Weekly Comms News Round Up 16/01/2014

Microsoft was thought to have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army over the weekend and today it was reported that a rival Turkish group had attacked and defaced the SEA website.
The talk of the day however has been the rumoured selling of the Independent newspaper, as reported by the Guardian. Catch up on the latest comms news from the past week here. All stories curated via @CisionUK.

The Independent seeks buyer by @GreensladeR via the Guardian

The Independent is up for sale. The paper’s founder, and current chairman of its publishing company, Andreas Whittam Smith, has been authorised to seek out a buyer.

The owners, Alexander Lebedev and his son, Evgeny, have been indicating for some time that they would be happy to dispose of the paper and its sister titles, i, and the Independent on Sunday.

They have made various cryptic statements over the last six months about their willingness to offload loss-making papers that they see no prospect of turning into profit.

New Gmail messaging feature causes privacy concerns via The BBC News

Users of Google’s Gmail service will soon be able to send messages directly to other Gmail accounts, regardless of whether the recipient has shared their email address.

The new feature will include everyone signed up to both Gmail and Google+, the web giant’s social network. The change has caused concern among some privacy advocates, who say people could be contacted by strangers.

Twitter Expands Tailored Audiences to Email Addresses, User IDs by @EPro via The Next Web

Last month, Twitter launched tailor audiences to let brands target their Promoted Tweets using browser cookies. The company has now expanded the advertising product to include email addresses and user IDs.

These two separate approaches, CRM audiences (email addresses) and Twitter IDs (usernames), are meant to help advertisers define groups of “existing and potential customers,” according to Twitter.

High Court: ‘Google privacy case can be heard in UK’ by @Sparkes via The Telegraph

The High Court ruled on Thursday that Google can be sued by a group of Britons over an alleged breach of privacy, despite the company being based in the US and claiming that the case was not serious enough to fall under British jurisdiction.

Google faced a group action by users of Apple’s Safari browser who were angered by the way their online habits were apparently tracked against their wishes in order to provide targeted advertising. But because Google is based in the US they needed to seek the court’s permission to bring the case in the UK, something which the search company claimed was inappropriate.

Microsoft hit in weekend of hacking attacks via The BBC News

Microsoft’s official blog and two of its Twitter accounts are believed to have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. The hacking group accessed the social media accounts to post pro-Syria messages and to criticise the company.

Microsoft shut down the accounts for “maintenance” after it discovered they had been compromised. The attack was one of several carried out by activist and hacking groups during the weekend.