Ransomware review: March 2024

This article is based on research by Marcelo Rivero, Malwarebytes ransomware specialist, who monitors information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web sites. In this report, "known attacks" are those where the victim did not pay a ransom. This provides the best overall picture of...

Facebook’s Extensive Surveillance Network

Consumer Reports is reporting that Facebook has built a massive surveillance network: Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in th...

Case Study: The Cookie Privacy Monster in Big Global Retail

Explore how an advanced exposure management solution saved a major retail industry client from ending up on the naughty step due to a misconfiguration in its cookie management policy. This wasn't anything malicious, but with modern web environments being so complex, mistakes can happen, and...

Google Settles $5 Billion Privacy Lawsuit Over Tracking Users in 'Incognito Mode'

Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed in June 2020 that alleged that the company misled users by tracking their surfing activity who thought that their internet use remained private when using the "incognito" or "private" mode on web browsers. The class-action lawsuit sought at least $5...

Shifting from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha

We are adding another CAPTCHA vendor and helping our customers migrate from Googles reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha. Why We Are Making This Change We continuously evaluate our security measures to ensure they align with the evolving landscape of threats. After carefully evaluating several different CAPTCHA...

YouTube shows ads for ad blocker, financial scams

After performing local experiments for a few months, YouTube recently expanded its effort to block ad blockers. The move was immediately unpopular with some users, and raised some questions in Europe about whether it was breaking privacy laws. In addition, there are some still some fundamental...

Meta Launches Paid Ad-Free Subscription in Europe to Satisfy Privacy Laws

Meta on Monday announced plans to offer an ad-free option to access Facebook and Instagram for users in the European Union EU, European Economic Area EEA, and Switzerland to comply with "evolving" data protection regulations in the region. The ad-free subscription, which costs €9.99/month on the...

Food delivery robots give captured video footage to police

In what sounds like a new step towards Skynet, footage from a food delivery robot has been used as part of a criminal investigation. As 404 Media reports, the food delivery robots that are deployed for Uber Eats in Los Angeles are operated by Serve Robotics, which ultimately wants to deploy up to...

Google Agrees to $93 Million Settlement in California's Location-Privacy Lawsuit

Google has agreed to pay $93 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. state of California over allegations that the company's location-privacy practices misled consumers and violated consumer protection laws. "Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its users one thing – that it...

The Twisted Eye in the Sky Over Buenos Aires

A scandal unfolding in Argentina shows the dangers of implementing facial recognition—even with laws and limits in place...

Hacking Food Labeling Laws

This article talks about new Mexican laws about food labeling, and the lengths to which food manufacturers are going to ensure that they are not effective. There are the typical high-pressure lobbying tactics and lawsuits. But theres also examples of companies hacking the laws: Companies like...

FCC comes down hard on robocallers with record $300m fine

Robocallers are in the news after the FCC issued a $300 million forfeiture to a persistent offender and shut down their operation. A robocall network makes use of automated software diallers to spam out large numbers of cold calls to unsuspecting recipients. These calls promise much but give very...

Software company accused of illegally profiling millions of mobile phone users

A digital rights and privacy organization has filed a complaint against software company TeleSign for gathering and selling information on millions of mobile phone users. The organization that filed the complaint is nyob. nyob is an Austrian based digital right organization that focusses on...

How to Improve Your API Security Posture

APIs, more formally known as application programming interfaces, empower apps and microservices to communicate and share data. However, this level of connectivity doesn't come without major risks. Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in APIs to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data or even ta...

Microsoft to Pay $20 Million Penalty for Illegally Collecting Kids' Data on Xbox

Microsoft has agreed to pay a penalty of $20 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission FTC charges that the company illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console without their parents' knowledge or consent. "Our proposed order makes i...

Legislation alone isn’t enough to stop spyware

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. The use of spyware continues to make headlines across the globe. While primarily used by authoritarian regimes to track potentially sensitive subjects like political opponents or activists, governments from all over the world are guil...

Indiana, Iowa, and Tennessee Pass Comprehensive Privacy Laws

Its been a big month for US data privacy. Indiana, Iowa, and Tennessee all passed state privacy laws, bringing the total number of states with a privacy law up to eight. No private right of action in any of those, which means its up to the states to enforce the laws...

China Bans U.S. Chip Giant Micron, Citing "Serious Cybersecurity Problems"

China has banned U.S. chip maker Micron from selling its products to Chinese companies working on key infrastructure projects, citing national security risks. The development comes nearly two months after the country's cybersecurity authority initiated a probe in late March 2023 to assess potenti...

Four key questions for privacy programs in the U.S.

With new state privacy laws passed each year, organizations are tasked with developing privacy programs that are compliant with applicable laws. To help organizations identify their current privacy program maturity, privacy professionals can ask four questions to determine where they stand...

Getting started with the CDMC framework—Microsoft’s guide to cloud data management

On March 20, 2023, Microsoft announced the successful completion of the Cloud Data Management Capabilities CDMC certification. As a proponent of wider industry standards, I was fortunate to be part of Microsoft’s executive team working to achieve this important milestone. Beginning in 2020, we...