Tag Archives: privacy

There’s nothing like a disaster to prompt a call for change.In early October, Congress grilled Equifax’s former CEO, Richard Smith, in four separate committee hearings about how his credit reporting agency put the consumer records of over 145 million people in jeopardy.How bad was the hack? Pretty bad. We’ll be feeling the effects for “essentially …

Google Lens is here, and it promises to do no less than change the way you find information about the world around you. Announced in May by the company behind the world’s biggest search engine, Lens lets you find details on different things in the real world by pointing your phone’s camera at them. Take a picture of a book, …

Apple is working to satisfy lawmakers’ privacy and security concerns over its Face ID facial recognition technology. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, said Monday that he appreciates the company’s efforts to answer his questions about how it’s addressing such concerns. Franken, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law, sent Apple a letter …

A researcher was still combing through Facebook posts from Russia-affiliated accounts when the social networking company deleted them from the public record.  That’s according to The Washington Post, which reported Thursday that analyst Jonathan Albright had downloaded posts from six of the Facebook pages before learning information from all 470 accounts was no longer publicly available. Albright told the Post …

Congressional leaders say they plan to publicly release thousands of politically divisive Facebook ads purchased by Russian-linked operatives during the 2016 US presidential election. Representatives Mike Conaway and Adam Schiff, leaders of the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, said Wednesday that they were working with the company to release the ads publicly after meeting with Facebook chief …

A District of Columbia Superior Court judge on Tuesday imposed further limits on a Justice Department warrant for data on an anti-Trump website, saying free speech and privacy must be safeguarded. Chief Judge Robert Morin’s order requires DreamHost, a web hosting company, to turn over data to the federal government on Disruptj20.org, a website used to organize Inauguration Day protests …

Uber’s iOS app had the ability to record users’ screens, and anything on them, such as passwords or messages, security researchers told Gizmodo on Thursday.  The ride-hailing company has permission from Apple to build that ability into the app, and the researchers said Uber’s was the only app on the App Store that appeared to have that permission. The capability was …

Sonos owners, it’s finally time to sharpen your Alexa skills.  The maker of high-end, connected speakers announced today at a press event in New York City that Alexa-powered voice controls will arrive via a firmware update. The voice controls will allow you to cue up music on your Sonos speakers using voice commands with an Alexa-enabled device such as the …

Back in 2013, I was boarding a New Jersey Transit train with a piece of metal and plastic on my head. Google Glass ended up being a symbol of many things — the technology industry’s cavalier invasions of privacy, or its increasing elitism — but its promise of a cyborg future didn’t ever really arrive.  More from Google’s event Google …

The biggest benefit of AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner? Cheaper prices for consumers, fueled mostly by more targeted advertising. That’s what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Wednesday at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in Beverly Hills. Stephenson said not many people can afford the $110 to $120 a month cable companies charge for their traditional TV bundle. …