Scrub EXIF Image Data in Your DevOps Pipeline

In this post, we’ll go over why you need to scrub EXIF image data and how to integrate this process into your DevOps pipeline...

Ford wants to eavesdrop on passenger conversations to help target ads

Car manufacturer Ford Motor Company has filed a patent application for an in-vehicle advertisement presentation system based on information derived from several trip and driver characteristics. Among those characteristics—human conversations. In the abstract of the patent application publication...

TikTok probed over child privacy practices

The privacy protection authorities for Canada, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta have announced they will start an investigation into TikTok's privacy practices, especially in relation to its younger users. The investigation will include whether the company obtained valid and meaningful conse...

VPNs and Trust

TorrentFreak surveyed nineteen VPN providers, asking them questions about their privacy practices: what data they keep, how they respond to court order, what country they are incorporated in, and so on. Most interesting to me is the home countries of these companies. Express VPN is incorporated i...

Security and Privacy Implications of Zoom

Over the past few weeks, Zoom's use has exploded since it became the video conferencing platform of choice in today's COVID-19 world. My own university, Harvard, uses it for all of its classes. Boris Johnson had a cabinet meeting over Zoom. Over that same period, the company has been exposed for...

Please don’t buy this: smart doorbells

Though Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, the two shopping holidays were just precursors to the larger Christmas season—a time of year when online packages pile high on doorsteps and front porches around the world. According to some companies, it's only logical to want to protect these...

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,...

Your Android Phone Can Get Hacked Just By Playing This Video

Are you using an Android device? Beware! You should be more careful while playing a video on your smartphone—downloaded anywhere from the Internet or received through email. That's because, a specially crafted innocuous-looking video file can compromise your Android smartphone—thanks to a critica...

Facebook Agrees to Pay $5 Billion Fine and Setup New Privacy Program for 20 Years

The Federal Trade Commission FTC today officially confirmed that Facebook has agreed to pay a record-breaking $5 billion fine over privacy violations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Besides the multibillion-dollar penalty, the company has also accepted a 20-year-long agreement that...

Why Isn't GDPR Being Enforced?

Politico has a long article making the case that the lead GDPR regulator, Ireland, has too cozy a relationship with Silicon Valley tech companies to effectively regulate their privacy practices. Despite its vows to beef up its threadbare regulatory apparatus, Ireland has a long history of caterin...

FTC Demands Broadband Providers Reveal Data Handling Practices

The Federal Trade Commission FTC is putting pressure on internet broadband providers to reveal exactly what data they’re collecting – and how they are using it. The FTC on Tuesday issued orders to seven U.S. ISPs requesting that they detail how they collect, retain, use and disclose information...

Physician, protect thyself: healthcare cybersecurity circling the drain

No one knows you better than you do. But thanks to technology advances and the continued digitization of healthcare data accumulation and sharing processes, we can also honestly say the same about your healthcare provider. Indeed, every time we get in touch with a health professional, data is...

Ashley Madison Dating Site Agrees to Pay $1.6 Million Fine Over Massive Breach

Ashley Madison, an American most prominent dating website that helps married people cheat on their spouses has been hacked, has agreed to pay a hefty fine of $1.6 Million for failing to protect account information of 36 Million users, after a massive data breach last year. Yes, the parent company...

Google Stresses Transparency in New Chrome Web Store Policies

Google last week put app developers on notice, urging them to comply with a new set of privacy policies that it plans on enforcing starting this summer designed to better promote transparency. The rules reflect an update to Google’s User Data Policy for the Chrome Web Store. The company has porte...

Privacy Badger Extension Blocks Tracking Through Social Icons

Online tracking has been a thorny problem for years, and as Web security companies, browser vendors and users have become more aware of the problem and smarter about how to defend themselves, ad companies and trackers have responded in kind. The advent of social networks has made it far easier fo...

Bug Exposes Facebook Data Correlation, Privacy Practices

An information disclosure bug has drawn back the curtain on some of the data correlation Facebook does with users’ contact details and opened the social network’s policies up to criticism. Facebook said the bug in its Download Your Information DYI tool has been repaired but not before six million...

Pandora Mobile App Transmits Gobs Of Personal Data

A popular free mobile application from online music service Pandora.com that is the subject of a Grand Jury investigation into loose data privacy practices in the mobile application market confirms that the application silently sends reams of sensitive data to advertisers. The analysis was...