Facebook privacy lapse leaks 400m phone numbers in USA, Britain and Vietnam

Phone numbers linked to more than 400 million Facebook accounts were listed online in the latest privacy lapse for the social media giant, US media reported Wednesday. An exposed server stored 419 million records on users across several databases — including 133 million US accounts, more than 50 million in Vietnam, and 18 million in …

Sundar Pichai says Google is now thinking privacy first

In a series of sweeping announcements on Tuesday, Google announced it’s unveiling new privacy tools that would, if they lived up to the hype, let users restrict how companies track their online activities and compile and sell their personal data. Speaking at an annual conference for developers on Tuesday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, delivered …

Oath, the owner of AOL and Yahoo to pay $5 million to settle charges for violating children’s privacy law.

Oath, the owner of AOL and Yahoo, has agreed to pay about $5 million to settle charges from the New York attorney general that the media company’s online advertising business was violating a federal children’s privacy law. AOL, through its ad exchange, helped place targeted display ads on hundreds of websites that it knew were …

Magna Carta for the web: Tim Berners-Lee in new campaign to rescue the web from abuse

The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he invented the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago. In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to …

New Facebook Portal videochat hardware looks like a privacy disaster waiting to happen

Facebook has released new AI controlled hardware at quite n odd time when its fighting privacy breach allegations. The devices Facebook claims creates a new way to videochat with your Facebook friends. It’s not an app, nor is it some awkward virtual-reality playpen. It’s a device called Portal, and it’s meant to sit in your …

A Simple Tweak turns India’s controversial Biometric Database, Aadhaar, Into a Profitable Counterfeit System

India’s controversial biometric database, Aadhaar, has been once again compromised, according to a three-month investigation launched by HuffPost India. In a report published Tuesday, HuffPost revealed the existence of a malicious patch said to disable critical security features, making it easier not only to create unauthorized Aadhaar numbers but to fool the system’s biometric recognition …

Telegram rebuffs Russian regulators to hand over user data

Telegram rejected demands from Russian regulators to hand over data, The app maker has told the regulator that it is technically unable to hand the encryption keys to user accounts to the country’s secret services. This comes just weeks after the messaging platform was ordered to do so or risk being banned in the country …