Archive for the ‘Global Domination’ Category
Facebook Wanted to Kill This Investigative People You May Know Tool
Last year, we launched an investigation into how Facebook’s People You May Know tool makes its creepily accurate recommendations. By November, we had it mostly figured out: Facebook has nearly limitless access to all the phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, and social media handles most people on Earth have ever used. That, plus its […]
It’s either legal to port-scan someone without consent or it’s not, fumes researcher: Halifax bank port scans you when you visit the page
Halifax Bank scans the machines of surfers that land on its login page whether or not they are customers, it has emerged. Security researcher Paul Moore has made his objection to this practice – in which the British bank is not alone – clear, even though it is done for good reasons. The researcher claimed […]
Facebook: We’re not asking for financial data, we’re just partnering with banks
Facebook is pushing back against a report in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that the company is asking major banks to provide private financial data. The social media giant has reportedly had talks with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and US Bancorp to discuss proposed features including fraud alerts and checking account balances via Messenger. Elisabeth […]
Anti DRM software programmer Arrested For Cracking Denuvo Anti-Piracy Tech
Denuvo’s notorious anti-piracy tech used to be seen as uncrackable. It held up against hackers’ best efforts for years, contorting itself into obtuse new shapes every time anybody broke through. In 2016, a Bulgarian hacker calling himself Voksi came along with a breakthrough that revitalized the whole Denuvo cracking scene. He’s been a pillar of […]
UK snooping ‘unlawful for more than decade’ – but seemingly (and amazingly) responsible
The system that allowed spy agency GCHQ access to vast amounts of personal data from telecoms companies was unlawful for more than a decade, a surveillance watchdog has ruled. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal said that successive foreign secretaries had delegated powers without oversight. But it added there was no evidence GCHQ had misused the system. […]
Robocall Firm Exposes Hundreds of Thousands of US Voters’ Records
Personal details and political affiliations exposed The server that drew Diachenko’s attention, this time, contained 2,584 files, which the researcher later connected to RoboCent. The type of user data exposed via Robocent’s bucket included: ⬖ Full Name, suffix, prefix ⬖ Phone numbers (cell and landlines) ⬖ Address with house, street, city, state, zip, precinct ⬖ […]
Chinese mobile phone cameras are not-so-secretly recording users’ activities
It has been widely reported that software and web applications made in China are often built with a “backdoor” feature, allowing the manufacturer or the government to monitor and collect data from the user’s device. But how exactly does the backdoor feature work? Recent discussion among mobile phone users in mainland China has shed some […]
Controversial copyright law rejected by EU parliament
A controversial overhaul of the EU’s copyright law that sparked a fierce debate between internet giants and content creators has been rejected. The proposed rules would have put more responsibility on websites to check for copyright infringements, and forced platforms to pay for linking to news. A slew of high-profile music stars had backed the […]
App Traps: How Cheap Smartphones Siphon User Data in Developing Countries
For millions of people buying inexpensive smartphones in developing countries where privacy protections are usually low, the convenience of on-the-go internet access could come with a hidden cost: preloaded apps that harvest users’ data without their knowledge. One such app, included on thousands of Chinese-made Singtech P10 smartphones sold in Myanmar and Cambodia, sends the […]
Mitsubishi Wants Your Driving Data, and It’s Willing to Throw in a Free Cup of Coffee to Get It
Automakers want in on the highly lucrative big data game and Mitsubishi is willing to pay for the privilege. In exchange for running the risk of jacking up its customers’ insurance premiums, the car manufacturer is offering drivers $10 off of an oil change and other rewards. Consumers will have to decide if a gift […]
‘Plane Hacker’ Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap!
Cars are turning into computers on wheels and airplanes have become flying data centres, but this increase in power and connectivity has largely happened without designing in adequate security controls. Improving transportation security was a major strand of the recent Cyber Week security conference in Israel. A one-day event, Speed of Light, focused on transportation […]
Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes
Facebook has long had the same public response when questioned about its disruption of the news industry: it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company. But in a small courtroom in California’s Redwood City on Monday, attorneys for the social media company presented a different message from the one executives have […]
More on how social media hacks brains to addict users
In a followup to How programmers addict you to social media, games and your mobile phone Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker: site made to exploit human ‘vulnerability’ He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset […]
Is My Phone Recording Everything I Say? It turns out it sends screenshots and videos of what you do
Some computer science academics at Northeastern University had heard enough people talking about this technological myth that they decided to do a rigorous study to tackle it. For the last year, Elleen Pan, Jingjing Ren, Martina Lindorfer, Christo Wilson, and David Choffnes ran an experiment involving more than 17,000 of the most popular apps on […]
Europe is reading smartphones and using the data as a weapon to deport refugees
Across the continent, migrants are being confronted by a booming mobile forensics industry that specialises in extracting a smartphone’s messages, location history, and even WhatsApp data. That information can potentially be turned against the phone owners themselves. In 2017 both Germany and Denmark expanded laws that enabled immigration officials to extract data from asylum seekers’ […]
Google allows outside app developers to read people’s Gmails
Google promised a year ago to provide more privacy to Gmail users, but The Wall Street Journal reports that hundreds of app makers have access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users. The outside app companies receive access to messages from Gmail users who signed up for things like price-comparison services or automated travel-itinerary […]
Dear Samsung mobe owners: It may leak your private pics to randoms
Samsung’s Messages app bundled with the South Korean giant’s latest smartphones and tablets may silently send people’s private photos to random contacts, it is claimed. An unlucky bunch of Sammy phone fans – including owners of Galaxy S9, S9+ and Note 8 gadgets – have complained on Reddit and the official support forums that the […]
This popular Facebook app publicly exposed your data for years
Nametests.com, the website behind the quizzes, recently fixed a flaw that publicly exposed information of their more than 120 million monthly users — even after they deleted the app. At my request, Facebook donated $8,000 to the Freedom of the Press Foundation as part of their Data Abuse Bounty Program. […] While loading a test, the website […]
Facebook Patent Imagines Triggering Your Phone’s Mic When a Hidden Signal Plays on TV
You may have seen the ads that Facebook has been running on TV in a full-court press to apologize for abusing users privacy. They’re embarrassing. And, it turns out, they may be a sign of things to come. Based on a recently published patent application, Facebook could one day use ads on television to further […]
Facebook, Google, Microsoft scolded for tricking people into spilling their private info
Five consumer privacy groups have asked the European Data Protection Board to investigate how Facebook, Google, and Microsoft design their software to see whether it complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Essentially, the tech giants are accused of crafting their user interfaces so that netizens are fooled into clicking away their privacy, and […]
EU breaks internet, starts wholesale censorship for rich man copyright holders
The problems are huge, not least because the EU will implement an automated content filter, which means that memes will die, but also, if you have the money to spam the system with requests, you can basically kill any content you want with the actual content holder only having a marginal chance of navigating EU […]
Red Shell packaged games (Civ VI, Total War, ESO, KSP and more) contain a spyware which tracks your Internet activity outside of the game
Red shell is a Spyware that tracks data of your PC and shares it with 3rd parties. On their website they formulate it all in very harmless language, but the fact is that this is software from someone i don’t trust and whom i never invited, which is looking at my data and running on […]
Customer Rewards get a lot weirder if you think of them as seperate transactions
Source: xkcd: Customer Rewards
EU Copyright law could put end to net memes
Memes, remixes and other user-generated content could disappear online if the EU’s proposed rules on copyright become law, warn experts. Digital rights groups are campaigning against the Copyright Directive, which the European Parliament will vote on later this month. The legislation aims to protect rights-holders in the internet age. But critics say it misunderstands the […]
Facebook gave some companies special access to data on users’ friends
Facebook granted a select group of companies special access to its users’ records even after the point in 2015 that the company has claimed it stopped sharing such data with app developers. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited court documents, unnamed Facebook officials and other unnamed sources, Facebook made special agreements with certain companies called “whitelists,” […]
