Lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation today that would impose new restrictions on companies' ability to collect data from children.

Citing evidence of fake Facebook profiles, the Federal Trade Commission said today that it had rejected a company's application to draw on the social graph in order to confirm people's identity. "Identity verification via social-graph is an emerging technology and further research, development, and implementation is necessary to demonstrate that it is sufficiently reliable," the FTC said in a letter sent to AssertID.

Internet service providers that engage in controversial usage-based billing could face a host of new regulations, if a bill introduced on Tuesday by Senate Commerce Committee head Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is enacted.

Airbnb's New York users have the right to keep the records of their activity "shielded from unauthorized snooping," the advocacy groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology argue in new court papers.

An attempt by New York's Attorney General to obtain data about Airbnb's New York users could harm a vast array of online businesses, a coalition of Web companies warns in new court papers.

Two months ago, media guru Jeff Jarvis brought to light that Verizon Wireless was refusing to activate Google's Nexus 7 tablet. As of this week, however, the telecom still hasn't certified the Nexus 7 as fit for the 4G/LTE network. The delay prompted a new FCC complaint from Jarvis.

Apple is joining Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and LinkedIn in their fight to publish data about the National Security Agency's request for user information.

Companies that deal in so-called native advertising face a dilemma: Anyone who wants to avoid trouble with the Federal Trade Commission should make it clear that marketers have paid for particular pieces of content -- such as by labeling them as "advertorials," "sponsored content" or some other terminology. But if advertisers and publishers clearly label a piece of content as an "ad," they could lose crucial free-speech protections for the material.

Human Rights Watch, Consumer Action and the Consumer Electronics Association are among the roster of outside groups asking the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to rule in YouTube's favor in its long-running copyright battle with Viacom.

A coalition of six tech giants is calling on Congress to enact new curbs on government surveillance. The tech companies were responding to this week's jaw-dropping report that the National Security Agency had found a way to tap directly into Yahoo and Google data centers -- meaning that the NSA can gather information stored by those companies without asking them for it.