12 Ways Millennials Can Protect Their Privacy Online
As a millennial, most of your time is probably spent online watching your favorite TV shows, researching for your projects, connecting with people on Facebook, and what not. However, while the Internet makes life a heck of a lot easier, it also brings with it a plethora of issues surrounding privacy protection.
Here’s what needs to be done to protect your privacy online.
Online Privacy Tip #1: Be Cautious of What You Post
Read all 12 tips on PureVPN website
CIA 'Weeping Angel' Program Can Hack Your Smart TV, WikiLeaks Says
You watch TV — but your TV could also be capable of spying on you.
A trove of documents released Tuesday by WikiLeaks claim that a CIA surveillance program can target everyday electronic gadgets — including smart TVs, smartphones and even cars.
The spy program can snoop on unsuspecting Americans, WikiLeaks says, by turning the gadgets into recording devices that can capture conversations.
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Facebook’s Push for Facial Recognition Prompts Privacy Alarms
When Facebook rolled out facial recognition tools in the European Union this year, it promoted the technology as a way to help people safeguard their online identities.
“Face recognition technology allows us to help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you,” Facebook told its users in Europe.
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Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract
It’s been nearly three months since many Google employees—and the public—learned about the company’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company’s continued involvement in Maven.
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First Wi-Fi-Enabled Smart Contact Lens Prototype
One promise of modern microelectronics is the possibility of embedding sensors in various parts of the human body and using them to monitor everything from blood glucose levels to brain waves. They could even help treat conditions such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and other medical conditions.
Estonia's "Data Embassy" Could be UK's First Brexit Cyber Casualty
The government of Estonia is one of the most cyber-aware governments in the world. Recent reports have suggested that the country has been in discussion with the UK for the establishment of an overseas data embassy. Those same reports suggest that Britain's decision to leave the European Union is making Estonia reconsider the UK, and perhaps favor Luxembourg. If this is true, it could make the loss of business with Estonia the first major cyber casualty of the Brexit.
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Mac Ransomware Caught Before Large Number Of Computers Infected
(Reuters) - The first known ransomware attack on Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) Mac computers, which was discovered over the weekend, was downloaded more than 6,000 times before the threat was contained, according to a developer whose product was tainted with the malicious software.
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Microsoft Accused Of Adding Spy Features To Windows 7, 8
Windows' network activity continues to be scrutinized amid privacy concerns. Windows 10 was first put under the microscope with both new and old features causing concern. With its Cortana digital personal assistant, Windows 10 represents a new breed of operating system that incorporates extensive online services as an integral part of the platform. But its older predecessors haven't escaped attention, and questions are now being asked of Windows 7 and 8's online connectivity.
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Facebook Accused Of Spying On Belgian Citizens Like The NSA
Facebook acted like the US’s National Security Agency, spying without authority on European users, lawyers representing the Belgian data protection authority said on Monday.
In opening arguments in a closely watched case being brought against the social network company, Frederic Debussere, representing the Belgian privacy commission (BPC), referred to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about surreptitious mass surveillance by the spy agency.
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Edward Snowden: Apple’s iPhone CAN Spy On You
Edward Snowden is a contentious figure. To some he’s a hero, to others he’s a traitor. Since leaking of thousands of classified intelligence documents in 2013 the former NSA contractor has been living at an undisclosed location in Russia, where the leaks continue to seep out.
While many people seem to have become acclimated to the levels the NSA and GCHQ can apparently peer into our lives, the latest allegation from Snowden might make those of us who use iPhones a bit nervous –– if Snowden is to be believed.
Speaking to Russia’s RIA Novosti, Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena revealed that Snowden uses “a simple phone” because of the access Snowden knows governments have to the iPhone.
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Meet 'Boundless Informant,' the NSA's Secret Tool for Tracking Global Surveillance Data
What does the NSA know, and how does it know it?
Just one of the many, many questions that has emerged again, and that has remained largely unanswered again, this week. And under the umbrella of that extensive question mark have been more discrete mysteries: How, actually, does the National Security Agency process the information it collects? How does it distinguish between international surveillance and domestic? And to what extent, when it comes to the surveillance it's been engaged in, does the agency convert the metadata it gathers into simply, you know, data?
New revelations published by (surprise!) The Guardian may shed some light on those questions. The NSA, Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill report, "has developed a powerful tool for recording and analyzing where its intelligence comes from." And that, in turn, they claim, raises questions about the agency's "repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications."
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Revealed: How US and UK Spy Agencies Defeat Internet Privacy and Security
US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.
The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.
The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".
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FBI Turns to Broad New Wiretap Method
The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.
Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.
Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)
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Utah's $1.5 billion Cyber-Security Center Under Way
CAMP WILLIAMS — Thursday's groundbreaking for a $1.5 billion National Security Agency data center is being billed as important in the short term for construction jobs and important in the long term for Utah's reputation as a technology center.
"This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during its construction and development phase," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on Wednesday. "Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent high-paid employees."
Officially named the Utah Data Center, the facility's role in aggregating and verifying dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community has already earned it the nickname "Spy Center." Its really long moniker is the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center — the first in the nation's intelligence community.
A White House document identifies the Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative as addressing "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter." The document details a number of technology-related countermeasures to the security threat.
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