Top 10 Stories

The CEO of social media app Whisper has hit back at allegations that it may be illegally monitoring and tracking users.   Following reports that the app tracks users via an internally developed mapping tool, CEO Michael Heyward penned a blog post over the weekend to try and clear the mess up.   He repeated the line about not collecting PII and only collecting GPS data via opt-in, however his response was more measured than that of...

Apple is being hit with criticisms about privacy issues in the new version of OS X.   The latest version of the operating system, known as Yosemite, sends location information to Apple by default via the Spotlight search feature, something that has angered users and privacy advocates.   Yosemite was released to users on October 17th and within hours, users began reporting that highly specific location data was being sent from their machines back to Apple....

The Australian Immigration department has reported the theft of hard drives containing hundreds of asylum seekers' personal files to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.   Immigration chief Mike Pezzullo today said the department had received reports that a number of devices had gone missing from the offshore detention facility, as first reported by SBS in September and The Guardian Australian on Saturday.   The storage devices were reportedly not password protected and were stolen from inside an ‘unlockable’ tent on...

The NSA has launched an internal review of a senior official’s part-time work for a private company.   Under the arrangement, which was confirmed by former NSA director Keith Alexander and current intelligence officials, Chief Technical Officer Patrick Dowd, is allowed to work up to 20 hours a week at IronNet Cybersecurity, the private firm led by Alexander, a retired Army general and his former boss.   In a statement in response to inquiries by Reuters,...

Microsoft has been forced to pull a patch again.   A patch that aimed to add “SHA-2 Hashing” to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has instead raised some concerns among Redmond's customers, reported The Register.   The company is “investigating behaviour associated with this update” and recommends those who have implemented and have found things have since gone awry it uninstall the software.   VIEW FULL STORY

Facebook has launched a “Safety Check” tool which allows users to quickly alert family and friends that they are safe.   Previously only available in Japan, if Facebook designates a particular geographical area as a crisis zone, it will activate this tool for users it believes are in the area. The service attempts to detect your location via Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” tool, the city listed in your profile, or where you’ve recently logged in. It...

The illegal online trade of personal information has soared to a record high in 2014.   According to research by Experian, more than 110 million pieces of data bought and sold by criminals so far in 2014. Using web monitoring technology, it found that 96.5 per cent of the illegally traded data consisted of login credentials.   The remaining data consisted of passport details and payment card details.   VIEW FULL STORY

Home Secretary Theresa May has defended the collection of vast amounts of phone and internet data, saying that there was an "unwritten agreement" that harvesting of personal data was needed to "keep us safe".   May told a Parliamentary committee citizens did not give their explicit consent to have their data harvested by the security services and argued that collecting and storing phone and internet records was not the same as "mass surveillance" because "most...

The Drupal security team is reporting that versions of Drupal 7 prior to 7.32 are vulnerable to a "Highly Critical" SQL injection bug.   Version 7.32 of the content management system has been made available to address the bug, as the flaw could allow an attacker to exploit the vulnerability to achieve privilege escalation or execute arbitrary PHP code.   At the time that the vulnerability was disclosed, no known exploits were being used. The attack...

Young people are being warned of the consequences of sharing too much information on social media by Cifas - the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service.   In a new publication, titled “Beware what you share”, the often unexpected dangers of posting too much information online through social networking sites is detailed. From pointing out what a fraudster will see when you post holiday details, through to understanding privacy settings on popular social networking sites, “Beware what you share” points...