Security

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook's latest overhaul of its privacy policies. "We're monitoring compliance" with an FTC order issued previously against Facebook, said FTC spokesperson Peter Kaplan. Part of that "involves interacting with Facebook," Kaplan added. That order was pa...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not pull any punches Wednesday in describing the U.S. government's communications approach to revelations that the National Security Agency has been accessing digital conversations around the world -- and using tech companies such as Facebook in the process. "Frankly...

The 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled, in essence, that Google broke federal wiretap laws when its Street View cars collected data from unencrypted WiFi networks. The federal court affirmed a district court's order denying Google's motion to dismiss the claim. Google's data collec...

An October 2010 class action lawsuit against Google included allegations that "Google transmitted user search queries to third parties without knowledge or consent in order to enhance advertising revenue and profitability." Following three years of litigation, Google and the plaintiff users this Jun...

Samsung will bundle a forthcoming business suite from Lookout into its flailing Knox enterprise security solution for the Android platform. Knox, an end-to-end solution that provides security from the hardware all the way through to the application level, is Samsung's approach to the security threat...

Because of the rapid pace of SaaS adoption, many security practitioners have found themselves scrambling to ensure the security of the specific technologies their enterprises want to employ. However, the dynamics of SaaS can make this a challenging exercise. This is because most of the options for s...

Google is contesting the right of UK Safari users to bring a case against it in the UK, according to a statement from the plaintiffs' law firm. To emphasize its stance, in fact, the search engine did not accept notice of the lawsuit in the UK but forced the plaintiffs to file in California instead -...

The continuing flood of news about the NSA's surveillance of Americans' communications, which has already forced secure email providers Lavabit and Silent Circle to shut down, has now claimed yet another victim. Specifically, award-winning tech legal news site Groklaw, which served the free and open...

Most of us have a hard enough time keeping track of the security implications of the services we've signed up for, but recently an assertion was made that should send chills down the spine of virtually anyone who ever uses the Web. Namely, Google can scan and use the electronic communications not ju...

Following the voluntary shutdown of two secure email services to prevent the NSA from obtaining information about their subscribers, Internet bad boy Kim Dotcom's cloud-based file hosting service Mega is stepping up. The company is working on a secure, encrypted email service that will extend the en...

The White House this week released a set of incentives designed to encourage private companies to join the administration in its efforts to cut down on cyberattacks. The initiatives are a follow-up to the cybersecurity executive order President Obama signed in February, following Congress' failure t...

By now, most organizations have adopted cloud. Increased and widespread adoption as well as expansion of existing deployments are reflected in recent surveys. This suggests that if you're a technology pro and your organization is like most, you've already spent considerable time addressing how to fi...

Mobile device users' privacy will be safeguarded under a new transparency code of conduct created in an effort involving 40 groups ranging from businesses to advocacy groups and led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling hailed ...

American cloud service providers seeking to do business abroad are feeling the fallout from the NSA's PRISM surveillance program, suggests a month-long online survey by the Cloud Security Alliance. Fifty-six percent of more than 200 overseas respondents said they were less likely to use U.S.-based c...

When a tweet goes out on Twitter that a user didn't send, the concern is usually that the account has been hijacked by a malicious user. This week, however, three users on Twitter were surprised to find out that their user names and images had been used as examples in a marketing campaign created by...