Tag Archives: privacy

A panel of judges have ruled that the current system of UK intelligence collection does not breach the European Convention of Human Rights. This case has been important in clarifying the GCHQ's policy following the Snowden leaks, which detailed the extent of US and UK surveillance practices. The current GCHQ …

In a move that seems to counter that of their peers, who have continued the push for tighter surveillance laws so much that there's a pending Human Rights investigation into GCHQ spying, MPs on the Science and Technology select committee, have warned their contemporaries and the public that Facebook has too much …

As the world's second most well known and talked about social network, you would think Twitteer would have had the same storied history of privacy concerns that Facebook has. Traditionally however, it's not monetised its service quite as much as others, so has left the personal lives of its users more …

Are you looking for someone that has a background in breaking webcam security? Perhaps a penchant for highlighting security flaws in major corporate software in the public eye? Then consider hiring on the man responsible for the recent webcam hacking scandal, as he's added a job listing to his site, …

Facebook has announced to its members via a user email that it will be once again updating its privacy policy and terms and conditions as of 1st January next year. To give people a heads up on what that entails, it's posted a break down that explains how it will …

The US government is attempting to fight back against the new encryption technologies used on smartphones. An official at the US Department of Justice stated that tragedy would ensue if the authorities did not have unwarranted access to devices such as a suspect's phone. The Wall Street Journal reports that …

WhatsApp has revealed that going forward, it will be encrypting every chat message sent via the service by default, signalling another step in the right direction for privacy online. The rollout was announced today and is described by the App maker as the “largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever”. There …

The European court has been forcing Google to evaluate and remove search links based on ‘right to be forgotten' applications for some time now. The company has struggled to keep up with demand and it looks like things might get worse as the ruling may now extend out of Europe. …

Leading Swedish internet service provider, Bahnhof, is making an effort to protect its customer's privacy by supplying a free to use, no-logging VPN service. The new privacy protection measure comes shortly after the Swedish Telecoms Regulator, PTS, ordered Bahnhof to start monitoring and storing communications data under local data retention …

One of the keystone shocks of the big Edward Snowden reveals last year, was that tech giants like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many others had been forced into handing over information to the governments in the five-eyes intelligence alliance (USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada), without being able to …

The British government is rushing through a new set of laws to allow intelligence agencies like GCHQ and ISPs, to continue legally collecting meta-data on phone calls and digital communications, and in some cases the content of those conversations, in the wake of the EU ruling data retention as a human rights …

In the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations, it's become clear that the online world is a lot less private than we once thought, with governments and corporations often in secret collusion to provide information on their customers and citizens to intelligence agencies, whether you've done something wrong or not. However …

Companies that sell invasive spying software to oppressive regimes around the world, should be held accountable. That's according to the Coalition Against Unlawful Surveillance Exports (CAUSE) which has just been launched in Brussels, Belgium. Made up of representatives from a variety of other rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights …

The NSA and GCHQ might still be listening at our digital wall with a glass to their ear, but it may get a lot harder for them in the future, at least on this side of the Atlantic. The European Parliament has now voted for a radical upheaval of privacy …

Unfortunately we now live in a world where government intelligence agencies like the NSA, GCHQ, the GCSB and more are perfectly within their (pseudo) legal rights to record data from our phones and internet connections on the off chance that we might be a terrorist. Apparently it goes far further …

German chancellor Angela Merkel has a good reason to be sceptical of the US intelligence agencies and the NSA in particular, as it was discovered that despite both the US and Germany being allied nations, her phone was tapped. Since then she's called for large reforms to US data gathering, …

Despite all the negative attention that the privacy destroying revelations surrounding the NSA's PRISM scheme has brought to the US and the huge fallout because of that in the US technology sector, the government is continuing to extend its tentacles around the world and is getting local governments to force …

Hundreds of university researchers, lecturers, professors have come together to sign the Academics Against Surveillance charter, which demands that governments around the world provide better online protection for their citizens' right to privacy, which they say has been eroded by the actions of organisations like the NSA, GCHQ and GCSB. …

Google has been hit by a near million euro fine for breaching Spanish privacy laws by combining different information on users from its multiple services without letting consumers in on it, and not giving them access to the data that's held on them. This is all about a move in …

In an effort to increase its transparency as an organisation that reports to governments worldwide about its users, Facebook has published a report that tells us exactly who it's been talking to in the first half of 2013 and how often it complied with requests. The report lists countries in …

While the world and his dog went up in arms about Microsoft's DRM and online activation policies with the Xbox One, not quite so many were worried about the bundled Kinect sensor being always on – you even had a few people say that old classic line, “if you've got …

While it's less of a hot topic now than it was a couple of weeks ago, the NSA's PRISM scheme (and to a lesser extent, the UK's Tempora) freaked people out. Cloud providers in the US and UK saw their business fleeing to more privacy protected Europe and articles have …

The US has been leading the way with regards to data backup and remote computing for some time now, but in the wake of recent allegations and revelations over the PRISM controversy, Switzerland has seen a big upsurge in people taking out cloud backup services with companies from its nationality. …

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has announced that it will be extending the use of its privacy certification program to mobile developers, to allow their software to be given the thumbs up in terms of personal privacy and data retention. Some of this will mean ongoing cooperation with the …

While Kim Dotcom is often seen as a folk hero of the internet, he drew a lot of criticism recently for his deletion of 3D printed gun plans from his Mega file locker website and this concerned people: partly because Dotcom has previously been all about freedom of information and …

Kim Dotcom has announced via his twitter that in the future, Mega, the file locker website launched on the anniversary of the original Megaupload shutdown, will support not only cloud backup services, but encrypted email, chat, as well as voice and video communications. On top of that, this weekend he …

As if letting people know you're out of the house and ripe for a burglary wasn't enough, Foursquare has pledged to serve up more information on its users, including full names, thanks to a change in privacy policy. As of 28th January, Foursquare will begin showing a user's entire name, …

We reported yesterday how a change in photo sharing and retro-ifying service, Instagram, seemed to suggest that it had impunity to sell photos uploaded by users, as well as using their name, username, location and any other data it saw fit as part of marketing campaigns. Now though, in the …

Since Kickstarter became the latest vogue way to get your business off of the ground, we've seen everything under the sun appear on crowd funding sites: books, movies, games, wargaming models and more. However one thing we haven't seen much of is legal funding, for taking on Facebook. This is …

Despite Kim Dotcom also pushing next-gen music service, Megabox, he also has plans to bring back Megaupload, under a new banner simply titled: “Mega.” This will be more of an homage to the original service, providing a file locker that is designed to circumvent the legal issues of its predecessor. …