If you were born in California since 1983, the state owns your DNA. The data of every Californian born since that year is kept in a bland office building in Richmond, a city located in the eastern section of the San Francisco Bay Area. That data’s not just passively kept, mind you: it’s also being...

Microsoft’s new plan to keep the US government’s hands off its customers’ data: Germany will be a safe harbor in the digital privacy storm. Microsoft on Wednesday announced that beginning in the second half of 2016, it will give foreign customers the option of keeping data in new European facilities that, at least in theory,...

US federal prosecutors, on Tuesday, unveiled criminal charges against three men accused of orchestrating the biggest theft of customer data from financial institutions in the country’s history – encompassing personal data belonging to more than 100 million people. Unsealing a 23-count indictment in Manhattan, the Justice Department charged Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein with computer hacking...

Max Schrems must be pleased. He who rose up from the ranks of Facebook’s privacy-ravaged users to file complaints against what he said was Facebook’s illegal data collection/retention, and is now witnessing the fruits of his labor. Or, as he tweeted in response to the Belgian court giving Facebook 48 hours to stop tracking those without...

A 15-year-old schoolboy arrested and questioned over the TalkTalk cyberattack is suing three UK newspapers over alleged breach of privacy. Lawyers for the teenager, who’s from Northern Ireland, told the court that the boy was recognizable in the newspapers’ coverage, even though the publications altered his image. According to the Irish Independent, his lawyers said...

A fugitive is back in custody having spent a year posting selfies onto Facebook showing his tanned mug and his beachside hideaway. Nick Grove’s 2014 escape from jail, by scaling a barbed-wire fence, would have been worthy of being the next Jason Bourne movie if only he’d been followed around by a Hollywood production staff...