California's state legislature passed the Location Privacy Act of 2012 (SB-1434) on Wednesday, which would make it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before gathering any GPS or other location-tracking data that a suspect's cell phone might be sending back to its carrier.
One of the most maddening things about Facebook is that regardless of how careful you are about building up walls around your personal information, they can come tumbling down in an instant thanks to overly sharing friends with a poor sense of personal boundaries.
This is especially true if you happen to run an alleged crime syndicate and one of your gangsta friends has rolled over for the Feds.
Consumer advocates accused companies including McDonald's and Viacom's Nickelodeon of unlawfully using children to market their websites through campaigns that encourage sharing video, games and other content.
The Center for Digital Democracy and 16 other groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate, accusing the companies of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by asking children to divulge personal information and the information of friends without parental consent.
The Federal Trade Commission's $22.5 million settlement with Google last month over its user-tracking practices woke up enterprise-risk managers around the country. With penalty thresholds hitting this new range of pain, publicly traded companies now have to ask whether data privacy should be included in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings as a key risk.
People with smartphones and tablets may be giving Apple and Android apps they download the permission to capture their geolocation data to know where they are, but security experts are making the strong argument to just say no instead -- and turn off that GPS function unless really needed.
Essex County Council is investigating a serious data security breach, which could leave hundreds of people at risk of identity theft.
A council worker at Essex County Council is believed to have sent personal and financial data of 400 people in care to an unauthorised recipient, according to a report by local news website This Is Total Essex.
Last January, the US Supreme Court ruled that the police must obtain a warrant before secretly attaching a GPS tracking device to your car, at least for any length of time. The decision in Jones v. United States was heralded as a small victory for those of us who like our gadgets but love our privacy even more.
WikiLeaks is under attack again, and many Internet users speculate it may be related to information the site has recently published about a wide-spanning American surveillance system called TrapWire.
"What is TrapWire and why is WikiLeaks under a sophisticated DDOS attack after posting docs about TrapWire?" tweeted journalist, professor and media critic Dan Gillmor Friday.
Just when you think it's safe to tweet, here comes WeKnowYourHouse.com. The site is a social media experiment designed to show how easy it is for tweets to be used against you. If a Twitter user has location turned on, and they send a message with the word "home" in it, then the site will display it along with a Street View image of the location. Similar to PleaseRobMe.com, it showcases how some users may not be aware of how much information they are sharing.
The Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) has slammed the Federal Government's proposed amendments to privacy legislation as a “lost opportunity” in improving areas such as credit reporting practices and protection from data off-shoring.
APF board member Nigel Waters told a Senate inquiry late last week that the proposed bill would "significantly weaken" privacy protections for Australians.
