Privacy

NAVIGATION DEVICE MAKER Tomtom has admitted that it has been inadvertently giving Dutch police data collected from its devices in order to set speed traps. Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad revealed that the police were using the information to catch racing drivers, but Tomtom claims it never intended or foresaw this use.

The police gained access to the data after Tomtom gave it to the Dutch government, apparently oblivious that it might be used in ways that would anger customers. The company claims that it handed the data over to help make roads safer and less congested.

It’s become almost a weekly occurrence: Another online company letting customers personal and private information leak because of an Internet breach.

Sometimes this sensitive data is stolen by hackers who gain access through holes in a network that customers unwittingly trust companies to protect. Lately, there are more instances of companies procuring data without customers’ knowledge and using it for — well, who knows what they’re using it for?

In early April, Engadget posted a short article confirming a rumor that Facebook would be using facial recognition to suggest the names of friends who appeared in newly uploaded photos. You’d be allowed to opt out of tagging, and only friends would be able to tag each other in albums. Nevertheless, a commenter beneath the story quipped, “Awesome! Now I can take pictures of cute girls at the grocery store or at the park, upload them and Facebook will tell me who they are! (I'm pretty sure that’s not [how] it works but I’m sure it will get there.)”

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog—but they might now have an easy time finding your kennel.

Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.

If you're worried about privacy, you can turn off the function on your smartphone that tracks where you go. But that means giving up the services that probably made you want a smartphone in the first place. After all, how smart is an iPhone or an Android if you can't use it to map your car trip or scan reviews of nearby restaurants?

Law enforcement agencies have known since at least last year that an iPhone or iPad surreptitiously records its owner's approximate location, and have used that geolocation data to aid criminal investigations.

You don't want to be pulled over by the police in Michigan. When law enforcement wants half a million dollars to produce documents for a FOIA request, something is not right. And since the high-tech mobile forensic device in question can grab data in one-and-a-half minutes off more than 3,000 different cell phone models, it could be used during minor traffic violations to conduct suspicionless and warrantless searches without the phone owner having any idea that all their phone data was now in the hands of authorities.

German computer software company Ashampoo, known for its Windows utilities, has been targeted by attackers that managed to gain access to its customers database and possibly obtained data such as names and email addresses.

According to the company, hackers gained access to one of its servers. Thankfully, Ashampoo discovered the break-in early on and closed the security gap as soon as it was identified. Subsidiary companies of the Ashampoo group were not affected by this incident.