privacy

Another day, another House Intelligence Committee session held in secret, under the rather convenient excuse that "classified information" might be revealed.

As was the case last year when members of the committee amended the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) the first time around -- the bill, dubbed a "privacy killer" by online activists and privacy groups, will once again be amended in a veil of secrecy.

According to the committee's spokesperson, Susan Phalen, (via The Hill), these secret hearings are not uncommon and "sometimes they'll need to bounce into classified information … Read more

Google's 2012 rewrite of its privacy policy, which gave the company the right to "combine personal information" across multiple products, is still ruffling feathers in Europe.

France's privacy watchdog, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), said today that six European countries are launching "coordinated and simultaneous enforcement actions" because Google "has not implemented any significant compliance measures," despite a request for changes to the policy. The countries are France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.K.

It all dates back to early last year, when Google … Read more

Google's "new" privacy policy, launched a little over a year ago, is still causing headaches in Europe. But a new pan-European investigation into the policy may cause greater troubles for the search giant.

The French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), said today that the search giant has failed to respond to its requests to make changes to its controversial privacy policy and has handed the case to European member states to deal with the matter locally.

The U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands were first involved … Read more

It's not uncommon for Google to be accused of violating user privacy. So, anyone in the seat of defending the Web giant's privacy policies has a hard job.

According to Forbes, Google's current privacy director Alma Whitten is stepping down in June after three years on the job. She will be replaced by Google engineering director Lawrence You, who will take the title, "director of privacy for product and engineering."

Whitten worked as a Google engineer for seven years and had a background in privacy and security when she was named privacy director for the … Read more

Whether it's attaching your name to social-based ads that your friends will see, or  resurrecting old messages onto your Timeline, Facebook has become quite the source of over-sharing and headache.

Unfortunately, by simply clicking "Like" on a Facebook that you want to read updates from, your Timeline can become more cluttered than ever. You might see more sponsored posts related to your Likes, and you'll be announcing each Like to all of your friends. Wouldn't it be nice to follow pages without announcing them to everyone or flooding your updates?

A … Read more

When someone can't take the hint and keeps calling or texting you, it might be time to disable their ability to do so. The Android contact app allows you to send callers directly to voice mail, which is fine in most cases; however, if you're still getting flooded with voice mails, or even texts, Current Caller ID can help.

The app's new blocking feature -- suggested by users to WhitePages -- will let you quickly send callers to voice mail without fumbling through the contacts app, or perform a pickup and hang up operation when they call. … Read more

Facebook's messaging system can sometimes be more distracting than useful. The ability for everyone you have as a friend to contact you in a real-time chat can eat a large chunk of your time each day (depending on the number of friends, of course). Instead of allowing everyone to talk to you at their whim, why not just enable chat for the people you would actually want to have real-time conversations with?

Luckily Facebook has options to turn off chat for everyone except those you select, or simply turn it off for people who contact you too often. Here'… Read more

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's secretive "Stingray" surveillance technology that allows police to surreptitiously track the locations of cell phones and other mobile devices will itself go on trial in an Arizona courtroom tomorrow afternoon.

Attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Justice are expected to defend warrantless use of stingray devices, which trick mobile devices into connecting to them by impersonating legitimate cell towers. Prosecutors yesterday filed court documents saying stingrays were used in investigations in Arizona and Wisconsin going back to 2008.

In the legal skirmishing leading up to tomorrow's three-hour hearing, federal attorneys … Read more

Apple has fixed the security issue involving its Apple ID password-reset page, a vulnerability that had made it possible for hackers with a user's e-mail address and birth date to reset the user's password.

Apple said yesterday that it was aware of the issue and was preparing a fix. Meanwhile, the company had taken the "iForgot" reset page offline for maintenance. Now the page is back up, and Apple has confirmed the fix with CNET.

The security exploit made use of a special URL that got around the need to answer a security question. Apple had … Read more