Facebook controversies come and go, but a recent issue involving the surveillance and transcription of users’ conversations seems particularly troubling to government officials, privacy watchdogs, and users. Here are answers to 10 questions you may hav…
Cybersecurity researchers discovered an unprotected and unencrypted database containing over 161 million records belonging to movie ticket subscription service MoviePass. TechCrunch reported that many of the records pertained to daily service operation…
Many consumers are aware of cookies that track web activity, and their use is fairly well-regulated. But online fingerprinting (also called device fingerprinting) is not as well understood. We believe mainstream media is vastly underestimating how prev…
I’ve often written here about how companies exploit our tendency to accept lax security defaults. People don’t have time to read thousands of pages of terms of service or bother to ask why a mobile game needs to know their ID and location. (It’s usuall…
Your browser is a doorway to the internet, and it needs to be guarded. With all the tracking and targeting and phishing and faking that occurs on a daily basis, you need a browser that filters out the bad and fights off the dangerous. Avast Secure Brow…
The threat of big fines made businesses take GDPR regulations seriously two years ago – but would they ever really happen? Now those big judgments are rumbling like thunder across Europe.
We recently looked at some of the threats that come from smart or connected devices in the home, and the solutions we can employ. The threats arise because the devices are often inherently insecure when we buy them. The full solution seems obvious – ma…
A U.S. border patrol database of traveler photos and license plates has been compromised as part of a malicious cyberattack, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
There’s big business in genealogy. Whether it’s a family tree that goes straight up and down like a mighty oak, or stretches east and west into dozens of brambles, people want to know their genetic makeup. Family history site Ancestry.com boasts 20 mil…
Many of us have our smartphones on us almost all the time. Like wallets, they have become ubiquitous and essential to daily life. (For many, smartphones now even double as wallets.) Along with holding so much of our sensitive info, these devices also s…