Children's health and privacy advocates are petitioning toy giant Mattel not to release a kid-focused smart hub called Aristotle, which they argue gives an unprecedented look into the personal lives of children. The issue has drawn attention from Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who sent Mattel a letter last week asking the toymaker for more information on how it will store and retain data it collects on children.
European competition regulators mounted a push against tax avoidance by Silicon Valley giants, announcing plans to take Ireland to court for failing to collect back taxes from Apple and ordering Luxembourg to claim unpaid taxes from Amazon. The effort, which comes as the European Union considers proposals meant to increase the sums levied on technology companies, is part of a concerted campaign to revamp how taxes are collected in the 28-nation bloc.
Allowing foreign governments to require reviews of software secrets of technology products built by U.S. companies is “problematic,” the top White House cyber security official said, adding that the increasingly common arrangements presented both security and intellectual property risks. Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator, said that letting countries inspect source code, the closely guarded internal instructions of software, as a condition for entry into foreign markets was a protectionist effort by certain regimes that threatened a “free and open internet” and could “hobble” a product’s security and privacy features.
All 3 billion of Yahoo’s users as of 2013 were affected by a data theft the company originally said had only affected 1 billion users, Yahoo said in a statement. That makes the Yahoo hack far and away the largest in history.
Ireland’s High Court said it would ask the EU’s top court to decide whether to ban the way in which Internet firms such as Facebook transfer users’ data to the United States in a case with major implications for companies. The case is the latest to question whether methods used by large tech firms such as Google and Apple to transfer data outside the 28-nation European Union give EU consumers sufficient protection from U.S. surveillance.
Brussels will hit Amazon with a bill for Luxembourg back taxes worth several hundred million euros in the latest fallout from the EU crackdown on tax avoidance by big multinationals. The European Commission’s move, confirmed by several people familiar with the case, comes on the heels of Apple’s record €13bn bill for Irish back taxes last year, which prompted a fierce political backlash from Washington.
Russian state-owned company TransTeleCom has provided a new Internet connection to Kim Jong Un's regime, according to North Korea monitoring project 38 North. The move strengthens North Korea's cybersecurity capabilities at a time of heightened tensions with the U.S. -- and also reduces its reliance on China.
Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee. The material is part of an attempt to learn the depth of what investigators now believe was a sprawling foreign effort spanning years to interfere with the 2016 United States presidential election.
Equifax Inc. was alerted in March to the software security vulnerability that led to hackers obtaining personal information of more than 140 million Americans but took months to patch it, its former CEO said in testimony to be delivered to Congress. “It appears that the breach occurred because of both human error and technology failures,” former CEO Richard Smith said in written testimony released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
An Indiana couple has pled guilty to charges of federal mail fraud and money laundering resulting from an elaborate plot that fleeced Amazon out of over $1.2 million in merchandise, according to The Star Press. Erin Finan, 38, and Leah Finan, 37, enacted their scheme by taking advantage of Amazon’s accommodating returns policy, which does not always require a broken item be sent back before a replacement is issued.
Google is conducting a broad internal investigation to determine whether Russian-linked entities used its ads or services to try to manipulate voters ahead of the U.S. election, according to a person familiar with the matter, a move that comes after Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. said Russian actors used their sites. Google, part of Alphabet Inc., is also talking with congressional officials who are investigating Russian efforts to influence the election and plans to share its findings with them once completed, the person said.
An alarming number of Macs remain vulnerable to known exploits that completely undermine their security and are almost impossible to detect or fix even after receiving all security updates available from Apple, a comprehensive study has concluded. The exposure results from known vulnerabilities that remain in the Extensible Firmware Interface, or EFI, which is the software located on a computer motherboard that runs first when a Mac is turned on.
A federal judge has ruled that the FBI does not have to make public how much it paid last year to unlock an iPhone used by one of the apparent perpetrators of a terrorist attack in California that killed 14 people. Three news organizations -- USA Today, The Associated Press and Vice Media -- sued under the Freedom of Information Act to try to force the FBI to reveal the amount of the payment and the identity of the company that received it, but U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that information is exempt from mandatory disclosure under the landmark transparency statute.
Early in his administration, President Trump signed a directive outlining a strategy of pressure against North Korea that involved actions across a broad spectrum of government agencies and led to the use of military cyber-capabilities, according to U.S. officials.As part of the campaign, U.S. Cyber Command targeted hackers in North Korea’s military spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, by barraging their computer servers with traffic that choked off Internet access.
Trump administration lawyers are demanding the private account information of potentially thousands of Facebook users in three separate search warrants served on the social media giant, according to court documents obtained by CNN. The warrants specifically target the accounts of three Facebook users who are described by their attorneys as "anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration's policies."
Apple released more details about the iPhone X's Face ID feature when it published a new privacy site, addressing some of the concerns that people have had since the face-scanning feature was announced. When Apple unveiled the feature, which can unlock phones and be used for payments, it spurred not only a thousand alarming think pieces, but also a letter from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asking how the company will protect the data.
California and Wisconsin said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was incorrect when it notified them they were among 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. DHS spokesman Scott McConnell said notifications to 21 states were “based on a variety of sources, including scanning detected from malicious IP addresses and intelligence information that cannot be publicly disclosed.”
European regulators are giving Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube six months to voluntarily get more aggressive about blocking and removing hate speech and terrorist-related content. If they fail to do so, they could face possible new regulations next year.
Twitter has informed Congress that it found and took action on roughly 200 accounts on its service after determining they were linked to Russia and sought to interfere in American politics. "Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter. All of those identified accounts had already been or immediately were suspended from Twitter for breaking our rules," Twitter announced in a blog post.
Facebook said its efforts to fight fake news during Germany’s national elections included taking down tens of thousands of fake profiles in the final month of the campaign. Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy for Europe, Middle East Africa, said the Silicon Valley-based company mounted an array of efforts to ensure the social media network was not used as a platform to manipulate public opinion.
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