messages

Skype has added a new "private conversations" feature. Calls made this way will be encrypted so that it's impossible for anyone to usefully intercept or listen in. The data for such calls will use end-to-end encryption. That means the data is ... encrypted on one user's device and kept that way throughout its journey over the Internet until it reaches the other user's device. If the data is intercepted, it won't be of any use. The system will work on a "conversation" basis rather than a call-by-call basis. One user must select the feature, which will then send ... (view more)

Google has confirmed that third parties may be able to read your Google email (Gmail) messages. The resulting controversy comes from a lack of clarity over its permission settings. The issue isn't about Google itself reading email messages. ... Previously, Google servers would scan email messages for keywords, then use targeted advertisements based on those keyboards whenever users logged into Gmail to read their emails. However, Google has dropped this policy last year and instead bases its ads on other information, such as Google web searches and YouTube viewing. The latest controversy relates ... (view more)

A drug dealer was convicted after his phone revealed his fingerprint. It wasn't from a log-in scanner, but rather an unfortunate side effect of a photo he took. Police in Wales seized a phone from a property they raided after receiving a tip-off ... that it was being used to sell drugs. The phone included the app called "WhatsApp," which is a very popular tool used to send private messages to friends. The app is prevalent among some users because the messages are encrypted in transit, meaning that the company behind WhatsApp is unable to hand over the contents to law enforcement ... (view more)

Facebook is to use artificial intelligence to spot posts made by people who might be suicidal. However, it will continue using human moderators to decide how to act over such posts. The site already has a tool that moderators can activate to display ... special messages to people whose wellbeing may be in question. These messages include details of local professional support services and help lines. The messages also encourage the user to talk over their problems with a friend and even include suggested wordings for how to ask for help. Facebook says this tool was developed with the help of ... (view more)

A European court says an employee shouldn't have been fired for sending private messages while at work. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) overturned a lower court decision and said the employee's right to privacy had been violated. However, ... the court said the verdict was largely about the specifics of the case and that it didn't constitute an absolute ban on monitoring staff computer use, or create a right to private Internet access while at work. The case involves Bogan Mihai Barbalescu, a Romanian man fired in 2007 after using Yahoo Messenger at work to send personal and intimate ... (view more)

More than 700 million email addresses and passwords have been leaked online. While many are bogus, enough appear to be genuine that security experts have advised users to change their email passwords. The collection of account details does not ... appear to have been used for identity theft or other fraud. Instead, the collection has been marketed as a way to send spam messages. The idea is that spammers can login to the compromised accounts in order to send their unsolicited emails. This effectively flies under the spam radar, as most spam comes from IP addresses without any reputation. In this ... (view more)

Google is to stop scanning Gmail messages for advertising purposes. The move was driven largely by a need to satisfy business customers. The company announced that "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after ... this change." A company spokesman said this would bring the consumer service into line with the G Suite service for businesses. Business Users 'Put Off' By Scanning Diane Greene said that although business customers "have never had their messages scanned for use in advertising, many potential customers were nonetheless put ... (view more)

A German court has upheld Facebook's refusal to let the parents of a deceased girl access her private messages. It's the latest attempt to deal with the tricky balance of dealing with social network history after people die. The sheer number of ... people on Facebook means that users dying has become a significant issue. An estimated 10,000 users die each day and more than 30 million have already passed away. Facebook deals with the issue by "memorializing" accounts. Once it has seen credible evidence that a person has died, it can put the account into a special mode in which ... (view more)

The National Security Agency (NSA) is to revise a controversial program that let it read emails from US citizens without a warrant. It also says it will delete many of the messages it collected in this way. The program has been dubbed "Section 702 ... activities", named after the relevant part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such activities are significant because they are an exception to the general principle that the NSA doesn't carry out surveillance within the US, something that would normally bring constitutional rights to privacy into play. Section 702 allowed ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gale S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I read with great interest your series of articles on Mozilla Thunderbird. The last article I read was in regard to Thunderbird: One Inbox, Multiple Email Accounts . Near the end of that article you ... mentioned there would be another editorial piece to explain how to archive emails for offline viewing using Thunderbird. I would personally love to download my Gmail emails to my PC and store them locally. Can you explain how to do that? " My response: I've already written an article on how to do that , though I'd be happy to go over it again in ... (view more)