The 21st century world is all about data: who has it, how they use it, when they share it, and how much they make from selling it. Despite the proliferation of terms of service and privacy policies, the companies responsible for handling our data are largely doing a poor job of telling us what they do with it. [More]
Data & Privacy
Hackers Say They Will Wipe iPhones Unless Apple Pays Ransom
By 3.21.17
Hundreds of millions of iPhone owners may be up a creek next month, at least according to a hacker group that claims to have unprecedented access to the devices and is threatening to remotely wipe them clean if Apple doesn’t pay up. [More]
Judge Says Google Must Do More To Disclose That It Intercepts, Scans Emails From Non-Gmail Users
By 3.21.17
Google recently tried to settle a class-action lawsuit with non-Gmail users who sued because their emails to Gmail users were being intercepted and scanned for the purposes of providing targeted advertising to the recipient. However, that settlement has been rejected by the judge in the case, who says it doesn’t go far enough in requiring proper disclosures from Google about this invasive practice. [More]
Is Your DVR Acting Funny? It Might Be Attacking The Internet
By 3.20.17
It’s pretty obvious when a major internet service provider is under some kind of attack: The service gets bad and slow, error messages pop up all over, and everyone basically knows something is not right. But it’s a lot harder to tell is some other web-connected device you use is acting strange because it’s old, or is broken… or remotely attacking the internet on the other side of the globe. [More]
Google Apologizes To McDonald’s, BBC, For Running Their Ads Alongside Offensive YouTube Clips
By 3.20.17
Google is apologizing to some very big companies that stopped running YouTube ads after learning that their brands were being featured alongside offensive and hateful videos. [More]
Neiman Marcus Agrees To Pay $1.6M To Settle 2013 Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit
By 3.20.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Three years after Neiman Marcus disclosed that it had become the victim of a hack attack in 2013, exposing the credit card information of more than 350,000 customers, the upscale retailer has reached a $1.6 million settlement in the subsequent class action lawsuit. [More]
Saks Fifth Avenue Customer Email Addresses Posted Publicly
By 3.20.17
The email addresses for thousands of Saks Fifth Avenue customers were sitting on the retailer’s website, unencrypted, for an unknown period of time. [More]
Search Warrant Issued For Everyone Who Googled Identity Theft Victim’s Name
By 3.17.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Try to imagine a police officer in the pre-internet era serving a search warrant on the phone company, wanting the names of everyone who looked up a certain number. What would have seemed ludicrous at the time is now feasible, and one judge believes Google should turn over the personal information for anyone who used the search engine to look up a victim’s name. [More]
Facebook, Google, Twitter Told To Revise User Agreements Or Face Fines In Europe
By 3.17.17
Operating globally is tricky: You have to know, and follow, the rules not just of the country where you’re based, but of the countries and regions where you serve customers, too. And for a major silicon valley trio, the way they serve customers in the European Union is apparently not up to snuff. [More]
McDonald’s: Hacker Posted Anti-Trump Message On Twitter Account
By 3.16.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
McDonald’s is blaming hackers for a post on the fast food chain’s official Twitter account that contained some less-than-kind words for President Trump. [More]
Windows Vista Still Exists, But Will No Longer Have Microsoft Support April 11
By 3.16.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Are you out there, Windows Vista users? If so, prepare yourself for the end: Microsoft will be pulling support for the operating system on April 11, sending it to wherever poorly received software goes when it dies. [More]
DOJ: Russian Intelligence Officers Hired Hackers To Attack Yahoo’s Network
By 3.15.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Back in September, Yahoo confirmed a massive data breach that affected at least 500 million users that dated back to 2014. At the time, the company said it suspected a “state-sponsored” actor did it. The U.S. Justice Department has now brought charges against two Russian intelligence agents, as well as two accused co-conspirators, in connection to the hack attack. [More]
Several High-Profile Twitter Accounts Hacked Overnight
By 3.15.17
If you happened to be on Twitter in the early hours of the morning here in the U.S., you may have noticed some strange activity: Several major news sites’ accounts, along with accounts of various European political bodies, were hacked ahead of elections in the Netherlands. [More]
The Mall Is Following You While You Shop
By 3.14.17
When you go to a shopping mall — if you ever do — there’s a good chance you’ve got a smartphone turned on in your pocket or bag. And if you do, you may be providing valuable data to that property’s owners, who can follow you around like a hawk to figure out how much time and money you’re there to spend. [More]
You Can Hack A Phone Just By Using Sound Waves, Researchers Find
By 3.14.17
It sounds like wild science-fiction stuff: Play the right sequence of music through a speaker, and you can take over any device that “hears” it. And yet, a bunch of scientists have just announced that under the right circumstances, you can do exactly that thing. [More]
Facebook Tells Developers To Quit It With The “Surveillance” Already
By 3.13.17
Your phone knows where you are, because it’s there with you. And when you use social media to post photos and talk with friends about an event you’re at, that’s data that can be scraped and used… including by cops who want to figure out what you’re up to. But not so fast, Facebook now says: If you want to build an app for surveillance, you’re going to have to do it without their data. [More]
Credit Reports Soon Won’t Include Some Tax Lien, Civil Judgment Data
By 3.13.17 — Updated: 3.15.17
Millions of consumers could soon see their FICO credit scores increase as the three credit reporting agencies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — take another step to overhaul their systems by excluding certain negative information related to tax liens and civil judgments from credit reports. [More]
Why Amazon’s Alexa Can’t Tell You If It’s Connected To The CIA
By 3.10.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Is your Amazon Echo device — and its virtual assistant Alexa — somehow connected to the CIA? A video of one Echo refusing to answer that question both amused and alarmed (but mostly amused) viewers, but Amazon is now chalking it up to a glitch that has since been fixed. [More]
