Category Archives: Security News
Facebook Bans Surveillance Tools
Facebook relents under pressure from civil liberties groups and bans developers from using social networks to create surveillance tools.
Facebook announced that it has stopped software developers from being able to access the social network’s data to create surveillance tools, finally closing off a dubious situation that has seen third party vendors exploiting that information and selling it to law enforcement agencies to track protesters.
Facebook and Twitter first came under fire from privacy advocates late last year
Google Home Treats Users To Ads Without Permission
The curious case of the Disney ad that’s not an ad…
Google Home users are accustomed to snippets of requested information, but a recently reported story that has been verified by other users smells of something a little too “commercial.” In the past week, users have reported an additional bonus when asking for information from the AI device: an ad for Disney’s new release, Beauty and the Beast.
Think back to the uproar over strategically placed advertisements when Amazon first announced a Kindle e-reader that included ads on the sleep screen. It was blasted as the death of reading, just for the very notion that an Amazon customer might want to see an ad on a platform they already use for shopping. Of course, in the Kindle’s case, the ads were a trade off for getting a device of similar quality at a heavily discounted price.
Technology Could Kill Us All, Says Stephen Hawking
Advances in technology and innate human tendency for aggression could threaten survival chances of human race, but it might not come to that…
Stephen Hawking, the world renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist has said in an interview the UK Times newspaper that he thinks that rapid technological advances mixed with humanity’s naturally aggressive instincts and our tendency to wage war with one another, could ultimately threaten the human race.
To ensure the survival of humanity, Hawking believes we need we need to establish a way of identifying both environmental and technological threats quickly, before they have a chance to escalate.
The NSA’s foreign surveillance: 5 things to know
The main authority for the agency’s foreign surveillance programs expires at the end of the year, and some people want to rein it in.
Credit: National Security Agency
A contentious piece of U.S. law giving the National Security Agency broad authority to spy on people overseas expires at the end of the year. Expect heated debate about the scope of U.S. surveillance law leading up to Dec. 31.
One major issue to watch involves the way the surveillance treats communications from U.S. residents. Critics say U.S. emails, texts, and chat logs — potentially millions of them — are caught up in surveillance authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Googles Launches Family Link Parental Control
Parents can approve app purchases or downloads, monitor time spent on each app, and more.
There’s really nothing quite like hearing a six-year-old girl with ribbons in her pigtails and a gap-toothed smile showing a few missing baby teeth tell you, “Just send it to my Gmail and I’ll call it up on my phone.” While critics and supporters argue over whether screens and connectivity should be banned for children under a certain age, there’s no arguing that today’s digital natives are equipped with technology in ways that even their older siblings never were.
Parents can approve app purchases or downloads, monitor how much time was spent within each app, and more.
