The best browsers for privacy and security

Unfortunately there is a low correlation factor between what most people find the best browsers and what are the best browsers when it comes to privacy and security. If you look at the market share of the most popular browsers, there is one browser that steals the crown without a lot of...

Google limits which apps can access the list of installed apps on your device

Apps on Android have been able to infer the presence of specific apps, or even collect the full list of installed apps on the device. What's more, an app can also set to be notified when a new app is installed. Apart from all the usual concerns about misuse of such a data grab, the information ca...

Facebook’s Mandatory Data-Sharing Rules for WhatsApp Spark Ire

WhatsApp is asking users to accept a new privacy policy that will share all of their data with Facebook beginning Feb. 8, a move that has users sounding an alarm once again about the privacy of their information in the hands of the social media giant. The Facebook-owned messaging service already...

Twitter Fixes High-Severity Flaw Affecting Android Users

Twitter has fixed a vulnerability in its Android app, which could have enabled attackers to access private Twitter data, like direct messages DMs on Android devices. The flaw is related to an underlying Android operating system OS security issue CVE-2018-9492, which affects operating system...

Twitter Could Face $250M FTC Fine Over Improper Data Use

Twitter may be facing a Federal Trade Commission FTC fine of up to $250 million, after the social media giant last year revealed the improper use of users’ email addresses and phone numbers. In October 2019, Twitter acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security...

Bluetooth beacons: one free privacy debate with your next order

Apps and their permissions have been in the news recently, particularly in relation to tracking/privacy issues and Bluetooth. Why Bluetooth, though? What is it, and what is it doing to raise concerns in some security quarters? Bluetooth: your cool, then uncool, but mostly cool again cousin...

FTC Slams Children’s App Developer for COPPA Violations

Children’s app developer HyperBeard has agreed to pay $150,000 after being accused by the Federal Trade Commission FTC of illegally collecting children’s data without parental consent. HyperBeard‘s website says it’s the largest mobile game developer and publisher in Mexico, with various games suc...

Data-Enriched Profiles on 1.2B People Exposed in Gigantic Leak

An open Elasticsearch server has exposed the rich profiles of more than 1.2 billion people to the open internet. First found on October 16 by researchers Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia, the database contains more than 4 terabytes of data. It consists of scraped information from social media source...

ThreatList: Google's Advertising Network Dominates Global Data Collection

When it comes to data collection, Google’s combined arsenal of advertising tools and services continue to help it dominate at a global level. Close behind are AOL Advertising, Moat and AppNexus. Each are singled out by researchers in new report that brings to mind the privacy-busting quote, “If...

Twitter Uses Phone Numbers, Emails to Sell Ads

Twitter has acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security purposes, as part of its two-factor authentication policy, may have been used to sell ads. It calls the move an accident. The revelation is being widely criticized for its obvious breach of user privacy,...

Google Fined $170 Million For Violating Kids' Privacy On YouTube

Google has finally agreed to pay $170 million fine to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general that its YouTube service earned millions by illegally harvesting personal information from children without their parents' consent. The settlement requires...

General Motors collected location & radio listening habits data of 90,000 drivers

By Waqas The listening habits of around 90,000 drivers of General Motors in Chicago and Los Angeles were monitored by the company for three months in 2017 under its radio-tracking program. The Detroit Free Press reported later released a report that General Motors was involved in targeted...

Facebook Is Using Your Two-Factor Authentication Phone Number to Target Advertising

From Kashmir Hill: Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn't hand over at all, but that was collected from other...

Social media: A treasure trove of spam and scams

There are two kinds of spam associated with social media. There are spam ads that actually live on social media, and there is spam that comes in your inbox, courtesy of social media. Both thrive by using data from your social media accounts. But how do spammers know how to target you and send you...

Gone Phishing For The Holidays

Written by Or Katz and Amiram Cohen Overview: While our team, Akamai's Enterprise Threat Protector Security Research Team, monitored internet traffic throughout the 2017 holiday season, we spotted a wide-spread phishing campaign targeting users through an advertising tactic. During the six week...

The Data Tinder Collects, Saves, and Uses

Under European law, service providers like Tinder are required to show users what information they have on them when requested. This author requested, and this is what she received: Some 800 pages came back containing information such as my Facebook "likes," my photos from Instagram even after I...

Google to stop scanning user emails for Gmail ads

By Jahanzaib Hassan Diane Greene, the founder of VMware Inc. and the board member at Google revealed that Google will now stop analyzing user’s personal emails for targeted advertising purposes. Gmail As you may know, Gmail users encounter a number of ads based on their emails content. That is, t...

Germany Bans Facebook From Collecting WhatsApp Data

Just last month, the most popular messaging app WhatsApp updated its privacy policy and T&Cs to start sharing its user data with its parent company, and now both the companies are in trouble, at least in Germany and India. Both Facebook, as well as WhatsApp, have been told to immediately stop...

Verizon Wireless Injects Identifiers to Track Mobile Customers’ Online Activities

The Nation's largest telecom operator 'Verizon Wireless' is tracking its customers' mobile internet traffic by adding a token to Web requests traveling over its network, in order to facilitate targeted advertising even if a user has opted out of their Customer Proprietary Network Information CPNI...

White House Calls for Transparency from Data Brokers

The White House redirected attention away from the data collection efforts of the intelligence community yesterday with the release of a report that urged data brokers to be more transparent about their own data harvesting. Companies such as Facebook, Google and others make a living collecting th...