WhatsApp will finally let users encrypt their chat backups in the cloud

WhatsApp said on Friday it will give its two billion users the option to encrypt their chat backups to the cloud, taking a significant step to put a lid on one of the tricky ways private communication between individuals on the app can be compromised. The Facebook-owned service has end-to-end encrypted chats between users for […]

UK dials up the spin on data reform, claiming ‘simplified’ rules will drive ‘responsible’ data sharing

The U.K. government has announced a consultation on plans to shake up the national data protection regime, as it looks at how to diverge from European Union rules following Brexit. It’s also a year since the U.K. published a national data strategy in which said it wanted pandemic levels of data sharing to become Britain’s […]

グーグルから捜査当局に渡される位置データが急増、「ジオフェンス令状」が人々のプライヴァシーを脅かしている

人々の位置情報などの履歴を法執行機関が請求する「ジオフェンス令状」に基づく捜査が米国で急増していることが、このほどグーグルが明らかにした情報請求の件数から明らかになった。ユーザーの個人情報を特定の場所や時間に基づいて企業に一括請求する捜査手法であることから、プライヴァシーの侵害につながる危険性が改めて指摘されている。

UK offers cash for CSAM detection tech targeted at E2E encryption

The U.K. government is preparing to spend over half a million dollars to encourage the development of detection technologies for child sexual exploitation material (CSAM) that can be bolted on to end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms to scan for the illegal material, as part of its ongoing policy push around internet and child safety. In a […]

Texas Right to Life website exposed job applicants’ resumes

Anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life exposed the personal information of hundreds of job applicants after a website bug allowed anyone to access their resumes, which were stored in an unprotected directory on its website. A security researcher told TechCrunch that the group’s main website, built largely in WordPress, was not properly protecting the file […]

After years of inaction against adtech, UK’s ICO calls for browser-level controls to fix ‘cookie fatigue’

In the latest quasi-throwback toward ‘do not track‘, the UK’s data protection chief has come out in favor of a browser- and/or device-level setting to allow Internet users to set “lasting” cookie preferences — suggesting this as a fix for the barrage of consent pop-ups that continues to infest websites in the region. European web […]