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Facebook charged with fraud

Candice Jones
By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor
Johannesburg, 25 Jul 2007

Facebook charged with fraud

Social networking Web site Facebook could be closed if legal action in the US by a rival site's founders succeeds, reports BBC News.

Three founders of ConnectU say Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the site while at Harvard. Facebook has become a global phenomenon, with about 31 million users, compared with ConnectU's 70 000.

A Federal case accuses Zuckerberg of fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets, and asks for ConnectU to be given ownership of Facebook. Facebook has asked a judge at a Boston district court to dismiss the case.

Power outage darkens Web sites

Some of the Internet's biggest Web sites went dark following power interruptions in San Francisco that disrupted operations at co-location facility 365 Main, reports The Register.

"There's a notion that there are redundant power supplies at 365 Main, maybe they didn't kick in," Craigslist (one of the affected sites) founder Craig Newmark said.

He said Craigslist engineers were in the process of trying to understand the cause and extent of the outage. Those attempting to visit the online bazaar were greeted by a message saying the site and many others were down due to "issues at the co-lo facility".

MySpace cuts 29 000

Popular Internet social network MySpace detected and deleted 29 000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported, states News.com.

The company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp, said in May it had deleted about 7 000 user profiles that belonged to convicted offenders. MySpace attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the US.

US state authorities first revealed the new figure after MySpace turned over information on convicted sex offenders it had removed from the service. "The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace - 29 000 and counting - screams for action," Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.

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