Canonical bungs kill switch onto Ubuntu’s Amazon ‘adware’
Canonical is reining in its Ubuntu Linux distro's new Amazon "adware" desktop search feature after penguinistas vented their rage.
Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has explained in a blog post how users can disable the controversial system that, by default, sends desktop search queries unencrypted to Amazon via Canonical's servers so that links to products related to the queries can be shown in the results.
The catch is, the fix won’t just stop you from receiving results from Amazon: it will eliminate all online results from the search. Read more...
Facebook’s new app bazaar ‘violates’ punters’ privacy – lobbyists
Facebook stands accused by a consumer lobby group of breaching Germany's privacy laws with the recent launch of its App Center.
The dominant social network has been threatened with possible legal action if it fails to respond to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations within the next seven days.
The lobby group claimed that Facebook was farming out customer information without informing its users that their data was being used, according to the Associated Press.
Facebook has until 4 September to resolve the matter, the group said, or else it could face potential legal action. Read more...
McAfee focuses on privacy in mobile security software package for Android
McAfee is expanding its mobile security software for Android tablets and smartphones, as it sees an increase in threats targeting Android devices, the Intel subsidiary announced on Monday.
The new Mobile Security software has features that help ensure that apps are not accessing personal information without the user's knowledge, and reports on apps that may be sending personal data to risky sites such as adware and spyware networks, McAfee said in a news release. The software should also protect customers against financial fraud, identity theft and viruses, it said.
The new security suite also allows users to filter their App Alert notifications in apps that are using permissions the user deems important, and it checks if apps are associated with risky URLs, McAfee said, adding that McAfee Labs has discovered that approximately five percent of apps in its database are associated with risky URLs. Read more...
Which do you trust less with your data, the U.S. government or Google?
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Black Hat Conference, a panel of experts got together to expound on what they see as the privacy and security mess of our times, and they had plenty to say about the U.S. government, cyber war, and Google.
The government really sucks at handling classified data, opined Marcus Ranum, CSO at Tenable Security. He said the vast WikiLeaks dumps of sensitive data from the U.S. government seen over the past few years shows that agencies such as the Department of State need to improve data custodianship.
As the panelists veered into the topic of who would you trust less with your data, the U.S. government or Google, ICANN CSO Jeff Moss answered that he feared Google more than the feds. That got Ranum to quip: thats because Google has a history of getting things done. Read more...
White House order on emergency communications riles privacy group
An executive order issued by the White House last Friday seeks to bolster the government's ability to keep its emergency communications capabilities intact during national emergencies.
But one privacy advocacy group expressed concern that the order gives government unprecedented new authority to take over wired and wireless private communication networks in the pretext of national security.
The order issued by President Obama directs agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense, Department of State and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to come up with policy recommendations and plans for ensuring continuity of government communications capabilities in a crisis.
The order authorizes the creation of a new National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Committee (NS/EP), which will consist of representatives from each of these agencies.
As part of its mission the executive committee will develop a long-term strategic plan and propose funding initiatives to support the incorporation of the necessary redundancy, mobility, interoperability and restorability of government communications capabilities "under all circumstances." Read more...
Google close to deal with FTC to pay record $22.5M fine for violating Apple users’ privacy
Google is close to a deal with the Federal Trade Commission to pay a record fine of $22.5 million related to violating the privacy of millions of Apple Safari browser users by bypassing their privacy settings, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ says the fine is expected to be the largest ever levied on a single company by the FTC. It's said to stem from charges that Google used computer coding tricks to fool Apple's Safari software into letting it monitor the Apple users that had made the effort to adjust their Safari browsers to block this type of tracking. The WSJ has written in depth about the issue, and says Google stopped the practice after the publication wrote about it. Read more...
Top US Senator to Apple, Google: ‘Curb your spy planes’
One week after Apple announced it was booting Google Maps from iOS and photographing the world with its own aerial fleet, a top US Senator has written to both companies expressing concern over their "military-grade spy planes."
"Barbequing or sunbathing in your backyard shouldn't be a public event," said Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) in a statement on Monday. "People should be free from the worry of some high-tech peeping Tom technology violating one's privacy when in your own home."
Schumer noted that although Google Maps and Google Earth have used satellite imagery in the past, "reports have suggested" that both Google and Apple have upgraded their capabilities to aircraft-based photography that can see through windows and capture detailed images with four-inch resolution. Read more...
Android Malware Genome Project launched
At this year's IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, security researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) announced the launch of the Android Malware Genome Project. The goal of the new initiative is to find, collect and analyse Android malware and share it with other researchers around the world. Read more...
CISPA sponsors support amendments addressing privacy concerns
The sponsors of a controversial cyberthreat information-sharing bill will offer new amendments to address privacy concerns, with changes focused on limiting how government agencies can use information shared by private companies, as the bill comes to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week.
Sponsors of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, said Tuesday they will support amendments to the legislation, including one that would narrow the way U.S. agencies can use the shared information.
The bill now allows agencies to use the information for a broad range of purposes, but the proposed amendment would limit agencies to acting on cybersecurity issues, on investigations involving potential deaths or serious injury, on investigations involving child pornography and on issues related to U.S. national security. Read more...
Demand your data from Internet companies
Tim Berners-Lee has said that the problem with companies like Facebook and Google is not that they collect vast troves of data about their users, but that they don't share with them what they learn from it.
Berners-Lee, who is often described as the inventor of the World Wide Web, was speaking out against the U.K.'s proposal to allow government intelligence to monitor digital communications. Berners-Lee is a U.K. native.
He acknowledged that users reveal deeply personal information about themselves through their use of the Web.
"You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to, because often people will confide in the Internet as they find their way through medical websites ... Read more...
RapidShare Publishes Anti-Piracy Manifesto for Cyberlockers
Swiss-based file-hosting service RapidShare has released an anti-piracy manifesto to serve as a guideline for cyberlocker and cloud hosting sites. Partly motivated by the criminal indictment of Megaupload, RapidShare stresses that they will do all they can to counter piracy, even if this is at the expense of user privacy and convenience.
In the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown, people have been keeping a close eye on other file-hosting services, RapidShare included.
As a company, RapidShare sees itself operating in the “cloud hosting” business, offering a service comparable to the likes of Dropbox. And since people are moving data from local drives to the cloud at an increasing rate, these companies will undoubtedly host some copyrighted material too.
During the past several years RapidShare has made tremendous efforts to cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements. Read more...
Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too
Microsoft has released data showing that Google has been bypassing the user-defined privacy settings in Internet Explorer by using incorrect P3P identification terms.
“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Dean Hachamovitch, VP of Internet Explorer wrote in a blog post. “We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.” Read more...
Lawmaker dissatisfied with Amazon’s answers on Kindle Fire’s data harvesting
Amazon told a Massachusetts congressman that the Silk browser in its Kindle Fire tablet doesn't pose a privacy threat to consumers, but the lawmaker wasn't ready to give the online retailer a pass.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-chairman of a congressional caucus on consumer privacy, on Tuesday released the retailer's responses to questions he had put to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in October about Silk and the data it collected.
Markey wasn't happy with Amazon's answers.
"Amazon's responses to my inquiries do not provide enough detail about how the company intends to use customer information, beyond acknowledging that the company uses this valuable information," said Markey in a statement. Read more...
Technology once protected our privacy, now erodes it
In light of the erosion of privacy online, we need to be careful to protect our privacy at home, according toMichael Birnhack, law professor at Tel Aviv University, speaking at Intelligence Squared's If conference.
In direct contrast to Martin Blinder's argument in favor of personal analytics, Birnhack said: "Yes we can measure stuff, but do we want to measure all that stuff? I would argue that at least some of us would like to maintain a place where nothing is measured and nothing should be measured." Read more...
Legal reform needed to govern data
Legal experts and law enforcement agents say new and updated laws are required to protect user privacy while allowing law enforcement to catch cybercriminals.
A revamp to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act will help set policy around new technology that the creators of that law didn't imagine, panelists said during a cybercrime conference hosted by the University of Washington's School of Law on Friday.
The act was written long before current email systems were devised. "In 1986, no one thought email would be stored indefinitely, so the statute says that 180-day-old email is stale and therefore not in need of protection," explained Sharon Nelson, formerly the director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology at the University of Washington School of Law.
That means law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to access emails from 180 days ago, or emails and other data stored in the cloud, experts said. Read more...