privacy and security - Page 9

In a recent article, the Freedom of the Press Foundation joined many other privacy advocates in expressing concerns over Apple’s recently announced plan to scan photos on user devices to detect child abuse imagery. The organization states that false positives will be a common problem with Apple’s scanning of customer devices, a situation that will put press freedom at risk.

T-Mobile is reportedly investigating recent claims that the company has been victim to a massive customer data breach. The alleged hacker claims to have private data on more than 100 million T-Mobile customers.

Warner Bros. is reportedly using an interactive deepfake program to allow users to insert themselves into the studio’s latest promo for the new movie Reminiscence. AI-generated deepfake videos are often good enough to fool the average person, making famous people appear to say things they never said, or putting them in unusual situations.

Following widespread outcry from multiple privacy advocates, Apple’s own employees are now reportedly raising concerns over the company’s decision to scan customers’ iPhones and computers for child sex abuse images with many worried that the company could be spying on other user activities and images.

According to recent reports, some third-party sellers on Amazon are tracking down users who leave negative reviews and offering refunds or gift cards in an attempt to convince them to change their minds.

A recent report claims that workers at one of the largest call center firms in the world are facing additional monitoring that many call a violation of their privacy. Call center employees working from home are reportedly being pressured into installing surveillance equipment including cameras in their own homes.

Recently, Apple announced a new addition to its upcoming iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 firmware for iPhones and iPads. The new feature will allow Apple to scan user photos stored in Apple’s iCloud service and determine if they contain sexually explicit images involving children. Following a blowback against the Masters of the Universe scanning the devices of its customers, the company is now promising it will not abuse the feature or allow governments to dictate what types of data iPhones are scanned for.

Over the past three weeks, some of the most powerful tech companies in the world have taken a number of steps — unprecedented even by their standards — to monitor their users.

Tech giant Apple recently announced a new feature that will allow it to scan iPhone and iPad photos to detect if they contain sexually explicit imagery involving children, which Apple will report to authorities — however, many privacy experts are worried about the implications of Apple snooping on user content. One expert points out that Apple’s move is well-intentioned, but they should be thinking about one important question: “What will China want them to block?”

Google fired eighty employees in the last three years for security violations related to the misuse of company data and user data, according to an internal Google document obtained by Vice’s tech news vertical, Motherboard.

Teleconferencing giant Zoom has reportedly agreed to pay $85 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of violating user privacy and enabling “zoom bombing,” in which trolls would join users’ chats without an invitation.

Popular privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is now offering an email privacy service that aims to stop ad companies from tracking users via their email.

A secretive program called Pegasus, manufactured by Israeli surveillance company NSO group, has allegedly been used to infect the smartphones of government officials, business executives, activists, and journalists, according to an investigation by 16 media organizations including PBS Frontline, the Guardian, Haaretz, and the Washington Post. 

According to an upcoming exposé of Facebook, a company engineer abused his employee access to user data to track down a woman who had left him after they fought while traveling together. This is just one of the troubling abuses of privacy documented in the book.

Tech giant Amazon has been granted permission by the FCC to make a device that can monitor people’s sleep using radar. Government documents say that Amazon “plans to use the radar’s capability of capturing motion in a three-dimensional space to enable contactless sleep tracing functionalities.”

Executives at Miami-based software company Kaseya were reportedly warned of critical flaws in its software before a ransomware attack this month that affected as many as 1,500 companies, according to former employees.

According to a recent report, the code used by the Russian-speaking hacking ring REvil in its ransomware attacks was written to avoid systems that primarily use the Russian language.

A coalition of privacy-focused tech companies including DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, and the company behind Protonmail have called for a ban on targeted “surveillance-based” advertising.

Microsoft has urged Windows users to immediately install a system update after security researchers found a serious vulnerability in the operating system. The “PrintNightmare” exploit could allow hackers to take control of your system without tricking you into downloading malware.

The hackers behind the recent ransomware attack of the IT firm Kaseya have offered a universal decryptor software key that could unlock all affected machines for $70 million.

Between 800 and 1,500 businesses worldwide have reportedly been affected by a ransomware attack focused on the U.S. information technology firm Kaseya, according to the firm’s CEO.

Advertisers have reportedly begun shifting their spending patterns following Apple’s iOS update that requires apps to gain iPhone and iPad users’ permission to track them. Industry data shows that mobile advertising aimed at iPhone users has dropped significantly while advertising aimed at users of Google’s Android OS are climbing.

Yet another massive ransomware attack has taken place as hackers continue to hold valuable systems hostage — receiving millions of dollars in the process.

Microsoft is reportedly warning Windows users about an unpatched critical flaw in the Windows Print Spooler service, dubbed “PrintNightmare.” The critical bug allows attackers to execute code with system-level privileges in Windows computers.

Federal law enforcement agencies secretly request the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times per year, according to the congressional testimony of Tom Burt, the company’s VP for customer security and trust.

Recent reports claim that a second data breach at Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has exposed the personal data of 700 million users, which is more than 92 percent of the platform’s total 756 million users.

A recent report alleges that Apple is making certain employees wear police-grade body cameras in response to recent product leaks.

Former TikTok employees have recently claimed that there is cause for concern about the megapopular app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance and the tight control it holds over the social media platform.

Privacy-focused web browser Brave has launched a beta version of its Brave search engine in an attempt to create a privacy-focused alternative to Google. Brave is basing its search engine on its own index of websites, unlike rival DuckDuckGo which is based on the Bing search index, making it vulnerable to Microsoft’s censorship efforts.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Monday that it is rescinding a Trump-era list of prohibited transactions involving the Chinese-owned social media platforms TikTok and WeChat, which sought to block new U.S. downloads of the apps affiliated with the communist regime.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has ruled that private user information, including IP addresses, names, and postal addresses can, under certain conditions, be handed over to intellectual property rights holders and other third parties that make copyright claims.

Hackers with physical access to the popular Peloton Bike+ and Peloton Tread exercise equipment could reportedly gain root entry to the device’s tablet, allowing them to perform a number of remote attacks including taking over the exercise equipment’s web camera.

Facebook has announced a new AI research project that can mimic and alter the text style in a photo just by looking at one example word. The technology is reminiscent of “deep fake” AI used to create fake videos.

Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology, which eliminated cashiers in its Amazon Go convenience stores, has now been integrated into a full-size 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh grocery store for the first time. The system uses camera surveillance, pressure-sensitive shelves, and biometric data to charge customers for items they put in their carts.

Polish game developer CD Projekt Red, the popular company behind the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077, has revealed this week that proprietary data taken in a ransomware attack disclosed four months ago is circulating online.

Volkswagen and its luxury brand Audi have been hacked, resulting in the personal data of three million customers being stolen.