Articles about Privacy

Like many social platforms, Twitter is often used by trolls to launch abusive attacks on people. It's something that Twitter has tried to tackle before, but now the company is stepping up its game. Having already made it easier to report abusive tweets, the same tools are being rolled out to simplify the reporting of content relating to impersonation, self-harm and doxing.

Dick Costolo had already promised that Twitter was ready to get tough on harassment, and now we know what he meant. The size of the team handling reports about abuse has been tripled, and this means that five times as many reported tweets are to be investigated.

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How much would you be prepared to sell your data for? According to a new survey, almost half of the UK wouldn’t give it up for any less than a million quid.

The study of a thousand Brits, undertaken by Swiss data center Artmotion, found that 49 percent of respondents would only sell their personal or company data for £1 million or more.

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A few months ago Twitter was criticized for teaming up with suicide prevention charity Samaritans to automatically monitor for key words and phrases that could indicate that someone was struggling to cope with life. Despite the privacy concerns that surrounded Samaritans Radar, Facebook has decided that it is going to launch a similar venture for Compassion Research Day in a bid to prevent suicides.

Working with mental health organizations including mental health organizations Forefront, Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Save.org, Facebook aims to provide greater help and support for anyone considering suicide or self-harm.

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Although organizations are increasingly concerned about data protection many of them don’t have the appropriate tools in place to secure their information.

According to a new report from data loss prevention specialists Boldon James compiled by Bloor Research, although over half of organizations see data security as a major concern 47 percent say they don't have a data classification tool.

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If you want to post naked pictures or videos of people on Reddit without their consent, you only have a couple of weeks to do so. As of March, the site is imposing a ban on content of an explicit nature that the subject has not given permission to be posted.

The cleanup of the site comes hot on the heels of news from Google that explicit content will be banned from Blogger. It also comes in the wake of last year’s Fappening which saw a glut of naked celebrity photos leaked online.

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Data privacy is a growing concern and a number of countries including Germany, France and Russia have recently adopted new data protection regulations to protect their citizens' information.

Add in regulations like HIPAA and FINRA in the US and it's clear that businesses need to have an infrastructure to meet the various requirements or face possible legal consequences.

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There are many things that Facebook finds itself accused of on a regular basis. Unfairness to different groups, censorship of content, insensitivity, and endless problems surrounding its attitude to privacy and handling of user data. It seems that concerns about privacy were well-founded as a new report finds that the social network violated European law. Analysis carried out by the Belgian Privacy Commission and ICRI/CIR says that Facebook breaks the law in Europe in a number of ways. As well as placing too many expectations on users to be able to change settings for themselves.

Facebook is also accused of failing to give people the ability opt out of certain privacy-invading features. Back in January, Facebook made some changes to its privacy policies and also introduced simplified documentation. The report found that rather than cleaning up its act, Facebook merely highlighted some of its old, existing practices. The social network is criticized for its "complex web of settings", for failing to explain what is meant when users are told that their data will be used "for advertising purposes", and for not allowing people to opt out of Sponsored Stories and location sharing.

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Few weeks go by without Google coming under fire for some privacy-related misdemeanor or other. In Italy, however, the search giant has just agreed to comply with measures put in place by the Data Protection Authority. Moreover, the company will be subjected to regular audits to make sure that everything is in order.

Google is required to make improvements not only to privacy notices for its various services, but also obtain consent from users to use their data in research and profiling. The right-to-be forgotten also rears its head again as the authority requires Google to investigate individuals' requests for search listing removals.

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In mid-2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the government-backed agency NSA monitored everything happening on the Internet, including spying on individuals' phone calls, messaging, and emails to glean information and pinpoint suspicious activities in an attempt to stop the growing terrorist acts.

Since the revelations -- which changed everyone's perspective on privacy -- the leaked information from Snowden and acceptance from major technology companies have given us an understanding of how the NSA managed to get our data from the services we heavily rely on. Essentially, either providers agreed to turn over our data or the NSA found another way, a backdoor, to obtain it. But how it manage to tap our phone calls was mostly unclear. Last year, Vodafone did acknowledge that it allowed the NSA to place surveillance tools inside its data centers. But as it turns out, the agency had more ways to log our phone activities.

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In a new twist to the on-going NSA story, security firm Kaspersky Lab has discovered that a threat actor of previously unknown complexity and sophistication has been embedding surveillance software on hard drives produced by a number of well-known manufacturers. With names such as Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba mentioned, and the reach of the spy program stretching to dozens of countries, it's not clear quite how many people may be affected.

Although Kapersky does not go as far as naming the NSA, or even specifying which country is responsible for the advanced surveillance, it seems that the spying campaign is somehow related to Stuxnet -- the tool used by the NSA to attack Iran -- and the Flame group.

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The gradual push of just about everything to the cloud means that security and privacy are of greater concern than ever before. This is true for everyone who makes use of cloud services like OneDrive and Azure, but it is of particular interest to enterprise customers.

Today Microsoft has become the first major cloud service provider to adopt ISO/IEC 27018, the world’s first international standard for cloud privacy. The idea is to ensure that there is a global standard that determines how personal data privacy is handled in the cloud. The standard equips people with a number of assurances.

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The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruling that GCHQ’s access to information intercepted by the NSA breached human rights laws is feeding a growing and increasingly heated global debate regarding the whole issue of digital privacy.

Earlier this month, the tribunal held that the British intelligence and security agency had been in breach of articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, referring to the right to private family life and to freedom of expression. But hard on the heels of the UK ruling came news that the US government is creating a dedicated agency to monitor cybersecurity threats, pooling and analyzing information across a spectrum of risks. The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC)’s mission will be to 'connect the dots' between various sources of intelligence.

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Have you prepared for the day you die? Let people know if you want to be stuck in a hole in the ground, cremated and scattered in an awkward place, or just left at the side of the road to be picked at by passing foxes? While you may have considered what happens to your lifeless meatsack and your worldly belongings, what about things in the digital realm?

Facebook has just taken a step that will make it easier for a designated loved one to take control of your account. Your 'legacy contact' will be able to set up a memorial to you and download your account archive.

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It probably hasn't escaped your notice that today (10 February) is Safer Internet Day. This is intended to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people.

Online advice site Knowthenet.org.uk -- operated by the Nominet domain registry -- has published some new research looking at the attitudes of parents to their children's use of social media and finds that whilst it has a generally good effect there's still a need for caution.

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A secret UK court has ruled that the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ acted unlawfully by intercepting information gathered by the NSA. Investigatory Powers Tribunal said that because the rules surrounding the UK’s access to the NSA's PRISM and UPSTREAM program data were secret, data sharing between the US and UK was illegal. A case has been brought against GCHQ by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Liberty, and Amnesty International.

But while the IPT said that accessing this information breached human rights laws this is no longer the case. Why? The illegality of sharing data collected through these surveillance programs centered on the very fact that they were secret. In blowing the whistle about what the NSA was doing, Edward Snowden unwittingly made this data sharing legal. Whoops.

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