Bigmouthmedia Search Engine News: /privacy-security/

Clegg criticises Draft Communications Data Bill

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:24:00 GMT

Nick Clegg has announced that the Draft Communications Data Bill needs a "fundamental rethink" following pans to give intelligence services access to all internet user activity in the UK.

The Deputy Prime Minister has said he would block the Draft Communications Data Bill which he says cannot proceed, with plans to ensure a balance between freedom of information and security.

The news comes following an MP committee meeting whereby the bill was criticised after the Home Office suggested the move must be taken to prevent terrorism.

Under these plans, internet providers can store all online communication details in the UK, giving external sources access to data such as time, duration, originator and recipient of communication. Police would not have to seek any further access to gain this information but would need a warrant to see the content of any personal messages.

"It is for those reasons that I believe the coalition government needs to have a fundamental rethink about this legislation. We cannot proceed with this bill and we have to go back to the drawing board," Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg told the BBC.

"The committee did not, however, suggest that nothing needs to be done. They were very clear that there is a problem that must be addressed to give law enforcement agencies the powers they need to fight crime. I agree.

"But that must be done in a proportionate way that gets the balance between security and liberty right."

Home Secretary Theresa May has argued that the bill is vital for keeping watch over paedophiles, frauds and extremists, but ministers have warned that this could lead to "potentially limitless categories of data" unless the bill is amended.

MP's argued that the bill is "insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy" and went "much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data."

Theresa May would like the bill in place by next year.

"This legislation is vital to help catch paedophiles, terrorists and other serious criminals and we are pleased both scrutiny committees have recognised the need for new laws," a Home Office Spokesperson told the BBC.

"We have now considered the committees' recommendations carefully and we will accept the substance of them all. But there can be no delay to this legislation. It is needed by law enforcement agencies now."

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Facebook shifts privacy policy goalposts

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:12:00 GMT

Facebook has rocked the boat with the most recent updates to its governing documents, which sees users losing their ability to vote on changes to the website's privacy policies.

The social media giant announced the changes in an email to members on Wednesday, stating that the public voting component of the site governance process "incentivised the quantity of comments over their quality."

Facebook is now proposing to "end the voting component of the process in favour of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement."

Campaigners are opposed to the changes and are urging disgruntled users to comment on the announcement.

Under Facebook's current rules, 7,000 opposing votes on the issue will result in a vote before the changes go through. However, the votes will only be taken into consideration if 30 per cent of the site's user base takes part.

Resultantly, given that Facebook recently reached its one-billionth sign-up, over 300 million users would have to take part in the vote for its results to take effect.

The new proposal also outlines plans to combine user data across various services owned by Facebook, such as popular photo-sharing app Instagram.

This move has caused speculation that the company intent to merge data profiles in a similar way to Google, making it easier to hit users with targeted advertising.

Those opposed also criticise Facebook's statement as being too vague.

A spokesperson from the Our Policy group told the BBC: "We want Facebook to use clear and understandable language.

"We oppose that Facebook is using 'like', 'may' or 'could' instead of clear statements. This makes it impossible to clearly know what we consent to."

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Web users unsure if online content is legal

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 03:13:00 GMT

Half of all web users admit that they aren't sure if the content they view online is legal and one in six say they have breached online copyright, according to a new study.

Media regulation body Ofcom has found 47 per cent of web users do not know the source of their downloads or if they are even legal.

When asked if they were confident in knowing what is legal or illegal in terms of streaming, downloading and viewing online content, 28 per cent of those asked reported that they were not particularly confident and 17 per cent answered "not at all."

Of the one in six users who said they knowingly accessed illegal content, half of them were consuming music and two per cent games and software, with 54 per cent saying the most common reason for doing so is because it is free.

Internet Service Providers are soon to be made responsible for informing users the content they are about to view or use could be illegal and used for copyright infringement cases. They will also be encouraged to promote legal places for users to download content.

"Consumer research is only one perspective on levels of online copyright infringement. For a more complete picture, it should be considered alongside direct measurement of behaviour on file-sharing websites and wider industry data. Ofcom expects to consider all these data sources as part of its statutory reporting duties in the near future," Ofcom stated in a press release.

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Four in five teens hide internet activity from parents

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 03:00:00 GMT

Four in every five children hide inappropriate internet activity from their parents according to a recent study.

Of the 400 parents and teenagers surveyed, one in three British parents make no effort to track what their child does online whilst 50 per cent admit they are confident they could track their child's internet activity with ease.

Behaviours like minimising internet browsers, clearing internet history and the creation of private email address are all clever tactics employed by young people in order to keep their parents from discovering their online activity.

30.5 per cent of teenagers admitted using websites their parents would disapprove of, 25 per cent admitted searching for nude images or pornography whilst 19 per cent admitted downloading illegal or pirated music and 6 per cent had used the internet to buy alcohol or drugs.

It was also found that less than a third of parents set controls on their child's smartphone and only 12 per cent know the security password allowing them access to the device.

21.5 per cent of parents admitted their children are more tech savvy than they are with 11 per cent of children admitted to knowing how to turn off parental controls.

"We believe the data will come as quite a shock to some parents, and we hope it will encourage them to take immediate action to protect their children," EMEA CTO Raj Samani told the Telegraph.

"It is clear that a huge gap exists between what teens are doing online, and what parents are aware of. Parents must take an active role to ensure their teens are practicing safe online behaviour."

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Rise in attempts by governments to monitor Google

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:13:00 GMT

Almost 21,000 requests for information were made to Google by governments in the first half of 2012.

The figure emerged as part of Google's recent Transparency Report, with the American government again the most zealous in pursuing data with 7,969 requests.

British appeals doubled to 1,425 during the first six months of 2012, with the search engine giant complying with 64 per cent of these requests.

Dorothy Chou, Google's Senior Policy Analyst, told the BBC that, "This is the sixth time we've released this data, and one trend has become clear: government surveillance is on the rise.

"It reflects laws on the ground. For example in Turkey there are specific laws about defaming public figures whereas in Germany we get requests to remove neo-Nazi content. And in Brazil we get a lot of requests to remove content during elections because there is a law banning parodies of candidates.

"We hope that the report will shed light on how governments interact with online services and how laws are reflected in online behaviour."

In total requests for user data affected 34, 614 people, with governments seeking to gain access to their search history, Gmail accounts or YouTube videos.

The Turkish government made 501 requests for content to be taken down, with the US making 273 whilst Germany was third with 247 demands. The most common reasons for removing information or online content are defamation, privacy breaches or security issues.

The report also disclosed the fact that a British law enforcement agency made 14 requests to have information criticising the police removed but Google rejected their appeals. The company also turned down a demand to remove a YouTube video that accused the police of racism.

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Android accused of breaching user privacy

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:25:00 GMT

Millions of people who use Android apps may be misled into divulging personal details according to new research.

Scientists conducted tests on 13, 500 Android applications and found almost 8 per cent of them failed to protect private details such as bank account and social media logins.

By creating an imitation Wi-Fi hotspot, researchers from the University of Leibniz in Hanover were able to develop an attack device which allowed them to perform a number of security breaches such as capturing login details or bank accounts, email facilities and social media sites, disable security programmes and use computer code to manipulate programs making them insecure.

"About half of the participants could not judge the security state of a browser session correctly," researchers told the BBC.

"Most importantly, research is needed to study which counter-measures offer the right combination of usability for developers and users, security benefits and economic incentives to be deployed on a large scale."

Some of the apps tested in this project have been downloaded millions of times by Android users and the follow up survey shows that many people may have difficulty knowing when they are at risk.

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Four fifths of UK five year olds surf the internet

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 01:37:00 GMT

Research has found that over four fifths of British five year olds have accessed the internet.

The survey of 2,000 parents with children aged 5 to 15 by McAfee security firm, found that 82 per cent of this age group had access to a computer, smartphone, tablet or some other way of accessing the internet.

The study also discovered that around a quarter of those surveyed had allowed their children to go on the internet whilst unsupervised.

Raj Samani, the European chief technology officer of McAfee, believes parents need to exercise caution, telling The Daily Telegraph, that, "Children are increasingly technology savvy, yet their perceptions of danger are not fully developed.

"It's crucial for parents to educate their children about how to stay safe online and also make sure that they have the appropriate blocks and controls installed on any device that might be used by a child."

This increasing number of young people using the internet will undoubtedly fuel the debate surrounding online child safety. The British government has been pushing for the introduction of an 'opt-out' adult filter system, where blocks would be placed on mature content that users would have to contact their providers to remove.

However search giant Google rejected this automatic filter system earlier in the year, instead favouring education over technical solutions.

Parent groups have argued that current provisions are failing to protect very young children from dangerous material due to families being either unwilling or technically unable to impose protective filters.

The study also showed a huge divergence in internet usage between young and old people, with 71 per cent of over-75s never having accessed the internet.

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Facebook messages scare proves unfounded

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:48:00 GMT

Facebook has denied rumours that a bug caused users' old private messages are being published on their public profiles after French users reported messages from 2009 were appearing on user timelines.

"No private information has been disclosed." Fred Wolens, a representative for the Facebook Communications team, told the Huffington Post.

"The posts appearing on users walls are merely wall posts and not private messages or chats, as some outlets are reporting."

"There are messages I've got on my wall that are most definitely private messages! From 2006 all the way up to 2012," wrote Poppy Dinsey, owner of fashion social network What I Wore Today.

"I'm 100% sure by content and from memory. And also some posts on my wall were clearly beginnings of (private) group [messages]."

Engineers have confirmed there is no possible way the private information could have been mixed up with the public as Facebook does not contain a mechanism allowing it to do so.

"We haven't seen one report that's been confirmed. A lot of the confusion is because before 2008 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation," A Facebook rep told CNET.

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Facebook turns off facial recognition in Europe

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:37:00 GMT

Facebook has turned off its facial recognition feature in Europe following recommendations from privacy regulators which cited the software as one of the main privacy threats posed by the social network.

Facebook has said it will make changes to the auto-tag feature before reinstating it on the site. The controversial software was turned on automatically last year by the social network, sparking intense criticisms by privacy advocates around the globe.

The company also came under fire from EU regulators, who instigated an audit and review shortly after the facial recognition software was released - Facebook has been working closely with the Irish data protection commission, where its European operations are based, since then.

"I am particularly encouraged in relation to the approach it has decided to adopt on the tag suggest/facial recognition feature by in fact agreeing to go beyond our initial recommendations, in light of developments since then, in order to achieve best practice," Billy Hawkes, head of the Irish data protection commission, which led the investigation, said in a statement.

Facebook has said it is confident any privacy issues can be resolved and vowed to continue working with regulators to ensure it remains compliant with European data protection laws.

"As our regulator in Europe, the Irish office of the data protection commissioner is constantly working with us to ensure that we keep improving on the high standards of control that we have built into our existing tools," a spokesman for the social network said.

"This audit is part of an ongoing process of oversight, and we are pleased that, as the data protection commissioner said, the latest announcement is confirmation that we are not only compliant with European data protection law but we have gone beyond some of their initial recommendations and are fully committed to best practice in data protection compliance."

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Microsoft set to release security update after malware scare

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:13:00 GMT

Microsoft is set to release a security update today after a temporary "Fix It" tool was developed to remedy a bug in Internet Explorer.

The browser's system flaw allows for intrusion from "Poison Ivy" malware, discovered for the first time earlier this week.

The trojan can potentially affect all versions of the browser except Internet Explorer 10 and has the capability to steal data or take control of computers remotely, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of users.

However, Microsoft stated in a blog that the issue has only impacted "a small number of users".

The Internet Explorer update will be released today through Windows Update, in the hope of rectifying the issue and reinforcing the fix provided by the temporary update.

In the first instance, users were recommended to change their security settings to "high" and run the browser in restricted mode whilst Microsoft worked on a solution.

Liam O Murchu, research manager for cyber security company Symantec, told the BBC: "Any time you see a zero-day (newly discovered virus) like this it is concerning. There are no patches available. It is very difficult for people to protect themselves."

However the undiscovered vulnerabilities are rare, with Symantec reporting only eight similar malware instances last year.

Microsoft plan to release the update with a "critical" status, further details of which will become available in a bulletin at approximately 10am PDT (6pm GMT).

An hour-long, live webcast will also be held at 12pm PDT (8pm GMT), allowing concerned users to pitch any questions they may have about the security update.

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