Google may be forced to pay out compensation to more than 5 million Brits if a class action lawsuit in the UK is successful. A group, labeling itself “Google You Owe Us,” is taking Google to court, claiming it unlawfully collected personal information by bypassing privacy settings on Apple’s iPhone Safari browser. Google, Facebook, and several other online advertising networks were caught in 2012 using a workaround to bypass restrictions, allowing the companies to deposit cookies on an iPhone even if the device was set to block them.

Apple has launched a new app today that will allow the company to gather irregular heart rhythm data from the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor. Called the Apple Heart Study app, it will detect irregularities and send notifications to users who may be suffering from atrial fibrillation (AFib).

The company imagines that the virtual assistant will help employees launch conference calls, organize room bookings, and even wrangle with their expenses.

Facebook announced a wider availability of its new Customer Chat service today, which lets businesses talk with users both on their own websites and within Facebook Messenger. Customer Chat is essentially a website plugin that brings the Facebook Messenger experience to any retailer’s website, which lets the customer support representatives then converse with customers as if they were chatting with a friend on Facebook.

Law enforcement agencies investigating digital crimes are overwhelmed. All this has sparked renewed interest in “hacking back”—or allowing the victims of breaches to pursue attackers through cyberspace themselves.

Today, such vigilantes would be breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a law that makes it illegal to access third-party computers without prior authorization. Draft legislation currently making its way through the House of Representatives aims to change that. The Active Cyber Defense Certainty (ACDC) Act would let victims access computers that aren’t theirs in order to track down digital assailants and stolen data.

om Colella worked for 20 years as an Instrument Electrical Tradesperson for Aroona Alliance in Western Australia, until he was fired in on Sept 20, 2016 for sneaking off to play golf every Wednesday afternoon and hiding his absences from his employer by putting the PDA that he was obliged to carry -- in order to track his movements -- in a mylar potato-chip bag that acted as a Faraday cage and prevented it from receiving GPS signals and other location-identifying beacons and storing or communicating his location for his employer.

This might seem like no big deal, but it’s actually the latest sign that cloud-based machine learning is about to take the software industry by storm—and, by extension, to rewire the entire economy. Using Amazon’s new platform, developers can collaborate in real time to tap into powerful, cloud-based AI that they can bake into a new generation of apps and Web services. This will mean learning new ways of thinking about software, and it should lead to the rise of everyday software that behaves with more intelligence.

This shift promises to be the biggest transition for the software world in decades. The easy availability of on-demand machine learning, combined with tools for automating the design and training of AI models, should, in fact, have an increasing impact on overall economic productivity, according to some economists.

In a letter to to heads of government ministries, NCSC CEO, Ciaran Martin said that organizations “need to be vigilant to the risk that an [antivirus] product under the control of a hostile actor could extract sensitive data from that network, or indeed cause damage to the network itself.” He went on to specifically call out Russia, noting that the country is a “highly capable cyber threat actor which uses cyber as a tool of statecraft,” and that in instances where government agencies have information that would pose a threat to national security should it be accessed by Russian agents, antivirus products from Russian companies should not be used.

Bundesrechenzentrum Geschäftsführer Markus Kaiser (mit Siemens- und Atos-Erfahrung):
User würden, was die Verknüpfung von Daten betrifft, Facebook und anderen sozialen Medien mehr erlauben als dem Staat. „Dieses Modell auf den Staat zu übertragen ergäbe eine andere Servicequalität.“ Er wünscht sich eine Wahlmöglichkeit für die Bürger, mit der sie festlegen können, welche Daten Behörden verwenden dürfen.

Nach Protesten von Datenschützern beendet der Pharmakonzern Bayer die Gesichtserkennung in Apotheken. Das Thema ist dem Pharmakonzern zu kontrovers.

If you found the "Facebook emotion manipulation" paper disturbing, how would you feel about this paper which analyses the posts that you wrote on Facebook but eventually never sent, and naively assumed nobody is watching

Bonuspunkte für den Kauf gesunder Babynahrung, Abzug für Pornokonsum: In China wird das Social Credit System getestet. Es überwacht, bewertet und erzieht die Bürger.

According to Kaija Kirch, head of the Police and Border Guard Board's (PPA) Identity and Status Bureau, the police authority is still awaiting a public apology from Gemalto, the manufacturer of electronic ID cards in use in Estonia.

The UK approved an export licence for the sale of surveillance equipment to Macedonia – while the country was engaged in an illegal surveillance programme against its citizens. A senior minister was consulted on the decision

Three employees in the inspector general’s office for the Department of Homeland Security stole a computer system that contained sensitive personal information of about 246,000 agency employees, according to three United States officials and a report sent to Congress last week. They planned to modify the office’s proprietary software for managing investigative and disciplinary cases so that they could market and sell it to other inspector general offices across the federal government.

Wer kein Porträtbild von sich hochlädt, bekommt keinen Zugriff auf sein Profil: Mit dieser drastischen Methode will Facebook in seinem Netzwerk künftig möglicherweise den Unterschied zwischen Menschen und Bots erkennen.

A Canadian hacker for hire has admitted ransacking webmail accounts for miscreants accused of orchestrating the Yahoo! megahack that hit all three billion Purple Palace user accounts.

Yale University’s Privacy Lab using research to call on developers and Google ‘for increased transparency into privacy and security practice’

More than three in four Android apps contain at least one third-party “tracker”, according to a new analysis of hundreds of apps.

Licht-Management, Verkehrsleittechnik, Laden von E-Fahrzeugen und Handys, Video-Überwachung mit Polizei-Verbindung, Erneuerbare Energie-Nutzung: Diese und weitere den Menschen dienenden Kriterien erfüllt das am Dienstag in St. Pölten vorgestellte "Smart Street"-Muster-Projekt der Initiative SSGM (Smart Safe & Green Mobility). Es wird mit zehn Unternehmen in Ebreichsdorf, Melk und Vitis umgesetzt.

Vor zwei Wochen hat das Unternehmen Bkav zur Vorsicht im Umgang mit Apples iPhone X und dem Gesichtsscanner Face ID geraten. Insbesondere bekannte Politiker, Chefs großer Firmen und bekannte Persönlichkeiten sollten demnach lieber auf dessen Verwendung verzichten. Anlass dafür war, dass es den Experten gelungen war, das System erfolgreich mit einer Maske auszutricksen.

Nun hat der Sicherheitschef des vietnamesischen Unternehmens, Ngo Tuan Anh, die Warnung verschärft. Denn man hat es geschafft, eine Maske um 200 Dollar an Materialkosten herzustellen, die noch zuverlässiger funktioniert.