, including the ability of users to vote on future privacy changes. Since announced on November 21, many Facebook users and privacy groups had comments related to the changes proposed to Facebook governance process. In a blog post announcing the vote, Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy, said that "this feedback allows us to respond to your questions and make substantive changes to our proposals before they are implemented. Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, we’ve further clarified some of our proposals." The response to comments related to proposed governance process changes can be found here.

Google announced that it is integrating Google Drive service into Gmail, which will enable users to insert and send files up to 10GB. This is 400 times larger than what you can send as a traditional attachment. Users will be able to insert files directly from Drive into an email without ever having to leave Gmail, Google said. Also, because you’re sending a file stored in the cloud, all your recipients will have access to the same, most-up-to-date version. This feature is rolling out over the next few days and is only available with Gmail's new compose experience.

Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, has launched a new project enabling registered users to post videos, according to the portal's press service.
"A new video player has been enabled on Wikipedia and its sister sites, and it comes with the promise of bringing free educational videos to more people, on more devices, in more languages," Wikimedia Foundation said Friday.
The video upload project, carried out in cooperation with open-source video start-up Kaltura and the Google search engine, was launched in 2008. But it was delayed due to numerous technical problems.
The new HTML5 player is a result of a combined effort between Wikipedia, Google and Kaltura.

If you have received password reset email from Twitter it doesn't necessarily means that your account has been compromised. Twitter has issued a statement confirming it was an accident on their part.
"In instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users. In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused."

Have you heard of Mat Honan?

 We tried to avoid this news before we get more info on what actually happened. Long story short, Mat lost all of his data, thanks to Cloud concept. He is a Mac user, and as such believed in iCloud. Someone hacked his accounts on several systems, using some serious social engineering skills. Through those accounts, unknown perpetrator managed to access and remotely wipe all of his data, on all of his iDevices. Moral of the story – BACKUP! Do it on several locations, at least one of them offline, on external hard drive with no network connectivity. And change your password. Yes, everyone is saying this all the time, but we never do.

 As the source of the problem was in poor security procedures in Apple and Amazon, both companies no longer allow password changes to be made over the phone. Two of the mightiest tech companies have been scammed. That is a cause for some serious eyebrow-raising. Google offers two-factor authentication, as do some other online systems. If you haven’t started using them, maybe this is the right time? The key issue here, which almost no one is talking about - this stuff has been going on for a decade or so. Anyone still remembers scandal called News_of_the_World?