Items tagged with Privacy
Fast food chain Chick-fil-A is in the news again, though this time it has to do with a recent security breach in which it appears that customers' credit card information was compromised. Chick-fil-A said it's been receiving reports of potential unusual activity involving payment cards used at a few of its restaurants...
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An association of hackers known as Chaos Computer Club has found a way to reproduce fingerprints by using just a couple of photos of someone's fingers. The group explained its method at the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, using the thumbprint of German Defense Minister Ursula von der...
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After Edward Snowden exposed the NSA's spying behavior last summer, it took little time for companies the world over to capitalize on it, offering either software or hardware with the promise of enhancing our security and privacy. Admittedly, I'm always more drawn towards the hardware side, and it was Geeksphone's...
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Another day, another security revelation. This time, it comes from researchers in Germany, who've exposed some serious vulnerabilities in the SS7 set of protocols that cellular carriers use to perform many basic functions. At the core, SS7 (or signaling system #7) is used to keep people connected, moving them from...
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Whenever an organization becomes too large, too complex, and too intertwined in too many facets of business, governments begin to take notice. You need look no further than the breakup of the Bell System last century to see what's possible when a single entity begins to control too much of a given field. Now, regulators in the European Union
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Symantec made the unsettling announcement today that it has discovered sophisticated malware that has been operating successfully on and off since 2008. Named Regin, the malware launches in a series of stages and is designed to avoid detection at each stage. Symantec hasn’t identified the organization that created...
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It's sad that we can't go more than a day lately without learning more about how governments love to eavesdrop on us, removing whatever privacy we have left. Just yesterday, we talked about the continued pressure law enforcement is putting on companies like Apple and Google regarding encryption on their respective...
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It's been no secret that most law enforcement, including the biggest US government agencies, would rather encryption didn't exist outside of its own use. Just this past week, we saw the Department of Justice defend its stance on scooping up user data en masse, and in September, we talked twice about the 'major...
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is bringing the legal hammer down on tech support scammers who trick people into thinking there's something wrong with their computer that they're able to fix, or otherwise offering to speed up your PC. What they're really doing is charging for services that aren't necessary, though...
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Phew, we can all breathe a sigh a relief that the scooping up of our sensitive mobile phone data -- things like text messages, call records, browsing history, pictures, contact, and more -- is completely legal, or so the government says. Doesn't that make you make feel much better about the U.S. Marshal Service's use...
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The Department of Justice's U.S. Marshals Service division has reportedly been employing fake cellphone towers on planes in an effort to stay one step ahead of criminals such as drug dealers and terrorist organizations operating in the United States. Unfortunately for law abiding citizens and privacy advocates at...
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Most of the time, when we hear about data breaches, it's because companies have either been compromised or failed to properly protect data. This time around, however, it's the United Postal Service in the limelight. Data on as many as 800,000 employees may have been stolen along with data on customers who called the...
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Governments around the world are increasingly interested in what their citizens are doing on Facebook. According to the social network's third Government Requests Report, which provides information about the number of government data and content removal requests received during the first half of 2014, combined...
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After a recent judge ruling, the ultra-secure fingerprint login feature your smartphone may offer doesn't seem quite so secure after all. Virginia Beach Judge Steven Frucci has ruled that while a person does not have to hand over their phone's passcode so that law enforcement can gain entry, a fingerprint is fair...
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We've talked a lot in the past about the rather large number of security risks that have existed on Android, and Google's Play Store in particular. While part of the reason that so much bad can happen on Android is due to its openness, something I appreciate a lot, Google still takes security and privacy on its platform extremely seriously....
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One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight -- until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that...
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A couple of months ago, Facebook caused quite a stir when it wanted drag queens to use their real names on the service. Of course, this isn't a rule that affects only drag queens, but that was this community that became the loudest opposition. Last week, we established that the entire thing was a big misunderstanding...
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One of the original big features of Google's Glass was facial recognition, but after catching a ton of flack for it, the company decided last summer to purge the feature on its cutting-edge device. However, while that might be the case, the company is finding it impossible to distance itself from the fact that Glass...
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Apple is making a big deal about its encryption scheme in iOS 8 and is championing itself as a purveyor of user privacy. The way Apple chief Tim Cook explains it, Apple wouldn't be able to help law enforcement infiltrate your iPhone even if it wanted to because the encryption is too strong. Google's been echoing a...
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Late last week, we reported on the FBI's latest beef with Apple, as the company is soon to make encryption standard on its customer's iPhones. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's not just the FBI that's upset, but law enforcement in general. Since the FBI spoke out, some Bay Area police officials have spoken out as well...
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There's a fine line between privacy and safety, and the question we face as a nation is how much information should government agencies be allowed to access? Privacy advocates would argue that the U.S. government is stepping way over the line with the level of spying it's capable of, and in the aftermath of that all...
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Events of the past year or so have really highlighted the importance of both our security and privacy, but the sad fact of the matter is, the majority of people don't take simple precautions to vastly improve either of those things. Take two-step authentication, for example. It's widely available, but not widely used...
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