John Gruber from Daring Fireball gives a very good description of how online ad tracking would work in the physical world: Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything. And then immediately a stranger approached you with an offer […]
Category Archives: Privacy
Is Apple Killing A Billion-Dollar Ad Industry With A Popup?
The focus on Apple’s WWDC 2020 Keynote was on the next iterations of iOS, mac OS Big Sur and of course Apple Silicon. From the perspective of advertisement agencies, there was a specific feature that made them – let’s say – uneasy. It’s a new iOS 14 privacy-feature that requires active opting-in from users. Starting […]
Uncovered: 1,000 phrases that incorrectly trigger Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant | Ars Technica
If you are a user of Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant you’re familiar with “false alarms”. You just utter a completely innocent phrase and suddenly one of these voice assistants springs into action. This can be funny sometimes, but has become quite a privacy issue. Researches managed to produce a list of more than 1.000 […]
WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results — But is it a Bug? | Threatpost
The WhatsApp feature “Click to Chat” exposes mobile phone numbers on the web and Google’s search engine is able to index them. You can try it using the search string site:wa.me “+43” The phone numbers are simply as part of an URL string (https://wa.me/<phone_number>) and available in plaintext. Facebook claims that this not a bug: […]
Nearly a Million WP Sites Targeted in Large-Scale Attacks
If you have a WordPress page, you should check the status of your installtion right away. Because there was a massive attempt of a hacker group to capture more than 900.000 pages. Hackers tried to insert malicious JavaScript Code into WordPress pages that diverts visitors to manipulated webpages. They also scanned for admin logins to […]
Zoom Endpoint-Security Considerations | THS
Zoom problems in a nutshell: it is possible for someone to send malicious code to the participants in a session. Once this is done the code cannot be removed. Other than that Zoom uses several outdated software components. All of them have well known documented security issues. More here: Zoom Endpoint-Security Considerations | THS Photo […]
Security lapse exposed Clearview AI source code | TechCrunch
Clearview AI is widely considered as a privacy nightmare. With the exposure of it’s own source code on the Internet due a server misconfiuration, it’s clear that it cannot even handle it’s most important assets. The privacy blunder was made public by Mossab Hussein, chief security officer of SpiderSilk when he gained access to a […]
Jitsi for the win
Everybody seems to make video calls all the time these days. The usage of Zoom has skyrocketed and so have the privacy issues with this videoconferencing app. As alternative we recommend Jitsi. It’s open source (yay!), it uses a good level of encryption (yay!) and you can install it on your own server (yay!). And […]
Over 500,000 Zoom accounts sold on hacker forums, the dark web
More than 500.000 Zoom accounts have emerged for sale on the dark web and hacker forums, according to a new report by BleepingComputer. Zoom has become a very popular videoconferencing app in recent weeks when the number of people working from home has grown. With the growing popularity, concerns about the app’s security have also […]
Clearview AI’s Facial Recognition Tech Is Being Used By The Justice Department, ICE, And The FBI
Clearview’s facial recognition AI is not only used by law enforcement; there is a large number of private companies that have Clearview accounts, like Kohl’s and Walmart and banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. While most of these companies have no formal contracts with Clearview and appear to have used Clearview’s software on […]