Items tagged with Privacy
Most would argue that privacy features are good for users, but media platforms have a different perspective. Facebook claims that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature will cost it $10 billion in revenue this year. Meta CFO Dave Wehner remarked the loss in revenue the company expects to see in 2022 is based on...
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Practically anything and everything can be accomplished online these days, and that obviously includes applying for a job. As it relates to that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) posted a notice warning that scammers are preying on job applicants resulting in an average loss of $3,000 per victim, as well as...
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Back in 2018, a team of security researchers from Akamai released a white paper detailing a malicious proxy system they dubbed UPnProxy that is now being leveraged in a new attack. The malicious proxy system draws its name from Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which is a set of networking protocols that enables devices...
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Many websites and applications employ various device fingerprinting methods to identify users and track their activity across websites and applications over time. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good explainer on this subject, as well as a tool to test how well your browser protects you from fingerprinting...
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Remember what life was like before the advent of social media? Such a time feels like ancient history, and many people these days juggle multiple social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a host of others. They're all super popular, and so it's no surprise that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)...
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After more than a year of testing, Google is abandoning plans to replace support for third-party tracking cookies with the "Federated Learning of Cohorts," otherwise known as FLoC, basically an algorithm that sorts people into groups with others who have similar browsing habits. Google isn't embracing third-party...
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WhatsApp users may soon be able to migrate their chat history from an Android phone to an iPhone. Incidentally, the chat migration feature is already available for users moving their chat histories from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones.
When it comes to messaging apps, WhatsApp is one of the most...
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End-to-end Encryption for most people this is something invisible they never even think about, but for just about everyone who uses messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal and many others, this is an absolute necessity for privacy.
In a recent report by Rolling Stone it was revealed that the UK...
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In another example of social engineering’, an unpatchable bug has been discovered in iOS. This ultimate persistence bug makes you think your iPhone has been shut down when it hasn’t. Once in effect, it’s a trivial matter for nefarious individuals to activate your iPhone’s camera and microphone to spy on you.
The...
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Some of you reading this might be doing some from with the privacy-focused Brave browser. Heck, a lot of you might be, given the latest statistics Brave shared as part of its year in review. By the end of 2021, Brave was seeing over 50 million monthly active users, which is twice as much as at the end of 2020. It also...
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You might already use DuckDuckGo as your go-to search engine rather than Google or Bing (or whatever else—AskJeeves, perhaps?). If you're into DuckDuckGo, then you will be ecstatic to learn that it is expanding from a privacy oriented search engine into a full-blown browser on the desktop, just as it has done on...
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Google has addressed concerns over possible stalking using Apple's AirTag with a new detection app. The Tracker Detect app looks for item trackers that are compatible with Apple's Find My network and that are potentially abusing the device to stalk someone.
AirTags recently made the news as car thieves in Canada...
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Digital privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is telling Chrome browser users to beware of Google's plan to transition extensions to Manifest V3, which Google touts as being "more secure, performant, and privacy preserving than its predecessor." However, EFF says it's a "raw deal for users," which is...
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Late last year, the Los Angeles Police Department banned the use of facial recognition software like Clearview AI, which is used by thousands of law enforcement agencies. However, despite the mounting concerns and push-back regarding facial recognition technology, the United States-based company has effectively been...
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Remember that 2700-page, $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill that the US government passed back in August? Well, have you read it? Of course we're joking -- we know you haven't read it. Most of the legislators who voted on it probably haven't either. Some folks have, though, and they're finding some pretty alarming...
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It sometimes (maybe oftentimes) feels like Big Tech plays fast and loose with our privacy and security, as if an apology and a mea culpa after the fact makes everything okay. As much as they'd like that to be the case, it doesn't always suffice. Not in the eyes of the United States Federal Trade Commission, anyway...
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When you open an app or website, location or GPS permissions are one of those things people tend not to allow. However, what if the app or site was able to extrapolate where you are without even needing new permissions? This is potentially happening on your Android device as security researchers have shown that motion...
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The messaging app landscape is kind of a wasteland of apps with similar feature sets, with a few standouts. Facebook's Messenger is popular, of course, as are services like Discord, WhatsApp and Telegram. Secure messaging app Signal is rapidly growing in popularity, though, largely because of its main differentiating...
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Privacy and data security are always major areas of concern for everyone these days. Google Fi users are about to be given another tool for when they are talking on their Android phones.
Google has been one of the leaders in providing tools to its users for online safety and security (including its Pixel phones)...
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Everyone who uses an Android phone has probably had some security-conscious acquaintance ask, "don't you know how much data your phone is harvesting?" Most of us shrug it off as one of the unavoidable circumstances of modern life: you want a smartphone, you deal with data harvesting. Still, some folks aren't so...
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Mozilla’s Firefox is generally considered a safe, privacy-centric browser. However, a change to the default configuration of a relatively new feature may change some users' minds. Firefox is now sending keystrokes, location info, and more back to Mozilla. Thankfully, there is a way to disable some of this, which we...
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Wondering if Mark Zuckerberg and the gang at Facebook are reading your encrypted WhatsApp messages? The social networking site insists it does not, as end-to-end encryption is what keeps everything private. Nevertheless, if you send a message through WhatsApp, it could still end up being read by a Facebook moderator...
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