Pew: 30% of all Americans, get news from the social network…ICANN introduces its first top-level domains using non-Latin characters…Cyberculture roundup…

Pew: 47% of US Facebook users, or about 30% of all Americans, get news from the social network

How NSA-Proof Are VPN Providers?

Let?s start off by saying that no VPN service can ever guarantee your anonymity 100%. That said, there is good reason to believe that the most secure encryption schemes are nearly impossible to crack.

ICANN introduces its first top-level domains using non-Latin characters

ICANN announced today that it has begun its expansion of new top-level domains, including the first names that use non-Latin characters, such as Arabic, Cyrillic and Chinese.

The expansion will take the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) from 22 to 1,400. Non-Latin domain strings include:

• ???? (xn--ngbc5azd) ? Arabic for ?web/network?

• Registry: International Domain Registry Pty. Ltd.

• ?????? (xn--80asehdb) ? Cyrillic for ?online?

• Registry: CORE Association

• ???? (xn--80aswg) ? Cyrillic for ?site?

• Registry: CORE Association

• ??(xn--unup4y) ? Chinese for ?game(s)?

• Registry: Spring Fields, LLC

NSA Monitored 35 World Leaders and Other News You Need to Know

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world.

A Deeper Dive Into Yahoo and Facebook’s Transparency Reports

Ever since Google issued its first transparency report in early 2010, EFF has called on other companies to follow suit and disclose statistics about the number of government requests for user data, whether the request they receive is an official demand (such as a warrant) or an unofficial request.  After all, users make decisions every day about which companies they trust with their data, therefore companies owe it to their customers to be transparent about when they hand data over to governments and law enforcement.

We Know With 100% Certainty That Mass Surveillance Hasn?t Foiled A Single Terror Plot

Privacy:?We know with 100% absolute certainty that the wiretapping industry ? NSA, GCHQ, FRA, etc ? has stopped a total of exactly zero terror plots. We can be certain of this fact, as there have been no trials and no convictions of planning widespread destruction. Planning such a crime is almost as serious a crime as executing it, and while there can be secret evidence in some uncivilized countries, the courts and trials themselves are not secret.

For Bitcoin’s Biggest Believers, Digital Currency Is Better Than Gold

Part of the magic of bitcoin is that it can be so many different things to so many different people. For some, it may be even more attractive than silver and gold because, as a completely digital currency, it’s capable of many things that other types of currency are not. The possibilities are almost endless.