April 9, 2021

Neowin: DuckDuckGo updates extension to block Google’s FLoC tracking

Neowin: DuckDuckGo updates extension to block Google’s FLoC tracking. “DuckDuckGo, the privacy search engine, has updated its DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension for Chrome to block Google’s new tracking method FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). The update to the DuckDuckGo add-on comes after Google began a FLoC trial which opted Chrome users in without the option to opt-out unless they turned off third-party cookies which would break some websites.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
April 9, 2021

CPO Magazine: Faced With Potential Loss of Revenue, Snapchat Explores Ways Around Apple’s New Privacy Rules

CPO Magazine: Faced With Potential Loss of Revenue, Snapchat Explores Ways Around Apple’s New Privacy Rules. “The Financial Times reports that the parent company of messaging app Snapchat has explored plans to skirt Apple’s new privacy rules and continue tracking users, making use of banned device fingerprinting techniques rather than the IDFA identification number.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 9, 2021

CNN: 500 million LinkedIn users’ data is for sale on a hacker site

CNN: 500 million LinkedIn users’ data is for sale on a hacker site. “Information scraped from around 500 million LinkedIn user profiles is part of a database posted for sale on a website popular with hackers, the company confirmed Thursday. The sale of the data was first reported on Tuesday by cybersecurity news and research site CyberNews, which said that an archive including user IDs, names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, professional titles and links to other social media profiles was being auctioned off on the forum for a four-figure sum.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 8, 2021

Elite University Track Coach Stole Athletes’ Nudes Then Extorted Them: DOJ (The Daily Beast)

The Daily Beast: Elite University Track Coach Stole Athletes’ Nudes Then Extorted Them: DOJ. “A track coach who left Northeastern after a sexual harassment investigation and was then hired by another university is facing several charges after allegedly duping female athletes to send him nude photographs in an elaborate social media scheme—and cyberstalking at least one of them.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 8, 2021

The Local: Austria privacy group files complaint against Google

The Local: Austria privacy group files complaint against Google. “An Austrian online privacy campaign group said Wednesday it has a filed a complaint against Google over what it says is a tracking code ‘illegally’ installed on Android phones. The complaint from NOYB relates to Google’s Android Advertising Identifier (AAID) and has been lodged with the CNIL, France’s data protection authority.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 7, 2021

Vice: Facebook Says It’s Your Fault That Hackers Got Half a Billion User Phone Numbers

Vice: Facebook Says It’s Your Fault That Hackers Got Half a Billion User Phone Numbers. “Facebook has become accustomed to dealing with multiple massive privacy breaches in recent years, and data belonging to hundreds of millions of its users has been leaked or stolen by hackers. But, instead of owning up to its latest failure to protect user data, Facebook is pulling from a familiar playbook: just like it did during the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, it’s attempting to reframe the security failure as merely a breach of its terms of service.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 7, 2021

Troy Hunt: The Facebook Phone Numbers Are Now Searchable in Have I Been Pwned

Troy Hunt: The Facebook Phone Numbers Are Now Searchable in Have I Been Pwned. “The headline is pretty self-explanatory so in the interest of time, let me just jump directly into the details of how this all works. There’s been huge interest in this incident, and I’ve seen near-unprecedented traffic to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) over the last couple of days, let me do my best to explain how I’ve approached the phone number search feature.”

Useful Stuff 0
April 7, 2021

Washington Post: How America’s surveillance networks helped the FBI catch the Capitol mob

Washington Post: How America’s surveillance networks helped the FBI catch the Capitol mob. “Debra Maimone pulled down her American flag mask for a moment on Jan. 6 and gazed at the unruly mob of supporters of President Donald Trump overrunning the U.S. Capitol. ‘Put your mask on,’ warned her fiance, as the couple stood beneath an unblinking array of surveillance cameras. ‘I don’t want them to see you.’ It was too late.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 7, 2021

Gizmodo: Google Is Cracking Down on Apps That Can See Every Other App You Have Installed

Gizmodo: Google Is Cracking Down on Apps That Can See Every Other App You Have Installed. “In a recent announcement for developers, Google outlined an update to its policies that will restrict ‘broad app visibility’ in Android 11 or later. Broad app visibility is a function that allows apps to query your device and potentially see what other apps you have installed. Google says it considers data regarding other apps installed on a device to be sensitive information and is making this change to help increase user privacy.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 6, 2021

The Intercept: LexisNexis To Provide Giant Database Of Personal Information To ICE

The Intercept: Lexisnexis To Provide Giant Database Of Personal Information To ICE. “THE POPULAR LEGAL RESEARCH and data brokerage firm LexisNexis signed a $16.8 million contract to sell information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to documents shared with The Intercept. The deal is already drawing fire from critics and comes less than two years after the company downplayed its ties to ICE, claiming it was ‘not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist their efforts.’”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 6, 2021

BuzzFeed News: Surveillance Nation

BuzzFeed News: Surveillance Nation. “A controversial facial recognition tool designed for policing has been quietly deployed across the country with little to no public oversight. According to reporting and data reviewed by BuzzFeed News, more than 7,000 individuals from nearly 2,000 public agencies nationwide have used Clearview AI to search through millions of Americans’ faces, looking for people, including Black Lives Matter protesters, Capitol insurrectionists, petty criminals, and their own friends and family members. BuzzFeed News has developed a searchable table of 1,803 publicly funded agencies whose employees are listed in the data as having used or tested the controversial policing tool before February 2020.”

New Resources 0
April 5, 2021

Business Insider: 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

Business Insider: 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online. “A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online. The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 1, 2021

TechRadar: Google is taking far more data from your Android devices than you may think

TechRadar: Google is taking far more data from your Android devices than you may think. “Researchers have discovered that Android devices are collecting far more telemetry data on users than iOS. The findings from Douglas Leith from Trinity College in Ireland were part of a project looking to quantify the data both Android and iOS handsets send to their headquarters.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 1, 2021

New York Times: Five Tech Commandments to a Safer Digital Life

New York Times: Five Tech Commandments to a Safer Digital Life. “Tech is always changing, and so is the way we use it. That means we are always finding new ways to let our guard down for bad actors to snoop on our data. Remember when you shared your address book with that trendy new app? Or when you posted photos on social networks? Those actions may all pose consequences that weaken security for ourselves and the people we care about.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
March 31, 2021

In bed with Google: A new Sleep Sensing feature prompts privacy worries (CNET)

CNET: In bed with Google: A new Sleep Sensing feature prompts privacy worries. “The focus on sleep tracking underscores an uncomfortable reality about Google’s size and ubiquity. The tech giant already collects vast amounts of data about people in their waking lives: what they search for online, what videos they watch on YouTube and where they’ve traveled, from location data gathered through an Android phone or Google Maps. Now the company is zeroing in on the other half of people’s lives — what they’re doing when they’re not awake.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

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