Articles about Privacy

A privacy case against Facebook has been thrown out of court by a judge in the US District Court, Northern District of California. The case surrounded Facebook's tracking of users via Like buttons on other sites even when they were not logged into their accounts.

Plaintiffs said that Facebook violated wiretapping and privacy laws, but District Judge Edward Davila ruled that there was no evidence that the social network had illegally "intercepted" communications. She said that plaintiffs had failed to show "realistic" economic harm or loss, adding that they could have taken steps to maintain the privacy of their browsing histories.

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A partnership between London's Royal Free hospital and DeepMind resulted in a breach of the Data Protection Act, an investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has concluded.

The personal data of more than 1.6 million patients was transferred to the Google subsidiary as part of the creation of Streams, an app to diagnose and detect acute kidney injury. The ICO found that patients were not properly informed about how their data would be used, and highlighted a "number of shortcomings" in the way data was handled.

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There have been lots of complaints about invasion of privacy since the release of Windows 10. Microsoft's telemetry lead to several lawsuits, including one from France's National Data Protection Commission which said Windows 10 was collecting "excessive personal data" about users.

But now the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) has decided to drop its case against Microsoft. The commission is happy that sufficient steps have been taken to reduce the amount of data that is collected and users are now informed about data collection.

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All organizations have valuable data which they need to protect, but as their digital footprint gets larger it becomes harder to keep track of and guard all their information.

Content collaboration and governance specialist Egnyte is launching a cloud-based governance solution, Egnyte Protect to provide real-time analysis of all content within an organization and deliver insights to help administrators prevent potential data breaches.

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WPD is a freeware tool for exploring, understanding and tweaking Windows 10 privacy settings. We’ve seen many of these -- we’ll bet you have, too -- but the program does have some unusual extras which help it stand out from the crowd.

The interface is up-to-date, for instance. The developer hasn’t got it right in every area, but the program does look like it was written for Windows 10.

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Google has updated its search policies without any sort of fanfare. The search engine now "may remove" -- in addition to existing categories of information -- "confidential, personal medical records of private people" from search results.

That such information was not already obscured from search results may well come as something of a surprise to many people. The change -- first reported by Bloomberg -- has been confirmed by Google, although the company has not issued any form of announcement about it.

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ProtonMail has opened up its free VPN service to anyone who wants to use it. ProtonVPN was previously only available to a limited number of beta testers, but now everyone can secure their internet connection for free.

The company is best known for its encrypted email service, but the prospect of a free VPN tool will also be enticing to anyone who has concerns about privacy. It also provides a free way of bypassing internet restrictions that may be put in place by governments or ISPs.

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Late last year Mozilla launched a private browser for iOS called Firefox Focus. Now the browser arrives on Android bringing the same privacy-focused internet experience to users of Google's mobile operating system.

When Mozilla talks about being privacy-focused, it does not just mean using Private Browsing. Firefox Focus is a completely separate browser which blocks trackers, analytics and ads, and also wipes your browsing history with a single tap. As well as improving privacy, Focus also speeds up web browsing and reduces data usage.

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Time is running out to ensure that your organization is prepared for the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and with less than a year to go now is the time to take action.

In order to help organizations prepare for GDPR, the data governance firm DQM GRC has released a free online GDPR Self-Assessment Tool that provides insight into a company's compliance levels compared to the new regulation and offers practical advice on how they can overcome their biggest challenges.

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If you are reading this, your privacy is under attack. Don't think hackers or government agencies have any reason to spy on you? Think again. Information is power, and collected data is very valuable. Only a sucker would argue that it doesn't matter because they have nothing to hide. Your liberties can be eroded when you don't join the battle for the overall greater good. In other words, it is important to fight for your rights before it is too late.

One way to fight for your privacy is to hide your internet activity from prying eyes. A great option for this -- especially in countries where exercising free speech can get you jailed or killed -- is Tails. This is a privacy-focused Linux-based operating system that is designed to run as a live environment -- preferably from an optical disk to best hide tracks. It was made famous by freedom-fighter Edward Snowden. You may not want to use the OS all the time, but it is a great tool for when you absolutely need privacy. Today, the Tails Linux distro reaches a significant milestone -- version 3.0 is stable. You can download the ISO immediately.

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Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act -- the legislation used to permit the NSA to conduct online surveillance -- is due to expire at the end of the year. We have already seen a number of the big names from the world of technology calling for a number of changes during reform.

As part of the reform, officials had promised that they would reveal broad details about the number of American citizens about whom information has been, and is, collected. This is no longer the case. The Director of National Intelligence has performed a u-turn on the promise.

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With businesses under pressure to secure their data and control who accesses it, there’s increased demand for visibility into where information is going.

Information security company Globalscape is launching a a new reporting platform called EFT Insight. This uses a combination of business and operational intelligence to ensure information exchanges are functioning properly and securely, alerting network administrators to any conditions that could compromise security or violate service level agreements.

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It's WWDC 2017 and if there is one thing that you can count on is Apple showing off the new versions of its main operating systems. So, today, we catch a glimpse of macOS High Sierra, which is shaping up to be a pretty impressive upgrade over its predecessor, macOS Sierra.

There are a couple of notable new features in macOS High Sierra, namely the introduction of Apple File System, VR support, a better browsing experience in Safari, faster graphics, and improved video support.

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UK companies were hit with fines totaling over £3.2m last year after falling foul of data protection laws, a new report reveals.

Analysis of figures from the ICO by PwC found that the 35 fines handed out in 2016 were almost double of  the previous year, despite repeated warning that the new GDPR regulations are just a year away.

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New research shows that more than a third of all public web pages of FTSE 30 companies capturing personally identifiable information (PII) are in danger of violating the GDPR regulations by doing so insecurely.

The FTSE 30 is made up of the 30 most influential companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. The study by RiskIQ looking at the sites of these organizations finds that more controls on outward facing web assets are needed.

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