I know people who do it. You probably know people who do it. And we’re not talking about falling in love. File sharing, the euphemism for copying and sharing copyrighted material without paying, was one of the early hallmarks of the digital, anything-goes-on-the-Internet age. Names like Napster became synonymous with killing the music industry. And there were countless lawsuits against groups and individuals aimed at curbing illegal sharing — but nothing seemed to work. Now, […]

CISPA, the Privacy-Invading Cybersecurity Spying Bill, is Back in Congress It’s official: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives yesterday. CISPA is the contentious bill civil liberties advocates fought last year, which would provide a poorly-defined “cybersecurity” exception to existing privacy law. CISPA offers broad immunities to companies who choose to share data with government agencies (including the private communications of users) in the name of cybersecurity. It […]

Well, here we go again. The Energy Department was hit by an online attack last month that compromised the personal data of several hundred employees. In an e-mail sent to employees Friday evening, the agency confirmed that hackers penetrated computers and servers at the agency’s Washington headquarters and stole the personal information of hundreds of employees and contractors. The agency said it was working with federal authorities to investigate the attack. It said that, based […]

Chinese hackers have not been messing around as of late, they have decided to go all out. One day after The New York Times reported that Chinese hackers had infiltrated its computers and stolen passwords for its employees, The Wall Street Journal announced that it too had been hacked. Two of the largest media entities in the US have been attacked, yet our network defense systems have still not been put at the top of […]

Google has been stealing more and more of your privacy for years,  with some simple work arounds, but those were always guesses. Now advertisers have access to not simply what you have looked at, but actually purchased. Google built its $38 billion business selling ads based on how people search and browse the Web. Facebook, too, uses what it knows about its one billion users to sell targeted ads. But when it comes to what many […]

Kaspersky has uncovered a new, far-ranging cyberspying campaign that targets government secrets. The firm has tantalizing named the malicious software behind the attack “Red October,” a nod to the famous Tom Clancy novel. Red October has been attempting to steal critical, secret documents since at least 2007, Kaspersky said in a report posted to its website Monday.  It’s designed to defeat a common encryption scheme that’s used by NATO and government agencies, Kaspersky says. It’s also capable […]

Honestly, I knew little about Snapchat and only recently had begun to research Poke. The idea of message “self destructing” after 10 seconds or so sounded interesting, and as most of you know privacy is kind of a big issue to me (and beginning to be for many on the internet). The only problem is, they may not be so private. First problem I thought of, and at least they had as well, was screen […]

Are you serious? How hard is the government going to try and destroy our privacy? Well apparently they are going to try really hard, and keep trying until they get it. A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law (written in 1986 and beyond outdated). Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation […]