Safety Security & Privacy

Google will be fined $7 million as part of a privacy settlement regarding its Street View car fleet’s collection of passwords, messages and other sensitive data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as it rolled past homes and businesses from 2008 through mid-2010, it was announced Tuesday. Google has already secured the information and agreed to destroy Continue Reading →

For the past nine months—and possibly for years—Apple has unnecessarily left many of its iOS customers open to attack because engineers failed to implement standard technology that encrypts all traffic traveling between handsets and the company’s App Store. While HTTPS-encrypted communications have been used for years to prevent attackers from intercepting and manipulating sensitive traffic Continue Reading →

When iOS 6.1 was released, it introduced an as-of-yet unfixed lock screen bug that could give an attacker with physical access to an iPhone an entry to the phone dialer app and all of the information therein, including contact information, recent and missed calls, and voicemails. Now, a similar bug has been discovered by a Continue Reading →

If there’s one thing that iPhone fans love to tease Android fans about, it’s the perceived lack of security on Android devices. But AppleInsider points us to a new study from mobile security vendor Appthority showing that free iOS apps may actually be less secure than free Android apps when it comes to leaking user Continue Reading →

In a move that’s often more reactive than proactive these days, Evernote has shared plans to add two-factor authentication to its login process. This latest announcement follows last week’s hacking attack and subsequent site-wide password reset, and will be available to all of the site’s 50 million users beginning later this year, according to an Continue Reading →

One downside of shifting to a post-PC world is the inevitable development and refinement of post-PC malware. Technology Review this week spoke with security researchers who say that they’re seeing an upgrade in both the quantity and sophistication of mobile malware attacks as hackers try to create a winning formula for distributing malware to mobile Continue Reading →

Cloud notetaking service Evernote has been hacked, the company has revealed, with an unidentified attacker compromising servers and extracting usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords. The attack has forced a mandatory password reset, meaning all users must change their password before they can log back into their account, but Evernote says there is no evidence Continue Reading →

Graph Search is Facebook’s bold new way of browsing the social network, letting you call up photos of your family in California, restaurants your friends like in New York, or any public updates from Gizmodo employees who also like hot air ballooning. It’s currently only available to a limited number of users, but it’s coming Continue Reading →

You probably don’t know Nir Goldshlager, but up until recently, he sure could have known you. That’s because Nir discovered a major privacy flaw in Facebook’s OAuth, the system developers use to access all sorts of information every time you hit that innocent, little “allow” button. Nir gained access to virtually anyone’s entire Facebook account. Continue Reading →

Adobe released emergency patches for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 11, 10 and 9 on Wednesday that address two critical vulnerabilities being actively exploited by attackers. The exploit was discovered by researchers from security firm FireEye in active attacks last Tuesday and was confirmed by Adobe one day later. It’s particularly dangerous because it bypasses the Continue Reading →