93 percent are worried about online privacy
Compared to a year ago 93 percent of people have the same amount or more concern about their online privacy.
This is according to a survey of of 1,000 people across the US by VPN comparison site TheBestVPN. It finds 51 percent are worried about their information being stolen by hackers, and 26 percent about companies collecting and sharing data.
Facebook value plummets by $118bn and Zuckerberg's fortune drops $16bn following privacy scandal-fueled growth slowdown
Facebook shares and the personal fortune of Mark Zuckerberg took massive hits as the social network felt the impact of a growth slowdown and the fallout of recent privacy scandals.
The company issued a warning to investors about a deceleration of growth in its userbase, leading to a stock drop of around 20 percent. A drop in share price lowered the value of Facebook by a massive $118 billion -- a record-breaking one-day drop in the value of a company.
Privacy: Facebook suspends data analytics firm Crimson Hexagon
Facebook has severed ties with data analytics company Crimson Hexagon because of concerns about its links to the US government, Russia and Turkey.
In a move that has echoes of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has suspended the company and blocked it from accessing user data because of fears about how that data is used. Crimson Hexagon claims to have gathered more than one trillion pieces of data about social media users, and there are concerns that this data could be used for surveillance purposes.
Google (sort of) redirects Duck.com to DuckDuckGo after complaints of anti-competitive behavior from its search rival
Google may have been slammed by Europe for using Android to dominate with its search engine, but this is not the only complaint that has been leveled at the company. Privacy-focused search rival DuckDuckGo has criticized Google for sending visitors to Duck.com to the Google search page.
Google owns Duck.com, but DuckDuckGo believes the company has been confusing users with the redirect. Now, following publicity of the issue, Google has relented and says it is introducing a new landing page that will give visitors to Duck.com the opportunity to jump to the DuckDuckGo search engine as well as other pages.
Gmail's new 'Confidential Mode' is flawed and misleading
Google recently rolled out a big update to Gmail, introducing a number of welcome new features.
One the big new additions is 'Confidential Mode' which you can enable from the compose window. This is designed to restrict how the emails you send can be viewed and shared, and you can also set an expiration date for messages. If you have the need to send and receive emails of a sensitive nature, then you might think this is the prefect solution. There’s just one problem -- messages sent using it aren’t confidential.
How much does Google know about you?
We all know that Google collects data and uses it to sell adverts. But just how well does Google know you?
VPN service comparison site TheBestVPN has created a full guide to how the corporation tracks you and what it does with the information.
Fitness app Polar Flow exposed names and locations of thousands of military, NSA and FBI staff
It's not all that long since fitness app Strava caused something of a security nightmare by inadvertently revealing the locations of numerous secret military bases. Now another app -- Polar Flow this time -- has gone a step further and revealed the names and home addresses of nearly 6,500 users.
A joint investigation by Bellingcat and Dutch journalism platform De Correspondent found that the app is "revealing the homes and lives of people exercising in secretive locations, such as intelligence agencies, military bases and airfields, nuclear weapons storage sites, and embassies around the world".
Google responds to Gmail privacy concerns: 'we're not reading your emails'
Another day, another privacy concern. Following a Wall Street Journal story about the access third party apps have to Gmail data, we wrote about how to stop it. While the WSJ did not really make any major new revelations, it did manage to reignite the conversation about privacy, and Google has responded to storm that has built up around it.
The company has used a blog post to respond to the concerns raised by the Wall Street Journal, insisting that it carefully vets any third party that has access to sensitive data. The task has been left to Suzanne Frey -- director of security, trust and privacy at Google Cloud -- to limit the damage caused by the article.
Privacy warning: Samsung phones are leaking photos to random contacts
If you have a Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+ or Note 8, you might want to check that your contacts haven't got hold of some of your photos. Some owners of the handsets are reporting that the Samsung Messages SMS app has been sending out images from their camera rolls to random contacts.
Worryingly, many people who were affected by the privacy-invading leaks were only made aware of the problem when their friends asked about the images they'd received -- the Messages app does not reveal that anything has been sent. Samsung says that it is aware of the issue and is investigating what is happening.
Facebook bug secretly unblocked people you thought you'd blocked
Facebook is primarily about connecting with other people, but its "block" functionality certainly has its place for avoiding those you don't want to be in touch with for one reason or another. It's a great option to have... until it goes wrong.
And that's precisely what happened. The social network has admitted that more than 800,000 were hit by a bug that meant people they had blocked on either Facebook or Facebook Messenger were temporarily unblocked and able to see content that had been posted.
The NSA is deleting all of its call records since 2015 because of privacy issues
The NSA -- not exactly a bastion of privacy -- has announced that it is deleting hundreds of millions of call and text records because of "technical irregularities".
The agency says that back in May this year is started to delete all of the calls records it collected since 2015. While full details of the reasons for the deletion are not given, the NSA notes that it collected data it was not authorized to collect.
Adidas data breach may have exposed personal data of American customers
Sportswear company Adidas has warned US customers about a security breach that took place earlier this week.
The firm says that on Tuesday it was made aware that "an unauthorized party claims to have acquired limited data associated with certain Adidas consumers". Two days later, the company started to notify its customers that personal data -- including contact information and usernames -- may have been compromised.
Report: AT&T is helping the NSA with surveillance using secret buildings throughout the US
A report published by the Intercept alleges that AT&T has eight buildings across the US which are used to collaborate on surveillance with the NSA.
Found in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC, these "peering" facilities are home to networking equipment through which a lot of US and global internet traffic is routed. The Intercept says that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that "the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across US territory".
Privacy group EFF announces STARTTLS Everywhere to secure emails with hop-to-hop -- but not end-to-end -- encryption
When it comes to messaging tools, people have started to show greater interest in whether encryption is used for security, and the same for websites -- but not so much with email. Thanks to the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, email security is being placed at the top of the agenda.
The privacy group today announces STARTTLS Everywhere, its new initiative to improve the security of the email eco-system. STARTTLS is an addition to SMTP, and while it does not add end-to-end encryption, it does provide hop-to-hop encryption, which is very much a step in the right direction.
Google Account revamped -- increased transparency and new security and privacy options
Google has unveiled a new look for users' accounts, making information clearer, improving transparency and adding new options.
To make it easy to find information, Google has added a search function and there's also a cleaner look to aid navigation. Building on the previous update to Security Checkup, your Google account now also highlights settings you can change to improve your security.
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