Remember when Google’s default setting was to maximize your privacy? Well, Google doesn’t. The internet’s biggest advertising company has now quietly shifted its baseline privacy behavior, so you’ll want to watch out if you’re creating any new accounts. [More]
Data & Privacy
AT&T, Time Warner Stock Prices Fall Slightly Amid Merger Skepticism
By 10.24.16
Before the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner was official, it was already being decried by people in both presidential campaigns, consumer advocates, lawmakers, and former regulators. Amid this backlash to the news, both companies’ values have taken a bit of a ding today. [More]
Webcam Maker To Recall Products Linked To Last Week’s Internet Crash
By 10.24.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
In the wake of a denial of service attack that bogged down sites like Twitter, Github, Reddit, Airbnb, and many others at various times on Friday, one company is recalling webcams that may have been used to aid hackers in taking these popular sites offline.
[More]
Facebook Relaunches “Safety Center” Anti-Bullying Hub With More Resources
By 10.24.16
Six years ago Facebook launched The Safety Center as a way to address bullying and provide users with copies of the social network’s community standards to ensure that anyone using the site can do so safely. Today, the company relaunched the Center and updated its Bullying Prevention Hub in order to reach more of its 1.7 billion users. [More]
FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Talks Privacy, 5G & Set-Top Box Reform
October 21, 2016
When Tom Wheeler was appointed FCC Chair in 2013, some questioned whether a former frontman for both the cable and telecom industries could possibly keep consumers’ needs in mind when dealing with the companies he’d known intimately for decades. John Oliver even likened the naming of Wheeler as FCC Chair to “needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.” Yet, not only has Wheeler demonstrated that he’s not a dingo, he’s also gone toe-to-toe with the companies he once represented, enacting new net neutrality rules that regulate broadband as a utility, challenging phone companies to put an end to robocalls, going after wireless providers for misleading “unlimited” plans, and trying to shake up the pay-TV monopoly on set-top boxes. [More]
iMessage Users Report Attempted Hacks
By 10.19.16
When it comes to trying to breach the data on iPhones, scammy text messages are apparently all the rage. In just the last year, we’ve had the text that could instantly crash an iPhone, and the flaw that allowed hackers to steal your saved passwords with a single text. Now, some Apple users are reporting another possible hack attempt, this time through their iMessage accounts. [More]
Feds Use Search Warrant To Make Everyone In Building Unlock Their Phones
By 10.19.16
If the cops show up with a search warrant, well, you expect they can search the premises. But showing up with a warrant that says every single person on a certain property has to unlock their fingerprint-reading phones and present them for search, too? That’s… pretty surprising. And yet, it turns out, earlier this year, that’s what happened in California. [More]
T-Mobile Will Pay $48M To Close FCC Investigation Into Limits On “Unlimited” Data Plans
By 10.19.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
If you’re going to market “unlimited” wireless data plans, you’d better adequately disclose that, as the name might imply, you’re not selling unfettered access to all the data you could possibly use in a month. Otherwise, you could end up on the hook for millions of dollars in penalties and discounts. [More]
Junk Mail Never Stops, Not Even After You Die
By 10.18.16 — Updated: 10.19.16
Selling health insurance to dead people is not a very profitable business, since they don’t need it. Yet because of bad information in marketing databases, plenty of dead people receive marketing mail… including Medicare supplemental insurance solicitations when they’re about to turn 65. Why do dead people keep getting mail, and is it possible to stop it before it sets off fresh grief? [More]
If FTC Can’t Resurrect Lawsuit Over AT&T’s “Unlimited” Data, Telecoms May Be Even More Untouchable
By 10.17.16
In August, an appeals court threw out the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against AT&T over the way it marketed its “unlimited” data plans (which were anything but unlimited). Now the FTC is taking its case up the legal ladder, making the case that if it’s not allowed to sue AT&T, then all phone and internet providers can more easily get away with deceptive business practices. [More]
Yahoo Explains Why It Turned Off Email Auto-Forwarding; Turns It Back On
By 10.14.16
Earlier this week, we told you about Yahoo Mail users complaining that they could no longer use the auto-forward function to have things from their Yahoo account forwarded to a different address. Now Yahoo is explaining why it turned off this function, and why it’s turned it back on. [More]
Millions Of Hijacked “Smart” Devices Already Aiding Criminals, Research Finds
By 10.13.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
Ever since “smart,” connected devices began to form the internet of things a few years back, some experts have warned that we could be facing a future where your toaster, washing machine, and TV become part of a sophisticated botnet used to attack others. Well, those experts say, the future is now. [More]
Feds Shut Down Scam That Used Pop-Up Alerts To Scare People Into Thinking Computers Were Hacked
By 10.12.16
If you’ve ever browsed some of the internet’s seedier nooks and crannies, you might be familiar with a particular type of scam: The pop-up warning (usually accompanied by a loud, alarm-like sound) telling you that your computer has been compromised and you must call tech support immediately. To people who know better, it’s a minor nuisance but to people who aren’t as scam-savvy, it’s a ruse that brings in millions of dollars to jerks around the world, including a Missouri-based operation that has been shut down by the Federal Trade Commission. [More]
Facebook Internet Satellite Destroyed Spectacularly In Rocket Failure
By 9.1.16
There was an “anomaly” today during testing of a SpaceX rocket at Cape Canaveral… the kind of “anomaly” that creates a spectacular fireball, goes “BOOM,” and leaves a smoke plume in the sky. Happily, nobody was hurt during the incident. However, one very expensive piece of high-profile technology went BOOM along with. [More]
Kimpton Confirms Credit Card Info Stolen From More Than 60 Hotels
By 9.1.16
In July, boutique hotel chain Kimpton revealed it was investigating indications that its credit card payment system had possibly been the latest to fall victim to a data breach. Now the company has confirmed the bad news, announcing that the payment terminals at dozens of Kimpton hotels, restaurants and bars were compromised for nearly six months. [More]
Consumer Privacy Groups File FTC Complaint Over Facebook, WhatsApp Data Sharing
By 8.30.16
It’s been less than a week since WhatsApp announced it would start sharing some user data with parent company Facebook, but in that short time, app users and privacy advocates alike have raised a ruckus over what they see as a broken promise. Now, some consumer privacy watchdog groups have filed a formal complaint with the FTC, asking them to look into it. [More]
Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Is “Not A Media Company,” But He May Be Mistaken
By 8.29.16
Amazon was once an online bookstore. Now it publishes books, and produces TV shows and movies (just like Netflix, which started as a DVD-by-mail company). Twitter is broadcasting political and sporting events, Apple will soon launch original streaming video content, and Snapchat has gone from a messaging service for sending self-destructing intimate photos to having a programming deal with NBC. Among all this shifting and pivoting, social media king Mark Zuckerberg claims that Facebook is not going to become a media company; he may be mistaken. [More]
Facebook Fires Humans, Hires Robots To Tell You What’s Hot Today
By 8.29.16
If you’ve ever looked at the Trending Topics in the top right of your Facebook newsfeed, just to see chatter about some video game character right next to news about a massive natural disaster, you’ve probably thought, “who on earth is deciding what shows up here?” Well, now it’s what, not a who, and it… might still need some refining. [More]
