Privacy

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection confirmed Monday that has undertaken a non-public investigation into Facebook’s data practices, according to a statement from Tom Pahl, the agency’s acting director. The announcement comes just over a week after The New York Times and the The Guardian published explosive reports about the reported improper use of data belonging to 50 million Facebook users by the Trump-campaign affiliated data firm Cambridge Analytica.

In recent days, more and more Facebook users started seeing a notification about how the social network uses its facial recognition technology. When Facebook first implemented the tech in 2013, it limited its use to suggesting tags in photos. In December, though, the company announced that it would expand face recognition's scope to notify you when someone added a photo you were in, whether it was tagged or not. If that sounds like something you'd rather Facebook not do, it's easy enough to stop.

Google Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers in use today. People like it because it is quick and highly customizable. However, many people are leery of using it because Chrome tends to send lots of user information home to the massive Google servers. (You didn’t think that Google built these huge data centers to store cat videos, did you?) Thankfully, there is an alternative for those who are privacy conscious.

You probably think your baby is special. Every hacker in the world is just itching to catch a glimpse of that tubby little poo monster. But let’s be real—probably no one is spying on your boring baby.

Nevertheless, on the off chance you are one of the 50,000 parents who bought a Mi-Cam device (presumably to keep track of your bundle of joy while you’re slamming back screwdrivers with the other breeders in your cul-de-sac) you should know that that cheap Chinese-made camera you got is apparently incredibly hackable.

Getting through an airport without a passport or boarding pass may only seem possible in the nostalgic memories of 20th-century travelers, but an initiative at Customs and Border Protection could make that bygone convenience a modern reality.

 Last November, Strava Labs released its "global heatmap" -- a stockpile of data created by millions of health-conscious people worldwide. Strava Labs is the GPS brain many fitness trackers rely on, allowing devices to record billions of steps recorded by millions of users. The company pulls data from big players like FitBit and Jawbone, as well as having its own fitness-tracking app. Here's what Strava Labs handed over to the general public:

1 billion activities

3 trillion latitude/longitude points

13 trillion pixels rasterized

10 terabytes of raw input data

Facebook tells users that giving the company their mobile phone number will help keep their account secure. Until a few weeks ago, however, the social network’s self-service ad-targeting tools could be massaged into revealing a Facebook user’s cellphone number from their email address. The same flaw made it possible to collect phone numbers for Facebook users who had visited a particular webpage.

A breach of the Unique Identification Authority of India's Aadhaar biometric system is putting personally identifiable information (PII) of more than 1 billion Indian residents at risk, reports the Tribune, an Indian publication.

Attackers created a gateway to the biometric database, in which any Aadhaar user's ID number can be entered into a portal, the Tribune reports. Once the number is entered, it will pull up the resident's name, address, postal code, photo, phone number, and email address, according to the Tribune.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency has updated its guidelines for electronic border searches, clarifying what remain broad and potentially invasive procedures. The directive was published today, and it adds new detail to border search rules that were last officially updated in 2009.

Security researchers warned of a serious vulnerability in a GPS service by the China-based firm ThinkRace exposes sensitive data in scores of GPS services, more than two years after the hole was discovered and reported to the firm. (Update: added comment from John van den Oever, the CEO of one2track B.V – PFR 1/3/2018)