Privacy is a growing concern in today’s world. Follow along with all our coverage related to privacy, security, what Apple and other companies are doing to keep your information safe, and what steps you can take to keep your information private.
We provided a roundup of some of the key take-outs from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress yesterday – including some of the things he didn’t say, thanks to a photograph of his briefing notes.
Reaction to Zuckerberg’s responses have been mixed, but investors seemed satisfied as Facebook stock closed 4.5% up on the day …
The biggest controversy over the way Facebook data ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica was how it got there. The company not only got access to the data of anyone naive enough to give permission to a third-party ‘personality quiz,’ but Facebook allowed the app some access to the data of their friends also …
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized to Congress in a written statement ahead of his testimony before two committee hearings today and tomorrow.
The statement suggests that the company didn’t do enough to prevent misuse because the company is ‘idealistic and optimistic’ but it now recognizes that it made a ‘big mistake’ in failing to put sufficient safeguards in place …
If you’re wondering whether you were one of the 87M Facebook users whose data was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, you may find out today. For Brits, at least, the BBC reports that users will receive one of two messages this afternoon letting them know whether or not they were affected …
[Update: Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that it plans to bring the an ‘unsend’ message feature to all users in the coming months.]
At a time when Facebook is under fire for failing to protect user data, it is ironically facing a $33M fine for refusing to allow police access to WhatsApp messages between suspected fraudsters …
There seems no end in sight to the Facebook privacy saga. Facebook first revealed that up to 87M people may have had their data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, 71M of them Americans.
The political consultancy denies this, TechCrunch reporting that it claims to have licensed data for up to 30M people, and saying that none of this data was used to help the Trump campaign …
Facebook continues to work on regaining the trust of users after the Cambridge Analytica revelations. After earlier pointing to instructions for removing permissions granted to apps running on the platform, the company has now streamlined the process to make it easier to do …
Third-party apps which rely on pulling data from Instagram are falling over as the company has started imposing limits on how much information is shared …
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and six other campaign groups have responded to the Facebook privacy controversy by calling on tech companies to sign a ‘security pledge.’ The pledge asks companies to make four promises to their customers and users …
HomePod reviews almost universally agreed on two things: the speaker sounds incredibly impressive for the size and price, and Apple’s smart speaker is the least-smart one on the market. Both Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home speakers were found to be significantly more capable when it comes to answering questions and carrying out tasks.
This is not, of course, coincidence. Amazon opens its Alexa ‘recipes’ up to any third-party developer, and Google has long snaffled-up as much data as it can to make its smart assistants as capable as possible. Apple, in contrast, carefully controls the personal data available to both itself and to third-party developers …
A memo written in 2016 has just come to light in which a Facebook VP argues that ‘questionable’ and deceptive tactics to grow the platform are justified – even if they cost someone their life.
The memo was written by one of Facebook’s longest-serving execs, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth …
Concerns over Facebook’s privacy policies don’t appear to be diminishing. Some users taking advantage of the opportunity to download an archive of all the data Facebook holds in their account are discovering a surprise: it includes videos they shot but never posted …
Investors fear that the fate of global stock markets are too heavily dependant on a handful of tech giants, Apple among them …
Snapchat appears to be planning to allow more connected apps, third-party apps that have access to some or all of your Snapchat data …
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly plans to accept an invitation to testify before Congress on the user data privacy controversy. The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday demanded that the chief exec appear before them, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee also expects Zuckerberg to testify.
Lawmakers want to know how the social network seemingly permitted data from around 50 million users to be used to influence the US presidential election …
The Indian government is threatening to take legal action against Apple to force it to approve an anti-spam app which the company has rejected for privacy reasons …
Pressure is growing on Facebook to explain its failure to protect customers against misuse of their data by a firm of political consultants.
Both US and UK governments have demanded that CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally appear before them to give testimony. But in the case of the UK, Zuckerberg has already refused …
After Bloomberg reported the news citing anonymous sources last week, the US Federal Trade Commission has confirmed this morning that it has an open probe looking into Facebook’s privacy practices.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has run full-page newspaper ads apologizing for the privacy breach that allowed a researcher to collect user data that was later used by Cambridge Analytica to help elect Trump. Fallout so far has included investigations in the US and UK, lawsuits and a petition.
The ads were run in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and six UK newspapers …
[Update: Apple says it will fix the bug in a future update.]
A privacy bug reported by Brazilian site Mac Magazine allows someone to access hidden message notifications on a locked iPhone by asking Siri to read them …
The fallout from the Facebook privacy controversy continues. After it was revealed that a firm of political consultants carried out a data-harvesting exercise disguised as a personality quiz, the latest developments include a lawsuit and a Mozilla-led petition for privacy changes to the app …
Not long after Telegram was pulled from the App Store when Apple learned it was serving child pornography, the encrypted messaging app has lost a Supreme Court appeal in Russia, and been ordered to share its encryption keys with KGB successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB) …
Facebook ran into trouble following its acquisition of WhatsApp back in 2014. It appeared to backtrack on an earlier promise not to share data between the two services, and was later warned that it may be breaking the law in the UK and elsewhere …
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) suggests that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) may be conducting illegal searches of electronic devices belonging to passengers on domestic flights …