Kelly Osbourne claims a hacker broke into her personal email account and may have stolen private information -- but the "ass" behind the cyber-crime may have made a crucial mistake ... and now cops are hot on his trail.
Just a few hours ago, Kelly went to her Twitter account and revealed, "Someone has hacked my mail account the police are now involved who ever did this is in big HUGE trouble!!"
THE e-mail account details of British government officials, civil servants and defence company staff have been leaked after computer hackers attacked a prominent group of gossip and news websites.
The work e-mail addresses and passwords of senior staff at the Crown Prosecution Service, officials at the Charity Commission and employees of BAE Systems are among those in a file of more than one million user names that is circulating online, putting highly sensitive correspondence at risk.
Modern smartphone apps are resurrecting the spyware trend that plagued the web ten years ago, but today's users are often unable to do anything to block their demographic data from being used to enhance the advertisements they see.
A report by the Wall Street Journal, part of a series examining privacy issues in computing and in particular the web, examined 101 popular smartphone apps for both iOS and Android devices to find what data they were sharing with advertisers.
After almost months of investigations, Ohio State University revealed that it is notifying about 760,000 students, professors, and other employees that their names and Social Security numbers may have been stolen. The university will spend $4 million to pay for the investigation and credit-protection services for those who have been affected by the attack, which is one of the largest to hit a university.
DevianART — a popular social networking site for artists and artist wannabes — is the latest to fall victim to hackers. The company has informed its users that its email database, which contains more than 13 million addresses, has been hacked. As a result, DevianART users could potentially become victims of spam or phishing attacks. Luckily, passwords have not been compromised. The company issued the following statement in a newsletter:
Most Americans are ready to put Big Brother on alert. They don't want to be tracked on the Internet and are unwilling to trade their privacy for Web ads that are tailored to their interests. So suggest the results of a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of Internet users conducted over the weekend.
A Colorado sheriff's department mistakenly exposed a sensitive database that contained names, addresses and other details on about 200,000 people, including confidential drug informants.
Thousands of pages of confidential information collected by the Mesa County Sheriff's Department were vulnerable from April until November 24, when someone tipped authorities, according to the Associated Press.
Tens of thousands of former University of Wisconsin students and staff members this week continued to receive advisory letters from the University, warning them that hackers managed to break into a database containing their social security numbers and other sensitive information.
Worse, according to the letter, it appears the hackers had unbridled access to the database for more than two years, putting at least 60,000 former students and employees at risk. School officials first began notifying affected individuals on Nov. 30, almost a month after the breach was first detected.
THE answer is not as far as the law is concerned. Legislators and courts are tackling privacy issues with vigour. Yet the unstoppable advances in technology, media and communications which stir up so much social agitation about privacy also highlight the law's limitations.
McDonald's is working with law enforcement authorities after malicious hackers broke into another company's databases and stole information about an undetermined number of the fast food chain's customers. McDonald's has also alerted potentially affected customers via e-mail and through a message on its website.
