Category: News

General news and updates about Privacy Online and Private Internet Access VPN Service.
  • Sep 22, 2018 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Governments, News, Privacy,

Top court rules UK mass interception of fiber-optic cable traffic violates the right to privacy: a victory, but how big?

Five years have passed since Edward Snowden’s revelations about the scale of surveillance by the US and UK shocked the world. Things have gone rather quiet on that front now, partly because there have been few new releases of documents from the Snowden hoard. But in the background, many privacy groups have been quietly working … Continue reading “Top court rules UK mass interception of fiber-optic cable traffic violates the right to privacy: a victory, but how big?”

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Vulnerability Acquisition Companies are Stockpiling 0-days and Selling Them to Governments Rather Than Allowing Them to be Patched

Last week, a so-called vulnerability acquisition company by the name of Zerodium disclosed a Tor Browser 0-day vulnerability to the public, in an apparent PR stunt. As you may know, 0-days are security bugs which have been discovered but not yet revealed to the developers responsible for patching. The 0-day disclosed by Zerodium was for … Continue reading “Vulnerability Acquisition Companies are Stockpiling 0-days and Selling Them to Governments Rather Than Allowing Them to be Patched”

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  • Sep 19, 2018 |
  • Derek Zimmer |
  • Copyright, Governments, News, Privacy,

Articles 11 and 13 in the New EU Copyright Directive Enable More Surveillance

Articles 11 and 13 in the New EU Copyright Directive are a Path to More Surveillance Privacy activists were caught off guard last week when the EU passed its controversial copyright legislation. The new law has far reaching consequences that technical experts and internet companies alike have strongly advised would damage EU businesses and change … Continue reading “Articles 11 and 13 in the New EU Copyright Directive Enable More Surveillance”

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  • Sep 8, 2018 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • News, Privacy, Programming,

How pervasive real-time bidding for online ads silently undermines your privacy

Most people have heard of Moore’s Law, which roughly means that computers have doubled in power every few years. One of the benefits of Moore’s Law is that it has put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket, in the shape of a low-cost mobile phone. Less well known is the profound impact on online advertising it … Continue reading “How pervasive real-time bidding for online ads silently undermines your privacy”

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An SEO Expert Has Shown How Chrome’s Back Button can be Hijacked to Spy on Users

For an unknown amount of time, the Chrome browser has contained a vulnerability which allows malicious websites to hijack the back button. This was recently demonstrated with striking effect by SEO expert Dan Petrovic of Dejan, an Austrialian internet marketing company. According to his public disclosure on the Dejan website, Petrovic used an elaborate proof-of-concept … Continue reading “An SEO Expert Has Shown How Chrome’s Back Button can be Hijacked to Spy on Users”

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  • Aug 25, 2018 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Governments, News, Privacy,

Beyond the GDPR: here comes the EU’s ePrivacy regulation – but not yet

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important – and controversial – privacy law passed in recent years. Despite its origin in the EU, its reach is truly global, since it affects anyone storing the personal data of EU citizens, no matter where the organization is located. In part because of a flurry … Continue reading “Beyond the GDPR: here comes the EU’s ePrivacy regulation – but not yet”

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How to See What Your Router is Exposing to the Internet

Is your home router a sitting duck with ports open to the world just waiting to be hacked? Let’s go over how you can check. First, it’s important to start with implementing basic defenses to secure your router. Keeping the firmware up to date on your router, changing the default password and turning off remote … Continue reading “How to See What Your Router is Exposing to the Internet”

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  • Aug 18, 2018 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Governments, News, Privacy, Programming, Security,

After call to implant microchips in people awaiting trial, are they about to become the next threat to our privacy?

Last year, Privacy News Online wrote about the Swedish SJ Railways allowing customers to use under-the-skin microchip implants for “easy” ticket purchases. That might have seemed a one-off bad idea, but such implants have a surprisingly long history. More worryingly, they seem to be gaining in popularity, and cropping up increasingly in everyday situations, with … Continue reading “After call to implant microchips in people awaiting trial, are they about to become the next threat to our privacy?”

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  • Aug 11, 2018 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Governments, News, Privacy,

US politicians discover personally the pitfalls of facial recognition: is it time to ban it completely?

For all the theoretical concerns about the limitations of facial recognition systems, there’s nothing like personal experience to hammer the point home. That was confirmed recently when the ACLU ran an interesting experiment using Amazon’s cloud-based Rekognition system, which Privacy News Online discussed a couple of months back: Using Rekognition, we built a face database … Continue reading “US politicians discover personally the pitfalls of facial recognition: is it time to ban it completely?”

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