Google, it seems, is very, very interested in knowing where you are at all times. Users have reported battery life issues with the latest Android build, with many pointing the finger at Google Play – Google’s app store – and its persistent, almost obsessive need to check where you are. Amid complaints that Google Play is always switching on GPS, it appears Google has...
Apple’s legal battle over encryption dominated headlines earlier this year, but another tech giant is fighting a quieter legal war over user privacy: Microsoft. It won a major victory last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit sided with the company, ruling that a U.S. warrant could not be used to force Microsoft to turn over email data stored in an Irish...
If you’re a Spotify user, your friends and family aren’t the only ones who are able to check out your playlists. The popular streaming service is now the latest platform that is opening its data to targeted advertising. Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen will be available to various third-party companies. Spotify is calling it programmatic...
Snapchat has proven to be a great resource for people to connect all over the world through the power of their smartphone. However, a sizeable user base also brings with it a sizeable opportunity for advertising revenue, and that’s exactly what the company appears to be promoting – just maybe not in the way you’d expect. The company has filed a patent for a...
Web browser Maxthon has been caught sending detailed information from it users, such as their browsing history and other installed applications to the China based company that develops the software. Maxthon is a freeware web browser for Windows, OS X and Linux, developed by Chinese company Maxthon Ltd based in Beijing. It is also available on Windows Phone 8, iOS and Android platforms as...
Earlier this week awareness of a privacy issue with Pokémon Go became public. We learned that the insanely popular mobile gaming app Pokémon Go requested full access to users’ Google accounts when activated on iOS. Niantic said that it was a mistake, and the issue was corrected in an update for the app. Yesterday, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter (PDF) to game creator Niantic asking the company to explain...
Facebook has a link problem. Earlier this week, a security researcher named Inti De Ceukelaire detailed a curious fact about how Facebook Messenger treats privately shared links. Through the right API call, De Ceukelaire was able to summon links shared by specific users in private messages. The links were collected by the Facebook crawler, where De Ceukelaire discovered they were easily accessible to anyone...
Facebook could be listening in on people’s conversations all of the time, an expert has claimed. The app might be using people’s phones to gather data on what they are talking about, it has been claimed. Facebook says that its app does listen to what’s happening around it, but only as a way of seeing what people are listening to or watching and suggesting...
The on-going battle between Apple and the FBI has brought encryption and security to the fore once again. After remaining silent on the subject for some time, President Obama — speaking at SXSW — said that he was opposed the idea of encryption mechanism that are so strong it prevents governmental access. “If technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system...
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it has found Verizon Wireless to have deliberately violated the privacy of its users by using a supercookie. Verizon Wireless is the largest US carrier with over 100m subscribers, but failed to disclose the practice of using supercookies in order to violate their users privacy from late 2012 until 2014, violating a 2010 FCC regulation on Internet transparency. Supercookies...
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