How to Delete Old Emails, Tweets, and Files
deleteSecuritySecurity / Security Advice October 25, 2020 0
Once you post something to the internet, it’s there forever unless you take steps to remove it (and even then, you may not be successful.) While keeping your digital history around in perpetuity can have its advantages—digging out those tax emails from 2006, looking back on vacations from half... Read more
Twitter’s ‘Hacked Materials’ Rule Tries to Thread an Impossible Needle
Election 2020SecuritySecurity / National Security October 16, 2020 0
Twitter for years functioned as an unrestricted mouthpiece for hackers of all stripes, from freewheeling hacktivists like Anonymous to the Kremlin-created cutouts like Guccifer 2.0. But as the company tries to crack down on hackers’ use of its platform to distribute their stolen information, it’s finding that that’s not... Read more
Facebook Shut Down Malware That Hijacked Accounts to Run Ads
adwareSecuritySecurity / Cyberattacks and Hacks October 1, 2020 0
Usually when you hear about malicious activity on Facebook it’s tied up in geopolitical skulduggery of some sort. But on Thursday the company detailed a campaign out of China that wasn’t focused on disinformation or stealing account data. The hackers instead stole user credentials and gained access to their... Read more
CryptoHarlem’s Founder Warns Against ‘Digital Stop and Frisk’
SecuritySecurity / PrivacyWIRED25 September 23, 2020 0
This year, many people braved the risk of coronavirus infection to protest police brutality in Black neighborhoods, but physical violence isn’t the only way law enforcement can harm marginalized and minority communities: Hacker Matt Mitchell wants us to pay attention to digital policing, too. He argues that marginalized communities... Read more
Google and Apple Change Tactics on Contact Tracing Tech
BusinessBusiness / Computers and SoftwareNew PlanScienceSecurity September 1, 2020 0
The new plan unifies some of the behind-the-scenes work of sending exposure notifications. In the original scheme, state health authorities were responsible for setting up servers to send exposure alerts to people who had been near others who had tested positive for Covid-19. Different states, different servers. That meant... Read more
The Blurred Lines and Closed Loops of Google Search
dark patternsSecuritySecurity / Security News September 1, 2020 0
Tricksy! You’ll notice the knowledge box on the righthand side, too. But Google has around 92 percent of global search market share. It effectively is online search. Dark patterns are all too common online in general, and January wasn’t the first time people accused Google of deploying them. In... Read more
A Former Uber Exec’s Indictment Is a Warning Shot
SecuritySecurity / Security News August 21, 2020 0
Khosrowshahi fired Sullivan and Craig Clark, a security lawyer, in 2017. Sullivan, who prior to Uber had been the chief security officer at Facebook, is now chief information security officer for the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare. In a tweet on Thursday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote, “Sad to see... Read more
The Covid-19 pandemic, and millions of people desperate for scarce protective equipment like masks and Tyvek suits, has presented a bonanza for scammers. Now, according to the US Department of Justice, it seems that even ISIS has gotten in on the game. In a series of civil and criminal... Read more
Hackers Flood Reddit With Pro-Trump Takeovers
SecuritySecurity / Cyberattacks and Hacks August 8, 2020 0
In what appears to be a massive coordinated strike against Reddit, hackers took over dozens of pages on Friday afternoon, using their access to plaster pro-Donald Trump imagery across subreddits with huge followings. Coming just over three weeks after hackers used access to high-profile Twitter accounts to tweet a... Read more
Hackers Broke Into Real News Sites to Plant Fake Stories
SecuritySecurity / Cyberattacks and Hacks July 29, 2020 0
Over the past few years, online disinformation has taken evolutionary leaps forward, with the Internet Research Agency pumping out artificial outrage on social media and hackers leaking documents—both real and fabricated—to suit their narrative. More recently, Eastern Europe has faced a broad campaign that takes fake news ops to... Read more