Privacy

Google is expanding the right of Europeans to be forgotten on the Internet to domains outside their countries, according to news reports Thursday. Searches made from European IP addresses for people whom Google has granted a right to be forgotten will turn up zero links, regardless of which version ...

The U.S. government is under pressure to improve cybersecurity and is meeting that challenge with a commitment to substantially enhance spending for protecting IT systems. The Obama administration projected that the federal budget for cybersecurity spending in fiscal 2016 would be about $14 billion ...

The U.S. government was shaken last year when the Office of Personnel Management disclosed that employment records affecting 21.5 million people had been breached. The Obama administration initiated several comprehensive actions designed to shore up federal data protection -- including an immediate ...

California State Assemblyman Jim Cooper last week introduced a bill seeking to ban the sale of smartphones that include unbreakable encryption. The bill would require smartphones made on or after Jan. 1, 2017, and sold in California to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by their manufacturer...

A coalition of 59 organizations on Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler calling on him to get cracking on privacy protection rules for consumers. The groups include consumer advocates such as Consumer Watchdog and the Chicago Consumer Coalition as we...

The Federal Trade Commission is extending its regulatory reach to the e-commerce impact of big data. For years, the FTC has asserted vigorously its authority to apply consumer protection laws to emerging developments in the IT realm. Now it is signaling that it will apply that same vigor to big data...

Privacy advocates from around the globe have taken heart from reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed hard against the Obama administration's efforts to reach a compromise on encryption during a recent Silicon Valley meeting. Cook earlier this month joined a delegation of social media and technology ...

Periscope on Tuesday announced integration with Twitter, allowing users to view its live-stream broadcasts directly in the Twitter iOS app. Previously, Periscope broadcasters could share only links to their videocasts in tweets. Now they can embed video directly into tweets, and the content can be s...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a deal that would require Uber to encrypt geolocation information about its riders, as well as enhance its data security practices. The AG opened an investigation into Uber in 2014, in response to allegations that the service had trac...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is engaged in an internal struggle over how it should assess the effect on consumers when businesses fail to provide proper e-commerce security. The outcome of the debate, which surfaced last month, will have a significant impact on the commission's ability to initi...

Congress on Friday passed an omnibus budget bill that included the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA. The Senate earlier this year passed CISA, which many conservative and liberal politicians, high-tech firms, and privacy and civil liberty advocates oppose. The latest version includes a...

UK police on Tuesday arrested a 21-year-old man as part of their investigation into last month's hack on VTech's systems. The man was arrested in Bracknell, 30 miles west of London, on suspicion of unauthorized access to a computer to facilitate the commission of an offense and suspicion of causing ...

Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9. It lets users block the same trackers blocked by Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. The protection is based on Disconnect's open source block...

VTech on Thursday revealed it has hired FireEye's Mandiant to help improve security after reaction from parents around the world over news that its servers were hacked. It also is cooperating with law enforcement agencies worldwide to investigate the incident and has temporarily shut down several we...