Security News

Strike three: FTC says Meta still failing to protect user privacy
2023-05-04 16:08

The US Federal Trade Commission is preparing to take action against Facebook parent company Meta for a third time over claims it failed to protect user privacy, as required under a 2020 agreement Meta made with the regulator. The rules imposed on Meta by the FTC would be extended under the new order to include any future acquisitions by Meta and would expand limits on the use of facial recognition technology included in the 2020 order.

ChatGPT is Back in Italy After Addressing Data Privacy Concerns
2023-04-29 04:23

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has officially made a return to Italy after the company met the data protection authority's demands ahead of April 30, 2023, deadline. The reinstatement comes following Garante's decision to temporarily block access to the popular AI chatbot service in Italy on March 31, 2023, over concerns that its practices are in violation of data protection laws in the region.

Windows 11 is getting a new 'Presence sensing' privacy setting
2023-04-13 18:19

Windows 11 is getting a new privacy setting that allows users to control whether applications can detect when actively interacting with the device. The new privacy setting is called 'Presence sensing' and allows you to configure whether applications can use APIs to determine if a user is active or inactive in Windows.

Consumers take data control into their own hands amid rising privacy concerns
2023-04-11 03:00

Data Subject Requests, which are formal requests made by individuals to access, modify, or delete their personal data held by a company, increased by 72% from 2021 to 2022. These numbers will continue to increase as new data privacy laws, like those in Virginia and Colorado, come into effect and focus attention on responsible data privacy practices.

China urges Apple to improve security and privacy
2023-03-29 01:27

Senior Chinese government officials have urged Apple CEO Tim Cook to improve the security and privacy features of his company's products. "Director Zheng Shanjie said that the Chinese government will unswervingly implement the basic national policy of opening to the outside world, and the National Development and Reform Commission will continue to support foreign-funded enterprises including Apple in their business in China," the post states.

Microsoft Issues Patch for aCropalypse Privacy Flaw in Windows Screenshot Tools
2023-03-27 09:48

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to address a privacy-defeating flaw in its screenshot editing tool for Windows 10 and Windows 11. "If you take a screenshot of your bank statement, save it to your desktop, and crop out your account number before saving it to the same location, the cropped image could still contain your account number in a hidden format that could be recovered by someone who has access to the complete image file," Microsoft explains.

Microsoft fixes Acropalypse privacy bug in Windows 11 Snipping Tool
2023-03-23 17:23

Microsoft is testing an updated version of the Windows 11 Snipping Tool that fixes a recently disclosed 'Acropalypse' privacy flaw that allows the partial restoration of cropped images. As first spotted by Windows enthusiast Xeno, Microsoft released Windows 11 Snipping Tool version 11.2302.20.0 yesterday to Windows Insiders in the Canary channel via the Microsoft Store.

ChatGPT Privacy Flaw
2023-03-22 11:14

OpenAI has disabled ChatGPT’s privacy history, almost certainly because they had a security flaw where users were seeing each others’ histories.

Windows 11 Snipping Tool privacy bug exposes cropped image content
2023-03-21 21:32

A severe privacy flaw named 'acropalypse' has also been found to affect the Windows Snipping Tool, allowing people to partially recover content that was edited out of an image. Last week, security researchers David Buchanan and Simon Aarons discovered that a bug in Google Pixel's Markup Tool caused the original image data to be retained even if it was edited or cropped out.

Privacy fail: Pictures cropped, redacted by Google Pixel phones can be recovered
2023-03-20 21:13

aCropalypse Now, starring any 2018-or-later device If you've owned a Google Pixel smartphone since the 3 series came out in 2018, bad news: any screenshot that you've cropped or redacted on your...