As if they hadn’t already grafted themselves onto a significant portion of your own childhood memories (damn your catchy classics, Elton John and Phil Collins), the rise of more screens in the household has only meant more of The Mouse for your kids.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved a measure that killed an upcoming FCC ruling that would have required internet providers to ask your permission to sell your browsing data. Now, everyone’s trying to find a way around this, and virtual private networks (VPNs) are the most popular means of doing so. But…
The House of Representatives voted today to repeal rules preventing internet service providers from selling their customers’ web browsing and app usage data without explicit consent. The Senate passed the same bill last week, which means the only obstacle that remains is a signature from President Trump—and the White…
On a recent trip to Disney World, I had an unusual experience. I rode a ride. It broke. We were evacuated, and a few minutes later, I got a picture on my phone. It was an empty raft sliding down Splash Mountain, taken at precisely the moment I was walking down the emergency stairwell. It was weird.
Today, the US Senate voted 50-48 to overturn broadband privacy rules that would have required internet service providers get consumer consent before selling their web browsing data to advertisers or other data companies.
Whether it’s poorly reported stories of hacked Samsung TVs, sadly hilarious tales of hacked teddy bears, or even more bizarre claims about wiretapped microwaves, real, fake, and overblown accounts of all the things that can happen with the devices we choose to connect to the internet dominate the news. We’ve brought…
The Oculus Rift is starting to ship, and we’re pretty happy with it. While it’s cool, like any interesting gadget, it’s worth looking through the Terms of Service, because there are some worrisome things included.
Do you know how much of your personal information is floating around? It's more than you think and very easy to find. Phone numbers, home addresses, email accounts. As my recent story about gamers who got swatted showed, anybody can become a target. You don't have to be someone with a million followers. Social…
“Evil” is a complex thing. Sometimes evil is justified, other times knowing evil is just the best way to fight it. Here are 10 things that clearly fall under the banner of “evil,” but are worth knowing how to do.
Oh dear. Chinese mobile app FengKuang LaiWang "leaked" over 35,000 user videos online, including clips of players in their underwear or naked.
By now you've probably heard about the massive Heartbleed security bug that may have compromised the majority of the world's web sites. Everyone should change their passwords on the affected sites—but only after those sites have patched the issue. Mashable is maintaining and updating a list of the most popular sites…
When you step outside, anyone can snap your photo. And said photo could spread all over cyberspace—Twitter, Facebook, you name it. Heck, it could even end up here! Maybe you don't want that. Maybe you want privacy. Maybe you don't mind looking silly.
Paranoid much, China? Cause it sure as hell looks like it when you have more than sixty security cameras strapped onto a single street light. This photograph, taken at an intersection in Shanghai by NetEase, hilariously captures the personal privacy be damned, big brother monster attitude that everyone imagines China…
Privacy and player data on Xbox One have been big concerns ever since Microsoft revealed its next console. If Microsoft's latest changes regarding Kinect and privacy haven't quieted your worries, you can read through their privacy statement in full over here. Be sure to click on the learn more links to expand each…
Responding to worries that an always-on Kinect sensor recording camera and audio information would be a threat to user privacy, Microsoft offers a simple solution: the ability to turn the Kinect off, which they'd told us about. Better: pause it while gaming.
Wow. Nothing is sacred. The Washington Post has discovered that the NSA and FBI have teamed up to tap into the servers of nine US tech companies—Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, you name it—and have extracted e-mails, photographs, audio, video, documents and connection logs. They basically have free reign to take…
USA Today reported yesterday that the Facebook version of Angry Birds had a flunking score of 65 in terms of respecting users' privacy, according to a group called PrivacyChoice.
A $3 million settlement by Playdom, the Disney social games studio, sends a pretty clear message that the U.S. Child Online Privacy Protection Act isn't messing around. Violate it, and it will be expensive.
"I was disappointed that Sony did not proactively notify my office...It seems to me that it's time to begin imposing fines - significant, attention-getting fines - on companies when poor privacy and security practices lead to breaches.'' [The Vancouver Sun]
