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A San Francisco mom says her child was illegally tracked while using the Disney Princess Palace Pets app.
Amanda Rushing, on behalf of her child referred to as “L.L.,” is suing The Walt Disney Company, Disney Electronic Content and others in a proposed class action filed Thursday in California federal court.
Rushing claims an advertising-specific software development kit is surreptitiously embedded in the code for the app, and that’s how Disney is collecting personal information and tracking online behavior.
“App developers and their SDK-providing partners can track children’s behavior while they play online games with their mobile devices by obtaining critical pieces of data from the mobile devices, including ‘persistent identifiers,’ typically a unique number linked to a specific mobile device,” writes attorney Michael Sobol in the complaint. “These persistent identifiers allow SDK providers to detect a child’s activity across multiple apps and platforms on the internet, and across different devices, effectively providing a full chronology of the child’s actions across devices and apps. This information is then sold to various third-parties who sell targeted online advertising.”
Two of the largest online black-market sites have been shuttered in a law enforcement crackdown, but drug dealers have moved in a hurry to a third “dark net” emporium, where listings of fentanyl and heroin have already spiked, according to analysts.
The newfound popularity of DreamMarket highlights the whack-a-mole challenges of policing drugs sold online even as government officials touted the the death of the other two sites, AlphaBay and Hansa.
The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department announced Thursday that AlphaBay — described as a major source of fentanyl and heroin that has been linked to overdose deaths — had been seized and closed down.
“This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year — taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The so-called dark net is a part of the Internet that can only be accessed by specialized software or hardware and contains clandestine websites not found through normal search engines.
Alphabay and Hansa advertised drugs, chemicals, counterfeit documents, weapon and computer malware among many other items and services, cloaking users in anonymity. Authorities said AlphaBay alone was responsible for at least a billion dollars worth of commerce, using bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
AlphaBay’s suspected founder, Alexandre Caze, was arrested earlier this month in Thailand at the request of U.S. officials. A week later he was found dead in his cell.
As soon as authorities shut down AlphaBay, sellers began migrating to other sites, according to Kela Targeted Cyber Intelligence, a Tel Aviv company that specializes in monitoring the dark net.
Whether or not you’re attuned to the ongoing dramas of the Kardashian krew, you’ve likely heard by now that Rob Kardashian (brother to Kim; sock entrepreneur) spent much of his Wednesday posting a series of nude photos, presumably sent to him privately, by his ex-fiancée and mother of his child, Blac Chyna (formerly Angela Renee White; model; makeup entrepreneur). Because the social media spree took place after he’d discovered that Chyna had apparently cheated on him, Kardashian’s act has been roundly deemed by celebrity gossip mongers like TMZ as “revenge.”
Indeed, celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom (daughter of famed civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred) confirmed this reading of the events when she announced Friday morning that she’d be representing Chyna in court as she pursues a restraining order against her raging ex. Bloom — who helped actress Mischa Barton get a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend who was threatening to sell her sex tape — told The New York Daily News that what Kardashian did constituted “revenge porn,” stating: “Revenge porn is illegal in CA and it certainly appears to me that Rob has violated this criminal law.”
California passed its revenge porn law in 2013. Today, more than half of U.S. states have similar laws. The very language with which we use to talk about “revenge porn” reveals a lot about how we approach the issue, casting it in terms of personal drama rather than as a violation of personhood. Iowa-based Drake University law professor Shontavia Johnson says the popular phrase is misleading. “Revenge porn is really about privacy, about protecting our personal information and having a right to do that,” she says. “We use the term ‘revenge porn,’ which makes it sound like it’s about the perpetrator, but it’s really about the privacy of the individual victim, and whether or not an unsuspecting victim can in some way stop this picture or video from being placed online.”
Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland was arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud Friday for allegedly defrauding investors with his disastrous music festival that left hundreds of well-heeled millennials stranded in the Bahamas and millions of dollars in investments and ticket sales unaccounted for.
McFarland, the 26-year-old CEO of Magnises, a concierge company, and Fyre Media, an app to book performing artists for private events, will spend the night in jail. He is expected to be arraigned before a judge on Saturday, Joon Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
“As alleged, William McFarland promised a ‘life changing’ music festival but in actuality delivered a disaster,” Joon said. “McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to induce investors to put over a million dollars into his company and the fiasco called the Fyre Festival. Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, McFarland will now have to answer for his crimes.”
Prosecutors allege McFarland began the criminal scheme in late 2016, right around the time he announced the Fyre Festival through a well-orchestrated marketing campaign involving hundreds of so-called Instagram “influencers,” including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Hailey Baldwin.
According to the criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, McFarland lied to at least two investors about how much the company was worth, eventually inducing them to invest around $1.2 million in the festival based on assertions that Fyre was making millions of dollars in revenue. In fact, prosecutors say, the company had earned only $60,000 over the past year.
McFarland also allegedly doctored a stock ownership statement to convince one of those unnamed investors that he held more than $2.5 million in shares in an unnamed company to use as collateral in the deal.
Though the complaint doesn’t specifically list the stock or the investor, a brokerage statement purporting to show McFarland as the owner of $2,565,079.18 in Facebook stock is listed as an exhibit in a civil suit filed by investor Oleg Itkin, who gave McFarland a $700,000 loan. Prosecutors say McFarland did own shares of Facebook stock — but only about $1,400 worth.
It’s not clear who is representing McFarland, who was dropped by his legal team Hughes, Hubbard & Reed LLP, on Wednesday. Michael Levine, a Westchester attorney, is listed as McFarland’s incoming attorney in a signed affidavit in the Itkin case. But reached by phone Friday night, Levine denied any involvement in the criminal case and said he was merely involved in the civil case as local counsel for a California firm which he declined to name.
Here’s a promotional video for the ill-fated Fyre Festival, which was canceled soon after it began in April:
Cover: Billy McFarland and Carol Mac attend The 23rd Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit & Auction at The Watermill Center on July 30, 2016 in Water Mill, NY. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via G Images)
Sourced From – https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-festival-founder-arrested-and-charged-with-wire-fraud
A few days ago, three committees appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court jointly ruled that its lawyers cannot participate in Avvo’s Legal Services program because it engages in unethical fee splitting with non-lawyers.
Avvo’s Legal Services program works like this: A lawyer who signs up for the program will have a chance to be connected to a client seeking a 15-minute consultation. The client pays $39.95 to Avvo which is deposited to the attorney’s bank account. Soon after, in a separate transaction, Avvo debits $10 from the attorney’s bank account as an “marketing fee” for that client.
Does the above make Avvo’s Legal Services program a fee-splitting scheme? Yes. You can call it a “marketing fee” or some other name that doesn’t include the words “fee split with non-lawyers.” But it does not change the fact that a lawyer is getting paid and a non-lawyer is getting a cut of that pay. And it’s not just New Jersey that thinks this way. The state bar ethics committees of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina also ruled that this was impermissible fee splitting. I am very confident that other states will rule the same way.
Some argued that this system is no different than a credit card processing company charging a fee based on a percentage of the money received from a credit card transaction. There is a big distinction. The credit card processing company is not providing the clients. The processing company does not care whether the client is happy with the lawyer’s service. Avvo sets up a caller with an attorney. I do not know how Avvo matches up callers with attorneys, but I think it’s safe to assume that if callers are consistently unhappy with a particular attorney, that attorney will stop getting connections.
