European law makers are looking to collect and store information on all airline travelers – a move that breaches EU privacy laws, the data protection supervisor has warned. The so-called PNR (passenger name record) scheme has again risen from the dead after Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) declined to pass it three times: in...

She was scolded, her properties weren’t displayed in the front window of the real estate agency, she didn’t get the printouts all the other agents got, and the agency principal’s wife wouldn’t even say good morning. But being unfriended on Facebook? Well, that was just the last straw. In a case brought before Australia’s Fair...

If someone wants to view your photos or contacts on your passcode-protected iPhone they may be able to gain access to the device with Siri. But if the federal authorities in the US want to see the contents of your phone in the old fashioned way – by asking you your password – they won’t get...

Heaven knows how you can bootleg a decent quality film when you stick your recording gadget in a popcorn box or cover your mobile camera with a sock to hide its lit screen – wouldn’t an apparently radioactive, glowing sock attract attention? – but that’s reportedly what pirates have been up to. (At least, so...

French citizens now have the ‘right to be forgotten’ worldwide. In rejecting an appeal from Google, the French data privacy regulator, CNIL, has closed a loophole that allowed the company to circumvent a May 2014 ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ruling allows European citizens to ask search engines not to display specific URLs linked to...

As of Monday, the Belgian-Facebook match is ON – let the rhetoric war begin!!! Belgian privacy body: “Facebook is as bad as the NSA!” Facebook: “If it weren’t for our infosec cookies, Belgium would become a cradle for cyber terrorism!” The “Facebook is spying on people all over the world, just like the US National...

The first operator to be convicted in the UK for illegally flying his drone out of visual contact, over a congested area and within 50 meters of buildings, has been fined £1800 (about $2,800). Nigel Wilson, a 42-year-old security guard from Nottingham, was also ordered to pay £600 in costs after pleading guilty to offenses under...

Bitcoin payments processor BitPay was spearphished late last year after a hacker gained access to an email account belonging to David Bailey, Editor-in-Chief of digital currency publication Bitcoin Magazine. Not once, not twice, but three times. It all began one day in December 2014 when BitPay’s chief financial officer, Bryan Krohn, received an email that appeared to have...

Live free or die. That, possibly the most well-known of US state mottos, is declared on vehicle license plates throughout the verdant, mountainous, cantankerous state of New Hampshire. True to that in-your-face independence, on Tuesday evening, in the New Hampshire town of Lebanon, the Lebanon Libraries board unanimously seized freedom and privacy by flipping the...

Snapchat has just released version 9.15 of the popular messaging app, and for the first time it includes a feature that users can purchase in-app. It’s called Replay, and for 99 cents you can replay an additional three snaps per day – additional because users already have the ability to replay one snap per day for...