News

• Site hosting leaked celebrity data goes offline

  By Lucian Constantin | 18 March, 2013 15:57

  A site that published the private information and credit reports of several celebrities and other public figures last week went offline on Sunday. The last person to have his alleged private information exposed on the site was CIA director John Brennan.

• Facebook quickly fixes privacy leak in new timeline, group says

  By Jeremy Kirk | 18 March, 2013 02:53

  Facebook quickly fixed a privacy leak in its new timeline after being alerted to the problem, according to a watchdog that follows the social-networking site closely.

• EU privacy watchdogs tell app developers and app stores to take care of users' data

  By Jennifer Baker | 14 March, 2013 13:49

  New recommendations from Europe's top privacy watchdog could have big ramifications for Google Play, Apple and application developers.

• U.S. court says feds need reasonable suspicion to search laptops at borders

  By Jaikumar Vijayan | 12 March, 2013 20:50

  Less than six week after the Department of Homeland Security issued a civil rights impact assessment saying that the government needed no warrant or cause to search electronic devices at U.S. borders, a federal appellate court has ruled otherwise.

• Harvard scrambles to explain why it secretly searched deans' emails

  By Jaikumar Vijayan | 11 March, 2013 20:21

  Harvard University officials scrambled Monday to contain the fallout from a damaging report in The Boston Globe over the weekend disclosing how administrators secretly accessed email accounts belonging to 16 resident deans at the university.

• Before Google Glass is released, it's already banned

  By Sharon Gaudin | 11 March, 2013 19:48

  Before an official pair has even been released, a Seattle cafe has banned customers from wearing Google's computerised eye glasses inside the business.

• Lack of HTTPS on iOS App Store left users open to attacks, researcher says

  By Lucian Constantin | 11 March, 2013 14:04

  Until late January, Apple's App Store servers did not encrypt all communications with iOS clients, which exposed users to several potential attacks, according to a Google security researcher.

• FTC: Mobile carriers should take steps to fight bill cramming

  By Grant Gross | 08 March, 2013 19:56

  Mobile carriers should deploy a number of safeguards to protect their customers against a growing problem of unauthorized billing through mobile payments, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said in a report released Friday.

• With SecuSmart chip, German officials free to talk and type securely on BlackBerry Z10

  By Peter Sayer | 08 March, 2013 16:59

  German government officials including Chancellor Angela Merkel could soon be communicating about classified matters using BlackBerry Z10 smartphones equipped with a new micro-SD card from SecuSmart.

• Scroogled dents Google's reputation, claims Microsoft

  By Gregg Keizer | 07 March, 2013 23:15

  Microsoft's anti-Google "Scroogled" campaign is a battle for hearts and minds as much as for search and email market share, and Microsoft claims the effort is making a difference.

• U.S. doctors don't believe patients need full access to health records

  By Lucas Mearian | 07 March, 2013 21:17

  A survey of physicians in eight countries found that U.S. doctors in particular do not believe patients should have full access to their electronic health records.

• Uniscon document exchange service uses two-factor authentication, stores no passwords

  By Peter Sayer | 07 March, 2013 11:18

  Uniscon's IDgard, a service for securely exchanging documents between companies and their clients or partners, uses two-factor authentication and stores only its customers' encrypted data on the server, with no passwords or hashes for hackers to steal.

• US lawmakers introduce electronic surveillance reform bill

  By Grant Gross | 06 March, 2013 20:09

  Three U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill to provide more protection from government surveillance for people who store data in the cloud.

• Microsoft to keep Scroogling

  By Gregg Keizer | 05 March, 2013 20:18

  Microsoft has denied reports that it has halted its anti-Google "Scroogled" campaign, and trumpeted the number of signatures its online petition has accumulated.

• Tech groups question new do-not-track bill

  By Grant Gross | 01 March, 2013 19:14

  New legislation in the U.S. Senate that would allow Internet users to tell companies to stop tracking them is unnecessary and could slow e-commerce growth, some tech groups said.