Privacy Blog

"Friends don’t let friends get spied on.' – Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation and longtime advocate of privacy in technology.

Online Privacy & Security

Leave a comment

Follow-up: Lenovo Devices Cannot Be Trusted for Secure Work

Yesterday I published an article of Lenovo Devices Cannot Be Trusted for Secure Work at https://privacyblog.com/2015/02/19/lenovo-devices-cannot-be-trusted-for-secure-work/. It describes a problem in Lenovo laptops sold between September 2014 and January 2015 that allows hackers to intercept encrypted communications from the laptops by snooping on wi-fi connections. Now Lenovo has issued an announcement claiming the security problem is not a problem at all.

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Web Privacy is the Newest Luxury Item in Today’s World

Writing in the The Christian Science Monitor, Paul F. Roberts reports, “A growing number of tech firms offer online privacy tools at a price. They are giving privacy-conscious consumers new ways of avoiding tracking on the Web with self-destructing e-mails and temporary online identities.” He also gives a brief overview of today’s threats: “There were more reported data breaches last year than ever before, leaking credit card information and health […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

How to Block Advertisers from Tracking Your Mobile Device

Mobile devices can track your Internet usage as well as the desktop systems do. You can block most (although not all) tracking rather simply. For Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch): Go to Settings —> Privacy —> Advertising and turn on Limit Ad Tracking. For Android devcies: Go to Settings —> Account —> choose Google account —> Ads, and turn on Opt out of interest-based ads.

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

AT&T Offers Data Privacy — for a Price

AT&T is installing a very high speed Internet service, called GigaPower, in Austin, Texas and in Kansas City, Missouri. The company plans to add 100 more cities to the new up to 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic fiber service soon. (See http://goo.gl/Nu81IE for details.) However, customers are offered two different prices. The cheaper service includes an agreement that AT&T will track users as they surf the Web. Customers who want to […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Report: NSA Hacked Hard Drive Firmware for Spying

The US government has been accused of embedding spyware directly onto hard drives using secret manufacturer information, according to a report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation stating that Russian security software manufacturer Kaspersky Lab made the claims, and stem from its efforts to find and eliminate malicious software. Kaspersky says officials appear to have only used the spyware to target specific, foreign-based individuals.

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Windows 10 Will Let You Say “Goodbye” to Passwords and “Hello” to Fido

Passwords are perhaps the biggest security problems in computers. Short passwords are easily guessed by hackers. Long passwords are more secure but are difficult to remember. The longer and more complex the password, the more likely it is to be written down someplace by the user. Of course, writing a password on paper or in a computer file increases the odds that it will be found by a hacker. Therefore, […]

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Biohacking

If you could replace your car keys, website login data, credit cards and bus passes with a chip embedded under your skin, would you? This is a question addressed this week at the Kaspersky Labs Security Analyst Summit by biohacker Hannes Sjoblad from BioNyfiken. A pioneer in what has been deemed ‘biohacking,” Sjoblad is the leader of a group of biohackers in Sweden who took the first step in experimenting […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Uncle Sam and the Illusion of Privacy Online

The U.S. government doubled its requests for Twitter user information in late 2014 compared with the year before. Most of the time, the publishing platform gave officials what they wanted. The U.S. government made twice as many requests for Twitter user information in the last half of 2014 compared with the year before, according to a detailed report out from Twitter this week. Details may be found at http://goo.gl/TRb1yy.

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

12 Ways to Protect Your Facebook Privacy

Many web sites extract and save your personal information. However, perhaps the most flagrant violator of your privacy is Facebook. The online service brings a lot of pleasure to people – it’s an easy way to keep in touch, share photographs and it’s also a great source of information. But there is certain information you might be unwittingly sharing on Facebook that you would rather keep private. There are also […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Lawmakers Call for Investigation Into Verizon’s Use of Mobile “Supercookies”

I wrote about Verizon’s “Supercookies” or “Perma-Cookies” earlier at http://goo.gl/M3gNaU. When a Verizon customer visits from a mobile device, these supercookies allow third-party advertisers and websites to assemble a deep, permanent profile of visitors’ web browsing habits without their consent. I don’t like the idea of supercookies and apparently a lot of other people also do not. Those who question the practice of online tracking include several U.S. senators. The […]

Continue Reading →