A seldom known page on Comcast’s Xfinity website was exposing customers’ account information to anyone — or any app — on a customer’s network. An anonymous security researcher dropped ZDNet an email, explaining that an API used by the internet giant could be tricked into returning customer data, including account numbers, a customer’s home address …
US Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook’s privacy practices following a week of scandals and public outrage over the company’s failure to protect the personal information of tens of millions of users. “The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook,” said Tom Pahl, acting director of …
Google is requesting that web publishers provide it with the necessary consents to continue gathering personal information from Europeans for targeted ads as it gears up for the impending arrival of toughened data privacy laws. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on 25 May after which companies will be obligated to obtain …
Today, March 12, is the World Wide Web’s 29th birthday. Here’s a message from our founder and web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee on what we need to ensure that everyone has access to a web worth having. Today, the World Wide Web turns 29. This year marks a milestone in the web’s history: for the …
A hacker group known for many high-level cyber attacks was able to infiltrate the German government’s secure computer networks, the dpa news agency reported Wednesday. Dpa cited unidentified security sources saying the group APT28 hacked into Germany’s foreign and defense ministries and managed to steal data. The attack was noticed in December and may have …
Bitcoin holders may have gotten a brief reprieve earlier this month after a rough January, but it didn’t last long. The top digital coin fell as much as 12 percent Wednesday, whipsawing investors who were just starting to take a deep breath after last month’s market rout. Other tokens have also suffered declines in the …
Digital-assets exchange Coinbase Inc. is releasing a service for merchants to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin payments, and deposit them into their own digital wallets, according to a blog post by the San Francisco-based company. The setup requires just an email address and a phone number. The product, called Coinbase Commerce, can be …
The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee has warned that YouTube’s powerful recommendation algorithm may be “optimising for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content” or susceptible to “manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities”. Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, made the stark warning after an investigation by the Guardian found that the Google-owned …
Some people think bitcoin’s spectacular price rise last year was manipulated by a cryptotoken called Tether that’s supposed to be pegged to the US dollar. Now, an anonymous report answers the question: What would bitcoin be worth without Tether? The answer: around $4,500, based on the current bitcoin price of about $7,600. Tether is a …
For long users have been warned of third-party Android apps might be hiding some malware as well. But your hyper-vigilant download habits should extend beyond your smartphone. You need to keep an eye on your desktop Chrome extensions as well. As with Android apps, though, Chrome extensions can sometimes hide malware or other scourges, even …