Survey Finds People are Privacy Hypocrites

Even while people remain concerned about their own privacy in the workplace and online, most still admit to violations of their coworkers’ privacy by “creeping” on PC screens and “peeking” at documents found in printer trays, a new survey has found. The survey—commissioned by HP as part of Nation...

Apple Under Fire Over Sending Some Users Browsing Data to China's Tencent

Do you know Apple is sending iOS web browsing related data of some of its users to Chinese Internet company Tencent? I am sure many of you are not aware of this, neither was I, and believe me, none of us could expect this from a tech company that promotes itself as a champion of consumer privacy...

Privacy Groups: Ring's Police Partnerships Can Lead to Sinister Ends

More than 30 privacy and consumer advocacy groups are urging local legislators to intervene in doorbell-camera company Ring’s partnerships with law enforcement. In 2018, Amazon-owned Ring announced that it was starting a “new neighborhood watch” effort, to allow homeowners to provide voluntary...

300 shades of gray: a look into free mobile VPN apps

The times, they are a changin'. When users once felt free to browse the Internet anonymously, post about their innermost lives on social media, and download apps with frivolity, folks are playing things a little closer to the vest these days. Nowadays, users are paying more attention to privacy a...

Leaky Server Exposes 419M Phone Numbers of Facebook Users

Phone numbers linked to the Facebook accounts of hundreds of millions of users has been found online on an insecure server in the latest privacy gaffe for the social media giant. The server, which lacked password protection, contained more than 419 million records over several databases of Facebo...

Firefox 69 Now Blocks 3rd-Party Tracking Cookies and Cryptominers By Default

Mozilla has finally enabled the "Enhanced Tracking Protection" feature for all of its web browser users worldwide by default with the official launch of Firefox 69 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The company enabled the "Enhanced Tracking Protection" setting by default for its browser in Ju...

Chinese Face-Swapping App ZAO Sparks Privacy Concerns After Going Crazily Viral

What could be more exciting than seeing yourself starring alongside your favorite actor in a movie, music video, or TV program? Yes, that's possible—well, kind of, by using a new AI-based deepfake app that has gone viral in China over this weekend, climbing to the top of the free apps list in the...

Chinese Face-Swapping App ZAO Sparks Privacy Concerns After Going Crazily Viral

What could be more exciting than seeing yourself starring alongside your favorite actor in a movie, music video, or TV program? Yes, that's possible—well, kind of, by using a new AI-based deepfake app that has gone viral in China over this weekend, climbing to the top of the free apps list in the...

News Wrap: Dentist Offices Hit By Ransomware, Venmo Faces Privacy Firestorm

In this week’s news wrap podcast, editor Lindsey O’Donnell and Tara Seals break down the top news of the week – from ransomware attacks to companies responding to outcry over privacy issues. Top stories include: Ring announced it is working with more than 400 US police departments to streamline...

Venmo's Public Transactions Policy Stirs Privacy Concerns

Your simple $5 Venmo payment to a friend after splitting a pizza could easily expedite various malicious attacks, from stalking to spear-phishing, according to researcher concerns. Many have weighed in on Venmo’s privacy practices, but the latest are Mozilla Foundation and the Electronic Frontier...

Facebook Records User Audio, Sparking Privacy Questions

Facebook has admitted that it has been transcribing audio chats between its users on its Messenger platform. Sources said that it’s paying hundreds to third-party outside contractors to do so. The latter calls into question Facebook’s data-handling practices when it comes to being open with its...

This Tesla Mod Turns a Model S Into a Mobile 'Surveillance Station'

The Surveillance Detection Scout can track license plates and faces near your Tesla—with all the privacy concerns that implies...

Facebook Plans on Backdooring WhatsApp

This article points out that Facebook's planned content moderation scheme will result in an encryption backdoor into WhatsApp: In Facebook's vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These...

Amazon Alexa, Google Home Are On a Collision Course With Regulation

Voice assistants are growing rapidly in popularity — but at the same time, the privacy concerns and security issues with popular home assistant devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are peaking too. Earlier in July, Amazon came under fire after acknowledging that it retains the voice recording...

Bluetooth Flaws Could Allow Global Tracking of Apple, Windows 10 Devices

Vulnerabilities in the way Bluetooth Low Energy is implemented on devices by manufacturers can open the door to global device tracking for the Windows 10, iOS and macOS devices that incorporate it, according to research from Boston University. An academic team at BU uncovered the flaws, which exi...

CVE-2014-10374

On Fitbit activity-tracker devices, certain addresses never change. According to the popets-2019-0036.pdf document, this leads to "permanent trackability" and "considerable privacy concerns" without a user-accessible anonymization feature. The devices, such as Charge 2, transmit Bluetooth Low...

Design/Logic Flaw

On Fitbit activity-tracker devices, certain addresses never change. According to the popets-2019-0036.pdf document, this leads to "permanent trackability" and "considerable privacy concerns" without a user-accessible anonymization feature. The devices, such as Charge 2, transmit Bluetooth Low...

CVE-2014-10374

CVE-2014-10374 concerns Fitbit activity-tracker devices where BLE advertising uses a TxAdd flag for random addresses, but the addresses remain constant. This leads to “permanent trackability” and privacy concerns when a device is sniffed at multiple fixed locations, enabling an adversary to tell ...

CVE-2014-10374

On Fitbit activity-tracker devices, certain addresses never change. According to the popets-2019-0036.pdf document, this leads to "permanent trackability" and "considerable privacy concerns" without a user-accessible anonymization feature. The devices, such as Charge 2, transmit Bluetooth Low...

Amazon Admits Alexa Voice Recordings Saved Indefinitely

Amazon has acknowledged that it retains the voice recordings and transcripts of customers’ interactions with its Alexa voice assistant indefinitely. The admission raises questions about how long companies should be able to save highly-personal data collected from voice assistant devices. After U....