Microsoft employees are passionate users of the latest tech toys. But there’s one gadget love that many at the company dare not name: the iPhone. more …

Microsoft employees are passionate users of the latest tech toys. But there’s one gadget love that many at the company dare not name: the iPhone. more …

Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook was awarded a cash and stock bonus worth about $22 million for his performance while filling in during Steve Jobs’s medical leave last year. more …

Source of Daily Maily story refuses to divulge ‘well-known social network’ where he posed as girl of 14 and received sexual approaches from men

Facebook has called on the ex-detective who posed as a 14-year-old girl online on a “well-known social network” and said he was approached by men making sexual suggestions within minutes to name the site he used.

But Mark Williams-Thomas, whose experiences were described by the Daily Mail in a contentious story this week, declined to name the site today. He suggested that it would not be helpful to the site’s users – and that it might damage its reputation or attract paedophiles to use it more extensively.

A spokesperson for Facebook said that it was important to identify the site so that young users could be protected. “If you really want to protect people online, then you should name sites which allow this. It’s up to the Daily Mail and Mark Williams-Thomas. If they really want to protect their readers, they should give the name.”

However, Williams-Thomas said that although the operators of the site would be able to identify it from his description in the story written in the Daily Mail earlier this week, identification would not be beneficial because it might attract unwelcome users. “The site would implode,” he told the Guardian.

Facebook is threatening to sue the Daily Mail over a story which appeared in Wednesday’s paper under Williams-Thomas’s byline which was headlined “I posed as girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you”. The piece described how Williams-Thomas had created a profile on a social networking service of a 14-year-old girl and within minutes of the profile going live had been contacted by men aged between 20 and 40 seeking sexual gratification.

The Mail has accepted that it wrongly suggested that the social network was Facebook, issuing an apology and blaming the error on “miscommunication”. However, Facebook is still considering whether to sue for damage to its reputation.

Facebook has come under fire this week after the conviction of Peter Chapman, who used Facebook and other social networking systems to pose as an 18-year-old boy and lure 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall to a meeting, upon which he raped and killed her. Some police organisations have criticised Facebook for not installing a “panic button” system that would let young users alert them over their concerns – although there is no evidence that Hall had any worries about who she thought Chapman was.

Williams-Thomas, who was a detective with Surrey Police until 2002, previously made an ITV documentary about the hunt for paedophiles in which he shadowed a team from the Metropolitan Police’s Paedophile Unit.

He added that the piece which appeared in the Daily Mail was part of an ongoing study being carried out into safety of social networks, which will be published later this year in a peer-reviewed journal.

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Social networking site Facebook resists calls for ‘panic button’ as it considers action against Daily Mail over false claims in story

Facebook has defended the safety measures it employs to protect users from sexual exploitation and continued to resist calls to include a “panic button” on its website.

The social networking website is today understood to be considering options including taking legal action against the Daily Mail, after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a Facebook profile could be approached “within seconds” by older men who “wanted to perform a sex act” in front of them.

Despite the fact that the Daily Mail has admitted the story was false Richard Allan, the former MP who heads Facebook’s European public policy operation, last night moved to reassure the public that the social networking website is safe in an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“What we are really keen to do is to ensure that our users, the parents, the children, have a really good understanding of how to keep themselves safe online,” he said.

Yesterday senior police officers and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) accused Facebook of ignoring claims that it is providing a safe haven for predatory paedophiles by refusing to sign up to a “panic button” for children and young people.

Facebook has refused requests by Ceop to put a panic button on the website. Rival social networking services including Bebo and MSN Messenger have the feature, which links users directly to Ceop to report suspected activity by predatory paedophiles.

“We simply believe we have some very effective reporting mechanisms already on the site,” said Allan. “They are very simple and well understood by our users and what they allow us to do is have really good real-time intelligence about the kind of activities taking place on the site. And when there are issues of concern we have a very strong team of technology experts who are then able to intervene and try and stop things happening before they become dangerous.”

Allan admitted that Facebook’s system “can never be 100% effective” but said he believed that the social networking website has “one of the safest environments out there on the internet”.

“We would hope people would look at the different services they can use and then judge whether or not they are taking reasonable efforts [to protect users],” he added. “Facebook will remove any reported photos of nudity or pornography from our site. That is not the case everywhere.”

Internet Watch Foundation, which polices child sexual abuse content online, said that Facebook joined its initiative last month. IWF already has members including Microsoft, MySpace and Bebo.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

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Lib Dem and Conservative peers plan to address concerns raised by ISPs and web companies over anti-piracy legislation

Peers will reportedly offer concessions over controversial anti-piracy legislation that would lead to websites being blocked without due judicial process, following criticism from internet companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

The Liberal Democrats are planning to publish changes to an earlier amendment to the digital economy bill, 120A, that seek to address concerns about the anti-piracy proposals raised by internet service providers and leading web companies, according to today’s Financial Times.

Last week Lib Dem and Conservatives peers added amendment 120A to the bill giving a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a website accused of hosting a “substantial” amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. The amendment was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140.

Under three changes proposed by the Lib Dems, of which the FT reports the Conservatives are broadly supportive, a judge could order copyright owners to pay legal costs and other compensation for asking a service provider to block a site. Content owners must also inform owners of sites they accuse of infringing their copyright before asking that it be blocked, and list the works illegally hosted.

Website owners or “any person aggrieved” would be able to appeal against a block under the latest amendments.

The Lib Dems are expected to publish the amendment today and they will be voted on in the Lords on Monday as part of the third reading of the digital economy bill, according to the FT.

Earlier this week a group of internet and technology companies, along with consumer groups, co-signed a letter published in the FT criticising amendment 120A. They said it raised “myriad legal, technical and practical issues” that needed to be reconciled before it could be “considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option”.

The letter was co-signed by the heads of the four largest UK internet service providers – BT, Orange, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo, along with consumer groups, academics and the technophile television host Stephen Fry.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

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Lib Dem and Conservative peers plan to address concerns raised by ISPs and web companies over anti-piracy legislation

Peers will reportedly offer concessions over controversial anti-piracy legislation that would lead to websites being blocked without due judicial process, following criticism from internet companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

The Liberal Democrats are planning to publish changes to an earlier amendment to the digital economy bill, 120A, that seek to address concerns about the anti-piracy proposals raised by internet service providers and leading web companies, according to today’s Financial Times.

Last week Lib Dem and Conservatives peers added amendment 120A to the bill giving a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a website accused of hosting a “substantial” amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. The amendment was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140.

Under three changes proposed by the Lib Dems, of which the FT reports the Conservatives are broadly supportive, a judge could order copyright owners to pay legal costs and other compensation for asking a service provider to block a site. Content owners must also inform owners of sites they accuse of infringing their copyright before asking that it be blocked, and list the works illegally hosted.

Website owners or “any person aggrieved” would be able to appeal against a block under the latest amendments.

The Lib Dems are expected to publish the amendment today and they will be voted on in the Lords on Monday as part of the third reading of the digital economy bill, according to the FT.

Earlier this week a group of internet and technology companies, along with consumer groups, co-signed a letter published in the FT criticising amendment 120A. They said it raised “myriad legal, technical and practical issues” that needed to be reconciled before it could be “considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option”.

The letter was co-signed by the heads of the four largest UK internet service providers – BT, Orange, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo, along with consumer groups, academics and the technophile television host Stephen Fry.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

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A Chinese minister warned that Google “will have to bear the consequences” if it stops censoring its Chinese search site. more …

Google could stop censoring its Web-search results in China within weeks, said people familiar with the matter, but the company isn’t likely to withdraw from the country entirely. more …

Britain’s High Court has ordered record company EMI to stop selling downloads of Pink Floyd tracks individually rather than as part of the band’s original albums. more …