A woman who was recruited by Google and rejected by Google four times has joined an age discrimination lawsuit. “According to the lawsuit, a Google recruiter contacted [Cheryl] Fillekes in 2007 for possible employment in either Google’s engineering and testing group or its software development group. There were a series of phone interviews and an […]
What’s the latest company on the transparency report bus? Why, it’s Etsy! “You may notice our report is different than the reports that others have issued. That’s because we want any insights and context we share to reflect Etsy’s unique marketplace, community and mission. We’re not only including information about requests for member information and […]
Unless you’re the US Navy or some similarly exceptional organization, Windows XP support is officially done. “Keeping to its word, Microsoft ended security support for existing Microsoft Security Essentials customers running Windows XP, a little more than a year after support officially ended April 8, 2014. Microsoft said last year that signatures and updates for […]
The Wikimedia Foundation has released its third transparency report. “In August 2014, we published our first transparency report, which detailed the number of requests we received to disclose user data or alter or remove content from the Wikimedia projects between July 2012 and June 2014. We updated the report in April 2015 with new data, […]
The US Office of Personnel Management is launching an information site after the recent hacking of over 21 million social security numbers and other data. “Today, OPM launched a new, online incident resource center at https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity to offer information regarding the OPM incidents as well as direct individuals to materials, training, and useful information on […]
Chrome has started blocking major torrent sites. “Over the past few hours the browser has started to block access to several of the most popular torrent sites including KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and RARBG. Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.” Unfortunately the story does […]
Eeesh. There’s a new Flash zero-day out there — please make sure you’re all patched up! “Hacking Team specializes in surveillance software which it resells to various governments around the world, and in particular to some oppressive regimes, a major issue that has activists outraged. The data stolen from the firm contains several gigabytes worth […]
Amazon is being taken to court over its search results. “Just like how Google has faced criticisms for the way it displays its search results, it seems that this is an issue that Amazon has run into as well, so much so that they’re being taken to court over the way the company displays its […]
A Japanese court has ordered Google to remove search results relating to a man’s arrest. “…the Saitama District Court has ordered the company to scrub the records of a man’s arrest from three years ago. The man in question was arrested for molesting a girl under 18 and was subsequently fined 500,000 yen.”
Sneaky black hat SEO: Using PDF documents to keyword stuff. “Always refining its search algorithms, Google is constantly on the lookout for new methods that attackers and unscrupulous search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners use to manipulate its system to gain higher search rankings. The practice of ‘cloaking’ to fool Google’s page indexer has been known […]
The Washington Post has begun encrypting part of their Web site. “The Washington Post will begin encrypting parts of its Web site Tuesday, making it more difficult for hackers, government agencies and others to track the reading habits of people who visit the site. The added security will immediately apply to The Post’s homepage as […]
Blogging site Medium wants you to be able to log in without a password. “Instead, users will be able to enter in an email address, then click a link sent to them in order to sign in to the site. Previously, the company allowed its users to sign in using their Twitter or Facebook credentials, […]
Do you use NoScript to keep Firefox secure? If you do, you need to update it immediately – it has a serious security vulnerability. “The attack works because NoScript has a limited whitelist of trusted domains, allowing the host browser to load commonly-used tools from certain content delivery networks like googleapis.com. This feature tries to […]
The Supreme Court has refused to hear Oracle v. Google. “The Supreme Court has declined to hear Oracle v. Google, sending the long-running case back to a lower court where Google will have to argue that it made fair use of Oracle’s copyrighted APIs. This has been a closely watched case, as the final decision […]
Make sure you have your Flash patched up, there are some exploit kits floating around. “French researcher Kafeine said on Sunday that a sample he encountered was dropping two instances of Cryptowall ransomware against a Windows 7 computer running Internet Explorer 11. Cryptowall is a strain of ransomware that encrypts files on a victim’s computer […]