Cyber Security

The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address Continue Reading →

Like a cautious parent, Facebook is giving teen users new freedom despite risks. For the first time, users under 18 can post publicly. The logic is that other sites don’t restrict kids, teens are getting more web savvy, and young celebrities want a voice. This could let minors publicly share things they’ll regret, so they Continue Reading →

Signifyd today launches tools for online merchants to fight fraud. It helps sellers make better choices about whether to accept or deny sales by piecing together online identities that match up with offline people. Signifyd CEO Rajesh Ramanand, who formerly led risk-management divisions at FedEx and PayPal, calls this “context detection,” but really what he Continue Reading →

Snapchat is on Monday looking to clarify exactly how and when law enforcement agencies can access your “self-destructing” messages. According to a new blog post from Micah Schaffer, who handles matters pertaining to trust and safety at the company, Snapchat can only retrieve snaps that are unopened. Once a message has been viewed by its Continue Reading →

One afternoon late last month, security researcher Hristo Bojinov placed his Galaxy Nexus phone face up on the table in a cramped Palo Alto conference room. Then he flipped it over and waited another beat. And that was it. In a matter of seconds, the device had given up its “fingerprints.” Code running on the Continue Reading →

Google announced a policy change on Friday that lets the company create sponsored endorsements based on reviews it collects from YouTube, Zagat and other Google-controlled sites. In practice, this means that after November 1 (when the policy goes into effect), you may see yourself appearing in ads. Some people will be fine with this — Continue Reading →

“Who can look up your Timeline by name?” Anyone you haven’t blocked. Facebook is removing this privacy setting, notifying those who had hidden themselves that they’ll be searchable. It deleted the option from those who hadn’t used it in December, and is starting to push everyone to use privacy controls on each type of content Continue Reading →

Microsoft is set to become the latest tech giant to develop its own tracking technology to replace the ubiquitous “cookie,” which has become the focus of regulators and privacy advocates. The company is internally developing the technology that would enable tracking across desktop computers, tablets and smartphones running Windows, as well as the company’s Xbox Continue Reading →

Microsoft said on Tuesday it is paying a well-known hacking expert more than $100,000 for finding security holes in its software, one of the largest such bounties awarded to date by a high-tech company. The software maker also released a much anticipated update to Internet Explorer, which it said fixes a bug that made users Continue Reading →

Delivered with a spice of arrogance, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Monday declared the Android platform more secure than Apple’s iPhone. The comparison, made during a question-and-answer session at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, drew laughter from a packed-house audience. Gartner analyst David Willis, who is chief of research for mobility and communications and who runs Continue Reading →