Privacy

Find My Friends, an iOS app aimed at helping friends and family members keep tabs on one another, was updated with the release of iOS 6. Other than some simple user interface changes, there wasn't a whole lot added to the app, with one exception -- notifications.

You can now set notifications to get alerted when a contact in your Find My Friends app arrives at or leaves a location you set.

To set up a notification for a friend, view their current location. In the upper-left corner of your screen, you'll see a button titled "Notify … Read more

A Netflix-backed bill to update an antique 1988 privacy law, crafted a generation before social networks and cloud computing became popular, was derailed today because of last-minute opposition from law enforcement officials.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary committee, postponed discussion on the proposal to update the dialup-era privacy law, likely pushing a final vote into the new Congress that will convene in 2013.

The delay comes two days after a phalanx of law enforcement organizations objected to the legislation, asking Leahy to "reconsider acting" on it "until a more comprehensive review of … Read more

In 1988, when President Reagan signed a video privacy bill into law, computer users were sipping bandwidth through the tiny straws of 2400 bps modems, IBM was selling mainframe databases for over $200,000, and musician Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" was topping the charts.

Well, it turns out that politicians are no better at prognostication than the rest of us are. The clutch of lawyers and their aides on Capitol Hill failed to anticipate the rise of Netflix and Facebook, and their well-intentioned but brittle video privacy law is now at odds with modern … Read more

With iOS 6, app developers will have to get permission to access your personal information. Apps will need permission to access your Location, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Photos, and even your Twitter or Facebook account.

The first time an app attempts to access any of your private information, you'll be prompted to grant it access to that information. Should you deny (or approve) the access but later change your mind, you can change it in the Settings app.

Instead of cluttering up the Settings app with option after option, Apple condensed all of the privacy settings and put them in … Read more

Apache, the most commonly used software to house Web sites, will ignore Microsoft's decision to disable ad-tracking technology by default in Internet Explorer 10.

Microsoft set IE10 and Windows 8 so that, by default, Web sites that observe the Do Not Track (DNT) standard won't track people's behavior. The move was made to "better protect user privacy," the company said.

But protecting user privacy turns out to be a thorny matter in practice -- at least when a standard has to be palatable to advertisers as well as browser makers and people surfing the Web. … Read more

If you own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you undoubtedly read with consternation the story on Monday about the Anonymous-affiliated group AntiSec claiming to have snatched data for 12 million iOS devices from the FBI (and the FBI's vague denial yesterday that its agent's laptop was hacked).

AntiSec claims it obtained 12 million Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) along with user names, device names, device type, zip codes, cell phone numbers, addresses and Apple Push Notification Service tokens. In a post on PasteBin, AntiSec says it released data for 1 million devices, though the group claims to have … Read more

Did you read Mat Honan's tale of woe last week? The one where his Amazon, Apple, Gmail, and Twitter accounts were hacked and his digital life was eradicated?

If not, I strongly encourage you to read his story. In a nutshell, hackers strung together pieces of information to gain access to several important online accounts. The results were personally devastating for him. But his story is a good lesson for all of us. After learning the details of the attack -- from one of the hackers himself, no less -- Honan says he regrets three things most of all.… Read more

Many high-profile Web sites in Malaysia are blacked out as part of a one-day protest against changes to a law that they say would restrict online freedom of speech.

Many home pages have been replaced with banners protesting the new amendment, dubbed "114A," to the Malaysian Evidence Act.

Revised in April, the Evidence Act 1950 was updated to include Section 114A, the "presumption of fact in publication," which critics claim would mean Web site administrators, Web hosting providers, Internet providers, and those who own a computer or mobile device "on which [content] was posted" … Read more

A New Hampshire man filed suit against Yahoo this week alleging that lax security measures allowed hackers to get into a Yahoo database and steal passwords from 450,000 accounts.

In his lawsuit seeking class-action status -- filed in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday (PDF) -- Jeff Allan is asking the court to order Yahoo to compensate him and others for "resulting account fraud" and measures people had to take to protect against identity theft.

Not only was Allan's Yahoo password stolen but someone also had accessed his eBay account without his permission after … Read more