Skip to main content

News Corp. offers $4.7 million to phone hacking victims

murdoch-scandel
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rupert Murdoch recently approved an early attempt at a settlement offer to the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl that was murdered in 2002. This payment stems from alleged hacking of Milly Dowler’s mobile phone by representatives of the Murdoch-owned News of the World. When the public discovered the phone hacking scandal, several of the high-ranking employees at the newspaper were arrested and eventually lost their jobs after the scandal forced the News of the World to shut down after 168 years of business. In addition to the newspaper closure, parent company News Corp. was forced to withdraw from negotiations to purchase the remaining shares of the BskyB network.

milly-dowler-phone-hackingDesigned to forgo litigation, the initial settlement offer stands at 3 million pounds or $4.7 million dollars. 2 million pounds would be paid directly to the family of Milly Dowler and the remaining 1 million pounds would be awarded to charity. Rupert Murdoch is said to be personally involved with the negotiations and recently visited the Dowler family in July to apologize personally for the hacking incident at News of the World. Shareholders of News Corp. were recently told that the cost of taking the various hacking cases to trial would cost the company approximately 20 million pounds, however analysts had estimated a typical court aware to be around 120,000 pounds. 

Recommended Videos

After London’s Metropolitan Police opened a criminal case regarding the phone hacking and began to arrest staff, the police have been notifying about 4,000 potential victims that phone hacking could have occurred. This has spawned dozens of lawsuits against News Corp. based off claims that their privacy was violated. In June, News Corp. had announced a system that would allow victims to contact the company directly for a faster route to financial compensation, but the planned system has yet to process any claims of hacking.

Topics
Mike Flacy
By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…
Early Black Friday Lenovo Laptop deals 2024: 20% off the best Lenovo Laptops
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i on a desktop surface outside.

Black Friday falls on November 29 this year, and while it's still quite early, there are a lot of great Lenovo deals you can take advantage of already. Along with Dell and Asus, Lenovo is one of the best laptop brands on the market right now and offers a pretty substantial choice of laptops for you to pick from. In fact, its laptops often show up on our list of best laptops and best gaming laptops, so pretty much everything you grab from Lenovo is likely going to be pretty excellent.

That's why we've gone out and collected some of our favorite early Black Friday Lenovo deals and put them for you down below.
IdeaPad 5i 2-in-1 -- $507 $634 20% off
 

Read more
If you use one of these passwords, hackers will love you
Username and password on a tablet screen.

You would think that at this point, people would be using stronger passwords. Sorry to disappoint you, but according to NordPass' annual list of the world's most popular passwords, the unoriginal choices are a letdown.

123456 is the back-to-back champ for the most common and easiest password. But on the bright side, at least "password" doesn't have the No. 1 spot like it did in the past. The remaining top spots go to passwords such as:

Read more
The best VR headsets for 2024
Fionna Ahomuoh using the Meta Quest 3 VR headset.

Virtual reality is finally crossing a threshold when everyone should be taking a closer look. As the number of VR headsets increases, getting the best one is important so you can truly appreciate what's possible. The challenge is finding the system that's right for you at a price you feel comfortable with.

Meta, HTC Vive, Sony, and Pimax stand out as the most popular and most active virtual reality brands. There's little doubt the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro is an impressive mixed-reality headset. However, there are plenty of other XR and VR headsets that are much more affordable than the Vision Pro and deliver a great, immersive experience for gaming, 3D movies, and even productivity. It's a good idea to check out all the options, and we've collected the very best here to make it easy to find the perfect VR headset for you.

Read more