Passwords, by definition, are secrets. We use them to identify ourselves to systems and gain authorized access to places that other people are denied access to. Every online account is an identity, but only if it … Learn more.
Citizens and policymakers around the world are grappling with how to limit companies’ use of data about individuals – and how private various types of information should be. But anthropologists like me know tha… Learn more.
The Federal Trade Commission issued its largest-ever fine, of US$5 billion, to Facebook for violating a 2011 privacy settlement in late July. But the amount is only about a month’s worth of the company’s reve… Learn more.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called privacy the “right to be let alone.” Perhaps Congress should give states trying to protect consumer data the same right. For years, a gridlocked Congress ignored priva… Learn more.
When someone types your name into Google, suppose the first link points to a newspaper article about you going bankrupt 15 years ago, or to a YouTube video of you smoking cigarettes 20 years ago, or simply a webpage that… Learn more.
A federal magistrate judge in California has issued a warrant ordering Apple to assist the FBI in accessing data on an iPhone used by a suspect in the December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting. Apple’s public refus… Learn more.
Once servers loaded with information about who we talk to, where we go, what we do, what we buy, which websites we visit, how we behave on them, etc. Edward Snowden got in a huge amount of trouble for hinting us the leve… Learn more.
Last month, I met Edward Snowden in a hotel in central Moscow, just blocks away from Red Square. It was the first time we’d met in person; he first emailed me nearly two years earlier, and we eventually created… Learn more.
Why would anyone use their official work or school email address to register for a website that promises to facilitate extramarital affairs? Reports indicate that there are 74,468 unique “.edu” email addresses… Learn more.
Facebook’s Community Operations team has announced it is changing the privacy settings on accounts for deceased users to reflect the settings they chose in life. Facebook introduced “memorialisation” in 2009… Learn more.
