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+4 +1
Apple will update iOS to block police hacking tool
For months, police across the country have been using a device called a GrayKey to unlock dormant iPhones, using an undisclosed technique to sidestep Apple’s default disk encryption. The devices are currently in use in at least five states and five federal agencies, seen as a breakthrough in collecting evidence from encrypted devices.
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+7 +1
Zuckerberg: If someone gets fired for data abuse 'it should be me'
Mark Zuckerberg isn't planning to fire himself. At least, not at the moment. During an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher published Wednesday, the Facebook CEO touched on Russians interfering with US elections, misinformation, data breaches, the company's business model and more. When asked by Swisher who's to blame for the Cambridge Analytica scandal and related data misuse, Zuckerberg said he "designed the platform, so if someone's going to get fired for this, it should be me." Swisher followed up by asking if he was going to fire himself. "Not on this podcast right now," he said.
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+17 +1
Stop Using WhatsApp If You Care About Your Privacy
Privacy has always been a key feature and popular selling point for the messaging app WhatsApp. Company co-founder Jan Koum grew up in the Soviet Union under heavy government surveillance, and he promised to keep user data protected after Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014. Now, with Koum on the way out, it may be time to ditch WhatsApp before that promise leaves with him.
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+22 +1
Facebook will pull its data-collecting VPN app from the App Store over privacy concerns
Facebook will soon pull a mobile VPN app called Onavo Protect from Apple’s App Store, after the iPhone maker declared it violated the store’s guidelines on data collection, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Onavo, which began as an Israeli analytics startup focused on helping users monitor their data usage, was acquired by Facebook in 2013. Its VPN provider then became a data collection tool for Facebook to monitor smartphone users’ behavior outside its core apps, helping inform Facebook’s live video strategy, competition from other social apps, and its decision to acquire companies including WhatsApp.
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+20 +1
Facebook doesn't think hackers accessed third-party sites
Facebook says it has not found any evidence "so far" that its attackers accessed third-party sites through Facebook Login. It's a sliver of good news about a massive data breach that the company first disclosed last week. Attackers accessed as many as 50 million accounts in the largest such breach of Facebook's network.
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+17 +1
Apple's Tim Cook: 'Don't believe' tech companies that say they need your data
Apple CEO Tim Cook hit out at tech companies that claim more customer data leads to superior products, saying that's a "bunch of bunk." In an exclusive interview with Vice News Tonight that aired Tuesday, Cook did not name any names but appeared to admonish the likes of advertising giants Facebook and Google, which rely on data sharing with third parties. "The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is: 'I've got to take all of your data to make my service better.' Well, don't believe them," Cook told Vice.
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+13 +1
Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network, though it didn’t find evidence of misuse. The company opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny.
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+15 +1
So many people have had their DNA sequenced that they've put other people's privacy in jeopardy
A new study argues that more than half of Americans could be identified by name if all you had to start with was a sample of their DNA and a few basic facts, such as where they live and how about how old they might be.
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+24 +1
Spammers, not a nation state, behind Facebook data breach, report says
Facebook believes spammers, not a nation state, were behind the data breach of 30 million accounts, according to a published report. The spammers aimed to make money through deceptive advertising and masqueraded as a digital marketing company, people familiar with the company’s internal investigation told the Wall Street Journal.
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+18 +1
Facebook Is the Least Trusted Major Tech Company When it Comes to Safeguarding Personal Data, Poll Finds
Facebook is the least trustworthy of all major tech companies when it comes to safeguarding user data, according to a new national poll conducted for Fortune, highlighting the major challenges the company faces following a series of recent privacy blunders. Only 22% of Americans said that they trust Facebook with their personal information, far less than Amazon (49%), Google (41%), Microsoft (40%), and Apple (39%).
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+17 +1
Our lack of interest in data ethics will come back to haunt us
When was the last time you saw a creepy ad on Facebook, which seemed to know about a product you were discussing with a coworker? Or when was the last time you noticed that your Google search had been modified to suit variables like your current location and personal interests? These micro-events happen on a daily basis for most of us, and are reminders of how valuable and how ubiquitous our data really is.
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+7 +1
Insurance companies are spying on patients through their sleep apnea machines to make sure they're using them, and experts warn it's part of the industry's playbook to make patients pay more
Last March, Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him. From his bedside, the device was tracking when he was using it and sending the information not just to his doctor, but to the maker of the machine, to the medical supply company that provided it and to his health insurer.
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+23 +1
Google using ‘deceptive, misleading, manipulative’ tactics to track people
Seven European consumer groups filed complaints against Google with national regulators on Tuesday, accusing the internet giant of covertly tracking users’ movements in violation of an EU regulation on data protection. The complaints cited a study by the Norwegian Consumer Council that concluded the internet giant used “deceptive design and misleading information, which results in users accepting to be constantly tracked”.
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+21 +1
Facebook’s Latest Scandal Shows We Need Stronger Privacy Laws
Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, has shown yet again that it does not deserve our trust. A New York Times investigation revealed that Facebook shared its users’ private data, without its users’ consent, with other tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix.
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+2 +1
An Anthropologist Investigates How We Think About How We Think
One afternoon several years ago, Emily Martin, a professor emerita of anthropology at N.Y.U., filled out a personality questionnaire through an app on Facebook called This Is Your Digital Life. This was long before the app’s creator, Aleksandr Kogan, was accused of using it to harvest information from more than fifty million Facebook users and sharing it with the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. (The firm allegedly offered that data, in turn, to clients, including Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign.)
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+1 +1
You'd be surprised how many VPNs are owned by the same company
The VPN market is consolidating
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+19 +1
A handy list of ways Facebook has tried to sneakily gather data about you
As we learned last year, Facebook has a habit of stealthily grabbing customer data to improve its own products and services, and then apologizing when the world finds out. There have been several instances that highlight how the company will go to any lengths to learn more about its users. It’s worrying for a number of reasons, but it’s especially troubling because the company still has tremendous potential to reach billions of users.
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+29 +1
Most Americans don't realize what companies can predict from their data
Sixty-seven percent of smartphone users rely on Google Maps to help them get to where they are going quickly and efficiently. A major of feature of Google Maps is its ability to predict how long different navigation routes will take. That’s possible because the mobile phone of each person using Google Maps sends data about its location and speed back to Google’s servers, where it is analyzed to generate new data about traffic conditions.
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+35 +1
You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.
Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc.
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+19 +1
Data Privacy Legislation Is Coming for Big Tech
Good Friday morning. I hope you’ve been enjoying Aaron’s incisive reporting from Barcelona and Clay’s insightful commentary from China. Fortune is a truly global organization. I’m going to end the week where I started, noting the tightening regulatory noose around the necks of the tech behemoths. They’ve built trillions of dollars of value in the past decade or so, more or less unencumbered by the type of scrutiny applied to other industries that reach deeply into our society’s fabric. No longer.
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