Google released its smart messaging app called Allo, but a decision to log chats indefinitely has privacy advocates worried.

Alleging a trail of broken promises, two privacy-focused advocacy groups yesterday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against a recent WhatsApp privacy policy change that states it will begin sharing user data with parent company Facebook. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) said in a joint...

The United States is months removed from this spring’s Apple vs. FBI debacle, but the debate around encryption is just beginning to play out in Europe. A joint press conference held Tuesday in Paris between Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve marked perhaps the most public declaration by a government figure that there...

A flaw in the popular Telegram Messenger app that allows attackers to crash devices and run up wireless data charges is being disputed by the app maker who calls the claims false. According to two Iranian-based researchers, Sadegh Ahmadzadegan and Omid Ghaffarinia, Telegram users are vulnerable to attacks via specially crafted messages that can bypass...

Mike Mimoso, Chris Brook, and Threatpost’s newest reporter, Tom Spring, discuss the week in news, including a first hand account of an online casino’s experience with a Teslacrypt infection, Brazil shutting down WhatsApp, and attackers mining an ADP portal for W-2s. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_May_6_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

WhatsApp’s presence in Brazil has been rocky at best from a legal standpoint, but it got even more tenuous this week when for the second time in the last six months a judge ordered the country’s telecommunications companies to block the messaging app. The judge demanded that WhatsApp be blocked for 72 hours after WhatsApp’s...

Following an appeal from WhatsApp’s lawyers, on Tuesday afternoon a Brazilian judge overturned a suspension previously handed down this week that would’ve blocked usage of the messaging app for 72 hours. According to Reuters, on Tuesday afternoon a “different judge from the state tribunal intervened” and canceled Monday’s ruling. WhatsApp’s presence in Brazil has been...

Messaging firm Viber is adding end-to-end encryption for 711 million of its users, becoming the latest tech firm to embrace encryption on an massive scale. Making the move even more provocative is the fact Viber is owned by a Japanese conglomerate and operates out of Israel – making it immune to existing and any upcoming U.S....

A bill that would force companies to decrypt messages and unlock devices if ordered to do so by government court order, surfaced Friday and is rattling security and privacy advocates and IT business leaders. They contend the bill is misguided and will have a detrimental effect on civil liberties and business. The issue came to...

If a report from this weekend’s New York Times is to be believed, the popular instant messaging platform WhatsApp may be the next technology company to find itself in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice and its war on crypto. Government officials are reportedly torn on how to proceed with a wiretap that a...