Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: August 14, 2020

Posted on Aug 14, 2020 by Caleb Chen
Privacy News Online | August 14, 2020

Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of August 14th, 2020

Chinese gamers will need to verify their real names on all games by September

Chinese gamers will need to verify their real names on all games by SeptemberThe Chinese government is rolling out a real name authentication and verification system to all online games in the country by the end of the month. Some of these verification systems actually utilize facial recognition. While some big gaming companies have already been rolling out their own real name verification systems, This final deadline to do so was revealed by the Chinese Central Publicity Department at ChinaJoy, the country’s biggest gaming convention.

PNO wants to know! What’s the worst thing that could happen if you couldn’t game anonymously?  Comment below and your comment could be read during next week’s episode. If we read your comment, you’ll get 1 month of free VPN service from Private Internet Access.

China expands Great Firewall to block HTTPS traffic that uses TLS 1.3 and ESNI

China expands Great Firewall to block HTTPS traffic that uses TLS 1.3 and ESNIDoesn’t seem to be a good week for Chinese internet users. According to a joint report by  iYouPort, the Great Firewall Report, and the University of Maryland, Chinese censors have upgraded the Great Firewall of China so that it blocks these newer types of HTTPS traffic. TLS 1.3 and ESNI are new technologies that augment HTTPS so that it is more secure – something that China is clearly not OK with. The blocks were first noted near the end of July and represent an escalation in the differences between China’s internet and the free and open internet.

The Department of Justice wants to stop California from having net neutrality

department of justice wants to stop california from having net neutralityThe DOJ has filed for an injunction to stop California from enacting their state level net neutrality law. Ever since net neutrality was repealed by the FCC starting in 2018, states have sought to keep net neutrality alive at least within their borders – something that US courts ruled states could do. This injunction won’t be ruled on until October, but California’s Attorney General has stated that he looks forward to defending California’s state net neutrality protections.

Buy Private Internet Access VPN

More Privacy News This Week:

Capital One ordered to pay $80 million penalty for its role in a 2019 data breach

Back in 2019, Capital One suffered a breach that affected 100 million people. The Office of the Comptroller of Currency emphasized that Capital One knew about their security flaws but chose to do nothing about it . As part of the penalty, Capital One will need to create a compliance committee and create an action plan for improving cybersecurity at the company. At less than a dollar for each impacted customer; hopefully that’s enough to really change things.

Turkey takes Germany’s “hate speech” law, and makes it much worse with its own censorship and data localization rules

Many countries around the world have been introducing their own “hate speech” laws which are used for censorship. Turkey is the latest country to do so, passing what the EFF calls the worst version” yet. Under the new law, Turkey can order internet service providers to throttle social media platforms that don’t comply. Turkey already doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to censorship as they’ve previously blocked VPN connections, Github, and even all of Wikipedia. Now things are getting worse.

F.T.C. Investigating Twitter for Potential Privacy Violations

Last week, Twitter let the world know that the social media platform is facing an FTC investigation that could result in a 150 to 250 million dollar fine. The investigation has been ongoing since October of 2019 and focuses on the fact that Twitter collected phone numbers from users for security use, but turned around and used the phone numbers to help target ads. This is something that Facebook has also been fined for doing.

A mysterious group has hijacked Tor exit nodes to perform SSL stripping attacks

A report by security researcher and Tor exit node operator Nusenu highlights that a group has been using hijacked Tor exit nodes to perform SSL stripping attacks targeted at cryptocurrency users. At its height, the group controlled 25% of the exit nodes and is still active with roughly 10% of the Tor exit nodes. The SSL stripping would downgrade users from HTTPS to HTTP then replace the bitcoin addresses that payouts would go to. This isn’t the first time this type of attack has happened, and likely won’t be the last.

Brought to you by Private Internet Access

Privacy News Online is brought to you by Private Internet Access, the world’s most trusted VPN service.
Sign up now and get 2 months of VPN service FREE!

Special thanks to Intego

Thank you to Josh Long our cybersecurity consultant from Intego, makers of award winning security software.
Save on Intego Antivirus for Windows: https://www.intego.com/lp/buynow?channel=privacynews
Save on Intego Premium Bundle for Mac: https://offer.intego.com/s_6mpddtgjf