Facebook said Thursday it was testing a feature that lets users of the leading social network make purchases by simply pressing an on-screen "Buy" button.

The test was limited to a few small- or medium-sized businesses in the United States.

Payment processor Visa is launching a new service called Visa Checkout that eliminates a few steps in online payment.

The company and its retailing partners, including Neiman Marcus, Pizza Hut, Staples and others, hope a quicker payout will lead to fewer abandoned shopping carts online. As more customers shop on smaller screens like smartphones and tablets, the hassle of entering in credit card numbers and billing addresses is becoming a sticking point and payment processors have been working to find ways to simplify the process.

You've probably decided who gets the house or that family heirloom up in the attic when you die. But what about your email account and all those photos stored online?

Grieving relatives might want access for sentimental reasons, or to settle financial issues. But do you want your mom reading your exchanges on an online dating profile or a spouse going through every email?

Tokyo police said Thursday they had arrested an engineer for allegedly stealing massive amounts of personal data from an educational services firm, a leak that may ultimately affect more than 20 million people.

Private details -- including names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays -- were stolen by 39-year-old suspect Masaomi Matsuzaki, police said, with Japanese media reporting that he sold the information for about 2.5 million yen ($24,600).

Microsoft on Wednesday followed in Google's footsteps by letting people in Europe ask to have links related to them 'forgotten' on its search engine Bing, under the auspices of a court ruling.

An online request form allowed people to identify specific web pages they thought should be omitted from results served up in response to Bing queries on their names.

Google+ apologized Tuesday and stopped requiring people to use their real names while mingling in the online social network, as it looks to gain ground on market leader Facebook.

"When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile," the California Internet titan said in a post at the social network.

Yahoo's hopes for renewed stardom on the Internet stage are being pinned on a song.

Make that many songs -- performed by popular musicians in real time, and streamed daily at yahoo.com/live beginning with a concert Tuesday by The Dave Matthews Band.

Apple and IBM unveiled a "landmark" partnership Tuesday to win over business customers by offering iPhones and iPads that are specially tailored to the corporate world. 

The tie-up between what were historically rivals aims to boost Apple's share of the market for mobile devices for businesses and will offer custom-made apps which bring the power of IBM's supercomputing analytics to a mobile workforce, a joint statement said.

A new social network says its goal is sharing among its users -- including some of the profits.

Bubblews, which is launching a new platform Wednesday, aims to bring together people by giving a small slice of ad revenues to users for each time they post or share.

U.S. technology giant Apple is fighting Chinese claims that the iPhone threatens national security through its ability to track and time-stamp a user's location.

The frequent locations function, which can be switched on or off by users, is available on iOS 7, the operating system used by the current generation of iPhones released in September 2013.