Cyber Security

Last year, the FCC and the Big Four carriers announced that they were developing a national lost-and-stolen phone registry. Now, the wireless industry says that the database is complete. To refresh your memory, last year we explained the point of the new initiative: “The database, which will be maintained by each carrier, will track all Continue Reading →

A Chinese iPhone thief may have atoned somewhat for his crime, sending his victim a handwritten list of nearly 1,000 contact numbers. The list ran to 11 pages. According to state media, the pickpocket took Zou Bin’s phone earlier this month when they shared a taxi in the central province of Hunan. Zou had nearly Continue Reading →

LG has admitted it continued collecting data on viewing habits even after users had activated a privacy setting designed to prevent it. The television maker has apologised to its customers and told the BBC it would issue an update to correct the problem. UK-based IT consultant Jason Huntley, who raised the issue in a blog, Continue Reading →

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it is releasing Office 365 Message Encryption, a new service that will let you send encrypted emails to anyone outside your company, in the first quarter of 2014. This means that no matter the end destination of your email being sent via Office 365, Microsoft is adding another level of Continue Reading →

Google has fixed a bug in its Gmail account retrieval and password reset process that could have allowed an attacker to fool a user into handing over their details. The bug, discovered by white-hat hacker Oren Hafif, has since been fixed and was confirmed as a ‘high impact’ vulnerability by Googler Sebastian Roschke on Google Continue Reading →

Phone theft is big business. However, in New York, iPhones and other Apple products are regarded as the ultimate heist. As Fox 5 New York reports, the NYPD announced that there were 16,000 Apple-picking thefts in 2012. This equates to 14 percent of all New York City crime. Indeed, 45 percent of all 2013 robberies Continue Reading →

Major US wireless carriers have rejected the idea of a “kill switch” security measure being added to Samsung’s popular Android phones, according to The New York Times. San Francisco district attorney George Gascón has been negotiating with Samsung to add tighter anti-theft features to its products, but mobile providers and the CTIA have reportedly come Continue Reading →

Doctor Beet was alarmed to notice that his LG TV was showing him ads on its home screen; he investigated and discovered a hidden, undocumented setting to switch off collection of his viewing habits. Still suspicious, he monitored the packets flowing from his TV’s network interface and discovered that even with the “data-collection off” setting Continue Reading →

Google extended its proactive Patch Reward Program to include even more open-source software (OSS). Among them is the Android Open Source Project, which the company previously did not reveal was going to be added. Last month, Google started providing financial incentives (between $500 and $3,133.70) for proactive improvements to OSS that go beyond merely fixing Continue Reading →

More than one percent of titles available in Google’s official Android app market may be unauthorized copycats of competing apps that have been re-engineered to more aggressively monitor browsing history and other personal habits, security researchers said on Monday. The study, published Monday by researchers from antivirus provider Bitdefender, analyzed 420,646 Android apps available in Continue Reading →