Safety Security & Privacy

If you’re flying into the US from certain countries, you may discover that getting through security will become even more time-consuming and stressful. The US Transport Security Administration revealed on Sunday that enhanced security procedures on flights coming to the US now include not allowing uncharged cell phones and other devices onto planes. In a Continue Reading →

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in Continue Reading →

If you’re using an Android phone that’s less than three years old, it could be broadcasting the names of every Wi-Fi network you’ve connected to. A new investigation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation traced the behavior to a feature called Preferred Network Offload (PNO) introduced with the Honeycomb OS. As part of the phone’s ongoing Continue Reading →

The NSA’s interest in breaking the Tor encryption system is well known. A presentation leaked in 2013 recounted the agency’s largely failed attempts to reveal the identities of users and degrade the quality of the network itself; using anonymizing software has been treated as a red flag. And according to a report published by security Continue Reading →

The password as we know it is in critical condition. These days, with big-name security breaches popping up seemingly as often as Justin Bieber scandals, we’ve had to try to find new ways to secure our online identities. One finger in the dike has been the “strong” password, or the practice of sprinkling numbers, symbols Continue Reading →

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a White House watchdog group that condemned the Obama administration’s phone surveillance program earlier this year, has released another report — and civil liberties groups aren’t happy about it. The report took on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the NSA, CIA, and FBI have Continue Reading →

The FTC is taking T-Mobile to court. Their claim? T-Mobile is allowing shady text messaging services to sneak onto your bill, and making “hundreds of millions of dollars” by not doing enough to stop it. Let’s say you’re sitting at home, bored. Your phone blinks as a text rolls in. “Welcome to Celebrity Gossip King! Continue Reading →

Microsoft announced a trio of security-focused nuggets on Tuesday. First up, Outlook.com is now cloaked in Transport Layer Security (TLS), cryptographic protocols used to safeguard data traveling between users – this works for both outbound and inbound messages. Matt Thomlinson, Vice President, Trustworthy Computing Security, at Microsoft says: “Over the past six months, we have Continue Reading →

Apple on Monday appears to have rolled out a new implementation of its two-factor Apple ID authentication system with iCloud.com, requiring users who have the additional layer of security enabled to enter a special code before accessing the Web apps. With the new implementation, Apple is expanding its two-step authentication security feature beyond Apple ID Continue Reading →

Facebook upset the Internet this weekend when a joint study conducted by one of its data scientists revealed that the company had socially engineered the news feeds of 689,003 users to make them feel feelings. For one week in January 2012, those users became unwitting guinea pigs as their feeds were flooded with either positive Continue Reading →