Sky News: Home secretary told to ‘get a grip’ after 150,000 police records wiped . “Home Secretary Priti Patel has been told to ‘get a grip’ after 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest history records were accidentally wiped from police databases. Critics have seized on the mass information loss, warning it would not make the streets […]
Legal Genealogist: Ancestry sued for yearbooks. “The case, brought by two California residents against Ancestry, focuses on the yearbook collection — ‘U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1999’ — and charges Ancestry with ‘knowingly misappropriating the photographs, likenesses, names, and identities of Plaintiffs and the class; knowingly using those photographs, likenesses, names, and identities for the commercial purpose […]
ZDNet: Developer of Popular Women’s Fertility-Tracking App Settles FTC Allegations that It Misled Consumers About the Disclosure of their Health Data. “The developer of a period and fertility-tracking app used by more than 100 million consumers has settled Federal Trade Commission allegations that the company shared the health information of users with outside data analytics […]
ZDNet: Google reveals sophisticated Windows and Android hacking operation. “The exploit chains included a combination of both zero-day and n-day vulnerabilities, where zero-day refers to bugs unknown to the software makers, and n-day refers to bugs that have been patched but are still being exploited in the wild.”
Neowin: Facebook’s Access Your Information tool gets a makeover and a new search tool. “Facebook today announced a visual redesign for its privacy settings tool called Access Your Information. The tool was first launched in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Back then, the tool had two data categories that were rather […]
Reuters: Google to add App Store privacy labels to its iOS apps as soon as this week. “Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Tuesday it will add App Store privacy labels to applications using the iOS operating system from Apple Inc as soon as this week or by next week.”
CNET: Why you’re hounded by pop-ups about cookies, and how they could go away. “California voters approved a privacy law in November that creates an incentive for companies to stop pestering you about cookies. It can be hard to tell from many of the pop-ups, but businesses are asking you to give them permission to […]
The Verge: Civil rights groups move to block expansion of facial recognition in airports. “A coalition of civil rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union have filed an objection to the proposed expansion of Customs and Border Protections facial recognition at land and sea ports. The National Immigration Law Center, Fight for the […]
New York Times: Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts?. “It isn’t clear who the thief or thieves are, or even how they might profit from the scheme. High-profile authors like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan have been targeted, along with celebrities like Ethan Hawke. But short story collections and works by little-known […]
Techdirt: A Major Wireless Network Flaw Is Still Being Exploited To Track User Locations. “In 2017, hackers and security researchers highlighted long-standing vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US), a series of protocols first built in 1975 to help connect phone carriers around the world. While the […]
BetaNews: Facebook explains why millions of users are losing access to key features. “Various restrictions have come into force because of new privacy laws that Facebook must comply with. It means that some ‘advanced options’, such as creating polls, are no longer available to millions of users. Facebook has revealed just what is happening.”
CNBC: China’s Huawei tested A.I. software that could identify Uighur Muslims and alert police, report says. “Huawei, together with one of China’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) firms Megvii, tested a facial recognition system that could be used to detect members of a minority Muslim group and send alerts to authorities, a new report claims.”
BBC: US cyber-attack: Around 50 firms ‘genuinely impacted’ by massive breach. “The cyber-security firm that identified the large-scale hacking of US government agencies says it ‘genuinely impacted’ around 50 organisations. Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye, said that while some 18,000 organisations had the malicious code in their networks, it was the 50 who suffered major […]