As Snowden Anniversary Nears, EFF Urges Users to Ramp Up Privacy and Security

Time flies when you’re having fun. But it apparently also flies when there’s a new story every other day about NSA surveillance. It’s been nearly one year since the first story sourced from the documents Edward Snowden stole from the agency appeared, and with that in mind, the EFF is encouraging...

Yahoo Drops Support for Do Not Track

Yahoo, one of the first large Web companies to recognize the Do Not Track header from browsers on its properties, has now backtracked and said it will no longer support DNT. Officials said the lack of an industry standard for DNT that’s effective led to the decision. DNT is an option in the major...

IE 12 to Support HSTS Encryption Protocol

Microsoft confirmed today it will support HTTPS Strict Transport Protocol HSTS in Internet Explorer 12, bringing its browser in line with other major vendors in its support of the protocol. Browsers supporting HSTS force any sessions sent over HTTP to be sent instead over HTTPS, encrypting...

Microsoft Reads User Email without Warrant

Late last week it emerged that Microsoft had searched through the contents of a French blogger’s Hotmail account in order to track down the source of a leak of proprietary information from the Redmond, Wash., tech giant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and transparency advocates have expressed...

Twitter Forces HTTPS Connections to its API

UPDATE: As of yesterday, Twitter’s application programming interface API will only recognize traffic traveling via Transport Layer Security TLS or Secure Sockets Layer SSL. Any applications connecting to the API in plaintext will no longer work. There is a vast selection of third-party Twitter...

Twitter Implements Perfect Forward Secrecy

Twitter took another step toward not only securing the privacy of its users’ communication over the social network, but in warding off the prying eyes of government surveillance with the implementation of Perfect Forward Secrecy. The technology thwarts the efforts of anyone who may be collecting...

EFF: Congress Has Opportunity to Stop Mass Surveillance

Since the leaks of NSA surveillance methods began in June, there has been a flurry of activity in Congress, with members scurrying to line up on either side of the issue, either defending the agency’s methods or condemning them. That mad scramble also has included the introduction of a number of...

DNI Releases FISC Docs, But Legislators Say Much More Remains Hidden

The federal government has released hundreds of pages of documents, including orders and opinions from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, related to the NSA’s surveillance programs, but legislators who have been involved in the process say that there still are significant...

Firefox Extension HTTP Nowhere Allows Users to Surf in Encrypted-Only Mode

It’s no secret that the Web wasn’t really meant to be a secure platform, for communications or commerce or anything else. But it’s used for all of these functions every day, and for the most part they depend upon the sites they deal with using SSL and doing so correctly. That’s not always a sure...

Declassified 2011 FISC Opinion Shows Court Found Some NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional

Newly declassified documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the EFF show that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 declared that the National Security Agency’s techniques for collecting upstream Internet communications was unconstitutional an...

Facebook Partners with Data Brokers for Better Ads

In late February, Facebook forged a partnership with four of its most prolific data brokers in order to more accurately target users with relevant advertisements. Facebook announced on Feb. 27 that it would be expanding its custom audiences tool, an earlier initiative designed to target users wit...

DHS: Border Device Search Policy Does Not Violate Fourth Amendment

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties CLCR has determined that the DHS’s warrantless, and often suspicion-less, search and seizure of electronics devices at U.S. borders does not violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search or...

Yahoo Makes SSL Option Available For Mail Users

Following a trail cut several years ago by Google and Microsoft, Yahoo has now given users of its webmail service the option of using an SSL connection for their sessions. The HTTPS option is not enabled by default, but users can turn it on with a couple of clicks. Yahoo has been slow to make the...

Senate Reauthorizes FISA, Rejects Proposed Privacy Amendments

UPDATE – The Senate today rejected the inclusion of four privacy-friendly amendments before voting to reauthorize the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA that grants the federal government the authority to clandestinely monitor electronic communications involving foreign...

EFF Raises Questions on Privacy Leaks in Ubuntu

The EFF is warning users of Ubuntu’s latest release that the open-source operating system sends their search queries to third parties, including Amazon, by default, and that some of their search results may be viewable by other users on the same network. The privacy leaks are present in Ubuntu...

HTTPS Everywhere 3.0 Released

The EFF has released an updated version of its popular HTTPS Everywhere browser plugin, which enables users to automatically connect over HTTPS to many sites. The newest version of the extension now supports more than 1,500 sites. The EFF developed HTTPS Everywhere in collaboration with The Tor...

Mozilla, EFF Help Launch Internet Defense League, a Bat Signal for the Internet

A group of civil-liberties organizations, software companies and popular Web sites are launching a new effort called the Internet Defense League that aims to “help Internet users, organizations, and companies fight back whenever online rights are threatened.” Inspired by the collaborative fight...

EFF's HTTPS Everywhere Plugin Detects Bad Certs, Security Flaws

The EFF has released a new version of its HTTPS Everywhere browser extension, and users can now turn on a feature that will send the EFF copies of digital certificates that the browser encounters, allowing the organization to look for flawed, fake or expired certificates. The new capability is...

Don't just 'delete,' – DELETE!

Many of EFF’s recommendations involve copying data onto an external device and then removing it from the device you’ll be carrying across the border. When doing this, you will want to make sure that the data you delete is actually gone. Simply pressing the ‘delete’ key or emptying the desktop was...

Know who you're dealing with

The EFF has some advice for interacting with border agents. First: don’t lie to them. This is a punishable crime regardless of whether you are lying to cover something up or not. It is always better to decline answering than it is to give a false answer. Don’t obstruct an Agent’s investigation or...