E-Mail Tracking

Interesting survey paper: on the privacy implications of e-mail tracking: Abstract: We show that the simple act of viewing emails contains privacy pitfalls for the unwary. We assembled a corpus of commercial mailing-list emails, and find a network of hundreds of third parties that track email...

Mozilla Moving Toward Full HTTPS Enforcement in Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation is initiating the process to phase out insecure HTTP connections in the Firefox browser. The decision is part of a broader movement to encrypt the Web, which in the case of Mozilla Firefox, means permitting only encrypted HTTPS browser connections. Mozilla is the developer ...

Black Hat 2014: Multipath TCP Introduces Security Blind Spot

If multipath TCP is the next big thing to bring resilience and efficiency to networking, then there are some serious security issues to address before it goes mainstream. MPTCP is an extension to the Internet’s primary communication protocol. It allows a TCP session to move over multiple...

FTC Asks Data Brokers, Congress for Transparency, Regulation

The Federal Trade Commission called on data brokers to be more transparent and give users more control over their personal information in a comprehensive report issued yesterday. The 100-plus page document, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Acccountability,” .PDF criticizes the industry...

FTC Discusses Regulating User-Generated Health Information

The proliferation of wearable devices coupled with smartphone apps that monitor heart rates and other health metrics raises an important question: How exactly should the information generated by these devices be regulated? If there’s a fist fight in a bar can a person’s Fitbit accelerator be...

Oversight Board Calls NSA Metadata Collection Illegal

Another independent review board investigating the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records metadata has come down hard on the program, calling it illegal, recommending the government end the program, and questioning its effectiveness in ferreting out terrorists. The Privacy and Civ...

Google to Pay $7M Settlement Over Street View Data Collection

Google has agreed to pay a $7 million settlement to several dozen U.S. states as part of an agreement of charges that the company was collecting private user data from WiFi hotspots while its Street View cars were driving around taking photos in various locations. The controversy over Google’s...

Seeking Crowd Engagement, Startup Stumbles On New Tool For Crowd Control

When CrowdOptic, a Silicon Valley, venture funded startup, developed a cool application that could stream real-time, context-aware information streams to mobile devices, the applications seemed straight-forward and lucrative enough: a blend of advertising and broadcasting that sports franchises a...

Experts Converge at RFIDsec to Discuss NFC Security Implications

RFID security problems have been biting at the ankles of users and companies that deploy the technology for several years now, but they’ve been mostly on the fringes of mainstream security concerns. But now, as the technology becomes more widespread and pervasive, that is beginning to change...

ToorCon: New Apps, Old Infrastructure Make Toxic Brew

In a variety of ways, experts at this weekend’s ToorCon Conference warned that the tidal wave of new devices and Web based services is straining an already aging Internet infrastructure, with privacy and security as the first victims. Call it the ‘schizophrenia of now’: a tidal wave of new...

Privacy problems in the cloud

With the economy cratering, staffs and budgets being cut and resources scarce, cloud computing has quickly become the prettiest girl at the prom. IT managers love its convenience and power and accounting departments are quite fond of its cost efficiencies. But what of security and privacy? Where ...

Exploiting the Google toolbar (GM#001-MC)

GreyMagic Security Advisory GM001-MC ===================================== By GreyMagic Software, Israel. 08 Aug 2002. Available in HTML format at http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm001-mc/. Topic: Exploiting the Google toolbar. Discovery date: 31 Jul 2002. Affected applications:...