Security News
The US House Committee on the Judiciary met on Wednesday to hear testimony on the government's practice of secretly subpoenaing cloud service providers, and Microsoft was happy to oblige. Tom Burt, Microsoft's veep of customer security & trust, testified as a representative of cloud service providers.
A GAO report finds government agencies are using the technology regularly in criminal investigations and to identify travelers, but need stricter management to protect people's privacy and avoid inaccurate identification. Though the federal government widely uses facial recognition for various uses from criminal investigations to collecting traveler data, this use is largely unmonitored and unmanaged - a scenario that must change to protect people's privacy and avoid inaccurate identification of perpetrators, a government watchdog report has found.
Microsoft has added a privacy feature to Windows 11 called DNS-over-HTTPS, allowing users to perform encrypted DNS lookups to bypass censorship and Internet activity. DNS-over-HTTPS allows your computer to perform these DNS lookups over an encrypted HTTPS connection rather than through normal plain text DNS lookups, which ISPs and governments can snoop on.
Mozilla has a new privacy-focused data sharing platform that provides users with increased control of their data and also allows them to contribute to a better Internet. Built in collaboration with Princeton University researchers, the new Mozilla Rally allows users to select who they want to share their browsing data with, the browser maker says.
Google recently unveiled the next evolution of Google Workspace, including new security and privacy capabilities to help users take advantage of trusted, cloud-native collaboration. How does Google Workspace help the remote workforce stay secure?
According to the findings, 63% of respondents say it is important or very important to protect employee privacy in the workforce, but only 34% of organizations are effective or very effective in doing so. The research also found that most organizations have a difficult time balancing workforce privacy with the growing perceptions around the need to monitor employee engagement and internal risk, given the shift to remote work.
Today, Brave launched their non-tracking privacy-centric search engine to bring another alternative to finding the information you want on the web without giving up your data. Brave Search is being launched first in Beta so that users can test the new search engine while Brave continues to refine its features.
About 20 percent of the Top 500 kids' mobile apps in the Google Play store are collecting data on users in a way that likely violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. COPPA, imposed by the Federal Trade Commission, applies to online services, apps and websites that target children under 13, and it requires child-directed websites, apps and online services to provide notice of their data-collection practices and obtain parental consent prior to collecting personal information from children under 13.
Google Chrome for iOS now allows you to lock your incognito tabs behind Face ID so other people can't snoop on what sites you are visiting. Google Chrome's incognito mode is commonly used to visit sensitive sites that people do not want to appear in the browser history or for cookies to be saved.
Tim Cook has claimed that proposed reforms to the App Store are "Not in the best interests of the user" and would "Destroy the security of the iPhone." "What we do at Apple is always focus intently on the user and what is in their best interests. The current DMA language that is being discussed would force sideloading on the iPhone, and this would be an alternate way of getting apps onto the iPhone," Cook said.