The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to vote on rules that would protect the privacy of broadband subscribers, later this month. “FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated the proposal to commissioners today and scheduled a vote for October 27,” ars technical reports. ‘The rules are likely to be approved by a 3-2 vote with the commission’s Democratic majority supporting them.’

Some researchers have abandoned or curbed plans to investigate whether Web companies discriminate against users, due to fears that online testing could spark claims that researchers violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That law makes it illegal to access a site without authorization. Arguably, the prohibition applies when people violate a site's terms of service, such as by providing false information, scraping data or engaging in other research techniques. “The C.F.A.A. is so vague that anyone doing empirical Internet research may find himself or herself at risk,” Carnegie Mellon University's Alessandro Acquisti and Christina Fong tell The New Yorker.

Spotify's free ad-supported software briefly served users with pop-up ads containing malware. The streaming music service says the malware stemmed from an isolated problem with one ad, that's since been pulled.

Hackers broke into BuzzFeed Wednesday, after the site posted a story about the group "OurMine." The hackers revised headlines of several posts to "Hacked by OurMine."

AT&T will roll out its Gigabit fiber optic broadband service to portions of 11 new markets. The company also is rebranding its service to AT&T Fiber.

T-Mobile is telling customers it plans to throttle tethered data (and mobile hotspot data) when the network is congested. "Because we want to provide customers with the best on-device experience, our network is now designed to prioritize T-Mobile on-device data over Smartphone Mobile HotSpot data," the company says on its Web site.

Yahoo secretly developed software to search all account holders' emails, in order to comply with a classified order issued by federal law enforcement officials. The company then scanned "hundreds of millions" of accounts. "Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time," Reuters reports.

EU antitrust officials have given Google until Oct. 31 to respond to charges that it unlawfully leveraged the popularity of its Android operating system to shut out competitors. Google also faces separate antitrust charges in the EU for allegedly giving preferences to its shopping service in the search results. EU regulators can impose fines of up to 10% of total revenue for antitrust violations.