Australian politicians want to make it easy for governments, hackers, identity thieves, credit card thieves, and other spies to steal your most private information. That by itself seems incredible. However, the entire issue gets pushed to the nearly unbelievable level when you realize the result could be similar gaping holes in privacy for residents of all other countries in the world! Do you want the thieves to be able to […]
Bad news: Advertisements are coming to WhatsApp. Like we need more advertising on the Internet? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. WhatsApp once was a successful freeware and cross-platform encrypted messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP) product that treated its customers like real human beings. Then the company was bought out by Facebook for approximately US$19.3 billion. Since then, the encrypted service has been abused by various groups. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#Reception_and_criticism […]
From Bruce Schneier’s excellent Schneier on Security blog: “Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the Russians and the Chinese were eavesdropping on President Donald Trump’s personal cell phone and using the information gleaned to better influence his behavior. This should surprise no one. Security experts have been talking about the potential security vulnerabilities in Trump’s cell phone use since he became president. And President Barack Obama bristled […]
This article summarizes the easiest ways to password protect or encrypt files and folders on a USB flash drive by using free software. It has solutions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-password-protect-your-usb-stick-3-easy-ways/
I have written before about the privacy email features of ProtonMail. (See https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aprivacyblog.com+proton+mail&t=h_&ia=web for a list of my past articles.) Now the company that produces ProtonMail has announced it will provide 99.95% uptime or better. 99.95% uptime means the service will be unavailable less than an average of 8 minutes per day. The new service level agreement (SLA) ensures that if downtime in any calendar month exceeds 0.05%, the company […]
A new start-up company wants you to host your own (encrypted) email messages, pictures, videos, and more where everything is under your control, not something provided by a privacy-stealing corporation. Do you use the Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail email services? If so, a large corporation can access your private messages for any reason at all. Or for no reason at all. The same is true for your photos, videos, […]
Apple has filed its formal opposition to a new bill currently being proposed by the Australian government that critics say would weaken encryption. If it passes, the “Assistance and Access Bill 2018” would create a new type of warrant that would allow what governments often call “lawful access” to thwart encryption, something that the former Australian attorney general proposed last year. The California company said in a filing provided to […]
ProtonMail, the Geneva, Switzerland-based encrypted email service, “wants you to be able to completely de-Google-fy your life,” according to CEO Andy Yen. “Come to ProtonMail, and have all the features, plus the security and the privacy that Google doesn’t provide you. So, that’s our long-term vision.” ProtonMail is primarily different from your free email — Gmail, Yahoo!, etc. — because it encrypts your message and can’t scrape them for data. […]
Millions of home Wi-Fi networks could be easily hacked, even when the network is protected by a strong password, thanks to a flaw in Chrome-based browsers. Researchers at cybersecurity and penetration testing consultancy SureCloud have uncovered a weakness in the way Google Chrome and Opera browsers, among others, handle saved passwords and how those saved passwords are used to interact with home Wi-Fi routers over unencrypted connections. Details may be […]
The governments of Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand have made the strongest statement yet that they intend to force technology providers to provide lawful access to users’ encrypted communications. Of course, if governments can spy on your private communications via “backdoors,” it won’t be long before even enemy governments, credit card thieves, hackers around the world, and probably even your ex-spouse’s attorney will be able to […]
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