Almost any article you read about Section 230 reminds you that it contains the most important26 words in techand that it isthe law that made the modern internet.This is all true, but Section 230 is also the most significant obstacle to stopping misinformation online. Section 230 is part of theCommunications Decency Act, a 1996 law passed while the internet was still embryonic and downright terrifying to some lawmakers for what it could unleash, particularly with regard to pornography....

If you’re a smartphone user on British Telecom’s network and you’re using wireless hotspots in public, you’ve opened yourself up to possible fraud and identify theft…and the company has known about this weakness for “years.” According to an investigative report fromThe Guardian, volunteers were used in testing that showed holesin the system. Usernames, passwords and messages from phones using Wi-Fi were accessed by security experts during the testing. This report comes only a week after it was dsicovered thatApple’s iPhone was tracking users’ whereaboutswithout them knowing it....

This morningon Hacker News, members spotted a gaping security hole inTumblr, which exposed more than 748 lines of sensitive configuration information out into the open. Members pointed to possible errors at the core of thePHPscripting language that might make the data dump inevitable. The error could have been a coding mishap, such as a missed opening PHP tag. Other coders felt that blaming PHP was unfair as security holes can be design as much as language....

A security researcher has created an app that allows you to log an iPad user’s keystrokes from any distance, so long as you’ve got a line of sight to the device’s keyboard. Researcher Haroon Meer of security firm Thinkst in South Africa’s Pretoria announced the app, shoulderPad, earlier this week,Forbes’ Andy Greenberg reports. The app, which can be installed on Mac OS and jailbroken iPhones and iPads, uses image recognition software to identify each keystroke an iPad user makes....

TNW Quick Hit: Following the rather embarrassing issuance of several false SSL certificates that impacted top websites, Microsoft is today releasing an update to its WP7 platform that will protect its phones from the threat. Multiple users havereported seeing the following promptfrom Zune upon plugging in their WP7 handset: Microsoft, in the update text, calls the patch “critical.” The following sites were impacted as part of the fake SSL certificates release:...