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Companies are understandably excited about the potential of customer data, but privacy must remain a priority!

Debates around surveillance, hacking and increased data collection has made many of us more sensitive to privacy – enough so that some companies are using it as a selling point. Apple chief executive Tim Cook recently said that customers “should be in control of their own information”, pitting his company against rivals such as Google by claiming to use data only to improve its products rather than to sell for revenue. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it,” he said.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/jul/23/privacy-becomes-a-priority-for-businesses-and-their-consumers
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

PageFair’s solution is to scrambles the ads and deliver them in a way that adblock software can’t “see.” “So a programme like Adblock Plus can’t recognise it,” Blanchfield says.

Apple tends not to launch new products unless it is confident they will succeed. That is why the news and media publishing industry is so terrified of the coming update to the Safari web browser on iPhone, which will reportedly contain an adblock option for users.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pagefair-thinks-it-can-defeat-apple-new-ad-blocking-plan-2015-7
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Dear Corporation,
While I am glad that (as you stated) my privacy is very important to you, it’s even more important to me. The intent of this policy is to inform you how you may collect, use, and dispose of personal information about me!

Dear Corporation,

You have expressed an interest in collecting personal information about me. (This interest may have been expressed by implication, in case you were attempting to collect such data without notifying me first.) Since you have told me repeatedly that personalization is a great benefit,\ and that advertising, search results, news, and other services should be tailored to my individual needs and desires, I’ve decided that I should also have my own personalized, targeted privacy policy. Here it is.
Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/07/20/create_a_personal_data_privacy_policy.html
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Hackers are threatening to publish the highly personal details of up to 36 million people who use the cheating website Ashley Madison!

Hackers are threatening to publish the highly personal details of up to 36 million people who use the cheating website Ashley Madison.
The hacker, who calls himself The Impact Team, breached the internal systems of Canadian company Avid Life Media (ALM) which owns Ashley Madison as well as similar sites Cougar Life and Established Men.
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ashley-madison-hacked-sensitive-customer-data-cheating-website-leaked-online-1511604
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Safe for now!

The UK High Court has ruled that parts of the government’s surveillance plans are unlawful, ruling out a possible ban on apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.
The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, permitting agencies and public bodies to gather information about phone calls and emails, was deemed to be “inconsistent with EU law”, reports the BBC. The government has been told it must pass new legislation to be enacted by the end of next March.
Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/whatsapp-is-safe-governments-plan-to-spy-on-your-data-ruled-unlawful-1299488
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

“The argument we make about why you should switch to DuckDuckGo is you’re not getting tracked, you’re getting all the results you expect, the instant answers and you’re also getting a less cluttered, fun design,” Weinberg says.

When Gabriel Weinberg, founder of the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo, first started working on the concept for it almost a decade ago now, he didn’t set out at first to build a company around it – or even a serious product that millions of people would eventually use.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/07/15/duckduckgo-founder-on-privacy-and-why-doesnt-track-users-like-google/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Any company processing data of a European citizen in the European Union is subject to EU law and any transfer of data outside the EU must meet certain adequacy standards. 

Brussels moves like striking cobra, looks to achieve October agreement.

The second round of negotiations on the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) saw real movement on Tuesday, according to negotiators.
Sources familiar with the discussions told El Reg that a tentative political agreement has been reached already on Chapter 5 and Article 3. These two elements focus specifically on territorial scope and international data transfers.
Read more: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/negotiators_go_for_early_wins_in_new_eu_data_protection_law/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

Now it’s just staged its own disappearing act!

FOR THOSE SEEKING stealth and anonymity online, a radio device known as ProxyHam was a highly anticipated new tool set to debut at the DefCon hacker conference next month. Now it’s just staged its own disappearing act.
Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-project-proxyham-mysteriously-vanishes/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

They should call it ‘Surveillance Barbie’.
Kids talking to Hello Barbie aren’t just talking to a doll, they’re talking to Mattel!

Using technology to make kids’ toys super cool – seems like a happy enough situation, no? Sadly things are not that simple for Mattel’s new WiFi Barbie doll, which critics fear could be used to spy on children, invade their privacy and use them as marketing tools.
The “Hello Barbie”, due to be released later this year, will use WiFi to chat to children, play interactive games, make jokes and tell stories using a concealed microphone activated by a button on her belt. However, the technology that processes what the child says is not contained within the doll itself. Instead recordings are transmitted over the Internet to cloud servers, where Mattel’s technology partner ToyTalk processes the audio with voice-recognition software.
Read more: http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1113355735/interactive-hello-barbie-could-invade-child-privacy-critics-say-031915/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me

One in 14 Americans may have just lost tons of their personal information!

One in 14 Americans may have just lost tons of their personal information — everything from their Social Security Number and birthdates to notes on their finances, relationships and even sexual proclivities — to hackers in a massive cyber breach, a federal agency said Thursday.
Hackers have made off with confidential data belonging to 22 million people who work, formerly worked or have applied to work for the federal government…
Read more: http://mashable.com/2015/07/11/government-hack-explainer/
Posted by Dont Mine on Me