Collaborate Disseminate
South Africa’s Postbank experienced a catastrophic security failure. The bank’s master PIN key was stolen, forcing it to cancel and replace 12 million bank cards. The breach resulted from the printing of the bank’s encrypted master key in plain, unencrypted digital language at the Postbank’s old data centre in the Pretoria city centre. According to a number of internal Postbank… Continue reading Bank Card "Master Key" Stolen
The California Consumer Privacy Act is a lesson in missed opportunities. It was passed in haste, to stop a ballot initiative that would have been even more restrictive: In September 2017, Alastair Mactaggart and Mary Ross proposed a statewide ballot in… Continue reading Another California Data Privacy Law
The California Consumer Privacy Act is a lesson in missed opportunities. It was passed in haste, to stop a ballot initiative that would have been even more restrictive: In September 2017, Alastair Mactaggart and Mary Ross proposed a statewide ballot initiative entitled the "California Consumer Privacy Act." Ballot initiatives are a process under California law in which private citizens can… Continue reading Another California Data Privacy Law
Privacy International has the details: Key facts: Despite Facebook claim, "Download Your Information" doesn’t provide users with a list of all advertisers who uploaded a list with their personal data. As a user this means you can’t exercise your rights under GDPR because you don’t know which companies have uploaded data to Facebook. Information provided about the advertisers is also… Continue reading Facebook’s Download-Your-Data Tool Is Incomplete
The United States is one of the few democracies without some formal data protection agency, and we need one. Senator Gillibrand just proposed creating one…. Continue reading A US Data Protection Agency
The Norwegian Consumer Council has published an extensive report about how the adtech industry violates consumer privacy. At the same time, it is filing three legal complaints against six companies in this space. From a Twitter summary: 1. [thread] We … Continue reading New Research on the Adtech Industry
The Norwegian Consumer Council has published an extensive report about how the adtech industry violates consumer privacy. At the same time, it is filing three legal complaints against six companies in this space. From a Twitter summary: 1. [thread] We are filing legal complaints against six companies based on our research, revealing systematic breaches to privacy, by shadowy #OutOfControl #adtech… Continue reading New Research on the Adtech Industry
To comply with California’s new data privacy law, companies that collect information on consumers and users are forced to be more transparent about it. Sometimes the results are creepy. Here’s an article about Ralphs, a California supermarket chain owned by Kroger: …the form proceeds to state that, as part of signing up for a rewards card, Ralphs "may collect" information… Continue reading Customer Tracking at Ralphs Grocery Store
BusKill is designed to wipe your laptop (Linux only) if it is snatched from you in a public place: The idea is to connect the BusKill cable to your Linux laptop on one end, and to your belt, on the other end. When someone yanks your laptop from your lap or table, the USB cable disconnects from the laptop and… Continue reading USB Cable Kill Switch for Laptops
Privacy International has published a detailed, technical examination of how data is extracted from smartphones…. Continue reading Extracting Data from Smartphones