Items tagged with Privacy
One of the most frustrating things on earth is being censored, and if there's one group that likes to be vocal in battling such things, it's The Pirate Bay. Censorship can come in many forms, however, such as restricting what you can say in public, or which websites you can visit. TPB might not be able to take care of...
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During a speech to the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC on cybersecurity, former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden confessed that if whistleblower Edward Snowden is captured by the US and brought back for trial, cyber-attacks by his defenders can be expected. While I find it hard to agree with most of what...
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Researchers at National Taiwan University have developed a tiny sensor that can be embedded into a tooth cavity, dentures, or braces to stop you from lying through your teeth, in a manner of speaking. The sensor is able to detect with nearly 94 percent accuracy common oral activities such as chewing, drinking...
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We download mobile apps like it’s nothing; Apple and Google’s respective app stores each hit the 50 billion download mark recently, after just a few years each in the business. Yet mobile apps are, as Natasha Singer of the New York Times calls them, Trojan horses of sorts. We let them into our lives and...
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Things are getting a little hairy on the wild, wild Internet. With privacy fears at an all-time high and the whole Snowden episode stirring up worries that governments can easily convince companies to hand out just about any digital information in the world, the mere notion of whimsically cruising the Internet is...
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Fueled by the recent NSA leaks brought forth by Edward Snowden regarding PRISM, along with other government eavesdropping programs that have since been brought to light, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and a small team have begun work on what I hope becomes a de facto chat client: Hemlis. What sets Hemlis apart...
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AT&T recently updated its privacy policy in an attempt to offer more transparency to its subscribers. As part of the update, Ma Bell revealed that it now plans to harvest and sell to third parties anonymous usage and location information to third parties, which in turn will result in targeted and more relevant...
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Still unclear about this whole Glass thing from Google? Don't worry, you're not alone. In part to address privacy concerns and offer some clarity to its Glass project, Google recently posted an extensive FAQ page broken up into four categories. It addresses general Glass questions, specifications, security and privacy...
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Look out, Internet -- the government's moving in on your wild, wild west territory. The Federal Trade Commission has just announced new guidelines for online advertisers, hoping to ensure that search results and ads are distinguished from each other. The entity has found that in recent years, paid search results have...
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Privacy couldn't be much hotter of a topic at the moment, so it's appropriate to learn now about "black boxes" that could become not only the norm in our cars, but a requirement. Apparently, many newer cars already feature these boxes, called Event Data Recorders (EDRs), but few consumers who own these vehicles know about them. Currently,...
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As we discussed last month, Mozilla postponed the introduction of automatic third-party cookie blocking in its Firefox Web browser, citing the obvious: it was too hasty in its decision. Well, that hastiness appears to have worn off, as now, the company has plans to rollout the do not track change to Firefox in the...
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France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) has initiated proceedings against Google over privacy violations and has given the sultan of search three months to fix things or face fines. Should Google drag its feet, it faces a maximum fine of 150,000 euros (~$198,000), along with 300,000 euros...
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Ever since its announcement, Google's Glass has been the target of those who care about privacy - and for good reason. With its ability to be (mostly) discrete and record audio + video with ease, concerns are clear. It's one thing to be monitored by something like a CCTV camera, but some might argue that it's something entirely different to...
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In an effort to offer Internet users some transparency and to deflect negative attention from recent revelations that big companies have been sharing user data with the government via the National Security Agency's (NSA) PRISM program, Google is seeking permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to...
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Facebook is taking a page out of Twitter’s playbook and rolling out clickable hashtags. This feature addition to Facebook was most definitely inevitable, as it allows the social network to more effectively let people add context to posts about certain subjects. It doesn’t make sense for Facebook to not have hashtag capabilities....
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For all the rabble rousing people are doing over Google Glass and its privacy-invading video-shooting feature, you’d think Google would do everything possible to assuage people’s fears in any way possible, particularly by normalizing the spec’s use. The company had an opportunity to do so at its shareholder’s meeting...
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It's out with the old and in with the new over at Yahoo, which is forcing users to either upgrade from its Yahoo Mail Classic email service or jump ship. Yahoo made the announcement on its site today and also sent emails to affected users letting them know that beginning this week, older versions of Yahoo Mail...
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Put away the pitchforks, privacy advocates, or at least take a break from sharpening the tips. Google has heard your cries loud and clear in regards to its Glass project and has decided that, for the time being, it will not include facial recognition technologies. So sayeth the Glass team on the project's Google+...
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To be honest, we’ve laid awake at night thanking the stars that Facebook wasn’t created until well after we hit adulthood, because some of us were really stupid, immature, and inappropriate our entire lives up until we were into our twenties. (And sometimes, far beyond that.) Younger generations growing up...
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Although the exclusive pre-mass production versions of Google Glass, dubbed the “Explorer Edition”, have been in the hands of 2,000 lucky early adopters--well, 1,999 of them now--for about a month, the average joe consumer can’t buy a pair. In fact, Google wasn’t going to be producing a...
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The verdict remains out on whether or not Google Glass is going to change our lives forever, but one thing's for certain: it's done a splendid job of drumming up lots of conversation. With its growing featureset, Glass has the capabilities of offering an unparalleled level of convenience to its wearers, but there's...
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As we reported back in February, Mozilla had plans to introduce cookie-blocking by default in version 22 of its Firefox Web browser. Well, it seems that the company has realized that it might have been a bit hasty in wanting to implement the change so quickly, so now, it's decided to hold off as it needs more time to analyze the outcome of...
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