Each year thousands of manufacturers recalled potentially dangerous and deadly products. While systems in place to notify consumers of these issues have resulted in fewer deaths and injuries in recent years, a new report has found that companies aren’t using their power on social media to protect consumers. [More]
Data & Privacy
Facebook Launching “Place Tips” So You Always Know Everything About Where You Are
By 1.29.15
When creating a post on Facebook, users can already tag their location to let the world know where they are. Now, the social media site is taking things a step farther with Place Tips, a service offering iPhone users a chance to learn more about that location, whether it be a coffee shop, restaurant, shopping mall or national landmark. [More]
Facebook Says Hour-Long Global Outage Was Its Own Fault, Not The Work Of Hackers
By 1.27.15
After Facebook and Instagram went down around the world for about an hour earlier today, the social media giant announced that despite the claims of hackers on Twitter, it’s placing the blame squarely on itself, saying it was a self-inflicted outage. [More]
Facebook Launches Effort To Cut Down On Those Annoying Hoax Stories Your Friends Can’t Stop Believing
By 1.20.15
No, Betty White is not dead (and neither is Eddie Murphy, Celine Dion, Jon Bon Jovi, etc). No, a bunch of worms didn’t burst out of a woman’s chest. But because your friends on Facebook are easily fooled and don’t know about the existence of Snopes.com, it’s up to you to run through that gauntlet of idiocy on your news feed. Since those gullible folks will never learn, Facebook says now it’s going to help crack down on bogus, hoax and otherwise fake Internet stories clogging up what you read on the social media site. [More]
Facebook Is Now Moving To Invade Your Workplace With New App
By 1.14.15
While many employers complain about their employees using Facebook too frequently during work hours, a new app actually seeks to integrate the Facebook experience with the workplace. [More]
Facebook Introduces AMBER Alerts That Appear In News Feeds Of Users In The Search Area
By 1.13.15
Facebook is continuing to dip its toes into the real life world of emergencies and natural disasters with another new safety feature: Whenever the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children issues an AMBER Alert for a missing child, users in the targeted search area affected will automatically see that alert in their Facebook feeds. [More]
Crayola Apologizes After Hackers Post NSFW Pics To Kid-Friendly Facebook Page
By 1.12.15
Visitors to the Crayola Facebook page were seeing Brick Red, or perhaps blushing in shades of Carnation Pink on Sunday when they realized that some nogoodniks had taken over the account and decided to have a laugh by juvenile but not kid-friendly updates for the crown company’s 2.45 million fans to see. [More]
Instagram Fixes A Loophole That Allowed Public To See Private Pics
By 1.12.15
Some 300 million people have accounts on Facebook-owned photo-sharing service Instagram, and while many of those users are fine with letting the world see every image they post, some Instagrammers prefer to keep their pics private. However, until this weekend there was a loophole that could give people unauthorized access to private images on Instagram. [More]
Study: 58% Of All American Adults Are On Facebook
By 1.9.15
While you’ll still bump into your share of people who prefer to abstain from maintaining a social media presence, there are a whole lot of us signed up and freely sharing inspirational quotes wrongly attributed to famous people. According to a new study looking at adults who use the Internet in the U.S. (81% of the entire population), a new study found that 71% have a Facebook account, which means roughly 58% of all American adults are on the social media site. [More]
From Samsung To Razer To Oculus, Our Experience With The Latest In Virtual Reality
By 1.6.15
Virtual reality has been a holy grail of sorts for tech developers for several decades, but previous generations’ attempts were too clunky, heavy, and unconvincing. The dream hasn’t died, and judging by what we saw at International CES this week, the field is ready to explode (in a good way). [More]
Banks Report Possible Data Breach At Chick-Fil-A Restaurants
By 12.31.14
2014 has been a year of point-of-sale data breaches, so why should the last day of the year be any different? Chick-Fil-A is the newest member of the Possible Breach Club, and is currently investigating reports of fraudulent transactions on customer credit cards. The reported breach would have started on December 2, 2013 and lasted until September 30, 2014. [More]
Sony Extends PlayStation Store Sales While Still Experiencing Connectivity Issues
By 12.30.14
If you have a Sony PlayStation, you’re no doubt aware that the PlayStation Network went down for several days during the Christmas holiday and is still apparently experiencing problems. While the company isn’t yet offering any free stuff or reimbursing PlayStation Plus members for the downtime, it is extending a pair of sales in response to the incident. [More]
Staples Confirms 1.16 Million Cards Breached In 115 Stores
By 12.22.14
Back in October, big-box office-supply retailer Staples announced that it was investigating a possible customer payment data breach. The results of that investigation are in: yes, the payment systems of some Staples stores were breached. [More]
The Organization That Coordinates All The Internet Domain Names In The World Got Hacked
By 12.19.14
If the Internet was the Death Star, then the weak point hackers might be trying to aim at would be the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN (though I’d like to think the non-profit organization that administers and coordinates all the world’s Internet domain names wouldn’t be on the dark side [althouuugh the company logo does kind of look like a Death Star…]). As it turns out, ICANN says it was hacked — though there will be no space explosions because of it. [More]
Ex-Employees Sue Sony Pictures, Claiming Company Failed To Protect Workers’ Personal Info From Hack
By 12.16.14
In the wake of the major hack over at Sony Pictures Entertainment earlier this month, two former employees are suing the company, claiming that Sony Pictures didn’t do enough to protect their personal information from hackers. [More]
Sony Demands Reporters Stop Reporting On, Destroy Stolen Documents
By 12.15.14
Sony is still reeling from the recent massive hack that has opened a seemingly endless source of news stories about funny names that celebrities use to check into hotels and which movie stars are considered greedy jerks by greedier, jerkier studio executives. But now the company is hoping to put this to an end, sending legal notices to reporters asking them to cease writing about the stolen items and to delete anything they might have in their possession. [More]
