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The vast majority of Facebook user data that was harvested by Cambridge Analytica came from Americans. But smaller countries are actually better at demonstrating just how big the problem got. Access to just 53 users in Australia reportedly allowed data firms to potentially capture information on over 310,000 people. According to data obtained by The…
Passwords are pretty archaic. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of companies including Google, Apple, Facebook and others, no one has figured out a uniform standard that would make it possible to do away with them entirely. Until, perhaps, now. A new credential system proposed by the W3C—the World Wide Web Consortium—could be what we need…
Since news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has been running damage control: public apologies, a hasty ad campaign, and reportedly delaying the launch of its voice assistant-enabled home speaker. Now we know what that device might have looked like. Made public today, a patent application simply titled “Electronic Device” shows what appears to…
The most-watched YouTube video of all time, “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, was was briefly removed from YouTube early Tuesday morning, along with several other popular YouTube videos, after hackers seemingly defaced the videos. Videos from Adele, Chris Brown, DJ Snake, Drake, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Shakira, and Taylor Swift were reportedly also…
More than 100 emergency sirens blanket the City of San Francisco, ready to warn locals in the event of a flood, a fire, an earthquake, or terrorism. And while true emergencies are few and far between, everyone in the Bay Area knows the siren’s racket, even if they’ve trained their ears to tune it out.…
It’s your all-in-one iPhone settings screen, accessible with a swipe up from the bottom of the display (or a swipe down from the top-right corner on an iPhone X or a double-tap of the Home button on an iPad). But do you know what all the Control Center options and switches actually do? And how…
New research from the Center for Democracy and Technology aims to help security researchers decide what level of risk is acceptable for them and their work. “The intent is to provide some guidance as to activities that are lower-risk or that may need more careful design to mitigate risk,” the CDT explains. “Although we mention…
Mark Zuckerberg is on the hot seat today. The billionaire CEO of Facebook will testify on Capitol Hill about the privacy scandals that have rocked his company, including the theft of data from over 87 million Facebook users by the political research firm Cambridge Analytica. [Update: If you’re looking for Day 2 of the testimony,…
A California federal district court has awarded a woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, who claimed a man named David K. Elam II posted revenge porn of her online $6.45 million in damages. According to CNN Tech, Doe’s lawyers say it is the second-largest payout ever awared in a revenge porn case not…
What appeared to be the biggest “Black Lives Matter” page on Facebook was actually “a scam with ties to a middle-aged white man in Australia,” CNN Tech reported on Monday, and it managed to raise over $100,000 while sending some of that money to Australian bank accounts. Just as troubling, CNN reported that Facebook initially…
Awful people who have yet to be identified are allegedly slipping white supremacist propaganda in the form of “IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE” cards into packages of diapers sold by Target. [See update below.] The Anti-Defamation League first received reports of the cards making their way into boxes of diapers opened by customers in DC…
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg will make the first of his back-to-back appearances on Capitol Hill. He’s reportedly been getting lots of coaching from normal humans, so we can expect a lot of canned answers pulled from Facebook’s greatest hits. To help you navigate the proceedings we’ve gamified the experience. Collected below you’ll find likely predictions,…
Justice Department officials on Monday praised the actions of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies seizing Backpage.com, the popular classifieds website long accused of enabling sex traffickers and profiting off criminalized sex work. Sex worker rights advocates, meanwhile, say the loss of Backpage and the US government’s other efforts to shutter similar sites is…
In February, three middle school students helped push a statewide net neutrality bill. Today, Gov. Kate Brown is headed to the girls’ middle school in Portland, where she will sign the bill into law. “It’s an honor for the Governor to come to our school and sign a bill that’s so important to the three…
23 privacy and children’s advocacy groups filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against YouTube, alleging the platform illegally collects data from children. The groups, led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), allege YouTube is violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data from children under 13 without parents’ permission. “It’s just…
Uber announced today that it’s acquiring Jump, a dockless bike-sharing service that recently launched a small fleet of bikes in San Francisco. Jump had previously partnered with Uber on a pilot program that allowed Uber users to book electric bicycles through its app. That partnership appears to have paid off—although terms of the acquisition were…
Leap Motion, the company behind the weird gesture-tracking controller for PC and VR, is showing off some pretty interesting tech in the form of an AR headset reference design. Whether or not you’ll be able to get your hands on the concept, which incorporates the company’s gesture control hardware, is another story. After all, it’s…
Researchers have recently discovered new kind of “jackpotting” malware—the sole purpose of which is forcing ATMs to spit out huge volumes of cash. According to Netskope, a California-based software company, the malware appears to share some functional similarities with ATM Ripper, a variant thought to be responsible for a slew of ATM heists last year…
Mark Zuckerberg is ready to apologize. In written testimony submitted prior to his congressional appearances this week, the Facebook CEO issued a sweeping apology for his company’s blunders on election interference, privacy, and fake news. He called the social media platform an “idealistic and optimistic company,” noting that attitude contributed to Facebook missing the signs…
If you weren’t able to scrape together $500 to buy Elon Musk’s fund-raising flamethrower, YouTube’s Jairus of All has a cheaper, DIY alternative that instead spews a massive spinning tornado of fire using a pair of ducted fans and a tank of liquid propane worn as a backpack. Jairus’ cannon has a wonderful ‘banned science…
