Items tagged with Privacy
It looks like Net Neutrality isn't the only thing on the mind of the Obama Administration. There's another issue that's gaining attention, and with Google growing, GPS becoming more mainstream and individual privacy rights being put into...
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A study using an application called "TaintDroid: An Information-Flow Tracking System for Realtime Privacy Monitoring on Smartphones," conducted by Intel Labs, Penn State Univesity, and Duke University found that a number of Android apps were sending user data, including location, back to...
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At the Usenix security conference, an "unusual" but still useful study was discussed. It involved using the smudges on touch screens to break into smartphones, among other devices. The study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania focused on smartphone touch screens, but researchers...
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If you're an Android app developer, and you have been troubled in the past by ill-willed people stealing your apps and then hosting them online for others to download, it's evident that Google is listening to your squealing. Apple's App...
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It seems we can't go a month without talking about privacy concerns surrounding one of today's popular social networking sites. Whether it's a new Facebook setting or other security breach, keeping one's private information private isn't always easy. A recent poll by the Marist Institute for...
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Well, this is one way to come back against the pundits who say that Facebook's privacy efforts aren't good enough. The world's most famous social networking site has been hit with a barrage of complaints over the past few months for not providing enough privacy to its users, and that really...
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Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, but not for reasons that the service is particularly proud of. For as many million users as it has, Facebook's biggest issue now is dealing with pundits and those who are focused on privacy holes that need to be patched up. Facebook is quickly...
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Oh boy, this won't go over well. Just as the weekend was getting set to kick into high gear, Google dropped one more bombshell for the news crowd to hop on. The company, which has seen lots of criticism lately over botched privacy efforts...
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One of the major news stories of the past week has focused on the Lower Merion school district in Philadelphia and the furor created when the school admitted it could remotely activate student webcams and observe them remotely. One clip from an episode of Frontline that aired in June 2009...
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Peek-a-boo! There's a decent chance that many, many more people will be "seeing you" if you aren't careful with your Facebook privacy settings, which were just recently overhauled by the powers that be. But many folks aren't exactly happy...
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After some iPhone users have reported receiving phone calls from the publisher of a free app they've downloaded from the App Store, users have begun to wonder: how did the company get my contact information? Since Apple does not provide contact information for users to App Store vendors, the...
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In the latest Big Brother-ish story to hit, a developer has discovered that the Palm Pre and Palm webOS know way too much about him than he wants. Not only does it upload location-based information to Palm, it also uploads data about his application usage. webOS also reports back crash log...
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It doesn't carry quite the same weight as the Warren Commission report and it might even contain more redactions than the Nixon tape transcripts, but recently-released FBI documents obtained by Wired News via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) prove that the FBI has been using its own...
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Only one day after Google has released its social networking, location-aware application, Google Latitude, a privacy advocacy group is claiming that Google Latitude has "a fundamental design problem that could substantially endanger user privacy." Even though Google Latitude is designed to...
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As Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Apple’s Safari all compete against one another to try to see who can be the No. 1 Web browser, certainly privacy is a key factor that influences success. While many of us hope to never have to deal with the repercussions of a flawed browser and/or stolen information,...
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We’re sure many of you have suggestions for how we could change the copyright laws, patent system, and privacy rules in this country. However, we’re guessing not many of you have acted upon it. The Pirate Party in Sweden is doing just that, and they’re gaining some serious support in the...
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There is a famous New Yorker cartoon from 1993 with a dog using a computer, where the dog says: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The implication is that you can be completely anonymous when online and be anyone, or anything, you want to be. That might have be mostly true in the...
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There's been talk recently over private browsing features in upcoming browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1 (Safari already has this feature). Privacy, of course, is an important subject for many end users (despite the somewhat pejorative term "porn mode" frequently used...
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Faced with concerns that users might switch over to IE8 or Google's new Chrome so they can browse porn, er, we mean privately, Mozilla has reversed course on Privacy Mode, which had been out for Firefox 3.1. The upcoming release will indeed support Privacy Mode, popularly known as "Porn...
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If you think the contents of your work computer are your business and only your business, then think again. Applying federal rulings from other jurisdictions to help guide its ruling, the New Jersey State Appeals Court ruled in a recent case that "an employee has no reasonable expectation of...
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A recent U.K. study by AOL finds that most online users are concerned about their online privacy and about providing personal details to Websites. No surprise there. In fact, the study found that 84 percent of respondents said that "they would not give away income details online." What to make...
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According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a dangerous legal precedent has just been set that can potentially unravel existing federal privacy protections for e-mail and Internet usage. The alert from the EFF is not just to sound a general warning, but it also takes the form of an Amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, filed...
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