Tag Archives: privacy

There’s a lot Apple’s done to improve the Siri voice assistant since its launch in 2011. The company’s made it capable of doing more things, like calling an Uber or looking up a dictionary term. Apple’s also making its voice sound more human. Still, it needs to check to make sure Siri’s getting things right. …

Robinhood warned its customers in an email Wednesday that their passwords may have been stored in plaintext. The stock trading service said it discovered the issue on Monday night, when it found “some user credentials” stored in readable formats on its internal systems. “Your Robinhood password may have been included,” Robinhood said in the email. “We resolved this issue, and …

Facebook said Wednesday that the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into the company, but the heightened regulatory scrutiny doesn’t appear to have slowed down the social network’s growth. The new investigation came on the same day that the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was hitting Facebook with a record $5 billion fine for its earlier privacy mishaps. It also …

Following its announcement of a $5 billion fine for Facebook Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against the company at the center of privacy scandal, Cambridge Analytica. The complaint says that the data firm was responsible for “deceptive acts and practices to harvest personal information from Facebook users.”  The FTC also settled with the app develop Aleksandr Kogan, …

Google’s Project Strobe, an attempt to keep Chrome browser extensions from slurping up your personal data, will take effect Oct. 15. The change is part of a broader tech industry move to protect private information that can be gathered for creepy business purposes or leaked through data breaches. Project Strobe imposes two requirements on developers who write the extensions that …

The US Department of Justice has announced an antitrust review of how online platforms achieved market power, and whether they are reducing competition, stifling innovation and harming consumers. While the Justice Department hasn’t named specific companies, it’s targeting tech giants including Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook, according to The Wall Street Journal. Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the antitrust division …

Selling your phone location data is a lucrative business, but it might not have a place in New York City: The City Council is considering a bill banning the practice within the five boroughs. Council member Justin Brannan on Tuesday proposed a bill that would prevent mobile carriers and apps from sharing people’s location data if that location is within …

In an era of social hyperconnectivity, even careful curators can find their Facebook and Twitter feeds bulging under the weight of trolls, clickbait artists and the occasional irate relative. Quality news sources are often left to muscle their way into view against an imperfect algorithm, all while new links are being discovered between depression and social media use.  One of …

Google has reportedly reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over alleged violations of children’s data privacy laws on YouTube. The settlement comes after an FTC investigation over whether the tech giant sufficiently protected the data of children using the platform, according to a Friday report from The Washington Post citing two people familiar with the matter.  …

You’d think it would be difficult to find an app that can secretly track a person’s every move. But researchers have found them right in the open on Google’s Play Store. Antivirus company Avast said Wednesday that it’s found seven stalkerware apps available on Android’s market. In all, they had been installed more than 130,000 times. Google removed four of …