Privacy

A group of 13 individuals in the United States have filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Yelp and 14 other companies, accusing them of distributing privacy invading mobile applications.

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction against such data collection and the destruction of all personal data collected by mobile application vendors to date. The plaintiffs describe themselves in the complaint as users of Apple iPhone and users of Android powered handsets.

Unhappy with the initial response from Apple outlining how the Cupertino-based giant reviews permission models for applications who transmit user data, two US lawmakers have since asked Apple to meet members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to explain the company's mobile privacy policies saying the original letter did not answer all their questions.

Revolutionaries have obtained what they claim to be personal e-mails of embattled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his wife. The Guardian was given access to about 3000 of these documents that activists have stolen since June 2011. 

Having difficulty gaining access to a pimp's Android phone they seized, the FBI has turned to Google for help. The FBI, which didn't have the right to search the phone without a warrant, obtained one in February. However, after sending it off to the FBI Regional Computer Forensics lab in California, technicians there “attempted to gain access to the contents of the memory of the cellular phone in question, but were unable to do so” says the FBI. Apparently they were defeated by Android's “pattern lock” screen.

Privacy advocates are sounding the alarm bells as approval for a Microsoft patent filed in 2009 finally sees the light of day. To 'make matters worse', the patent called "Legal Intercept" may also be making its way into everyone's favourite VoIP application - Skype.

A 2009 data breach that has already cost BlueCross BlueShield nearly $17 million has just gotten a little bit more expensive.

In a further settlement unveiled today, the insurer agreed to pay $1.5 million to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and also review and revise its privacy and security policies in addition to regularly training employees on their responsibility under the HIPAA of 1996.

Internet freedom actiivist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation has welcomed a move allowing users to delete log activity for GNOME applications in the latest update to the Ubuntu operating system.

The new feature, available in the current beta of Ubuntu 12.04, will allow users to disable activity logging for some Linux applications, potentially preventing thieves with physical access to a computer from pilfering user files.

Hackers claim to have stolen 40,000 plain text credit card from porn website Digital Playground.

The lifted details included names, CCV numbers and expiration dates.

Hackers from the group the Consortium say they also looted the personal information on 72,000 users. They said they rooted four of the site's servers which gave access to corporate emails. "We did not set out to destroy them, but they made it too enticing to resist," the hackers wrote on a defacement. "So now our humble crew leaves lulz and mayhem in our path."

When an online video gets more than a million views, it’s hard to ignore.

That may be the reason the Transportation Security Administration took the unusual step last week to address an online video that claims to show how to circumvent the full-body scanners that the TSA has installed at 140 airports across the country.

Body scanners are a controversial tool that's currently being installed at airports worldwide -- particularly in the U.S., where the government has paid contractors such as Rapiscan and Brijot hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy over 500 of the devices.  In the U.S. the deployment has reportedly been pushed by illicit financial ties, such as former U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) chief Michael Chertoff's financial relationship with Rapiscan, who paid off the chief for his "consulting services."