Privacy

Credit card data isn't quite as anonymous as promised, a new study says.

Scientists showed they can identify you with more than 90 percent accuracy by looking at just four purchases, three if the price is included - and this is after companies "anonymized" the transaction records, saying they wiped away names and other personal details. The study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published Thursday in the journal Science, examined three months of credit card records for 1.1 million people.

Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) is enthusiastic about the prospect of mandatory data-retention legislation passing in Australia, stating that it would likely use intercept powers and powers to access stored data more frequently should the legislation pass.

Verizon fixed a serious vulnerability in its My FiOS mobile application that allowed unfettered access to email accounts, according to a developer who found the problem.

Randy Westergren, a senior software developer with XDA Developers, looked at the Android version of My FiOS, which is used for account management, email and scheduling video recordings.

An online advertising clearinghouse relied on by Google, Yahoo, and Facebook is using controversial cookies that come back from the dead to track the Web surfing of Verizon customers.

The company, called Turn, is taking advantage of a hidden undeletable number that Verizon uses to monitor customers' habits on their smartphones and tablets. Turn uses the Verizon number to respawn tracking cookies that users have deleted.

It's tempting to imagine that few online safeguards will stop NSA surveillance in its tracks, but that's not true. A new leak from Edward Snowden's files reveals that there's a surprising number of ways to thwart these snoops, at least as of 2012. While you may already know that the NSA sees Tor's anonymity network as a problem, it hates the heavy encryption on chat protocols like CSpace or Off-the-Record, internet calling systems like ZRTP or highly secure email systems like Zoho.

A local judge in Arizona ruled Friday that the Tucson Police Department (TPD) does not have to disclose records related to the use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, under the state’s public records act.

Blackphone handsets can download and install a major software update today – ahead of the opening of an online store for privacy-focused apps for the mobes.

The Blackphone runs its own hardened version of Android, dubbed PrivatOS, on custom hardware. It allows owners to make and send encrypted calls and texts, among other security features.

Symantec Security Response has discovered a new malware called Regin which, they say, "...displays a degree of technical competence rarely seen and has been used in spying operations against governments, infrastructure operators, businesses, researchers, and private individuals."

This back-door trojan has been in use, according to the security company, since at least 2008, and has stayed under the radar since.

Government officials in the U.S. and the UK are warning people to secure their webcams after websites that broadcast the contents of those cameras have sprung up online.

One of the better-known sites, Insecam, appeared to have gone offline after the warnings Thursday, but at least one site that publishes similar content was still available.

Free software that can detect the presence of surveillance spyware has been launched by a global coalition of human rights and tech organizations.

Organizations including Amnesty International, Privacy International, Digitale Gesellschaft and Electronic Frontier Foundation have teamed up to unveil the open source tool Detekt.