Privacy

A Muslim woman sued US Customs and Border Protection on Thursday, alleging agents confiscated and held her iPhone for more than four months without explanation after she returned to the US from Europe.

Rejhane Lazoja, a US citizen, alleges she was taken to a small room at Newark Liberty Airport after returning from Zurich, Switzerland, with her 6-year-old daughter on Feb. 26. One of two CBP agents then asked her to unlock her iPhone 6S Plus, which she refused to do because she was given no reason, the suit says.

The Australian government wants to force companies to help it get at suspected criminals’ data. If they can’t, it would jail people for up to a decade if they refuse to unlock their phones.

The country’s Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia’s existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn’t strong enough.

The U.S. government has reportedly been trying to get Facebook to break the encryption in its Messenger app in an ongoing criminal probe so that the law enforcement agencies can listen to a suspects voice conversations. This has once again sparked the debate about whether or not companies can be forced to change the security parameters of their services to aid surveillance which would help law enforcement close ongoing cases.

Google has revised a help page that erroneously described how its "Location History" setting works, clarifying for users that it still tracks their location even if they turn the setting off.

On Monday, an Associated Press investigation revealed that several Google apps and websites store user location even if users have turned off Location History. Google has not changed its location-tracking practice in that regard.

 A firewall used by the CIA to communicate with its spies in China compromised their identities and contributed to their executions by the Chinese government, several current and former intelligence officials told Foreign Policy magazine in a report published Wednesday.

In a two-year period starting in 2010, Chinese officials began accurately identifying spies working for the US.

A security plug-in for the Firefox browser is under fire after users discovered it was collecting and uploading their online activity.

The outcry began after Mozilla featured the Web Security extension on its blog with a post titled "Make Your Firefox Browser a Privacy Superpower." The plug-in, developed by German company Creative Software Solutions, bills itself as a tool for blocking malicious pages and phishing sites.

If, like most people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong. According to an AP investigation published Monday, even if you disable Location History, the search giant still tracks you every time you open Google Maps, get certain automatic weather updates, or search for things in your browser. There's a way to stop it—but it takes some digging.

Major pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has inked a four year deal with 23andMe, a genetic testing company that has a massive database of DNA information.

The partnership, announced Wednesday, will focus on the development of new drug treatments, beginning with a focus on possible treatments for Parkinson's disease.

Make sure you remove all your personal information before you sell or trade your #iPhone in because if you don't, the consequences can be creepy and dangerous as one Ontario teenager discovered. AppleInsider recounts the tale, and shows you how to avoid the same fate.

There are those of us who hang on to our old iPhones and build up a stash of them for no reason that we can quite justify. More often, though, we can see our outdated devices as being cash to put towards a new phone. When even a broken iPhone is worth something in trade, you have to be tempted.

The National Security Agency is at an “increased risk” of jeopardizing civil liberties and the privacy of American citizens, according to an inspector general report that comes just months after a controversial program that collects emails and phone calls was extended.

The NSA watchdog said that agency analysts performed “noncompliant” searches using the organization’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Authority, which were caused by “human error, incomplete understanding of the rules, and gaps in guidance.”