internet – Page 3 – Hellbound and Down

Texas Locked a Foreign Company’s Domain Over Missing Digital ID Checks

In Travis County, Texas, a judge has frozen motherless.com, the .com domain of a foreign pornography operator, taking it down worldwide until it posts a $9.14 million bond and builds an age verification digital ID system to the state’s own specification.

Kick Online Entertainment is a foreign corporation, and the order admits so, which is the reason the writ went somewhere else. A state court cannot summon a company overseas, but it can order the American firm that keeps the registry of every .com name, and that registry is what makes a domain resolve at all.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The case turns on HB 1181, Texas’s age-verification law for adult sites. That firm is Verisign, a nonparty to it, and Judge Maya Guerra Gamble signed the writ of attachment on June 4, 2026, filed four days later in State of Texas v Kick Online Entertainment.

The order directs Verisign to place motherless.com on “a registry lock, hold, or similar status until replevied by Defendant,” the legal term for the operator posting a bond to get its domain back.

The domain is frozen rather than taken, though the difference means little here. What Verisign actually applied on was serverHold plus server-level prohibitions on deleting, transferring and updating the name. A hold pulls motherless.com out of the .com zone file, so it resolves for nobody.

Kick must post a bond of $9,140,000, and that bond is “conditioned on Defendant’s implementation of age verification that conforms with Texas Civil Practice and Remedies code chapter 129B,” together with an affirmation that it will satisfy the civil penalties entered against it on September 30, 2024. A company outside the state’s reach is being made to both pay and obey a Texas statute before its property comes back. This is specific performance of a state law, pulled from a foreign operator by holding an asset hostage at the registry.

Among the court’s stated reasons the writ is “appropriate and justified” is the finding that “Defendant is not a resident of this state and is a foreign corporation,” which turns the state’s inability to reach a company into a ground for taking its property.

The order then pre-authorizes more of the same, closing with the line that “as many writs as the State deems necessary shall issue,” so the count of future seizures is set by the attorney general and not by a judge weighing each one. And Texas was excused from the security these writs normally demand, because the order says “the State of Texas is not required to post a bond prior to the issuance of the Writ of Attachment.”

The party taking the asset posts nothing. The party losing it posts $9.14 million.

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California City Pulls Plug on It’s Computer System After Cyberattack

A northern California city of 30,000 people had to disconnect its entire computer network after a cyberattack, idling the municipality’s 911 emergency line for police and fire dispatch.

Officials in the city of Suisun City, located about 45 miles from San Francisco, had to find a workaround for emergency calls and did by forwarding 911 calls to a county dispatch center.

The city declared a state of emergency Saturday after malicious software invaded its computer network and system shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, according to the California Post.

“Officials shut down the entire network to stop the threat from spreading and protect evidence for a federal investigation,” the Post reported.

Despite the attack, Suisun City officials say they found a work around to prevent residents from being put in immediate danger during emergencies.

First responders remain active and dispatched, with city emergency operators routing calls through he Solano County dispatch center.

That way police and fire personnel are able to respond to calls for service,

The attack also disrupted non-emergency city services, including access to municipal records such as building permits and idled residents ability to pay bills online.

The complete shutdown came after the city council voted unanimously to pull the plug and declare a state of emergency at a special meeting Saturday morning.

Cybersecurity for municipalities and infrastructure systems have been in the news during the Iran war after U.S. authorities earlier this year issued an “urgent warning” that hackers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran were attempting to disrupt American computer networks.

Investigators are still at work in an effort to determine how the malicious software got inside the network and who was behind the attack, according to news reports.

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Online News Act left rural Canadians without credible information during wildfires: report

The report, first detailed by Blacklock’s Reporter, examined the consequences of Meta’s decision to block Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram following Parliament’s passage of Bill C-18.

The legislation was designed to compel large digital platforms to compensate Canadian publishers for news content. Meta responded by blocking news content from its platforms in Canada.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia said the consequences were particularly serious in rural communities, where Facebook had become a major source of local information during emergencies.

“Rural B.C. communities lost access to credible journalism at the precise moment they needed it most,” researchers wrote, citing consequences for public safety, trust and compliance with emergency instructions.

The study, “When Good Intentions Cause Harm: The Online News Act, Meta’s News Ban And Public Safety During Wildfire Emergencies,” examined wildfire coverage in several B.C. communities.

Researchers said removing journalism from Facebook did not eliminate information about the fires. Instead, personal accounts and emotionally charged material remained and were amplified on the platform, contributing to community outrage and conspiracy theories.

The report blamed the problem on a combination of declining institutional trust, social media algorithms and the disappearance of credible journalism from Facebook.

Researchers also criticized mainstream news coverage, saying the absence of local reporters with established community relationships made newsrooms increasingly dependent on governments and other “official voices.”

“Media were producing a version of wildfire events in which affected communities were compliance problems rather than people in crisis,” the report said.

The researchers noted an irony at the centre of the controversy: declining local journalism was partly caused by the advertising-market changes Bill C-18 was supposed to address, but the legislation ultimately contributed to credible journalism disappearing from one of the platforms rural Canadians relied upon most.

Blacklock’s was among the independent Canadian outlets that opposed the Online News Act, arguing it amounted to federal interference in the news marketplace. The outlet says it neither sought nor accepted payments available under the legislation.

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Four Kids “Safety” Bills, Supporting Online Digital ID Agenda, Hit Senate Floor

The CHATBOT Act says that nothing in it shall be construed to require a company to “implement an age gating or age verification” system, or to “affirmatively collect any personal data with respect to the age of any individual that the covered entity is not already collecting in the normal course” of its business. The Kids Online Safety Act carries a version of the same promise, ruling out “the affirmative collection of any personal data with respect to the age of users” that a platform doesn’t already gather.

But now read the rest of the same bills…

Yesterday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee sent four children’s online safety bills to the Senate floor, with parents who attribute the harm of their children to social media sitting right there in the room. KOSA went through on a unanimous voice vote. This obviously wasn’t a place for a debate. The Youth AI Privacy Act from Senator Ed Markey advanced. So did the CHATBOT Act from Senator Ted Cruz, with Senators Schatz, Curtis and Schiff as co-sponsors. Senator Tammy Duckworth’s bill makes four, and it orders the FTC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to study AI-enabled toys, which turns on nothing a company has to know about a user. A fifth, the SCREEN Act, got a tally and no result, which we’ll come back to.

KOSA passed the Senate in 2024 by 91 to 3, but the House never took it up. KOSA’s “duty of care” is the provision that gets the attention. It requires platforms to “exercise reasonable care” in design features to prevent and mitigate a listed set of harms to minors, with the FTC enforcing, and the harms run from conditions with “clinically diagnosable symptoms” through patterns of use “that indicate compulsive” behavior to sexual exploitation. The House stripped it out. The Senate sponsors called that version dead on arrival.

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Pritzker Signs Law Making Devices Report Every User’s Age Bracket to Apps

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, a law that takes the age check off individual websites and builds it into the device.

We obtained a copy of the law for you here.

It gives the state a say in what time minors are allowed to receive notifications. It’s also similar to what California is up to and also to what some senators want to extend nationwide. Starting in 2028, House Bill 5511 requires internet-enabled devices, operating systems and app stores to ask for the primary user’s birth date or age during account setup. The device then tells websites, apps, and online services which bracket that user falls into, whether under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and older.

Covered services must use the bracket to set default protections for users under 18. Algorithmic feeds are off for minors without “verifiable parental consent,” and their feeds can show only content they search for, posts from accounts they follow, and direct messages.

Feed notifications are blocked between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., precise location data is shielded, and minors need parental sign-off for what the bill calls “gifted currency” exchanges.

The governor’s office says the law reaches Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, X and gaming platforms like Roblox. Traditional news media, broadband providers, email services and learning management systems are exempt.

The age declaration happens once, at setup, and then follows the user everywhere. NetChoice testified that Section 10 “mandates that device manufacturers and operating system providers collect birth dates, ages and age bracket data from all users, and share that information with covered developers through digital signals.” All users include adults. An adult setting up a new phone in Illinois states an age so the operating system can vouch for it to any covered service, and the company that ships the operating system becomes the gatekeeper.

Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously and Pritzker made it one of his top priorities for the spring session. “Big social media companies have intentionally designed their platforms to keep kids online for as long as possible,” he said at the signing in Chicago. House sponsor Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, said attention spans are shrinking, depression rates are rising and kids are “sacrificing sleep to scroll long past when they should be asleep.”

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Senate Bill Would Put Age Checks in Every US Operating System

A bipartisan bill just introduced would build an age check into the operating system of every phone and computer sold in America.

The Digital Age Assurance Act of 2026, S. 5090, from Senators Andy Kim, Cynthia Lummis, Adam Schiff, and John Barrasso, takes California’s age-signaling law and makes it the national standard.

The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on July 22, 2026, and would take effect 18 months after enactment.

We finally obtained a copy of the bill text for you here.

With the proposals, an operating system cannot be used without an account, and the account requires the user to “indicate the date of birth and age of the user.”

For now, the user gets to declare their own age. A “covered device” is any computer, mobile device or other general-purpose computing device capable of running an operating system, so the requirement reaches practically everything.

This is also backdated and accounts that already exist when the law takes effect are included.

The operating provider may skip the prompt where it already knows the age of the user from some other obligation, including a purchase authorization.

When a declaration is made into one of four brackets, under 13, 13 to 15, 16, or 17+. The system broadcasts only the bracket, which the bill defines as “non-personally identifiable data derived from a user’s date of birth or age.”

Apps, app stores, and even browsers would have to have the ability to request that bracket and use it as “the primary indicator of a user’s age.”

Some websites would be included in this too. A “covered internet website” is one already “required under Federal or State law to verify the age of a user,” so the website obligations attach only where a state or federal age-verification mandate already exists.

With the first use of the browser on a device, it would request a signal from the operating system, and then it hands that signal to covered website operators on request. But the bill does not say how.

Under the proposals, a “browser provider” is anyone who “owns, maintains, or controls a browser for use on a covered device.” No size threshold is attached. A small maintainer with a few thousand users would carry the same obligation as a big tech platform like Google.

Anyone under 17, which is the bill’s definition of a “child,” has to “link their account to the account of a parent or legal guardian.” The only exception is for emancipated minors. There’s no trusted adult option that can override this. A 16-year-old in an abusive household, or one researching a parent’s conduct, has no route that does not run through the person they need distance from.

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MFA Was Supposed to Save Us. Hackers Found a Way Around Human Nature Instead.

For years, cybersecurity experts preached the same gospel. Use a strong password. Don’t reuse it. Turn on multi-factor authentication. The public eventually listened. Banks encouraged it. Social media platforms required it. Employers rolled it out. Even people who still struggle to find the right app on their phone learned that approving a login request was simply part of modern life.

Then the criminals adapted. One of the biggest cybersecurity stories this month revealed an uncomfortable truth about today’s online threats. Hackers are increasingly abandoning attempts to break multi-factor authentication. Instead, they’re simply waiting for people to complete it for them.

It’s a remarkably effective scam because it exploits something technology has never been very good at defending: human trust. The fake login page looks real. The text message appears legitimate. The authentication request pops up exactly as users expect. The victim enters their password, approves the prompt, and unknowingly grants attackers full access.

The security worked perfectly. The person didn’t. That’s why this latest wave of attacks should concern everyone, not just IT departments.

America is still catching up to cybersecurity basics while cybercriminals are already operating several chapters ahead. Millions of people only recently became comfortable using MFA. They don’t necessarily understand what it’s doing. They simply know they’ve been told it’s safer.

That knowledge gap has become an opportunity. Older Americans have become especially attractive targets. They bank online, manage retirement accounts digitally, schedule doctor appointments through patient portals, and increasingly rely on smartphones for everyday life. Many learned these habits out of necessity rather than curiosity, making them more vulnerable to sophisticated social engineering attacks designed to look routine.

Criminals know exactly who they’re looking for. This is no longer the stereotype of a teenager in a basement writing viruses for fun. Today’s cybercrime industry operates like a multinational business. It studies psychology, customer behavior, and user habits with the same precision legitimate companies use to improve marketing campaigns.

The objective isn’t always to outsmart the software. It’s to outsmart the person sitting behind the keyboard. Even Washington is acknowledging the stakes are getting higher. The Trump administration recently announced a new initiative to aggressively identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities tied to artificial intelligence before hostile actors can exploit them. If the federal government believes emerging technology demands an entirely new level of vigilance, it’s hard to argue that everyday consumers are somehow insulated from the same risks. If anything, they’re more exposed.

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“USA Isn’t A PiggyBank For Europe”: Trump Launches Section 301 Probe Into EU Over Big Tech Fines

Trump Says US Begins Section 301 Investigation on Europe

President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US will launch a Section 301 investigation into the European Union for “robbing American companies, in turn, the American Taxpayer.”

Trump said Brussels is using America as a “PIGGYBANK” by fining Big Tech companies billions and billions of dollars.

Trump listed the technology companies that have been fined a combined billions of dollars:

After having fined Apple, for no reason at all, 15 Billion Dollars, Meta, 3 Billion Dollars, Amazon 2.5 Billion Dollars, and many others, we have just been informed that Google, a truly advanced and amazing group, has been fined yet another 1 Billion Dollars, without explanation. This brings the Google total to over 18 Billion Dollars!

Trump continued:

This illegal and highly discriminatory practice started at these high levels during the first year of the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, but it’s not going to continue during the Trump Administration.

He added:

The United States of America is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!

Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that we will immediately initiate a 301 Investigation into the practice of “ROBBING” American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer.

The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about.

The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them at the earliest possible moment.

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India Cuts Mobile Internet in Delhi Amid Cockroach Protests

The Indian government answered a week of youth protests in the capital by ordering the mobile networks around them switched off.

Telecom operators cut mobile data across much of central Delhi on Thursday at the government’s instruction. Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone-Idea, the carriers that run India’s networks, complied.

The blackout took digital payments down with it. Vendors, shopkeepers, and restaurants were left unable to take money.

It was the widest mobile blackout in the capital since the farmers’ protests of 2021.

The demonstrators want Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gone. They protest under the banner of the Cockroach movement, a name lifted from a chief justice who reportedly likened young Indians to “cockroaches” and “parasites.”

Their grievance is the leak of the NEET-UG medical entrance exam, which forced roughly two million students to take it again. The leaks have been linked to several student suicides.

“We will not leave this place until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns,” Cockroach Janta Party spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said.

Police met a march to Parliament on Monday with tear gas and batons, and protesters answered with stones. At least 178 people, including security personnel, were injured.

The same exam scandal has now produced two communications shutdowns.

The government banned Telegram across India in June, cutting off more than 150 million users, after claiming cheating rings used the app during the leak. It reached for Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the power it holds to block platforms.

The leak came from inside the exam system. India’s own testing agency said “there is no such paper available outside the secured examination chain,” and the channels blamed for it were selling access to material that did not exist.

The insiders who produced the leak are the subject of a police investigation.

Pradhan has not resigned, and the networks in central Delhi stayed dark.

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