Items tagged with privacy violation
Did you attend E3 this past June? Your data may have been leaked. The data of over 2,000 journalists and content creators was at risk thanks to a website security breach. The Electronic Software Association (ESA) grants E3 press badges to thousands of journalists, content creators, and other industry experts each year. The ESA then compiles a list of attendee’s contact information and hands that out to companies. This data typically includes an attendee’s home or office address, phone number, and other relevant information. The companies will then invite attendees to various special events. The data is not meant to be shared with the public and is only intended to connect companies...
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Digital wellness apps and products have become increasingly popular in recent years. Parents in particular have started to use “screen time apps” to monitor the amount of time their children are playing games or watching shows on their devices. Unfortunately, according to Apple, not all screen time apps are created equal and the company recently banned several of them due to privacy violations. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, reported that Apple has banned apps that have misused mobile device management (MDM) systems. The offending MDM apps tracked information about children’s devices and then shared that information with parents who downloaded...
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Some people collect stamps, others collect vintage coins, and some companies collect your Facebook photos. Facebook recently announced that a bug allowed third-party apps to access the photos of nearly 6.8 million users. Facebook has apologized and promised to alert users whose photos may have been shared without their permission. It is believed that 1,500 apps by 876 developers were impacted by the bug between September 13th and September 25th, 2018. The issue affected apps that are able to access the photo API and the users who authorized these apps. Facebook typically only allows apps to obtain photos that are posted on a user’s timeline. This bug was also able to access content from...
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Is your smartphone secretly recording your screen activity? It turns out that conspiracy theorists may have some justification for their concern. Computer scientists from Northeastern University determined that some apps do violate a user’s privacy by quietly capturing pictures, videos, and recorded audio. According to the Northeastern University scientists, their research was the “first large-scale empirical study of media permissions and leaks from Android apps, covering 17,260 apps from Google Play, App China, Mi.com, and Anzhi.” The researchers worked with ten Android devices and an automated program to use the apps and determine whether any media files were sent to...
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