permission

A US company that used billions of online photos without permission for facial recognition faces a fine of more than $35 million. Regulators say they may hold directors of Clearview AI personally responsible after the company said the fine was ... unenforceable. Clearview has attracted the attention of regulators in several companies for the way it does business. It produces and licenses facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, for example, to identify alleged offenders from crowd photos or live video. The software works thanks to a massive database of pictures which Clearview ... (view more)

The latest version of Android adds several new privacy features. However, users may need to make some manual tweaks to take full advantage. The changes come in Android 12 which is rolling out to newer phones at the moment. Older models will either ... get it later on or will never be able to get it, depending on the manufacturer. The biggest change is more information about the permissions system. That's the set-up by which users don't have to give an app complete access to the hardware and software on their system. Instead they can individually grant or restrict individual permissions, each of ... (view more)

A company that sells location data has apologized after some details were collected without permission. Huq says the data remained anonymous despite the lack of consent. The company's business model is to partner with app developers to collect ... location data, aggregate it, then sell the overall details to clients. These included businesses trying to figure out patterns in where potential customers will be, and local governments that want to know which areas are busy at what times, for example to prioritize repairs of street lighting. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) The problem appears to be that Huq ... (view more)

Just one in eight iPhone and iPad users have agreed to let an app track them online. They've been able to make the decision since Apple changed its rules, to the dismay of advertisers. The change is to the way iOS handles a tag known as Identifier ... for Advertisers (IDFA). It identifies an individual device and allows advertisers to piece together information from multiple sources and activities. While advertisers argue this allows for better targeted and thus more relevant (and less annoying) ads, users and privacy groups have objected to what they see as surveillance and snooping. The change ... (view more)

Facebook users have been shocked to discover it stores the phone numbers of people who've never signed up to the site, along with the SMS and voice call histories of some users. But Facebook insists that users have explicitly given permission for ... such data storage. The site's data storage and sharing policies came back under the spotlight with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a journalist revealed that information gathered about users and their friends for a psychological study was shared without permission for use in political ad targeting. Since then, many users have been taking ... (view more)

Microsoft is to give Windows 10 users more details about exactly what an app is able to do on their computer. It's a similar security measure to that available on some mobile device apps. Until now, apps only usually have to get a Windows user's ... permission when they want to access location data, for example in a mapping tool. That's changing with the 2017 Fall Creators Update, the next major twice-yearly feature update for Windows 10. Microphone and Webcam Access Need Permission The change means apps will need the user's permission to access key hardware components on the computer such as a ... (view more)

An estimated one million people around the world received a recent phishing email, though it only posed a risk for around an hour before Google stepped in to stop the scam in its tracks. Victims of the scam may have inadvertently given attackers ... control of their email accounts. The attack involved a bogus email claiming that a contact tried to share a document with the recipient using Google Docs. While only a small proportion of people use Google Docs, the attackers appear to have been playing the numbers game. Attackers Accessed Emails and Contacts Unlike most phishing scams, the attackers ... (view more)

Internet service providers such as cable companies will no longer be allowed to use or sell personal data about customers without permission. The ban includes details about the sites and apps that a customer uses. It's part of a new set of rules ... issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after a 3-2 vote in favor by commissioners. The rules will be formally published soon, at which point ISPs will have a year to comply, though smaller providers will have a further 12 months after that. Providers will have to tell customers what data they collect, how they use it, and who if ... (view more)

A federal court has awarded a woman $229,500 compensation after a cable company unlawfully called her cellphone 153 times in less than a year. Time Warner Cable continued to make the automated "robo calls" even after Araceli King complained. The ... court ruled Time Warner Cable had violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed in 1991. The issue wasn't simply that the company made the calls without permission, but that they were automated. Robo Calls Illegal Without Express Permission With the so-called robo calls, a computer automatically dials a home phone number. If and ... (view more)

A survey of 2,000 households in the United Kingdom has revealed that few people take their WiFi network's security seriously enough. In fact, the security software firm behind the study, Avast, says our approach to home WiFi security is comparable ... to attitudes towards PC security in the 1990s -- which is not very good at all. Weak WiFi Passwords a Serious Problem Avast's survey revealed a number of alarming issues. First, the company found that more than 50 per cent of all home routers have little or no protection, making them easy to hack. In far too many cases, Avast found people ... (view more)