Items tagged with Privacy
Attention Home Depot shoppers, your credit and/or debit card information may be compromised. The hardware chain confirmed that a recent cyber attack is estimated to have put the payment card information of around 56 million unique credit and debit cards at risk due to malware that it suspects has been present between...
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Among all the different things Google is introducing in Android L, the next major version of Android, the one that will be of most interest to anyone concerned about privacy is the default setting for encryption. It will be the first version of Android to enable the setting by default, which means that a password will...
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Not even three weeks removed from a rather controversial iCloud hacking incident in which hackers were able to obtain nude photos of celebrities and post them online, Apple is championing itself as the protector of user privacy. Not many companies have the marketing mojo to go from one extreme end of the spectrum to...
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We already know that Uncle Sam is keeping tabs on us, or at least those of us who might trigger a red flag for one reason or another. The question is, to what degree? We might never know the full answer to that, though we can parse together bits and pieces to get an idea. For example, Google's latest transparency...
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When the EU began forcing Google to abide by its "Right to be forgotten" laws, it caused a major stink all over the world. For those unaware, these laws allow anyone within the EU to submit a link removal request to Google if the link happens to involve their personal information, or can be deemed irrelevant. In...
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Verizon will pay a hefty $7.4 million fine as part of a settlement agreement with the Federal Communications Commission to end an investigation into the wireless carrier's use of personal consumer information for marketing purposes without their consent, the FCC announced today. In addition to the fine, Verizon agreed...
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It's seemingly impossible to go any real length of time without learning of some security breach, but more often than not, the number of affected people is arguably minimal. Today, news is breaking of a breach involving Home Depot that's not minimal, and it's not a mere matter of some credentials being leaked, but...
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Privacy is becoming quite the profitable enterprise for those who can offer it. That includes Les Goldsmith, Chief Executive Officer of ESD America, maker of the CryptoPhone 500. What's special about the CrytpoPhone 500 is that it it sports a Samsung Galaxy S III body with a "hardened" version of Android that's had...
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Microsoft is flat out ignoring a federal court order to provide U.S. prosecutors access to a customer's emails being held on a server in Ireland. For Microsoft, this boils down to a matter of trust with its users, and so long as the case continues to maneuver through the appeals process, the Redmond outfit has no...
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Late this week, Facebook announced that it's begun rolling out a new mobile feature to a small number of users that greatly enhances the service's search capabilities. Anyone who's ever used Facebook's search on mobile or the desktop are probably well-aware that it's not exactly the greatest tool out there - sometimes...
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Grab your tin hat: your cellphone might be giving away your location to spy agencies and sophisticated gangs even as you read this. The Washington Post is reporting that certain companies are selling technology that gives governments and criminals tracking capabilities similar to what the NSA is believed to have...
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News is out today of a survey from video advertising platform Ebuzzing claiming that it would cost an average of E140 per year per UK citizen to pay for an ad-free Internet and that the majority of users (98% of them, in fact) would never, ever be willing to pay such fees. I'm not surprised by results like this -- if someone asked me "Would...
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We're often told that having a kill switch in our mobile devices - mostly our smartphones - is a good thing. At a basic level, that's hard to disagree with. If every mobile device had a built-in kill switch, theft would go down. Who'd waste their time over a device that probably won't work for very long? Here's where...
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A lot has sure changed in the past year, especially since the time before Edward Snowden, who we talked about yesterday, came forth with his NSA revelations. Anyone who cared about hiding their identity pre-Snowden were generally considered privacy nuts. But post-Snowden, the desire to keep private online suddenly...
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A couple of weeks ago, reports hit the Web claiming that Chinese phone maker Xiaomi was sending user info back to home base. At the time, the company's head of global expansion, ex-Googler Hugo Barra, claimed that no such thing was going on. But late last week, Finnish security firm F-Secure posted proof to the Web...
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Facebook has long been under fire for its seemingly lackluster care to user privacy, something that became a hot topic this past week as the company forced its mobile users to transition to its Messenger app in order to have messaging capabilities. Well, as hard as it might be to believe, there are some instances when...
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More details have surfaced on how the FBI uses its own custom malware to penetrate the Tor network's anonymizing service -- and while those tools have been deployed in some important investigations, it's sure to raise hackles in the post-Snowden era. Several years ago, the FBI launched a major sting operation against...
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Now that the NSA has everyone second-guessing themselves before hitting the Send button, BitTorrent is jumping into the chat game. The service credited with enabling record-breaking piracy of HBO’s Game of Thrones announced Bleep alpha, a chat service for Windows. The chat’s draw is that it’s meant to keep your chat safe...
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Another day, another report of a potential hack that could cause some real trouble. Researchers at Berlin's SR Labs have discovered that firmware can be rewritten on any sort of USB device, be it a keyboard, a mouse, or a flash drive, and exploits could involve logging keystrokes, eavesdropping on communications...
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People have a tendency to get ticked off if you mess with their heads, especially without their permission. Facebook, the world's largest social network, found this out the hard way when it revealed that it had altered nearly 700,000 user feeds to study people's emotions. Not cool, but are these types of studies...
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Big trouble in China? We're not sure, though reports are surfacing that Chinese government officials have been making unannounced visits to Microsoft's offices in China. Microsoft is keeping mum on the visits, and so is China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce, which Chinese media reports had made...
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For as impactful as Google has been on the world in a positive manner, it takes its fair share of flack. From privacy concerns to revamping its search algorithms, plenty of people aren't the fondest of Google. Over in the European Union, privacy officials have continued to slam Google regarding its "takedown" program...
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