When Microsoft released the preview of Internet Explorer 10 at the beginning of June and announced that in Windows 8 the browser will be sending a “Do Not Track” signal to Web sites by default, the statement started a heated discussion among advertisers, online analytics companies, and the Tracking Protection Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium.
A US federal appeals court has given the green light for warrantless wiretapping. That means federal government can now spy on communications between America citizens without any warrants—and without fear of being sued, either.
The ruling came Tuesday, Wired reports, in the process reversing the original ruling from the first and only case to successfully challenge the Terrorist Surveillance Program. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote:
We put more and more of ourselves in the cloud every day. E-mail, device settings, data synchronization between devices, and access to much of our digital selves is tied to a handful of cloud service accounts with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, and others. As demonstrated dramatically over the last week, those accounts are easily put at risk if they’re too interconnected—especially since the weakest link in cloud security may be the employees of the providers themselves.
A security breach at the Environmental Protection Agency that exposed the personal information of nearly 8,000 people involved servers that support a federal program to clean up hazardous waste, which is largely managed by information technology contractors, said an EPA employee who was briefed by agency management.
A former congressional staffer and NSA whistleblower who the authorities suspected of exposing the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program is suing the government, saying her constitutional rights are being violated because her computer seized five years ago has never been returned, and the feds have refused to clear her name.
Most of us would probably do less Web surfing if everyone in the world could see all the items on sex, drugs and nasty diseases that we spend time reading.
Watch out employers—as of January 1, 2013, you won’t be able to compel employees or job applicants to disclose passwords for social networking sites anymore.
On Wednesday, Gov. Pat Quinn signed the law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, making the state the second, after Maryland, to halt the practice. Other states, including Washington, Delaware, and New Jersey, are considering adopting similar legislation.
As the global adoption of smartphones has reached impressive levels during the past couple of years or so (with absolutely no sign of stopping anytime soon), it is surely not surprising to see that hackers have turned their evil eye towards exploiting the various weaknesses of your favorite mobile device. But although in the past we’ve talked how hackers exploit various soft spots in the OS, it turns out that attackers can actually use underlying technologies to get access to private information.
Skype has denied reports it is changing its architecture to facilitate easier surveillance of communications over the company's voice and video calling service by US authorities.
The fears were prompted after Skype unveiled plans to move its 'supernodes' — which act as relay stations and proxies for users on the peer-to-peer communications network — to Amazon Web Services infrastructure and ultimately to data centres operated by its new parent company, Microsoft.
KT Corp., South Korea's No. 2 wireless service provider, apologized on Sunday after personal data of millions of mobile phone subscribers was hacked.
It is the latest in a string of large-scale personal information hacking cases in one of the world's most wired countries.
