The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into a possible security breach of AT&T's website, which exposed the email addresses of some owners of Apple iPad devices. "The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation," an FBI spokeswoman tells The Wall Street Journal. Schweit said the FBI began the investigation Thursday, but wouldn't tell The Journal what the bureau is looking at. Earlier this week, Gawker reported that the email addresses of thousands of iPad owners -- including White House Chief of Staff …

In addition to the FBI's investigation into the Apple/AT&T iPad security breach, the Federal Communications Commission now plans to step up scrutiny of online security and privacy issues, Reuters reports. In a blog post, Joel Gurin, chief of the FCC's consumer and governmental affairs bureau, said the incident appeared to be a classic security breach, which has happened to many companies. "Our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is now addressing cybersecurity as a high priority," Gurin said. Furthermore, the communications regulatory agency will seek to ensure that broadband networks are safe and secure, Gurin added. "We're …

Excitement over the 2010 World Cup appears to be testing the Web's limits. Indeed, network operator Akamai is reporting the greatest bandwidth demand ever for news sites, notes Beet.TV. There are presently some 11 million visitor requests per minute to its network -- up 233% from the normal demand at this time. According to Beet, the previous record for most video requests was the inauguration of President Barack Obama. "While Akamai does not report on the world's total Internet demand, it carries many of the world's biggest news organizations including the BBC, CNN, and NBC." The Akamai …

Foursquare's initial investment of $1.35 million is spent, and its original investors have agreed to a modest "bridge" investment, reports All Things Digital, "citing a range of sources close to the situation." Those original investors include Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, along with unnamed angel investors. Word on the street is that Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley "mucked up" his first big opportunity to fund the startup, according to All Things D. "Talks with new VCs have been tabled for now ... as several firms, such as Accel Partners, have decided not to move forward at …

Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing have been gaining market share in comScore's search engine stats, according to the Business Insider -- but for "somewhat sketchy reasons." "The companies have increasingly been putting a ton of links on their popular homepages that are search queries disguised as content, and have been stitching together image slideshows as search queries, too," it writes. In response, comScore says it plans to change the way it accounts for this share, "in an effort to prevent the industry from saying this data is increasingly worthless," in the words of Business Insider. In a blog …

Search Engine Land's Matt McGee unexpectedly gained entry "completely new" Google News homepage design that Online Media Daily wrote about in late May. According to McGee's account -- and accompanying screenshots -- the new layout replaces the current two-column, grid-style layout with a wider main column and smaller sidebar-style column on the right. "It looks more like a blog, frankly," writes McGee. Each story has the same "star" option that existing on the current Google News, but a new drop-down menu presents users with several sharing options: Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Google Reader, and email. Meanwhile, …

And you thought Facebook was bad. Gawker's Valleywag is reporting that the email addresses of thousands of iPad owners -- including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Mayor Bloomberg -- were accidentally exposed by AT&T in what the blog is calling the "worst security breach" in Apple's history. So, what does this mean for Apple, AT&T, and their various rivals -- all of whom could suffer if consumers see the gaffe as a lesson in foolish digital expectations? "Assuming only email addresses were harvested, the worst case scenario is an increase in spam," …

In an effort to bolster its data gathering abilities, Twitter just acquired Smallthought Systems, The Next Web reports. Smallthought's Trendly service tracks data from the outside of publishers' sites, taking a look at Google Analytics, and then provides what The Next Web calls "true, sensible information." Twitter -- which is presently supporting some 65 million tweets a day -- would obviously like to glean greater insights from its users' behavior. Trendly is designed to spot trends, rather than peaks and valleys. "With Twitter's purchase of Smallthought Systems, the analytics information that will come out of Twitter could …

Citing unnamed sources "close to the situation," the Financial Times is reporting that U.S. antitrust regulators plan to investigate whether Apple is unfairly restricting its smartphone rivals from participating it its forthcoming mobile ad network. On Monday, Apple changed the rules that govern its new iAd mobile advertising platform to seemingly exclude direct competitors like Google -- new owner of mobile ad network AdMob -- and Microsoft. The dispute, which stems from a change in an obscure clause in Apple's developers agreement, has split the high tech community," Fortune explains. "Some see it as classic …

Twitter has no doubt left its mark on the cultural psyche. But, in what seems like a belated effort, The New York Times is drawing a line at the popular use of the word "tweet." Phil Corbett, standards editor at the Times, just issued a memo asking that writers abstain from using the past-tense, "and other weird iterations of the magical noun-verb 'Twitter,'" according to The Awl. "Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, 'tweet' has not yet achieved the status of standard English," explains Corbett. "And standard English is what we should use …