privacy

Ever wonder what your data is worth to Facebook? A new article from Time shows that the average revenue per user in 2017 was $20.21, with users in Canada and the U.S worth even more because of the size of the market. They get this profit by selling insights based on how we use Facebook, and then...

Expanding on the story we covered yesterday where Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of Facebook profiles, an article from The Washington Post states that Facebook may have violated an FTC decree. The article states that two former federal officials who crafted the consent decree governing...

In a blog post yesterday Microsoft showed off a new privacy screen settings layout available now to Windows Insiders. The release will come this Spring for non-insiders, and Microsoft says "This new design conveys focused information to help our customers make focused choices about their privacy...

The U.S Supreme Court is hearing a case today that will have significant impact going forward. NPR is reporting that the Supreme Court is hearing the case, United States v. Microsoft, which involves a federal drug-trafficking investigation where law enforcement obtained a warrant for all the...

In a report from Techdirt a German court has ruled that Facebook's real names policy violates local data protection rules. The ruling from the Berlin Regional Court states that users must be allowed to sign up for Facebook using pseudonyms to comply with privacy law. The court ruling was...

The Yale University Privacy Lab analyzed hundreds of apps and has found that 3 out of 4 Google Play apps contain at least one "tracker". Google needs to get their act together and make the companies that are tracking people fess up to what they are doing. Of course this would also mean big...

Apple won accolades from privacy experts in September for assuring that facial data used to unlock its new iPhone X would be securely stored on the phone itself. Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the...

Customer-facing kiosks are getting more sophisticated every day. Those equipped with cameras are estimating your age, gender, size, hair length and even the clothing you are wearing. Supposedly this is going to raise the level of interactivity with the kiosk and all the data is just generic...

Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered you don't have to be a huge corporation to steal someone's privacy. They say for as little as $1000 an individual can exploit mobile advertising networks to find out where you live and work. It's probably a good time for all of us to...

Google launched the $49 Home Mini last week, but it had one small flaw, recording every sound in your home 24/7 and sending it to Google servers. An Android Police writer noticed his new Home Mini he had received at the Made by Google October 4th launch event was waking up thousands of times a...

Facebook has a clever way to figure out what apps to build next. The social network reportedly has an internal system that tracks up-and-coming apps to decide what ideas to copy from smaller startups and companies, according to a report in the WSJ. Using technology from Onavo, an Israeli startup...

Carbon Black's Cb Defense Software may be sending your companies private information to third parties. In a blog post today, DirectDefense, a security consultancy claims Carbon Black's Cb Response protection software would, once installed for a customer, spew sensitive data to third parties...

Privacy researchers have accused Hotspot Shield VPN of logging user data and selling it to advertisers. In a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) requests a government investigation into the data security and data sharing practices of...

Microsoft is claiming that seven out of ten Windows 10 users have opted for the full telemetry settings since the Creators Update. What the blog post from Marisa Rogers, Windows Privacy officer fails to notice, is that means 29%, or 145 million people didn't just click through the default...

If you are a HardOCP reader in the great state of California, I highly suggest you give this Elelctronic Frontier Foundation article a read before you head to the polls next week. And if you head to the polls tonight, remember to take a thick stack of ones. The large broadband providers and...

I am not sure why anyone would ever want to do this, but How-To Geek shows us how to start a few of our favorite browsers in por...privacy mode without ever opening up a auto-logged in browser window. Most people won’t want to use private browsing mode permanently. You will have to log into the...

Back in 2015 we reported of a new tracking technology, where advertisers could use ultrasonic transmissions in locations, radio, TV broadcasts, music and apps, picked up by your phone, in order to tie your user account on your phone to these locations/sounds, collecting even more data about you...

Big Brother is watching less closely, as the National Security Agency announced the stoppage of a controversial act in their warrantless wiretapping activities. Previously, an American citizen’s text and email communication mentioning foreign people of interest had been marked for collection...

Typically when using a set of headphones, a consumer tends to listen to their music or multimedia. If you ask Illinois resident Kyle Zak and his representation, Bose has been “listening” to customers of their headphones and Bose Connect mobile app via data collection and distribution. Users are...

Peter Sunde, former spokesperson and co-founder of The Pirate Bay is pessimistic about the future of the open and free internet. He cites recent activities like a disappointing Net Neutrality law in Europe, and the fact that Facebook is receiving grants to provide internet in Africa and poor...

Researchers at the United States Military Academy at West Point have discovered that despite Netflix recently implementing TLS (HTTPS) encryption on their video streams to protect the privacy of their viewers, they can identify what video people are watching with 99.99% accuracy, using a...

As we have reported on in the past, Microsoft has new privacy controls in the works in response to a lot of people being unhappy about the combination of Microsoft not letting people disable data collection in Windows 10 completely, and also not being transparent about what, exactly, they...

In a post to the company's corporate privacy blog today, Comcast CEO Gerard Lewis promised to not sell their customers personal data. He went on to state "We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have...

Looks like big brother is at it again in the UK, which shouldn't be surprising considering it is the land of CCTV. The debate between privacy and security is not a new one, which has been highlighted by both the Apple FBI decryption case as well as the many conflicts between WhatsApp and the...

So, All the current news about the Senate and the FCC reversing its position on privacy, and allowing ISP's to sell user data without user permission, has renewed my long standing interest in VPN's, but it is a confusing topic, and I'd love some input from those of you who know more about it...

Earlier in the month, a Reddit user noticed some odd traffic from his Ring branded smart doorbell and intercom going to a server related to Baidu in China. When this story was picked up by IoT For All, and reported as a huge vulnerability, it understandably set off quite a bit of concern among...

Well, maybe it is time to sign up for that VPN service after all. Remember those sweeping privacy rules the FCC put in place back in October? Well, the Senate is apparently looking to undo them, removing the requirement that users "opt-in" before their sensitive personal data such as...

It used to shock me how facebook suggested me the exact same people I met for the first time. It has happened to me for 4 times as much as I can remember. It was on the same day. Any way, I personally have some privacy concerns which is the reason why these things actually shocked me more than...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation today posted a statement about how the house passed the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 387). This law is intended to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), a 1986 pre-Internet era law that currently governs, among other things, email privacy. Among...

I found an infographic via reddit and found it really interesting. What do you guys think about it?

The powers-that-be at Oculus don’t seem too concerned about all the privacy policy questions they have received lately, even with politicians breathing down their necks. A representative from the company told the Associated Press that all those questions will be answered “in due time.” Jason...