Privacy

Microsoft has performed an about-turn in India and revealed that a recent hack of its online store may have compromised credit card details belonging to customers in the country.

When the Microsoft India Store was hacked earlier this month, the company emailed its customers to assure them that “databases storing credit card details and payment information were not affected during this compromise”. However, it now appears that this is incorrect.

Facebook is being accused of snooping on its users' text messages, but the social network says the accusations are inaccurate and misleading.

Andrew Weissmann, general counsel for the FBI, has announced that his agency is switching off thousands of Global Positioning System-based tracking devices used for surveillance after a Supreme Court decision last month. Weissmann made the statement during a University of San Francisco School of Law symposium on communications privacy this past Friday. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Weissmann said the ruling in the US vs. Jones case, which broadly limited the use of warrantless GPS tracking devices, brought about a "sea change" at the Justice Department.

According to a recent report, iOS 5.0.1, released primarily to fix a bug affecting battery life has introduced another bug potentially compromising iPhone owners' privacy.

This newly discovered security flaw apparently allows unauthorised access to an iPhone, including the address book, call lists, and even allows intruders to make phone calls from the hacked iPhone. But before you start panicking - it's not very easy for a hacker to carry out and requires that they have access to your handset.

Apple, Google and other mobile platform providers will present privacy policies for all the apps offered in their stores as part of an agreement with the state of California.

Google has agreed to build support for Do Not Track into Chrome so its Web browser can tell Web sites when people don't want advertisers scrutinizing their behavior.

The Do Not Track technology modifies communications between browsers and servers so people can signal that they don't want their browsing behavior to become the basis for ad targeting.

In a legal skirmish that pitted a nephew against his uncle on harassment allegations for posting childhood Christmas pictures on Facebook, a judge has ruled that although comments about such images may be "mean and disrespectful," they and those pictures do not rise to the level necessary to remove them, or for a restraining order to prevent such images from turning up again.

YouPorn appears to have been compromised after hackers publicly posted the passwords, emails, and dates of birth of over a million users.



Sophos security analyst Graham Cluley attributed the breach to a public-facing server that wasn't properly locked down.



President Obama last week signed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012. Tucked inside the legislation is a provision that could have far-reaching implications in the coming decade: widespread civilian use of unmanned aerial drones.

This Valentine’s Day, the Serious Organised Crime Agency in the UK took control of a domain that had previously been used to distribute copyrighted material, notably music files. The domain in question is rnbexclusive.com (I know, I know… RnB, why would you?) SOCA replaced the landing page with a very direct message, advising visitors to the site of the action that had been taken and warning them that they may be liable to a ten year prison sentence and an unlimited fine.