A recent newspaper article made me stop and think. The columnist’s home in a small rural community was burglarized while he and his family were sleeping. He wrote, “A burglar or burglars shoved a pry bar into the latch and popped the door open to my family’s home. I never woke up. The culprits were just feet away from me, separated only by a closed bedroom door and a few […]
Most Internet users should know by now that personal digital security is in large part our own choice and responsibility. But in truth, our electronic security is also in the hands of the companies we do business with — and they’re not all taking that fact seriously. With the seemingly weekly revelations of hackers stealing our names, email addresses, credit-card numbers, passwords, and so forth from corporate databases, it’s small […]
The sending of e-mail filled with advertising is a common and odious activity. Thousands of web sites gather email addresses and then bombard you with their advertising. You might sign up for a newsletter or some other free service on a web site, and then they start flooding your in-box with advertising messages two or three times a week or even more often. I had a recent experience of just […]
On Tuesday night, as Colorado’s Mark Udall lost his Senate seat to Republican Cory Gardner. You can read my earlier article about Mark Udall at https://privacyblog.com/2014/11/01/the-senator-defending-your-privacy-is-fighting-for-his-political-life. While the election was not a referendum on Udall’s support for civil liberties (Gardner expressed support for surveillance reform, and Udall spent most of his campaign almost solely concentrating on reproductive issues), the loss is undoubtedly a blow for privacy and transparency advocates, as […]
Apple has updated its privacy policy as part of the latest version of its operating system: iOS 8. Newly-updated iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch mobile devices can no longer be accessed by anyone, not even by Apple itself. Previously, if law enforcement came to Apple with a seized device and a valid warrant, that agency was able to access a substantial portion of the data already on an iPad or iPhone. […]
In a piece for London’s Financial Times, Britain’s new spy chief Robert Hannigan said U.S. technology companies should offer “greater co-operation” in the fight against terrorism, by working with governments rather than working against their intelligence agencies in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures. Hannigan suggested that as the world celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Web, there should be a “new deal” between governments and the technology companies […]
Verizon users might want to start looking for another provider. In an effort to better serve advertisers, Verizon Wireless has been silently modifying its users’ web traffic on its network to inject a cookie-like tracker. This tracker, included in an HTTP header called X-UIDH, is sent to every unencrypted website a Verizon customer visits from a mobile device. It allows third-party advertisers and websites to assemble a deep, permanent profile […]
A new survey from Survata seems to indicate that Internet users are more afraid of their personal data being used by Google than the NSA. Details may be found at http://bgr.com/2014/10/28/google-vs-nsa-personal-data.
The FBI is attempting to persuade an obscure regulatory body in Washington to change its rules of engagement in order to seize significant new powers to hack into and carry out surveillance of computers throughout the US and around the world.
Apple provides free encryption software with every Macintosh. The functionality is built into Disk Utility, a multi-purpose program that can be found on every Mac. Disk Utility has many uses but for the moment I will only describe the encryption of files or folders. Disk Utility will encrypt any kind of file: text, images, videos, databases, anything at all. To encrypt a file or folder, first create the item(s) to […]
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