The Federal Communications Commission's neutrality rules were never all that groundbreaking. The regulations prohibit broadband providers -- wireline as well as wireless -- from blocking sites or competing applications. The rules also ban wireline providers from engaging in unreasonable discrimination.

Five years ago, Raphael Golb took to the Web to criticize scholars who disagreed with his father, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. To do so, Golb used some unconventional methods. He created dozens of fake email accounts under the names of other scholars, and then posted comments under those names in order to embarrass his father's critics -- especially NYU professor Larry Schiffman. At one point, Golb sent emails under Schiffman's name that admitted to plagiarism.

Psychologist Carla Ison didn't like what she saw when she conducted vanity searches on Google and Yahoo. Both search engines apparently returned ads and other links that Ison found troubling. Google allegedly associated the California-based psychologist's name with porn sites, as well as with "nonsensical" text and "practices considered unethical or very questionable." Yahoo allegedly returned a result showing a map of Ison's office location but wrongly indicating that she is a medical doctor.

Signaling a heightened focus on privacy, Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler said on Monday that he has created a new unit that will monitor Web companies' data collection practices.

As of Sunday people who purchase smartphones will no longer be able to legally unlock the devices without carrier approval, thanks to the Librarian of Congress.

Google often comes under fire for its privacy practices, but the company also has at least one policy that's surprisingly privacy-friendly. This week, Google revealed that it doesn't disclose email messages to law enforcement authorities unless they obtain search warrants.

Conventional wisdom has it that consumers say they're concerned about online privacy, but rarely do much about it. But Microsoft challenged that idea today by releasing new survey results that indicate consumers are trying to control the way data about them is used by marketers. Among other findings, the report includes the following jaw-dropping statistic: Almost half of U.S. adults, 44%, say they have opted out of targeted advertising.

Kim Dotcom's new cloud storage venture, Mega, got off to an inauspicious start this weekend when a surge of visitors crashed the servers. Unfortunately for the Internet mogul -- as well as Mega's new users -- that glitch might only be the beginning of the problems with the initiative. Dotcom launched Mega one year after U.S. agents raided his New Zealand home and shut down his previous cyberlocker service, Megaupload. Dotcom and other executives are still awaiting trial on criminal copyright infringement charges stemming from that defunct service -- though at this juncture it's not certain that the New …

A coalition of watchdogs is asking European regulators to issue stringent new online privacy rules. "The European Union must act to help set a global standard protecting the fundamental right to privacy," the Center for Digital Democracy, ACLU, Consumer Federation of American and other groups say in documents provided to EU officials on Monday.

Two years ago, lawmakers in the House and Senate unveiled do-not-track legislation that would limit ad networks' ability to track people as they surf the Web. Those efforts haven't yet gone anywhere -- though obviously they still could. But since 2011, the focus on Capitol Hill seems to have shifted from protecting the privacy of people who browse the Web on desktops (or laptops) to safeguarding information on smartphones.