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Last November, after a security researcher revealed that many Android phones contained software that tracked keystrokes while users were dialing phone numbers, news providers boiled the issue into a genuine spyware scare. That gave Carrier IQ, the maker of performance monitoring software, a black eye in the public mind.

As the testing software maker continues to recover from a huge perception problem, a leading House Democrat is proposing legislation mandating that carriers inform customers of the existence of any monitoring software on the phones they intend to purchase, and obtain their consent, prior to engaging that software.

2012 will be the year that consumers will learn how to use their smartphones to make payments with smartphones. Mobile payments will see consumers paying for physical goods with near field communications, mobile wallets and PayPal among other options. It has become such a big trend in the digital economy that mobile payments have caught the attention of the federal government.

The Federal Trade Commission wants to get in on the discussion. In April, the FTC will host a workshop on mobile payments and how the trend will affect consumers in the near future. You know an emerging technology is about to explode when the federal government starts poking its fingers in it. See the details below.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sent a letter to the FTC asking it to investigate privacy breaches and the new Facebook Timeline.

"With Timeline, Facebook has once again taken control over the user's data from the user and has now made information that was essentially achieved and inaccessible widely available without the consent of the user," writes EPIC to the FTC. It urges the FTC to investigate whether Timeline is "consistent with the terms of the settlement."

It's not at all coincidental that shortly after launching Timeline to the world, Facebook decided to ramp up its ad services.

This request comes less than two months after the November 29, 2011 settlement with the FTC in which Facebook agreed to obtain express consent from its users before changing privacy settings. It will also undergo privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years.

Las Zetas kill another "blogger." A body was hung from the same overpass where two bloggers were murdered last month. According to the Houston Chronicle, a sign hung with his body said, in Spanish, "This happened to me for not understanding that I shouldn't report on the social networks."

Representatives of the Nuevo Laredo En Vivo forum denied the person was one of their moderators. One of the previous victims was a moderator there.

In a first in the mobile health marketplace, the US Federal Trade Commission has filed settlements against two app makers that falsely claimed that using their smartphone apps would eradicate blemishes in teens and adults

The FTC passed down the proposed settlement claims against DermApps and Acne Pwner, forcing them to pay in total $14,294 and $1,700 respectively to the thousands of people who downloaded the apps from the iTunes store in a belief that it would shape up their skin flaws.

A maker of iPhone games targeted to kids has settled a case brought against it just last Friday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The case concerned use of child players' personal information without parental consent.

Broken Thumbs Apps is the maker of Emily's Girl World, and a series of spinoff games, primarily for the iOS platform, that center around the fun and fashionable world of young ladies. Kids can dress up virtual models in their choice of clothes and make-up. It sounds innocuous enough, but apparently those choices were being kept on file, and perhaps analyzed.

News surfaced yesterday that Google is facing a Federal Trade Commission antitrust investigation concerning its search practices, specifically the way it features Google products in search results ahead of competitors. Today, Google responded in a blog post, touting the company's transparency and commitment to users.

"It's still unclear exactly what the FTC's concerns are, but we're clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow." While the details of the case are emerging, it's clear Google is not facing a traditional antitrust case the way Microsoft did in the late 1990s. For Google, that could make all the difference.

Google cannot escape the federal government. Every large acquisition that the company makes is scrutinized for months by the feds and now the very nature of Google itself looks like it will go on trial. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Trade Commission will begin serving Google with subpoenas in the start of a broad antitrust investigation into the company's Web and search dominance.

Google's business practices will be put under the microscope, especially the core search product that makes up nearly 66% of search traffic in the United States. One of the key issues, according to The Wall Street Journal, will be if Google "unfairly channels users to its growing network of services at the expense of rivals." Microsoft once went down the antitrust road, and the results were damaging for the software giant. How will Google fare under the federal microscope?

A complaint filed with the FTC last week charges that the popular cloud-based storage system Dropbox misled its users about the security and privacy afforded by its services. Although security and privacy have been some of Dropbox's selling points, the complaint alleges that the company deceived users into thinking their files were completely encrypted and that Dropbox employees could not see the contents of the file.

At issue, in part, were Dropbox's Terms of Service that stated that "all files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password." Dropbox recently revised these terms to read simply "All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES 256).

Fueled by concerns about privacy, legislation that would limit Websites' ability to track users' browsing history via cookies is currently making its way through the California legislature and the U.S. Congress.

The so-called "Do Not Track" legislation is favored by consumer groups and privacy advocates, but opposed by many online marketers, who fear it may limit their ability to monetize their content and services online. Since this type of data is used to target ads to people based on their history and preferences, some fear that establishing an opt-in-only system could hurt the effectiveness of those ads and, in turn, the revenue they generate. Today, Google became the first browser maker to officially oppose California's version of the law.