Tag Archives: privacy

Recommendations startup Canopy hires vets of Instagram, New York Times

Privacy-minded recommendations startup Canopy is adding to its ranks of Silicon Valley vets with two hires Tuesday: Matthew Ogle from Facebook’s Instagram and Bassey Etim from the New York Times.   The company is being built by people who’ve worked at Spotify, Instagram, Google and The New York Times, many of whom became disillusioned with how most digital personalization …

Read More »

Google cracks down on apps that want access to your text and call logs

Privacy concerns are far from over even as we move into the new year. Google is removing apps that collect users’ SMS and call log information from its Play store in the coming weeks, it said in a blog post Monday. The post serves as a reminder to developers of the search giant’s new policy to restrict access to SMS …

Read More »

AT&T is cutting off all location

AT&T says it will no longer sell your location data to aggregation services. Lawmakers called on the FCC to investigate breach of privacy after Motherboard reported that mobile carriers, like T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T, provided phone location data to third-party trackers. Carriers offered location data for legitimate services, such as fraud prevention and emergency roadside assistance, but the information was frequently abused by …

Read More »

‘Right to be forgotten’ by Google should apply only in EU, says court adviser

Google shouldn’t have to remove links about European citizens from search results across the whole of the internet, just in the European Union. That’s the recommendation of a top legal advisor to the EU’s Court of Justice. EU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar released an opinion Thursday saying searches made outside the EU shouldn’t be affected by the so-called right to …

Read More »

7 parental controls you can use right now on your kid’s iPhone

iPhones ($285 at Amazon) are a bit like cigarettes, in that they’re addictive (in a sense) and sometimes marketed to kids. In fact, Apple has been urged to address “phone addiction” among its youngest customers. In response, Apple vowed to introduce new controls and added Screen Time with iOS 12. With it, you can establish time limits for individual apps, set a …

Read More »

HP expands Sure View to make sure people can’t view your screen

You can expect security to be a big topic at CES 2019, with many products designed to protect networks and data. But at the individual user level, you should also be thinking about one very basic way information can be misappropriated — your computer screen. The low-tech hack of simply looking over someone’s shoulder at an airport, coffee shop or …

Read More »

BlackBerry wants to make the internet of things safe for you

In case you missed it, smart home devices are vulnerable to hackers. Experts have been warning us for years that smart devices aren’t so smart when it comes to security, showing us how easily a car, a doll or a security camera could be hacked. And hackers have done their best to prove the cybersecurity experts right — from yelling …

Read More »

CES 2019 preview: PCs, laptops, tablets and gaming

Bigger, faster and, yes, more expensive computers are coming to CES 2019. A lot of that will be driven by Nvidia’s new laptop graphics cards, known (unofficially for now) as the RTX 20-series. There will also be plenty to see on the more modest end of the price spectrum, from Chromebooks to budget two-in-one hybrids.  For sheer numbers, you can’t …

Read More »

Apple saw more government requests for user data in the first half of 2018

Apple’s getting more government requests for data. The tech company is making it easier to see where and what kind of data is being demanded.  On Thursday, Apple released its biannual transparency report, which details how frequently governments and private parties request customer data. With more than 1.3 billion devices active around the world, governments are increasingly looking to Apple …

Read More »

Facebook says Netflix and Spotify ‘needed’ write access to users’ messages

Facebook on Wednesday said it was necessary to grant Spotify and Netflix special access to users’ private messages to enable integration of messaging features. The social media giant said in a blog post that experimental features no longer offered required granting read/write access to the companies. The blog post comes a day after The New York Times reported that Facebook …

Read More »